hey, its 645pm mr headache

i remembered the title of a book written by Mrs Y (i forgot the author) last night entitled 'as i was passing by'. perhaps that's the best that can describe what i wanted to relate in this post.

jodi picoult triggered my will and idea to write, again. i bought her newest book 'house rules' at kinokuniya last tuesday after my interview, and has been reading it since. i'm now at page 135. and perhaps because i still cannot stop reading it i even bring it out and read it inside the car while we were on our way to KKB. as a result, i got headache.

or maybe the headache was because i didnt eat before we got on the road. or because the road was curvy and the journey was quite long i hadnt anticipated it. or perhaps because the aircond was on too long and the car windows werent open that i felt suffocated. many times i figured out that my sickness were mostly psychologically related rather than externally caused. for example, my perfectionism makes me feel nauseous when something unanticipated occurs, because i feel i cannot do enough preparation to handle the late notice.

and now i probably sound like a freak. whatsoever, there are some things about myself that i have discovered in recent years, and the reason i stated them out is because i cannot draw out appropriate measures to problems i havent appropriately address. its a mechanism of coping and changing for the better, i can positively say.

because when abah passed away i didnt appropriately blurt out what i exactly feel, simply because i was so small i didnt know how to react, so i found my way out through excelling in my studies rather than facing my sadness and grief directly. my success was actually an escapism.

i dont regret it, because alhamdulillah Allah is Most Loving that things turned out to be good; i am here for everything i have experienced and did so far. but i realized that somehow my sunken, hidden wounds started to open up and are taking its credits, that i cannot ignore their effects anymore. thus i learned, and came out with a lesson that certain feelings shouldnt be locked inside our heart; it should be communicated. and how Allah is Most Gracious He blesses me with people who understand and are always be pleased to help.

next time if i have a chance to meet my interviewer again and jodi picoult, i'd like to thank them for indirectly helped me to realize many important things in my life. i thank you.

due to the headache i made a decision not to read anymore on our way back. so what i did was to observe the things happening around us while mama was driving. i noticed that some cyclists (mostly students) cycle along the traffic and some cycle against the traffic, which i thought can be a problem. imagine having two students cycling on the same road but at a point, are on the opposite directions of each other. that can be confusing and dangerous as well, because automatically they will pass each other and make a two-way traffic all by themselves, unless one decides to give way to another.

i suggest that there should be a law that says cyclists should cycle against the traffic ONLY, not along and against the traffic at the same time. more importantly, parents should guide their children about road safety, especially when their route includes main roads which can become crazy with speeding cars and red-lights' intruders.

yesterday while strolling the aisles at tesco, i noticed a father with his three children, one of them a baby resting on the trolley chewing newspaper. without a second thought i started to reach out my hand to take away the newspaper out of the baby's mouth when i realized that his father was there, looking at the baby and didnt stop the child from chewing it. i had to quickly walk away from them to stop myself from lecturing the father- which i was about to do without a second thought as well; plus due to the fact that mama said 'biarlah anak orang bukan anak kamu'.

two to three times i looked back to that same father and yup, he still ignored his baby as if the newspaper, loaded with carbon prints and unhealthy chemicals was a perfect toy for his child. i could only shake my head. that was why i stopped mama from buying gaseous drink for rais as usual, even though when we got back he sulked and searched for fights with ahnaf, which then ended up with all of us sleeping at about 1am and i practically got backache. so much for trying to save him from killing himself with doses of acids (he loves coke too much).

the sounds made by our proton wira drives me crazy- when mama corners it sounds like bones being stretched and almost break, which made me put more attention on the road. we got pass some old chinese residents, made from plain woods with hardly any branded furniture. it made me think of flat cold floor with no cushions and cozy pillows, open air and too bright living room and dull colors from in front to the back of the house. i then implied that these houses are not comfortable at all, which is why chinese people can become so victorious- they are never in a comfort zone, because they dont have one.

and that house's image plays inside their head, transferred into a strong ideology of 'always striving and there should never be enough' even until they are rich enough to own a house as big as a palace- perhaps some things never reside away.

i asked rais who happened to follow mama and me and was sitting at the back seat to hand me a candy ustaz gave us earlier in pusat zakat. he offered me a mint candy with a chocolate fill at the centre, which i loathe the most, and of course i rejected it; i asked for an ice tea candy in lieu. i cannot understand why they gave the name of the candy 'dynamite', because warm, slimy chocolate fill flowing through my mint candy onto my toungue so contrast with previous minty feeling would have nothing to do with any bursting flavour.

i hated the candy and all its likes since i was 6. i guess there are things about me that never change, even though my life has changed substantially during its course. mama then talked about how she remembered driving perhaps the oldest, almost rotten, barely alive toyota, painted blue-black and didnt even have signal lights from my past house to KKB, during our very hard times. i silently prayed that i got the job in petronas; i want to buy us better cars, i want to change some things for our family, and i hope the changes are for the better.

insyaAllah ameen.

p/s: happy 14th birthday awin amir ;-)