The little warrior in action

Last Sunday, Fatini was scheduled to take the exam for the taekwondo grading. She has only started a dfew months. I realised that Fatini has many hidden talents which she didn't show to me. I meant, I never expected anything from her, I just wanted her to have a good time. However watching her perform the taekwondo, I can see how dedicated she is towards anything that she did and how responsible she is. She just filled me with admiration for her. I'm so proud of you sayang.

Happy Birthday Emir

On 5^th December 2009, Emir was finally 4 years old. I had his birthday party done 2 weeks plus earlier because of expected busy times during this time which is absolutely true.

Emir, you are a joy to my life. You have become so handsome and grown so tall. You are also very smart, capable and compassionate. Your mind sometimes surprises me with its brilliance and sharpness I didn’t know you possess for such a small person your age. You are also very responsible and very caring. You have a sense of fairness and always try to be fair to your love ones.

At four years old, you can talk very well now and sometimes non stop. You are not afraid to speak up and will voice out your mind to people. I love listening to you and your refreshing accent.

You want to sleep only with me by your side. When you were very little, which was just a couple of years ago, you didn’t want me out of your sight! However, I notice now, you have become so much more independent and it’s okay when mummy leave you to go somewhere else for a while. Even though it is more convenient to me now, in my heart I felt a twinge of sadness that you don’t depend too much on me anymore. When I wanted to go out and I told you to stay home and you said “ok mommy” with your ever beautiful accent, instead of crying, it pulled that sadness string in my heart.

You also liked to praise me, saying I’m pretty, and you know what, coming from you, it means a whole lot to me!

Emir, do you know that mummy really love to smell your smell, have you sit on my lap and have you snuggled closed to me. When you hit your sister during one of your naughty episodes and I warned you to give your sister away, you said “ No, I don’t want that!”

My heart swells with pride to watch you feeling secure and your confidence growing day after day.

And I hope to persevere that feeling of security and protect you from any harm.

I have thousands of words to say but it’s impossible for me to pen them down here.

All I can tell is I love you so much and you have been the greatest joy to me. I pray you turn out to be a good responsible person and that you be successful in your life.

Qurban

Last Sunday was one hot day in the farm at Meru. I joined my husband’s group of friends in making Qurban, slaughtering of 2 cows and 2 sheeps. The men were working on the animals. I couldn’t watch though and didn’t let the children see the actual slaughtering for fearing of misunderstanding as they are still very young.

Emir remarked that the men were wicked men! But fortunately the kids didn’t give much attention to the activities as they busied themselves with more interesting past time with the horses and goats on the farm. The women helped with the onions, tomatoes and carrots. Easy job for us.

The meat was distributed to the poor people round the village, a shelter for girls, and the Rohingya refugees. We did cooked some meats for a late lunch which was served garden tuscan styled under the trees. Very nice indeed. Everybody had a great time even though the weather was quite hot and sweaty. I didn’t take picture, but I did record some scenes on my camcorder. This one picture was snapped by Emir.

Emir

Emir’s receiving his year end graduation from the Edudrama class. It’s end of year cum Christmas celebration. The class will be closed and continue after new year. The kids have been enjoying the classes and I have no reason not to continue. As long as they are happy. One thing is Saturday morning will never be a free time for me. However, I am enjoying every moment of the busy"ness" of being a mom to almost school going kids.

I am proud of Emir. He has been progressing very well. His "pelat" ness is almost gone even though I feel his speech has accent of baby talk which I love so much. It makes him very endearing. However he's growing very fast in terms of physique (he's tall) as well as mental capabilities. His cheekiness and boyish naughtiness have been on the increasing trend as well and I'm trying to curb it and have been lecturing him. He's been a good boy 99% of the time. I'm so proud of him. I love you Mir.

At Nabilah's party

End of year has always been busy times of the year. For me, it’s filled with birthday parties, school graduations and holiday plans. Last Saturday was the kids’ cousin, Nabilah’s birthday party at their home. We spent the whole afternoon there. There was a magician show and see the children’s face. They were really fascinated with the show. I think I will hire the magician next time around.

Emir's birthday party

We had Emir’s 4th birthday party last Saturday. It was Emir’s first party. Everything went superbly well after all and the birthday boy was so happy and proud. There were 25 children including his cousins attending. I won't write much as the pictures will tell more stories than I could pen down.

Not so smoothly

I had planned Emir’s Birthday party for tomorrow afternoon. So I made arrangement starting about two and half weeks ago. The invitations went out and since I got very good responses from his school mates and there are limited spaces for the party, my invitees were limited to the school mates and cousins. I had worried about too many children and not enough provisions as almost everyone invited save a couple confirmed their attendance.

So I maximized my order of food and children places. I also added more activities for the children. I bought and prepared the party goodie bags. I thought everything went quite smoothly by beginning of this week and was just getting ready for the party day. My children were excited. Everyday they were asking about the upcoming party.

Until a couple of days ago… when things were supposed to go smoothly something unexpected just have to happen. One of the classes was infected with Hands Foot and Mouth disease. One by one, parents called me cancelling the attendance as their children was infected. I felt sorry for the children, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling disheartened and disappointed that things didn’t go as smoothly. Why did it have to happen around this time? I felt like crying. So far about 6 of them had called to cancel and it's just days away from the party. I have about twenty more children in total, and I’m waiting nervously for any further bad news.

I really hope no more sick children. I hope everything will go well tomorrow. It’s Emir’s first party! I just want it to be memorable for him.

Outing

Last week Fatini asked whether she could follow her friend Leah to the rabbit farm at Bukit Tinggi. When I talked to the mother, she asked whether I would like to join her together with another of Fatini's friend's mom. So on Saturday afternoon we met at one house. 3 mothers and 6 kids. The children waited excitedly for each other and talking incessantly. It was fun watching them.

We decided to go with two cars, Fatini wanted to ride with her friends, so we exchanged children between us. Another boy and Emir rode with me however Emir was so upset because according to him Fatini was his best friend and he wanted Fatini to be with him. Awww Emir…..Mummy knew you love Fatini so much!

It was hot in the afternoon but as soon as we reached the rabbit farm, it started to rain. Well, the rain didn’t hinder the children, and far from dampening their spirits.

My camera ran out of battery soon after, how forgetful of me to charge the battery. Well it was raining heavily afterwards. We continued the climb to Colmar Tropicale. They managed to play amongst themselves, blowing bubbles and did some sand art.

It was dark when we decided to leave the place.

Meeting of the young at hearts

We had a get together recently after umpteenth year of absence since college days. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. One friend had offered to be a host and therefore we met at her lovely home. Hours went by and nobody stopped talking yet. Next meet, I heard they were talking about me to be the host! They promised to wash the plates and do the clean up afterwards ….

The Witch and the Pumkin

Today the children are going to have a Halloween Party at school. So they rose up early, very happy and excited to put on the costume even though I think Fatini preferred another costume than witch. But I bought that one for last year and I don’t want to buy another one. She, being smart and a little envious perhaps, mentioned it though, about Emir getting a new one, because Emir had a Spiderman suit for last year. "So what happened to the Spiderman suit, did you throw it away, mommy?"she had asked me. But I feel that the Spiderman suit is not suitable for the party so I bought another one. Emir may have grown out of the suit anyway.

They scared their daddy to death (pretend only) this morning.

To you!

The other day one very back dated racist human being said to me in his effort to initiate racial bashing, “Easy for you, your children will get paid by the government for her schooling because you are Malay” He said that because I was chatting about children with the mother of my kids’ friend who happened to be a foreigner.

He tipped me off. Let me steam off...

"Let me tell you b******, Firstly, between me, and my family circle, we paid huge amount of tax, an amount I’m sure is well above what you paid your whole lifetime if you ever pay a cent!

Secondly, my children are born with sufficient wealth, inheritance and abundance of good luck and blessing from God. So far their upbringing which is possibly higher than your monthly salary are being paid by ourselves. And even should we were under the communist government in the future, or whatever government, they will be doing well for themselves! Because that’s what I strived them to be. They are not going to fail because of a government.

Thirdly, I guess you want the government to give you money, for free…

Stop blaming others for your weakness and failure."

Letting go

I had loved this car. It held memories of me and my kids as we spent so much time in the car everyday. It was so messy inside all the time. The back seat was permanently fixed with two big children car seats that I couldn't take any additional passengers. It was full with toys, pillows and books which my kids had used day after day to keep them comfy and well occupied as we bulldozed through the traffic every single day. The back windows were splattered with stickers. I had the car since Fatini was just months old.

Sadly it was time to let go.

Meet again

Last Saturday, we went to a wedding in the afternoon in KL. The wedding was nice except that I heard the wedding had no blessing from the bridegroom's family, (how come?) therefore there was no representative from the male's side. What a pity as it was a beautiful wedding. I was imagining how the bridegroom must have felt getting married in the absence of his parents, and I was wondering what could be more important than giving your son your blessing and presence on his special day.

Then we went to a Hariraya invitation of my long lost friend who I got in contact with recently after so many years. She has recently become my colleague’s neighbour and had by chance mentioned about me. Then we followed by a phone call. I was quite close to her back in school as we represented school in one of the activities that required us to work together for 2 years in form 4 and 5. The last time I saw her was after our SPM result. After which everybody including her disappeared from my life.

I was so happy to finally meet her and she couldn’t believe I could come to her fabulous house. She looked exactly the same to me as she was back then.

There also, I met my history teacher when I was in lower secondary class. It was an additional pleasant surprise. For I kept on saying, I couldn’t have recognized him should I met him elsewhere. To me, he looked totally different (my memory about him was a bit different) but my friend thought he looked exactly the same and they had met accidentally anyway and she had recognized him immediately. He’s a big man now being a director of one of the government branches. I still remember fondly of some teachers who I really want to meet again but the opportunity has not come yet.

Wow, I was talking non stop to them, I hardly ate anything. It’s like me being carried back to my school days. My former teacher saw Fatini and remarked that that’s how I looked back then. Really? Fatini is now confirmed takes after me, he he.

I was in a boarding school throughout my secondary years and I guess maybe I didn’t really enjoy being there that when the time came, I could hardly wait to leave the school finally and never looked back. I did very well in school though scoring highly in all the public exams considering those times we didn't have so many "A" scorers. Anyway by fate, my destiny in tertiary education took quite a different route from the rest of my friends. When I worked, I met none of my secondary school friends either. We had no internet facilities back then nor did I have a handphone. Not to mention I only had Astro connected to my home in 2003!

Now with facebook, internet network, etc, etc I began to get in touch as one by one contacted me or I contacted them. Well, better late them never. Meeting my secondary school friends feels different from meeting other friends because I grew up with them. My most sensitive tender teenage years were with them. Days and nights were spent with them without our parents. Most teenage problems and all heartaches that accompanied it were solved by ourselves. We cried alone ourselves and managed our growing up years together. There was no supporting words from parents in their absence. Our life was guarded by wardens, teachers and prefects. Peers pressure was so felt back then but friendships formed were also strong.

Now decades later we meet again. I really like to meet more of my old friends. Only time will tell.

One Malaysia

Last Saturday Fatini had put on her Divali costume to join in the celebration at school. Happy Divali!