family- mother out-law

conversations with mymother outlaw are now very limited and most of the times it goes like this
me assalumualaikum che wan, apa khabar???
mol - uuuuum, uuuuummmm, uuuummmm
me - uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mol - uuuummm, uuuum, uuum, bit, bit bit, june june, june
me - july,july, july, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
this normally continues for a few minutes until one of us depart the encounter area, which is either the tv room or the dining table.

family- mother out-law

within a year of my stroke, my my mother-outlaw was afflicted with a series of minor strokes that renders the onset of dementia. her inherent diabetic condition also appreciably accelerated the festering of cataracts in her eyes making her almost blind. poor woman, at one stage, she was just sliding her body on the tiled floor and at numerous intervals demanding to go up. up to where we don't know as our house is a single storey bungalow. she was incoherent in other ways, always whining and shouting,but this woman had spirit,as evidenced by her continuous effort to move around unaided, these efforts inevitably leads to a number of falls which normally results in bleeding in some part of her head necessitating several visits to the emergency unit of the putrajaya hospital. i positively believe that a lot of her whining were desperate cries for attention and her inherent character of being the supremely ultimate drama queen. notwithstanding, i wouldn't wish dementia on anyone, my god it's so sad, distressing and unnerving. i instructed my second son to shoot me, if ever i descend into such a condition.mind you, i couldn't help but wonder why did old age so incapacitated her,millions of other people also grow old but never deteroriate like her,what great sin had she perpetuated???, in god's realm, the greatest sin is shirik,i.e. placing others on par with god,is there something unknown and unislamic which she had plunged in,like having a jin in her in order to always be radiant and attractive??? this i believe is quite common among royalties who are in decline.. wallahualam

my stroke recovery

at the hospital,the physio guided me to various form of exercise, one of which involves slipping some strait-jacketlike contraption on my affected arm, this whole appendage was then introduced into a machine that looks like a rice harvester.till today i am not sure of it's therapeutical use but i suppose this was a way to get the blood in my affected arm to flow. the whole physiotheraphy setup at the putrajaya hospital was woeful,there was no attempt to explain to me what happened and what they were trying to achieve. upon being back at home, i had my first session with an elderly masseuse, when he massaged my hands the pain was searing and unbearable. i was at this stage still totally ignorant of my predilection and was at the mercy of whatever was arranged by my dear wife. sometime in nov 2005 a friend brought another masseuse, pak lah, to start treating me, he confidently proclaimed that i should be walking after thirty sessions.well, thirty sessions went by very quickly but i was nowhere towards walking, not really,i was by then able to confidently stand-up, which was very good, as the imbalance was atrocious,i feel like falling down all the time. i made a few attempts to walk around but my loss of balance was too severe and debilitating and i was too scared of falling down and injuring my head

my stroke

in the early morning hours of saturday the2nd july 2005, i tried to get out of bed but my continuous digging of my elbow on the bed to prop me up proved futile, that was the last that i could remember. next i awoke in bed in the purajaya hospital and was told that i had a stroke. not knowing anything about stroke prior to that, i remain calm but my body seems to have this urgent need to go for a piss, at which particular moment i discovered that a catheher was painfully attached to my private part, so followed my first pissing experience via a cathether- utterly uncomfortable but not having any other choice, i proceeded to force the discharge. i then remember going through various machines which i later discovered were the mri and cscan ones.very slowly i became aware of my surroundings, my dear wife was there and the constant stream of visitors, relatives and friends. i was discharged after almost a week and still i was in good spirits, continuing to deceive myself that this was just another of one of those things which will soon correct itself. how verywrong i was!!!, for the next 6 months i was bedridden,the stroke having caused me to lose use and control of my left limb, my speech was surly and my ability to throw big water(buang air besar) severely curtailed it was all a total shock to me and my first instinct was to try to recollect the events that leads to these affliction. i remember eating ten nos of durians the day before whilst on my way back from nilai where my second son was studying, then, as is normal i busied myself around the house taking care of the plants together with azhar, my assistantand later on in the evening my usual night out at the royal lake club with nonad, max, steven, rama and others.maybe the mixture of durian and whiskey was the fatal catalyst that triggered something abnormal in my brain

pre-stroke- my childhood years

i was born in the year that tar(tengku abdul rahnman) and his cronies, all happily gallivanting in london under the guise of a wog(wily oriental gentlemen)deeply immersing themselves in the sinful pleasure offered by that bastion of the british empire, wine, women and gambling, although if you belief the local history books, they were there working hard towards the noble cause of fighting for our independence. my earliest recollection was being sarong-strapped around my mother's body, her with one hand clinging precariously to the chromed- steel bar that always ransnakily underneath the roof of a bus,which was courageously chugging along the labis-kluang route , we on another one of those "paying homage" visits to my maternal grandparents in kampung melayu,kluang . the subsequent move to jemaluang, mersing, kahang,gelang patah and kota tinggi and labis again before finally settling down in kluang were of the vaguest recollections to me, after kota tinggi i was packed off to attend the rmc where my growing-up really took-off. all these perennial uprooting ensures that my answers would always be long-winded when asked as to where is my hometown, i would initially rumble on about all these migration before finally ending with kuala lumpur as kl was the town that i had spent the longest time in,in my life, 20 years. after a while especially with someone whose presence bores me, the answer was simply, dunno!

pre-stroke- my working life

it is a fact of life that everywhere one temporarily spend some time, friendships and acquaintances are struck sometimes for life, sometimes very briefly. so it is in petronas that i somehow entered the orbit of one ikhlas abdul rahman. though not very close we struck up a friendship that last for the better part of almost 15years and the last i heard of him was from my brother-in-law in esso who now closely liase with ikhlas as ikhlas has also apparently comeup in the world, being now in some sort of position overseeing petronas jv with esso. also, everywhere one sojourn takes one to, invariably there one would encounter a kindly soul with a somewhat unusual name such as jai bin konik in rmc, so it was for me that i encountered one KADIR LAMBAK in petronas, not entirely privy as to why his father has that unusual name, never dared to ask him why. more on jai in a few months!!!


my stay in petronas was unusually short, a mere 1 month for the following reasons:
a). as a trainee engineer in those early days of petronas, one has to take one's own initiative on what one's duties and responsibilities were, i subsequently learned that the primary duties was zip, nothing just pretend to be busy and absorb as much knowledge as possible. inevitably this led to my daily efforts to be absent from the office and the main trick here is not to let puan minah track you, which was a difficult task as she is one of those kaypochee type if you get my meaning.
one of the basic requirement was to have had been on a stay on an oil platform for six occasions for what the manual classify as familiarisation trips. my first trip was to "tapisc", an oil platform kettle-shaped like all esso's platform. so i took a twin biplane from kl to kerteh, then a nuri chopper to the platform, spent a few days which was so bloody boring that i never again went onboard an oil platform, the general public might think that it's glamorous out there. wrong!!!!. just imagine you are in a kettle with nothing much to do, as the experts there have got no interest to teach you as it could mean them being soon jobless, surrounded by water, no women nothing at all , just endless expense of water to look at and tubs and tubs of ice cream to plunder on. i think i only lasted 3days.
b). on my return to the office there was of course the necessary ritual of writing a report for which reason i had to face puan minah to request for stationeries. believe it or not, just like ripleys yeah, it took her a week.
c)another of our duty was to accompany our sister materials and controls department staff when one of them had to attend what was glamorously referred to as "bid opening" its nothing more than just signing off against your name in an attendance sheet confirming that you have attended the occasion and that everything was above board,i.e. no one was bribed with wine and women to our knowledge. when the full report reached my manager, he remarked "well done". just for attending!! my hamid was an original follower of pak lah tidur as long ago as in 1980.
d) the ultimate and real reason was that mmc offered me a job as an engineer, not trainee and a substantial salary jump of rm 2300/-as compared to rm1,800/- in petronas, all this after just one month of working heh,heh, heh, am i good or were they desperate?? years later i found out that it was the latter (which immediately deflated my ego) in order to fulfill the bumi quota.

prestroke - my working life

the smoking lady deserves a mention here as she was a rarity, a malay woman who gaily smoked without any false pretensions, she remains true to her real life, no acting like some. on top of that she is an engineer and was one of the few first malaysian lady to ever step onto an oil platform. can't remember her name though, something beginning with f, she was milky white and very attractive and personable but che minah told me that she's off- limits, what a shame. i subsequently heard that she was mad mike's nasir lady and he is one fierce character, although when i at last met him, he was the most friendly ex-army colonel that one could ever come across, very unlike those retired british colonels who are the life and soul of the conservative club in some rural hamlet.
the manager, en hamid ibrahim, who subsequently retired as the managing director of petronas gas was also a character, gruff and quick tempered but very personable.
another character was azmy rahman, a throwback to my days in cardiff. rumour has it he was in the bookies every day of his final year in university and then proceeded nonchalantly to secure his honours degree. apparently, this is one hell of a brilliant shortie with an unpredictable and very short fuse.
a section head, aziz nong chik was a very nice man whom i subsequently heard was rhe ex-husband of the infamous rosmah. what a lucky man to be free of such a heavy excess baggage.
another person in the news was azhar, of whom i heard married sudirman's widow. he, apparently, is now somewhere in petronas proper taking care of petronas foray into the art and cultural world.
an rmc collegemate, nazir kassim who is now a svp with ranhill was also there and i heard that yet another collegemate, sofiyan, had just left. here is another character whose many and varied interests was fuel for the gossip mill. in later years he turns out to be a superb marketing executive although quite unreliable in personal relationships.

politics - pak lah

yesterday , i asked someone close to pak lah on what are his retirement plans. after firstly elucidating that someone in that position must have had an iron-clad retirement plan planned!!!!, she then couldn't help but follow it up by saying that he would most probably sleep right through it. my!!! that surprised me especially coming from her, i couldn't help but wonder what sort of exchange had happened between them for her to unhesitatingly blurb out such a retort. poor pak lah, looks like he will go down in history as the bapa tidur!!!!

a good book

i am now engrossed in reading another one of churchill's biography, this time by roy jenkins who himself was a former labour party minister. it is brilliantly written, wish my grasp of the written english language is similarly dazzling. i would say that the english is much better than that penned by martin gilbert. am taking my time reading it as i would regret finishing reading it too fast.to my siblings, please get me more books, preferably biography, history or humour)especially bill bryson)happy reading!!!

pre-stroke , my working life

the department i was in, the production dept. of the e&p division , was situated in the wisma peladang, along jalan bukit bintang,probably on the 8th or 9th floor if my memory serves me right. in that roomful of engineers were several interesting personalities and future high fliers, the prime example being dollah karim who is now the senior vice president of the e&p division and a datuk to boot, dollah is one of the few who held the distinction of having been to MCKK first and then on to rmc, my alma-mata. dollah , alas had another role in my life, having been the organiser of a disco night-out for me and my housemates, wherein i met this wannabe actress who now masquarades as my wife, interestingly, i later found out that she was supposed to be hived off to one of my housemate, who was with petronas gas and with me in grimsby and cardiff. WOW, i could be very happily married to someone else if not because of fate intervening. things could have been much better than now, especially the most promising thought is that i could have had a better and saner mil(mother-in-law).that is a very soothing thought.more on the others in future,especially that particular smoking lady.

pre-stroke , my working life

my first job was with petronas, maybe on the basis of my degree which includes the magic words ENERGY STUDIES", they offered me a position as a trainee engineer with a small desk right at the front of a room full of engineers facing an array of ladies who were not only there to be the supporting clerical staff but also were a rich source of gossips etc.,and thus absolutely necessary to befriend if one wish to have a smooth transition, all ably commandered by a lovely bespectacled lady by the name of minah meon, who lives somewhere in ukay heights, the beverly hills of kuala lumpur, so she quietly confided to me along the corridor one quiet day.mind you this was before the good times when driving to/from ukay heights was a pleasure, and when most of the hills were nice and serene with chirping birds to wake you up as the great lawyer shahul constantly reminded me, and definitely not strangled with traffic as it was in the nineties and the hills were more akin to kojak whose nose was badly dripping(aka regular landslides )culminating with that nasty incident wherein an entire block of apartments was swept away.can't exactly remember what it was called.

my stroke - cause/s ?

after so many days/ hours of reflection and almost daily sitting on my sofa seat in the cafe at our premises, i came to the conclusion that i was zapped by god for my own good. i have led all my adult life without a moment reflection of god(ALLAH), his exhortations and consequent effect in this world that he created and my place in it. please allow me to now now shout at the top of my voice ALHAMDULILLAH, through this affliction, god has indirectly conferred me another chance. god could have easily zapped me so that i would now be six feet in the ground being devoured by maggots to my bare bones, which god could ,in the blink of an eye have inflicted on me. but no god is giving me another chance to correct my errant ways, change my lifestyle,and most importantly get me to prepare myself and stockup on matters that are important when the day of reckoning comes, solat, zikir, zakat, puasa, haj, etc. when you think about it, this is a much greater honour conferred by god to me, much better than the datukships that all the scions of pirates are now dishing out to mostly half-baked pirates wannabe. syukur alhamdulillah., so it wasn't my blood pressure, there was nothing there to worry about, it has stayed at a reasonably comfortable level all the time., it wasn't the jembalang tanah or some totally innocent jins. oh dear me , i could have spared myself all those mandi limau and gurgling down litres and litres of jampied mineral water, the various mri's / cscans, doctors consultation,what a waste!!!! how i wish there is more than just a doa involving stroke and islam. maybe i would write a more detailed BOOK and have it titled A HALAL STROKE ( WHY NOT?, AFTER ALL THERE WILL SOON BE A HALAL SUPERMARKET, HALAL THIS AND HALAL THAT, CARRY ON KJ, JUST LEAVE HALAL STROKE TO ME-LAH)have a good weekend, i will, AT MY BROTHER'S OPEN HOUSE inshaALLAH

pre-stroke-my life

prior to the stroke, i was well on the way in recovering my life after two disasters, each seemingly more devastating than hurricane katrina. firstly, i had regained the upper hand in the fight initiated by my business partner, the ass-hole mamak iqbal. charges against me for which he paid the police rm200,000/-, via the notorious azeez rahim, were dropped without any trial.
secondly, ex-wife decided in her infinite wisdom to come back to me. i suppose that the burden of supporting the entire family of her soulmate was just too heavy a burden, a bunch of layabouts who do not care to lift a finger in order to earn a living. sure enough , the mystique assiociated with kampung living very quickly wore off- there is only so much you can do after all the inshaallah and alhamdulillah, after time you got to get real, somehow face the daily grind of living, poor souls!they were definitely deceived by my ex-wife's acting- you know daughter of a drama queen, pandai berlakun. anyway ,i went back into business with someone who must be the most hardworking soul i have ever come across. only his shortcoming of weakness in the written form has held him back, otherwise , nothing is insurmountable,on the slightest hint of any drawback, he would be off charging to tackle it in any way possible.
in the meantime, i was still happily drinking away at the lake club and indulge in the odd sexual encounter when conditions permit. something which i have practised for more than 20 years. never for a moment did i reflect on my sins, all the time forgetting allah and not giving a moment's notice to allahs exhortions as enshrined in the koran. never for a moment did it occur to me that i will be struck down by stroke,my blood pressure was normal and there was never the slightest hint of diabetes. If anything, i always thought it would have been a heart attack,
the night before the stroke i was as usual out at the lake club with my mates, nonad, max, steven and of course, dato zul. what subsequently happened in the intervening hours.? i have a theory, which you readers have to come back again, if you are curious to know, sorry lah cannot tell everything in one sitting, must stretch it, have a good weekend

my stroke recovery

it had been a most trying, more than three years, for me to undergo the task of trying to recover from my stroke.i am ill-equipped for this task as my life, just like the world in the last thirty years, has been the era of the quick fix,signalled by the advent of the computer era. mankind has evolved a quick fix for almost everything right from the process of giving birth, by way of induced birth or caesarian, right to our burial, no problem, just use natural gas to cremate, one push of the button and it's all over. it seems that we have forgotten and conveniently forget the trials and tribulations of doing something, gone with the wind is the art of patience, which is widely espoused in the koran and one of the most important virtue of being a muslim, kesabaran adalah satengah iman. in stroke recovery there is no quick fix, no pill capsule that you can take to get it over and done with. it's one of the failure of modern medicine.after trying modern and traditional medicinein my futile effort, so far, it's only now that i have am trying to discipline myself in the art of patience, i am convinced that this is the key to my rehabilitation and inshaallah god will guide me to the right path and towards recovery 700 days from today

my stroke

till today, the cause/s of the stroke that afflicted me is still a mystery to the neurologist that i consulted, even after mri's and cscan. uninformed theories abound, it was my smoking,drinking lifestyle and the best of all is that " one of my enemies, there are numerous, did a number on me, some sort of black magic to do with jins, this was the informed diagnosis of several shamans(bomohs)from kedah to johore.how easy was it for these specialists to blame the jins for all ails that affect their clients.in this manner, blame is conveniently shifted to some unseen" bad guys" and hence enhancing the bomohs access to easy money by putting the fear of the unknown into the afflicted party thus leading to repeated consultations/ mandi limau and bottles of mineral water appropriately "jampied." not a bad way to get repeat customers when you think about it.

my own diagnosis, after more than three years of being afflicted? that will be for another day, too tired now., sorry you need to come back again to this blog

stroke rehab / dispensing the wheelchair to exile

in my continued efforts to recover, the wheelchair has been exiled to the dining room since yesterday, walking without it now requires double the effort and my quad muscles are very tensed and in pain, i suppose this is what the dictum " no pain no gain truly means, inshaallah, the benefits will be forthcoming

family

is the institution of the nuclear family overrated?. we dedicate our life to ensure our wife and children have a comfortable life and surely it's not too much to expect from then kindness and love in return especially when one is sick and ill. it has been said again and again that god knows best, yet i am in this rut, is it because when god gave me the opportunity to make good and permanent a split from my other half, i in turn look at it as a calamity. looking back i should have grabbed the opportunity with both hands and created a new life or a new nuclear family. is it too late? what has god in store for me? this disable episode has most certainly jolted me from my stupor. i am eternally grateful to god for giving me this chance to redeem myself in his books,
now i at least have some bekalan to bring with me to the hereafter, is that what this is all about?

pulaumeranti- developments

nothing much here, just that at the one end near the bus factory, more and more land has been sold to the chinese and one can see more factories coming up. land prices has escalated to a million ringgit an acre and five thousand for rental of a three acre plot

lyanne batik- heading where?

next year,2009, would be a crtical year for lyanne batik,it has to make the crucial breakthrough that will determine whether it's a viable business, it would be past 3 years in operation so the lame excuse that it's relatively new cannot be used again and again, there are several clues as to where the breakthrough will come from, question is can lyanne batik exploit the potential such as in the form of casual wear, soft furnishing, indigo or the mass tourist market, i have my reservations re the implementer but am full of hope re the outcome as i desperately need it, moga allah kurniakan kepada kami kejayaan yang kekal ,halal dan berpanjangan.

a good book

john le carre is one of my favourite author, wonder if he has come out with anything new? it was a long time ago that i last went to mph

stroke recovery

the good news was that yesterday i managed to break the 10 minutes barrier when walking hands-free from the cafe to the kilang, this after more than one year of walking exercise. i now have a new training regimen with certain objectives by 31st december 2008, the primary objective being to stimulate the brain. inshaallah semoga allah izinkan

politics / pak lah / anwar / najib

is there anything to look forward herewith that in the foreseeable future one of the above will lead the country for over the next decade?i don't think so, nothing much to look forward here, only consolation is that there will never be another mamak era. of the current political drama, my commisseration is to pak lah. here is a good man in the cesspool of politics where he is in unfamiliar surroundings. i truly believe that he is a kind and gentle soul, albeit a confused one,lacking the killer touch, who has refrained from stooping down to the tactics used by his more unprincipled colleagues.
my heart is pining for tok guru nik aziz to be the next pm. now that is something to look forward to, aint it?

puasa/hari raya

puasa and hari raya has come and gone, back to the daily grind, which for me is the constant effort to keep my mind occupied and put in that extra effort in my physical theraphy. yesterday afternoon i tried going on the treadmill, my what a monstrous effort just to lift my affected leg, try as i might i could only last 1 minutes, how did all those old people in the john hopkins study stayed on for 4o minutes?. the good thing was that i could now fathom how much i had lost because of the stroke, lifting my knee was sooooooo difficult, my affected leg feels like lead it require me to concentrate and literally force my brain to urge my left knee to move, my each step requires a humongous effort. i can feel the benefit i will derive if i can rhythymically lift the knee but how to do it, i conclude that there was no other way but to keep trying and trying, lower my targets, keep going, like when i first walked in front of the showroom, 6 months ago this was painfully slow, but now i just look forward, recite surah al-ikhlaas and move forward, it now takes around 12 minutes for me to walk to and fro, inshaallah this treadmill regimen can be conquered in the same manner, first 1min, then 5 mins, ya allah permudahkan usahaku