The Roads Less Traveled (A.K.A. I'm Taking the Safe Road)

First, it started out as hopes, and who doesn't like hopes? Everybody likes hopes. Hopes give warmth and comfort, and they make us want to see the next day, because well, the hopes might come true.

Then there were challenges. Growing up, we were all taught that winds make a strong tree, or what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger, or any other claptraps that just intend to make us a risk-taking person. Challenges are supposed to make a person to be braver and stronger.

Then there was a time we fell down. As usual, everybody keeps saying the obvious, that we should get up and continue with the journey. The destination is just around the corner.

Then there were times when it was very dark and the only choice to go is the safe road. But, everybody keeps saying, repeating what's been repeated, we should take risk. Take risk! So, I decided to go through the darkness.

Then, it's the destination. After the bumps on the road, falling down, blinded by unlightedness, I reached to the destination. It turned out to be nothing but a dead end.

Finally, I had to go back, to the point where I had to choose between the risky road and the safe road. After all, the safe road is the better road after all. Except, it took time to go back to the beginning and in the process, I might die eaten by the wild bats, because I had used up all the resources.

Gratefully, I reached, and I had a little injury because of bats' bites. I'm healing and now I'm taking the safe road.

Powerful Me

People have been always asking, if you can have one super ability, what would you choose? There are a variety of cool superpowers to choose from - namely telekinesis, telepathy, levitation, time-space manipulation, and a lot more. And for me, my answer would be premonition. Imagine Nicolas Cage who can see 2 minutes in advance prior to the present in Next, or Phoebe Halliwell in Charmed, or Cordelia Chase in Angel; Aren't they awesome?!

Disclaimer: this post is strictly fantasy- and imagination-oriented.

Let's say you have the ability to know the future, wouldn't it be easier to just figure almost anything? Wouldn't it be even much easier to avoid making a screwed-up and twisted mistakes and choices in the future? Currently, I am in a dilemma of whether choosing a scholarship that offers furthering studies in Turkey with an allowance every month that can only cover a tenth of my tummy space and another scholarship that has a very nice monthly $$$. But of course it's never perfect. The scarily low scholarship would allow me to do something related to what I've been dreaming of to do - Forensic Psychology and the one with a nice bump in allowance requires me to do Social Work.

This is when I really really really hope premonition can aid my decision making process. Will I survive at Turkey? Will I develop love for Social Work? Will a foreign language be a blockade in my success in a Masters studies? Will I ever finish my Masters if I do something I'm not interested in? Will I be able to find other revenues for my daily expenditure in Turkey? Will  I... Will I... Will I... There are a lot to ask and to answer. But then, I have to wait for 2 years to know them, to figure out what's best for me, and at that time, of course it's too late.

What do I do?

Drama Addicts Anonymous (DAA)

Surprisingly, there are a lot people than we thought, who have the idea that life isn't as exciting without drama and scenes. That's why we have this term, 'drama queen' or 'drama junkie' to describe the people who can't get 'turned on' by anything unless there is a fight, major scene, conflict, or anything that would fit as a criterion of drama.

Too bad, at one point of my life, I was a little bit like that. I don't know why, and I wasn't even aware of it, but I used to be a fan of the idea that friends are closer when they undergo conflicts, which now I know is very untrue. If you have heard the term Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, our inner belief can affect our outer world, which happens especially when we are not noticing that the effect is taking its place. My point related to self-fulling prophecy is that when you always expects conflicts in life (or when you subtly want conflicts), conflicts will happen, even when you're not asking for it, at least obviously.

If there's one thing I learn about conflicts, it is that they usually become true and end things. Friendships don't blossom on fights, relationships don't grow on fights, and even family ties can be broken by misunderstandings. When at first, we just want to have a little movie scene, where two people are in conflict, then at least one party will realize the truth or just got the hidayah to make amends, they make up and become closer. But, sadly, the making amend part can be skipped and the broken relation remains broken, and unfortunately, for the rest of your life.

I used to write about friendship - Life and Humans: Little Friendships - where it doesn't need big things to happen, because friendship is a million little things, it's a million little communications, exchange, and memories that are most likely little things. And I can't stress LITTLE enough.

This post is especially dedicated to this one person I really care deeply for. I am sorry for my behavior and I should stay with you in this time of stress.

I am sorry...

The Beauty of Failure

Growing up, we always heard the idioms, phrases, and sayings that tell us how failures should mean to us. Failures, despite of the negativity the word brings and denotes, has some perks most of us fail (pun intended) to understand.

Many of the older people I met, among their favorite advice for the younger generation is that we do not repeat the mistakes of people of the past. Those mistakes were frowned upon, sure, but they serve as a way to tell us that doing a certain way can result in the failure in the first place. A post in Psychology Today has a very inspiring way to tell how to look at failure. It's not by changing the name, a failure is still a failure. Denying its concept will not help in any way, but embracing it as a part of your life (Rubin, 2010) and treating it as a platform for success (Barth, 2010).

I have been baking cheesecakes since ever. I will not deny that my first attempt of baking this expensive, delicate, and spoiled (as in manja) savory dessert was somehow disappointing. And being costly, my mother wouldn't want me to waste another sum of money spent on a spoilt (as in rosak) cake. Of course I would choose to listen, I mean just listen, but I knew if I took some risks and found what was wrong, I would figure out the correct way to make sure the next attempt would turn out good.

So, I took some amount of money, big enough to empty half of the space, and bought the ingredients for cheesecake. I tried to bake it again, this time with more careful 'obedience' on the baking instructions, the weight of each ingredient, and any other extraneous variable such as the heat of the oven and all. And you know what the turnout to be? It was awesome! I changed the flavor to orange and it tasted just like it is supposed to be. I think it can compete with Secret Recipe.

My point is, without wanting to accept failure, and without learning from it, success is very hard to come out to the surface. I can say, success is the son of failure.

Listen to this song (Bette Midler - The Rose), there is one part that says, the soul who is afraid to die, can never learn how to dance. Perfectly said.

References:

Barth, F. D. (2010). Turning Failure into Success. Retrieved on June 9 2010 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-couch/201005/turning-failure-success

Rubin, G. (2010). Enjoy the fun of failure. Retrieved on June 9 2010 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-project/201006/enjoy-the-fun-failure

Prejudice is Helpless!

Ugly feelings are out there. No matter how deep we hide them, no matter how much we deny their very existence in our sole hearts, and no matter how much we resent their stepping in our own mental zone, but they are there. When we go around, we always see people denying the ugly feelings that they have; like hating cute babies (because babies are supposed to be loved), despising minorities (because equality is supposed to be believed), feeling like our mother's yapping has been too much and annoying (because we should be an obedient son or daughters), or disfavors own country (because there is what they call 'patriotism'), and many more.

Lately, I am attacked with these feelings where if I express them out loud, people will be gasped with terror, with a face like I just ate a child. Especially when one of my close friends just admitted something that made me rethink about our friendship status. The whole night, when we were talking about it, I was acting fine, because, well, as a friend, I was supposed to understand him. But, more and more the time passed by, I couldn't help but to feel very much prejudiced towards him.

It is one ugly feeling that I have, whose existence most people would strongly deny, because it's an ugly feeling - It's disgust. It's disgust towards something I'm not supposed to...

Or am I?

One Marshmallow Now, or Two Marshmallows Later?

Last 3 days, I met with a very nice elderly woman who has a life, as said in a Malay idiom, "Kais pagi, makan pagi, kais petang, makan petang" which means that whatever you gain in the morning will be what you eat in the morning and whatever you gain in the afternoon will be your food in the afternoon. She has been planting grass under the sun, being a maid at many houses, etc. This elderly woman has been working hard to make sure that her children are fed, clothed, and schooled. And something about what she said twitched my conscience. She, very calmly, said, "I once said to my children, go for your dream, study and be very educated, so you wouldn't be having jobs like what I had."

I always had the idea that when your parents are financially strapped, it is always an honorable and huge sacrifice when the first sibling or the first son dropped out of school to work and gained some money, but not after she said the above-mentioned. In this world of knowledge and literacy, how far can you really go and gain, or how long would it be if you can go that far? It'd help your parents in the short-term but will it be any more of help in the future?

No matter how troubling our parents' financial condition is, but your parents wouldn't be selfish by not letting you to continue your education, because I believe every good mother and father has a universal motto that "no matter how hard it is, we'll find the resources to keep it going."

If you really want to help your parents, work hard in your education and be somebody who can finally afford your parents' lives, make them feel the most comfort in their lives. This is what we call as impulse control (Plante, 2010), "one marshmallow now, or two marshmallows later?" A research has been done that children who chose to have two marshmallows later are more likely to succeed in their future, as in they know how to control their impulses from immediate gratifications.

InsyaAllah, where there's a will, there's a way - so believe it, rizq is everywhere.

Reference:
Plante, T. (2010). Two words to remember to maximize success and satisfaction in life: Control impulses. Retrieved on 16th May 2010 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/do-the-right-thing/201005/two-words-remember-maximize-success-and-satisfaction-in-life-control-

The Power of Now

Maybe some of you have heard a book titled, "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. I am neither promoting nor have I read this book, it is just the title has been really giving me a lesson lately. Alhamdulillah, in my recent life journey, I have been blessed with some fortunate events that really make me happy. I am very grateful to Allah for this and I pray that He will prolong these events and make them stay 'til the rest of my life.

But, have you ever experienced the phenomenon where your mind is deliberately trying to sabotage you, that  you being happy is not supposed to happen. No, I'm sure that mind is NOT that tricky, but I believe this comes from past experience that might have just made you felt so insecure and paranoid about your future. When you always experienced that good things in your past always ended up turning bad, you might not believe in life anymore.

But then, have you ever considered the possibility that things turning bad might be so because you were so focused on bad things that might happen in the future? Being very insecure is very unattractive and can drive people away, and drive you away from the good likelihood per se. The only solution is for you to appreciate the elephant that exists in your moment - the now. Aren't you feeling happy now? Aren't you feeling like on the nine clouds right now? So, enjoy it! It's an art not everyone can master. Forget about future - the only one you think about is how you can harvest the now to make sure the future can be lived in an expectably nice manner.

So, enjoy the now!

p/s: By the way, this is my very good friend, I just want to dedicate this post for him.

Bad Conclusions about Turkey!

Finally, after a 'grueling' session of relaxing myself after a long and tiring flight journey from Istanbul to Doha and Doha to Malaysia, I got myself back again, typing for this entry, about Turkey and my many opinions about it.

Turkey -- Generally, it's very hard for me to find one person who can speak in, at least, broken English with me. Communications with salesperson, or assistants in any place, or almost anywhere in at least Istanbul (well, of course in Grand Bazaar you can find many English-speaking Turks because a lot of foreign shoppers are there) can be very difficult. Oh! And they are bad drivers! Bad, bad drivers with no patience whatsoever, and just drive across roads even when pedestrians are there crossing the roads. Because of the speed, I even watched live a small accident of a car hitting behind another car.

But, if the language and driving attitude already made you think Turkey is not worth it to be visited, think again. A lot, and yes, a whole lot other sides of Turkey and Turkish people can glue you to your own stay at the country. I love every other parts of Turkey when I was there. For example, one thing that amazed me was the fact that there was almost no gap between people of high ranking and people below them. I met with a lot of Turks who have achieved a lot of things - the mayor, the doctors, the managers, etc. But none of them actually deliberately tried to show us the fact that they're higher than us.

In Malaysia, especially the ones who already have PhD, many of them have this "I'm more superior than you, so you must speak with me in certain manners," or "I'm a doctor, you're a degree holder, so control your gazing, and don't touch me," or "I'm a doctor and who says you can call me or SMS me?" In Turkey, even the mayor offered us hugging and the PhD students talked with us like we were their brothers. They could make jokes, and we could have a conversation with them. We were not bombarded with the emphasis, "call me doctor, don't call me something else," or "why do you call me with that title?? It's inappropriate!" It is supported with the fact that everyone is honored with ONE title, which is "Abi." We call the person to whom we respect with his name followed with Abi. Like they called me Taufik Abi.

So, now, I have a very bad conclusion about Turkey after this trip. I fell in love with the culture and environment (although the weather made my lips and nails area dry as a desert) and I have a new dream - coming along with my dream to study at the country - that now the conclusion is, I want to migrate there and be a citizen. It might just be a dream that's afraid of waking up, or it might be a dream that comes true in the next morning, but I'll keep dreaming and if Allah wills, it'll soon be realizations. InsyaAllah.

Sorry that "Hujan emas di negeri orang, hujan batu di negeri sendiri, lebih baik di negeri sendiri," saying doesn't apply to me.

Everything Has Its First

On Sunday, 18th April 2010 at 9.30 a.m. I will be departing by Qatar Airways to Turkey. I decide that today, I should write something about it because this is kind of a huge deal for me. This is my first flight, and this is my first time stepping on a land that is not called Malaysia. This is my first time looking at clouds beneath me. This is my first time visiting a country that has been a dream since I was first introduced to it in my first year at university.

People traveling abroad often keep complaining about jet lags, panicky flight, bumping heartbeats, feeling like they're constantly being thrown up and down on the Space Shot at Genting Highlands. I don't know how it's much better or worse for me out there, but what I'm sure is, this is my first time experiencing those. The next time when people talk about feeling sleepy in the daytime, and wakeful in the night time after traveling, I'd know how to jump in and contribute my piece of mind.

Well then, 'til we meet again. See you in May. Wish me luck in my travels.

Little Friendships

"It's the little things that only I know. Those are the things that make you mine..."

Westlife's Flying Without Wings has been going around my head in this past few days. Perhaps because there is something that these two lines I quoted above want to tell. These past few days too, my thoughts have gone back and forth about the real deal with friendships.

If you take a look at any TV shows, what is the first thing that glue two friends together? It's more likely the huge conflict, life major problems, accident, fire incident, being kidnapped, murder, etc. Usually when big thing happens between the two friends in TV, then they become closer to each other, or develop best-friendship.

But in real life, the different thing is counted for. Take a look again at the lines I quoted above, and what do you understand from these lines? If you guess it right, it's about how small things, not major occurrence, but small things, like liking the same food at one particular cafe, or having the same opinion about human trafficking, always bumping into each other at a corner of a building, liking the same sports, knowing that he doesn't like jams on waffle, or learning that she likes to add colors in notes; all these things that are actually more likely to glue two friends together.

So, if you think that it's no biggie, that it doesn't matter, that that one friends wouldn't care, think again. Perhaps tagging your friend in a little note or status in Facebook, including one friend in a mass funny sms, saying 'hi' in e-mail, treating one friend a small warm cookie, sharing with your one friend a cool mango milkshake, or sitting down for awhile when bumping into your friend in cafe; all these do matter, more probably unconsciously, than consciously.

That said, take your time appreciating your friends by doing the little things that matter more because,

"Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things"