..dialogue in a supermarket..

"..I am sorry, sir.. but the counter for men is over there.."
"..but that counter is crowded..I'm just paying for this apples..and you're not serving anyone..."
"..sorry, sir..I can't serve you..you have to go to the men's counter..
"..what's the diff?..that counter also has a lady cashier.. and you're not serving anyone.."
"..I'm sorry sir..only women here.."
"..here, take this apples..I'm going home.."

..on the eve of Ramadhan..

..and so, that night, on the eve of Ramadhan, he sat along with the other members of the mosque..awaiting the bilal's call to terawih..

..his mind flew back to a similar night a year ago..when he had raised his hands in prayer.. seeking from his one and only God, Allah..

''O Allah...

..grant me the time and the space that I may savour this Holy Month of Ramadhan..in peace and in harmony..with my family and Muslim brethren...and forgive me my sins..

..grant me the will to be charitable that I might seek from You Your bounty.... the grace to overlook and forgive others' faults..that You may overlook and forgive mine...let me be magninamous that I may seek from You Your blessings..

..and as I rested my body from food during the fast, rest also my mind from dwelling too much on worldly pursuits..fill my nights with Your Light and my days with Your Guidance...

.. accept all the little deeds that I have done..that I may strived to do more..

..above all, O Allah, accept my repentance.. I have commited great sins..and You are The Great Forgiver..."

..and again that night, he raised his hands in prayer..that Allah may grant him the space and the time for him to savour yet another Ramadhan...InsyaAllah...God Willing...

..a cat story..

..do cats mourn their dead?.. I've heard of elephants..but cats..?..no.. I don't think they are capable of such profound feelings..being mainly selfish creatures, cats just love to curl up on laps whilst purring contently away to gentle strokes and rubs..

..until one day this old coot was proven otherwise..cats do mourn their dead..our favorite tabby, Ayam does..she just showed it to me this morning..and it leaves this sentimental old geezer in tears...

..it is common knowledge that Ayam had a thing going with Bobi, our neighbour's handsome tom..they were often seen frolicking in some corner of the garden..being just cats, their pairing does not raise an eyebrow..our neighbours joked about it..that their tom is spending more of his time in our compound then theirs..cats in love, I said, to everyone's amusement..

..a week ago, Bobi died.. from mysterious causes.. tongue jutting out and surrounded by faeces and urine..the owner, a lady principal at one of the town's secondary school, and her 16-year old daughter were gutted...they had him buried on a vacant lot next to their house..her daughter marked the grave with a leftover piece of floor tile..

..a few days later we noticed that Ayam is acting a bit strange..on being let out of the house in the wee hours of the morning as I opened the door for morning prayers, Ayam did not return for breakfast as she normally does..ditto for lunch..she went missing during the day..returning only in the evenings as I leave the house for Magrib prayers..

..she is always seen around our house, said the neighbours..she is missing Bobi, they jest..and we all laughed...

..until this morning, when I let her out of the house.. I decided to tail her..see where she goes.. she walked softly through the small back gate..stopping every now and then..looked around..saw me following and meowed softly at me..she knows where she is going..and so I followed her with my eye, as she crossed the road and stop ontop of where they had Bobi buried..she paused for a while..rubbed her head at the marker tile..and sat on the grave..

..she was lost in quiet reverie as this coot was lost in unfathomable feelings..my neighbour called out from her bedroom window..and this old coot cried..

..as I left her there to send my children to school, I could feel the tears running down my cheeks..

..she was no longer there when I came back..a quick search found her on a ledge of my neighbour's home..I hugged her as I carried her home..this cat mourns her dead..and this coot cried for her..

..a man of words..

..retirement frees me of encumbrances..free in the sense that there are not many tethers to my time and finance...but the mind is a funny thing, I found out...it cannot be idle for too long a time..like a garden left idle, weeds and other similar bushes starts to grow and pretty soon overwhelm the landscape..and in the landscape of the mind, being idle is dangerous...

..being always physically active, the body is relatively fit..for a 64year old, that is...the steps are still firm, but the spring is gone...the trick now is to keep the mind active...

..with that objective in mind, I offered my services to friends...since I am a man of words, I am now trying to be a man of deeds..after all, "a man of words and not of deeds, is like a garden full of weeds.."

..I prepare letters for friends having bureaucratic problems..I check accounts and made financial reports..look for houses someone wants to rent...offer advice and do errants..fill up forms...facebook and blog..

..and I read, voraciously..anything...from all the papers..Kosmos,(yes)..the Star...to whatever magazine that I can get my hands on..and blogs, whatever the genre..Rocky Bru and A Kadir Jasin are favorites...not so much for the articles posted, but more for the comments that followed..and, yes, I am a fan of Warrior 231...

..and with God, I try to keep to a schedule..solat berjumaah as far as possible, no matter where I am...read a few lines from the Quran every day...I try hard not to mourn the past..or reflect too much on the future..I thanked Him for each day that He giveth..asking for strength that whatever I have to do today, I will do it in earnest..and with honesty...

..and if, along the way, I get a few cents, then it is a bonus..

..orang pantai..

..it is the norm in Bachok to call the people who lived along the fringes of the beach as Beach People - orang pantai...being mainly fishermen theirs was a hard life, then..

..not too long ago their houses lacked toilet facilities..no, it cannot then be called houses...for huts is more like it...made of planks and atap roofs from coconut leaves...

....not having toilets, all toiletry activities are carried out on the the beach, for, indeed the whole beach is their toilets..normally done in the wee hours of the morning before the sun comes up...or after dusk...seeking safety from the halflight...the resulting puddle is left to the waves to pull it back to the sea...

...those days, if families wanted to spend a quite evening by sea, they would normally select beaches away from settled area...thus avoiding flotsam and stepping unwittingly on puddles...

...but things have improved greatly since...we have access roads built right up to the beaches..houses without bathrooms are no more..and children no longer have to rush to the beach whenever something they ate disagree with them...

..and for me, I can go to any part of the beach without fear...



..

..ayam in a shoe-box..

..a bit political...

..this is not a political blog...politics leave a bitter taste in my mouth..the least said about the state of politics the better...it is just a blog where an old geezer airs his linen...some smudged, some clean...a place where he punches his bag...

..but this time I just have to say something that touches on politics...not that I have anything against it..knowing its necessity... but it is the politicians and their antics that I cannot stand..

..but first let me set the premise straight...

..having served the Federal Government for almost 30 years in various capacities, being a Muslim Malay, I leaned a little towards Barisan..but having served 15 of those years in Kelantan, I can lived with PAS...but lately I am disappointed with both..with PAS especially...and I have no illusions with PKR, knowing and remembering its history...and DAP is just a Chinese version of PAS...

..most Kelantanese have nothing against UMNO as a party..but for as long as UMNO carries with it an image of an elitist party and the people in it are in it for the money.. for the projects.., I don't think there will be a day when Barisan can take over the state government...we are tired of old faces and their flashy cars and big bungalows...no matter how much PAS goofed and bungled...the people had grown accustomed to PAS...their low-keyed and low profile approach appealed to the simple village folks...Dato' Awang Adek has shown that it can be done...

...and why must Barisan wait for a by-election before coming in force with the goodies..? they are not winning elections that way...how many more elections does it take before they learned that Kelantanese are not taken in by pre-elections goodies and promises..? instead, why not identify an opposition strong-hold and adopt it as an UMNO area..? take care of it..nurture it..identify what is lacking.. bring in the basic projects...be with the people..in the truest sense..slogans don't win elections in Kelantan.

..take Bachok...a few days before PRU12, TPM came with 500k for the district mosque...a bit late...he should have come 2 years earlier with the money...that day he should be there just for the Friday prayers..and lunch with the raayat..the message would not have been lost..

..respect for the elders is paramount for Kelantanese..TGNA is old..so, leave him alone..confronting him directly will not win votes...if we have to differ with what he says..then, do it indirectly...

..but, then, oh well...as I said, I don't like politics...



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