..afiq. his papa and his spray..

....as I helped Afiq set up his workshop, I came to realise that I did not really know my son...he is my wife's first, and my second..although we grow up together, me into old age and him into adulthood, there are certain things about him that I was to only later discover...he is not as gregarious as his father, of course...or open...rather, he is quiet, almost broody..and there is a certain stubbornness in him which, earlier when he was grappling with early adulthood, I mistook for being wishy-washy...

...a few years back, I remember thinking that this is one son who has to work hard for his money...being paid 50 dollars per week was usual for him...but I refrained from commenting, thinking, rightly, that he was working on honing his skills..but he is one son who is of not much trouble to his mother or me..

..there must have been a time when he had had enough of grounding, polishing and sprayin... and receiving pittance... for apprentices are seldom handsomely paid...even though I raised my eyebrows when he took up job in a factory making diapers, I kept my peace and supported him....it is a highly competitive world he found himself in, and as in the animal world, survival is always of the fittest...

..meantime, we, her mother and I, both worried and prayed for him, most times triggered after reading Harian Metro...it is easy to succumb in the city of neon lights..where DGA, drugs, gals and alcohol are abound...and so, one day when he turned up at the door in Bachok, looking a bit pale and very much gaunt,  and said he had had enough of the big city, we were glad...and like all mothers everywhere, she fawned over him and fed him...

..Afiq working on a car...

..they say a father looked into their children to realise their own failed dreams...maybe so...but pakmat never had any dreams, being the vagabond, drifter and scoundrel that he was...but two weeks later after the opening, seeing Afiq working on cars sent in by friends of pakmat, sensing the pride in him on working on his own, being his own boss, as it were, pakmat rued his youth...those drifting without purpose days where life was on a song and a dance...and he was glad...that Afiq did not turned out to be like him...