Vertigo

A couple of days back, I walking from a class in school and while being left hanging from fist bumps by little schoolchildren, it suddenly hit me that by the time these kids grow up to be old enough to be considered a fellow adult (whoa, I’m an adult??), they’d have turned into completely different people from how they are right now, and that gave me a vertigo-like sensation for a moment. Terasa gayat tiba-tiba.

It’s crazy to think that we were once that age too, with similar views of the world, similar naivety, similar mudah-terhibur-ness and similar curiosity about the world around them. By the time I reached the ripe age of 18, I’d already built a somewhat concrete view of the world and applied it to myself. Luckily, I was able to break that view and reshape the way I saw the world by the time I was 19, and again when I was 20, and again when I was 21, and so on and so forth.

I’m 25 now, and thinking back to 9 year-old Anwar, the kid who had no friends at school, who struggled to even talk to anybody else because he was in Alor Setar, Kedah and the only Malay he could speak was Kelantanese, who spent most of his time envying those kids that were playing galah panjang (or as Northeners call it: toi) during recess while he ate his packed lunch all by himself, who always wished that he had one of those pullable backpacks with the wheels, who was ashamed of the Noor in his name because it was a girl’s name, it seems almost impossible that things turned out the way they did and formed the person typing on this laptop right now.

And upon reflection, this is true for the 9 year-olds in school right now. They might seem a certain way today, but give them 15 years to grow, and grow they shall. One hopes that they’ll have life-changing experiences (more than once, hopefully), fall in love, have their heart broken, learn the meaning of true friendship, find God in their lives, and it is the wish of this teacher and a lot of others too that they fulfil their potential. One prays that they find their passions and chase their dreams and never give up, because life is about making decisions and trying and failing and failing and failing until you finally succeed. Life isn’t easy, but easy things are for the weak, and they aren’t weak. Far from it. They are God-blessed with strength and tenacity, and if they could tap into that, God-willing, they’ll become great.

But for now, they’re just kids. 9 year-old kids with 9 year-old thoughts and 9 year-old concerns. And it’s so beautiful to be able to witness.

Littering

Earlier today I witnessed someone litter from their car while driving. Few things can get me so angry so quickly, but littering from your car, that does it pretty well. It made me think about why a lot of people seem to be very lax about their attitudes towards public cleanliness. I don’t really know why, to be honest.

Ever since I was little, I was taught to throw rubbish where it was meant to go, i.e. the rubbish bin. Teachers told me that all the time, and most grownups said the same. I remember a secondary school teacher of ours giving a lecture on stage during one of our weekly assemblies, criticising us school kids of our inability to throw rubbish where it was supposed to go. That teacher compared us to a rival school of ours (SMK Sultanah Asma). Legend has it that over there, there wasn’t a rubbish bin anywhere on the school compound, so any rubbish that you had had to be put in your pocket and be thrown away when you went home. So disciplined were the students of Asma that no rubbish was ever to be found on the floors of the place. The teacher’s point was that if the students of Asma could keep their rubbish in their pockets until they got home, we could certainly hold on to our candy-wrappers and scrap pieces of paper until we found a nearby rubbish bin.

But what really got me to start hating littering happened a lot earlier than that. During primary school, I attended a jamboree for the scouts. I think I was in standard four or something like that. During one of the nights, a speaker was doing his thing, talking to all us kids about stuff and things, most of which escaped my mind that very same night. 

But one story stuck to my mind. The grownup started talking about not throwing rubbish merata tempat and told a story about the experience he had that made him stop littering and start picking up litter on the street. He was having a walk in a public park one day, and not too far in front of him was a tourist, a foreigner just walking on his own enjoying nature. While they were walking on the track, the tourist stopped in his tracks, bent down and picked up a candy wrapper that was sitting on the ground, held on to it for a few steps and discharged the piece of rubbish into the nearby rubbish bin.

This made the brother ashamed of himself because he felt like this foreigner dude loves this country more than he did because of his action of picking up rubbish and putting it into its rightful place. He reflected that he had never done such a thing, even after all these years of living here and admitting to loving this country as a citizen. From that day onwards, he would pick up any rubbish that he saw on the floor wherever he was near and throw it into a rubbish bin.

That story affected me a lot and to this day I feel the same way the scout brother felt whenever I see any manageable piece of rubbish lying around. My understanding of the situation has also somewhat evolved throughout the years too. I now take the view that the tourist didn’t pick up the rubbish out of love towards this country. He did it out of love towards general cleanliness, out of loving this planet as a natural ecosystem, out of plain human decency. You don’t have to be patriotic to like cleanliness and dislike litter. You just have to be a decent human being. That way, you’ll take care not to litter anywhere you went, not just within the confines of your own country’s borders. Wherever you go, goodness goes, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

It always baffled me that so many people (even grownups, mind you) are still so very lax about their attitudes towards littering when that’s all they’ve ever been taught in school, if anything: to throw rubbish in the rubbish bin. A lecture about cleanliness is bound to come up during the weekly assemblies at least once a month, and kids are always always always told to stick to their jadual tugas in the class and clean up the class on their designated days. Yet, the very value of cleanliness manages to escape them and they live life being okay with throwing plastic into the drain, because apparently that ain’t their problem to deal with.

Maybe a new approach to teaching cleanliness is in order. Because at this rate, people who do value general cleanliness and are able to pick up rubbish on the ground while they’re strolling around in the mall are the exception rather than the rule. People who see rubbish on the sidewalk five steps away from a rubbish as an opportunity to do good in the world rather than just another thing the cleaner has to deal with are few and far between. And this fact saddens me.

Idea-Bank

A thing I (and probably some other people too) go through as a person who tries to write as much as he can is that sometimes, I’d get an idea to write about something. The thought would cross my mind and I’d say in my inner-voice “ha, that’s a good thing to write about!” and I’d ‘save’ it in my ‘idea-bank’ in my mind. 

Thing about my mind is that it’s a very crappy idea-bank. Things spill all the time, it’s not even funny. So when I say to myself that I’ll ‘save’ an idea there, it’s more often the case that I’m in all actuality deleting the idea from my system altogether.

And sometimes I’d get these thoughts that make me go (internally) “ah, this idea’s so good and relevant to me that there’s no WAY I’m going to forget this one!” and three hours later when I get in front of the laptop to write it down, all I’m left with is “I KNOW I have something to write about, but WHAT?” and I’ll just sit there in front of the laptop being angry with myself for forgetting that really good idea, for trusting the never-to-be-trusted idea-bank of Anwar Hadi’s mind.

But I am taking some steps in improving myself in this regard. Sometimes I’ll come across something funny in class or while listening to grown-ups talk that I could tweet about, and I’d quickly look for a pen and write that thing down on the back of my hand. I wouldn’t wipe what I wrote there until I have tweeted that thing. It’s worked so far, and I am able to make some people’s days better by giving them something to smile about online.

But that’s only for tweets. I still haven’t gotten down the habit of writing down ideas for the blog yet, I guess since I figured I can’t really write 500 words on the back of my hand and still be able to read it.

A thing I heard Mike Falzone (who makes two videos a week on Youtube without fail) say in one of his interviews is that he’d write his ideas down on anything he can put his hands on, such as on the back of receipts, used paper napkins, even toilet paper (he wrote on these things because he didn’t have his phone with him at the time, I guess). he does this because he KNOWS that he won’t be able to remember them a couple of hours later, or even a couple of minutes later for that matter, so he makes the thoughts concrete before he even has a chance to forget it.

I should do that more often. Write what I want to blog about down on something. It doesn’t have to be five hundred words, just a topic, or maybe even a mind map or something (whoa, teacher sangat nak guna ithink maps). And I shouldn’t limit myself to just one idea down a day. If I have multiple ideas a day, I should write all of them down somewhere before I forget. Then I can create a real idea-bank that is concrete, using a shoebox or a folder on the computer or something.

So yeah, concrete idea-bank, please, Anwar.

The Muslim Minority Experience

I was reminded today of the atmosphere of being a Muslim back in Sydney. The Muslim minority experience is definitely different from the Muslim majority one, and both come with their sets of pros and cons, but I’m going to rehash one of the good things I remember about my experience trying to stay true to my chosen religion in a foreign country.

I liked how all the Muslims there were very generous with their salaam-giving every time we met another Muslim brother. Upon making eye-contact with a fellow Muslim brother, especially when in the musolla, a smile would flash across their faces and a salaam was given almost immediately. At first, this weirded me out, since back in Malaysia, to even get a smile from a fellow Muslim at the masjid was uncommon, what more a full-blown “assalamualaikum brother!” from a complete stranger. I guess I never really got used to it, being the introvert that I am, but I did come to expect it more readily whenever I went to the musolla.

One supposes that they take the concept of Muslim brotherhood to heart, and no matter who you are or where you’re from, salaam is always given, and “how are you?” is always asked. If there’s time, small-talk was had, and maybe it’s just me, but it didn’t feel like small talk. It felt like they were genuinely interested in what we studied and where we came from. The concept of Muslim brotherhood, mixed with the warm Australian personality makes for a very friendly group of people.

Being a minority also helps foster this “togetherness” that they had over there. Since we were a relatively small group of people, we had to look out for each other and make sure that we had each others’ backs, which made us want to bond more tightly together as a group. It’s not that we were paranoid that the “enemies of Islam” were “out to get us”, but I guess we subconsciously told ourselves that we needed to be each others’ support systems so that when one of us falls, as we humans tend to do, we won’t get hurt too badly, since we would have people around us to give us support and help in times of need, as we would also want that same help and support if we were ever to find ourselves in times of trouble.

I couldn’t help but wish that that generosity with their salaams would take place in Malaysia too, since I found that it only worked to foster love between people, and provide for the givers and takers of the salaam a brief sense of connecting to one another. I think that if we could feel that connection with each other more often, across political and ideological understandings, there would be more peace around. Or maybe that’s just me and my crazy-talk.

Lives of Service

Today Malaysia mourned the deaths of two of the nation’s stalwarts in their own field, Tuan Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat and Datuk Haji Hasbullah Awang. The former was a spiritual as well as political leader, while the latter was a sports presenter. They will both be missed throughout the country.

What I can draw from both these great men’s lives is that each of them lived a life of service. Tuan Guru Nik Aziz, true to the title that people have given him, spent the most part of his life as a teacher and leader of the people, gracing people’s lives with his wisdom and knowledge (and he had a LOT of knowledge) while also being an example of moderation in practice. What it means to not let power or wealth get to one’s head and live humbly and sincerely for God and for the people. 

Datuk Haji Hasbullah Awang spent most of his life in the field of sports journalism, and has become to be known as the par excellence in his area of expertise. He lent his knowledge and interest in sports to the people of Malaysia, which is a service to the people as well. A lot of people benefited from his sharing sessions either through the radio or on the television screen, and I’m sure many go into the field holding him as one of their heroes. Much respect to the man.

And the impact that both of them had on the people across the whole country is hard to match. They are icons in their own right, and through their service to the people, have become as influential as they are regarded today. Their lives serve as an example of what one should strive towards: a life of service to the people, sharing your thoughts and your knowledge to improve the quality of the lives of the people around you, influencing them in a positive light.

If one can achieve a life like that, one shall be respected without asking for it. And that is how authentic respect is gained. By living a life doing things that make the world a better place. May we all look back at both these amazing men’s lives and be inspired to work towards positive social change, and be unrelenting while pursuing it.

Welcome To Our Podcast

As I’m typing this post, I am listening to Episode 46 of Welcome To Our Podcast ( https://soundcloud.com/welcome-to-our-podcast/episode-46-tessa-violet-rusty-clanton ) hosted by Mike Falzone. The show is usually joined by the co-host of the show, who is also the girlfriend of Mike: Zoja. But this particular episode was recorded away from their house in Los Angeles, so only Mike is hosting it.

What the show usually consists of is about twenty minutes of them talking about whatever interesting things happened to them throughout the week, and about another twenty minutes of them answering questions that people ask them through Twitter. Sometimes they have guests on the show and they talk about things that are related to the the guests of the day (like on the one I’m listening to right now, they’re Tessa Violet and Rusty Clanton, who are youtubers and musicians). 

I hadn’t listened to podcasts before I tried listening to Welcome To Our Podcast (WOTP), and after I’ve been listening to the show for several months now, I still haven’t listened to any other podcast as consistently as I listen to WOTP. It’s a great show, sure. It’s funny, insightful and has a good vibe to it with the back and forth that Mike and Zoja have, and listening to them having these conversations, it’s like I’ve become, however briefly, a friend of theirs who are right there with them in their apartment, listening to them tell me interesting stories and making funny jokes. It’s that feeling of being an insider to the setting that keeps me in, I guess is another way to put it.

The thing about podcasts is that it’s a lot like radio shows, just without the songs and numerous ads in between. But I rarely get the same feeling I do from listening to WOTP when I listen to anything on the radio. It’s that feeling of intimacy and closeness that you get through listening to two people having conversations regularly that you are able to understand and appreciate their dynamic and get their inside jokes, because you’ve been put on the inside part of it too.

It’s a really great way to start your day, at least I think so. And I hope to make a podcast with my significant other as well one day, so that we may spread that cheer and just that great feeling of listening to people having great conversations.

Just Another Day At School

So today was a rather busy day for me. Right off the bat, I was assigned to select and train the school’s track and field team. My highest achievement in olahraga was getting third place in the school’s 800m inter-house race back when I was in Form 5 (a good 8 years ago), and even that was a chance win. I had never been the fastest of runners, I admit that readily. So track and field was never one of my interests, but a teacher’s gotta do what a teacher’s gotta do, right?

It went alright, since we got a few names down and crossed some off the list too. The boys were so enthusiastic about it, right afterwards they asked if they could train again in the evening, to which I had to say yes, since it’s really tough to say no when kids are jumping around when they’re asking to do something. Also, because it was my job to supervise any training sessions. I took their 100m times, and, at eleven and twelve years old, most of them are actually faster than I ever was (even when I was 17). I’ll leave it at that.

Right after class, a couple of standard 5 students came to see me to make songs. How I met these particular kids (they’re different ones from the track and field ones) was last year, they performed as the percussionists for a nasyid performance during a school assembly. I asked them to teach me how to play percussions, since I’ve always seen them as cool instruments to play, so they invited me over to the music room after school and they taught me a few rudiments. It turned out, they didn’t know much more than the rudiments, and so I got bored quickly after I learned the basics.

I whipped out my book where I write most of my rhymes and started flowing over their beats. They found it cool, so they asked me how I did that. I then taught them the concept of rhyming words and, after some examples, they started writing some rhymes of their own. We made a chorus together last year, but it’s been lost in my old laptop.

Today was the first time this year that they came to see me, them being busy school students and all. We started writing again, but I had to reteach them the concept of rhymes, since they were rusty. Not practicing can do that to people. When I gave them a beat and asked them to write some lyrics, they ended up writing the lyrics to Altimet’s Kalau Aku Kaya. They were already one verse in when I caught them and asked why they were writing someone else’s words. I told them “pasaipa nak ada lagu sendiri tapi guna perkataan orang lain?” I encouraged them to write their own words, but since the day was ending and I had to go to attend to the track and field kids after that, I wrote a verse for them and asked them to go home and write two more verses. I’m looking forward to what they come up with.

Earlier tonight, after dinner, I finished up writing the script for my school’s choral speaking team. It’s about English and how we use it. It’ll be interesting to see how the kids perform the piece.