Jakarta in July

Another satisfying trip. Three days of unrelenting golf, three days of camaraderie, and three days of not talking about deadlines and deliverables. I am still recovering from my trip, and perhaps am still having the blues about having to once again get back to work. But heck, it pays the bills, so here I am hacking away. Life has taken many interesting twist and turns these last few months. The guy in the mirror is someone I barely recognize anymore. He seems to have taken a life of his own!

Anyway, back to Jakarta in July.

We started off in Cenkareng just five minutes from the airport. It is really an easy going course, with the occasional airplanes flying overhead taking off. Perhaps not playing the last two months didn’t help my score here, so shot a 96.

Next – Sentul Highlands. A newly renovated course, and one that is rather tight and undulating. Very rewarding if you can drive straight, else better to stick to the three woods. Course management is a must.

Finally, my favourite – Klub Golf Bogor Raya. Two days of golfing may have prepared me when I shot 5 pars on the first 9! Bogor Raya is a golfer’s Disneyland. Scenic, fantastic club-house, and caddies that makes you feel that 18 holes is just not enough. The food here is very good too. I had Nasi Timbal, and I would recommend this. My friends had the Gurami Dabu-dabu another dish that I would strongly recommend.

So that was golf. Final scores? 96 – 94 – 91. Got better along the way, and am really looking forward to more golf.

I am still having a few crisis burning holes at work, and am very concerned about how to implement a process that will ensure that balls are not dropped along the way. Then again that's what I get paid for. Enjoy the rest of the week folks, while I scheme my way for the next event - Surabaya in September!

When do’s and don’t collide

I seek security
I seek clarity
Yet all I find is insanity
And believe you me
I am happy!

I have longed wondered why something so easy for so many, can be so difficult for some? Why common sense is so uncommon? Why politics is just a big word for - I like it my way, and your way sucks, and if I don’t get my way then it’s because of politics? Why it is so hard for people to simply pick up the phone and ask? Why they wait for days on end, only to answer when asked – “Errr… I was waiting for your instruction?” I also wonder why they go to the toilet when I didn’t instruct them?

Alas, I beseech understanding - only to find myself further in a quagmire of human fallacy much to my dismay. Then, upon much thought it struck me!

Eureka! I know now the answer I seek.

Alas how thankful I am finally realizing that the enigma that lies upon me isn’t much of pain - as it is so much more of a gain.

You see when human is too lazy to seek answers to something so simple, it makes my work easy. When human would rather focus more on how to kill each other, it makes my work easy. When human is too lazy to simply pick up the phone, it makes my work easy. All I have to do is tell them how lousy they can be, and then I move on pretending to be a busy bee… And here I am writing for thee!

When you say, Phew!

Moments one keeps to one self.

1. Have you bumped into an old flame, looked at her size and tell yourself... Phew!
2. Have you bumped into one of your college mates and realized that because he did "Actuarial Science" and was perceived to be the smartest-dude around (aka nerd), and now he's stuck in a dead end job at the back of an insurance Company counting crap for a living - Phew!
3. Have you had one of those nights that you really feel like drinking, but didn't and you got stopped by the cops? (come closer and smell me breath Datuk! heh heh) - Phew!
4. Have you bumped into one of the girls that you almost had a one nighter with, and realized how she looks like during the day-time - double Phew!

So tell me - what was your Phew! moment...

Aaahhhh I am back

I missed writing here.

It has been a long hiatus, and one that was filled with projects, proposals, and much work in between.

I am getting the hang of my new life. Sort of a bit here, and a bit there but it seems to work out. I have waited a long time for my views on life to change. Yes, I expected it to change, and change it did.

I was sure that given enough time, I will have a different perspective towards what life has to offer, so I waited. True enough, with time my views did change. No longet am I the eager beaver jumping on everything and anything that comes by, but now I am more patient (relative to before perhaps, but to others I am perhaps still a very impatient man). I am more interested to hear the whole story before I conclude the ending. And often, yes often I find that perhaps I am not always right after all.

So feelings of immortality aside, the time has dawned on me that while I know a lot, there is so much more that I don't know, and shall never know. I am but a gnat in a world of gnats. I hold alas a small piece of the puzzle. To have to complete picture, I need more.

The real question is, do I really want the whole picture? Perhaps this ignorance that I hold I should cherish.

Shucks!

I really don't feel like working today.

Too much grinding action, with little to show for it. Time seems to have just decided to take a whizz on me and pass me by like a speeding train with no sound. A silent apperition chugging along, and I am reduced to a mere spectator.

Working 12 to 14 hours a day, with 7 to 10 meetings - makes me sometimes feel that things perhaps could be done in a better way. It has brought me to think about the broader picture. I need good people. People who understands technology and how it relates to business. Someone with seven to ten years of experience, and has been in a large scale successful IT Project.

I think this is an opportunity knocking for those who wants to live a challenge and enjoy the rewards. Anyone wants to answer the door?

Email me, and let's have a chat. I can only assure you that it would be interesting.

I have nothing to say...

Seriously, had so much to do so am left with very little to say, but felt like blogging a few words heh heh so here I am - Saying nothing.

Nothing.

A slice of Heaven, and a whole cake of Hell...

I wonder why it always feels like one has to chomp through a whole cake of Hell, before tasting ever so briefly a slice of Heaven? It has been that kind of year for me, and amazingly I crave for more.

On another note, it was brought to my attention that I write like a girl! Really? Damn! Of the many things that I thought was cool, like a girl? Seriously? Shit. Can't a man be sensitive too? Heh heh heh...

Bunch of crap plus some…

Well, it has been a pretty nauseating time the last month or so.

I am on a project, one that is long drawn and depending how one sees it – it is either very interesting or extremely dysfunctional. Either way, I am in it and getting out doesn’t seem likely.

By the way I am hunting for a couple of Oracle PL/SQL fella’s so please do drop me a line if you are interested (That is by sending me an email on my hotmail, and I shall contact you).

Over the last few months I have managed to contain myself from basically crapping on my own blog, but to heck with that. If I can’t bitch on my blog, where the heck else should I be doing it?

Having gone through the experience I had the last few months, the way I see it, we never left the playground. We are just a bunch of kids still in the sand-box pretending we know what the heck we are up to.

The bully’s, the know-it-alls, the just plain obnoxious they are all still around. Perhaps covered up with the guise of professionalism but plain and simple they are who they were. Lo and behold, I get this honor of baby sitting each and every one of them. Listening to their really annoying screechy complains and pretending that I actually care. Boy oh boy… what I could do with a screwdriver right now.

Anyway, so be it. Now I know why they say it is just plain lonely at the top. I am not even at the top of the ladder and it already is pretty lonesome here. I can’t bitch to my team, they might lose confidence, I can’t bitch to my peers – bunch of wolves they are they might just decide to have me for lunch. My boss? Forget that too, they might just shit in their pants and run around screaming “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”.

That kinda leaves you out there reading these words. I beg neither for sympathy, nor a shoulder to get putty on, alas a warm night under the moonlight by the beach cuddled up saying nothing but just a smile – satisfied.

Any takers? Heh heh heh.

(Zed’s Note: Naughty but nice… I promise)

In Paths Untrodden

IN paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
From all the standards hitherto publish’d—from the pleasures, profits, eruditions, conformities,
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul;
Clear to me, now, standards not yet publish’d—clear to me that my Soul,
That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices most in comrades;
Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talk’d to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abash’d—for in this secluded spot I can respond as I would not dare elsewhere,
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest,
Resolv’d to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,
Projecting them along that substantial life,
Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love,
Afternoon, this delicious Ninth-month, in my forty-first year,
I proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men,
To tell the secret of my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of comrades.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

I have always enjoyed Whitman, and as one reads in between the words forming the prose within his verse, one can’t help but to wonder what he was feeling and thinking at the exact moment when he wrote these words dancing full of toil and emotions.

It has been a while since I have seek the depths upon myself looking inside me, wondering about the perjury of life and the tribulations of living such a fib hoping for a day when it all may end. Alas one has no say. No say in his own play, as he may claim to possess the stage but the audience is one that does not care for neither an encore nor reverberating tall tales.

We are all merely selfish beings, born as such and shall die as such. Life is all but one convoluted mess of survival.

This realization may strike some as a bogus belief of deprivation and others as a small bump in the night, another truth passing by noticed by few, ignored by most. Well, as we sail through this precarious sea of life; with our soul embodied in this vessel of flesh and bones, I wonder if we actually realize that ultimately we are beings of equals.

Each seeking and searching for his or her own place, none realizing that it was never a journey about the destination – rather one that perpetuates itself until one expires. The only hope we have is to be our best, for ourselves and those that rides the journey along with us.

Am I being too perplexing? Am I in my own world, perhaps you may say? Well, maybe I am. Maybe I am lost in myself. Lost in the belief that there isn’t much to call upon beyond the shores of actualization. Maybe I am hoping for hope.

So be it, as it is much better to realize that catharsis, fate, fortune, providence, and destiny is not mine to question. It is mine to accept.

Salam Aidilfitri

It is almost Aidilfitri and it has been almost a month of fasting. It is also almost time for over 200 families to miss one of their loved ones forever. At some point next week 200 people will die. They will die in a mangled metal wreck, and hopefully death will come quickly for the lucky few.

Please drive safely.

Gruesome? Well, if only they make advertisements with the same lines. Maybe, just maybe this time we will listen. This childish rebellious attitude is a signature idiosyncrasy of Malaysians. I don’t know why, but nothing seems to work when you put a Malaysian behind the wheels. They simply turn to Mr. Hyde, and let their ugly side rule the road. Sad, but we live this moment everyday when we start our engines.

Enough said.

Back to more recent updates? I have not blogged for a very long time. It feels very long. So much has transpired, yet it feels like I am standing still and the whole world is just a blur moving past me. I feel contented, at peace, and am finally in a place where I am in complete acceptance of my fate. It is interesting. All our life we speak of God, of our Prophet, of Heaven and Hell, of Angels, and of the inevitable Death. Yet, how often do we realize that this insignificant moment we have in life, as opposed to the eternity that we shall spend upon death – is nothing?

Perhaps you say you believe not in God. Perhaps you say we were monkeys before. Perhaps you say that beyond this life is just emptiness. Perhaps for you life is a journey from nothing to nothing, and when it is all over we all rot away – food for the worms that we once stepped upon? Perhaps.

Alas, I can’t believe it is as such.

I can’t believe that life is about nothing. I will not accept such a travesty. There is more, so much more to life then empty feelings of winning and losing. So much more then waking up day upon day to seek dollar upon dollar to make ready for a time when not a single dollar we have can save us from the inevitable death. Come what may, we will die and I believe that Allah has put me here, put all of us here for a purpose much more then just trivial pursuits of self glorification.

I feel restored.

So much more to learn and everyday I thank Allah for the opportunity to seek his forgiveness, to seek knowledge in this ever diminishing life to please my Lord and to seek a better hereafter.

There is more.

We have not the answers. We never will. Skim the surface, perhaps. Glimpse at the truth, maybe just a shade – but answers we shall never truly have. Just a notion, evolving as God allows us to learn, but to truly know the answers we must first believe that there is one God, and Allah promises that the answers we seek in this life shall be endowed upon us should we seek the straight path.

Am I religious because I preach my faith?

No. it is not for me to say, nor you whether I am religious or not. But I am thankful that these last few months have been what they are. I am thankful that now I am afraid of hell, and wishes for heaven. May this journey be one that lasts a lifetime, and may this man be one that seeks his Lord’s pleasure.

I wonder what you think. Some of you know me. Some of you know of me. I wonder what you think.

Wallahualam. This is me signing off, and perhaps if Allah pleases we shall meet again.

Assalamualaikum and Salam Aidilfitri to all Moslems.