The Certain Future

Yesterday was the passing of Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali (12 July 1926 - 28 September 2026), wife of he former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir. Inna lillahi wainna ilaihi raji'un. Allahummamaghfirlaha warhamha wa'fuanha wa'afiha wa' fu'anha. Condolences to Tun Dr. Mahathir and family.

As a plain commoner, I do not have the good opportunity to know her personally apart from knowing her from afar as the wife of Tun Dr. Mahathir. She was accorded an honorable state funeral and laid to rest at the National Cemetery in Putrajaya. Having not personally know her, I headed over to her wikipedia page and it has been conveniently updated.

Each time there is a funeral, it serves to remind us of our definite future, our own ending. In the case of Allayarhamah Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah, there is the soothing sight of people putting their political differences to pay respect at the funeral. Many commoners like me have become tired of the constant political bickering. Saw that there are still disrespectful comments from our own local breed of fasadists but we should ignore them.

Speaking about negative feelings, I have been disappointed with myself for not being able to complete some tasks before September ends. I need to find ways to renew myself appropriately and soldier on.

Youngest At Kampung Seri Mendapat

Yesterday, we went to send our youngesr back to UiTM Jasin and brought along the newly repaired green Chevrolet Aveo driven by our eldest. The car still has a good pick up since we were trailing behind the car. We arrived at the house our son rented in Kampung Seri Mendapat just around 10 am.We were quite early and met a Sarawakian student (Adit, I think) who had arrived earlier.

We had a look inside; I think this has been left vacant some time and needed some cleaning. Our son told us that his room is the fourth one and we need to get a few things for him particularly a table for his computer. The room is not big and we need to make sure what size the table should be.

Later, we met En. Rizuan, the person who helped the house owner (En. Suffian) to look after the house and coordinate with the students renting there. Apparently, he has alao his house rented to students nearby and thus there is a community of students there. The door to our son's room is pretty stucked after locking and we need to buy WD40 to ease up opening the door.

We went to Merlimau town for lunch and get a few things for our son. Unfortunately, we cannot find the 'right' table for our son. Thus, we decided to go to Mydin in Jasin and bought a table with foldable legs.

Back at the house, helped unpack and cleaned what is appropriate. Prayed Zuhr there. Finally, we decided to take some photos outside the house.

We left the place (unfortunately my son is still alone there) around 3pm. There was a bit of congestion on the highway back to Seremban. Apparently it is due to the installation of 'lamp poles' with what looks like solar panels on top. I first noticed this when we first arrived at Jasin toll; the poles are put st a nearby distance apart, which I find was quite odd.

Reched home around 4pm and had received a message from our son telling us that his room mate has arrived. Here ia a photo of Idris (room-mate) with Izzuddin.

I hope that he will quickly get comfortable with his new environment and focus well on his studies.

Sandalous Varia

Update: The cost of car repair and service amounts to RM991. See photo below.

This is my pair of s(c)andals. Took them off while having a rest after our monthly shopping for our needs (usually last only for a little more than two weeks) this morning and also bought things for my youngest son's needs when he is back at his university (rented a house shared with his friends). We are supposed to send him off to the house this Saturday.

We have sent our old Chevrolet Aveo for service and the estimated cost is around RM850 and possibly more if there are further parts to be replaced. Definitely my limited budget will burst. My other half has kindly offered help to pay the semester registration. Staying ourtside of campus will also certainly require more pocket money especially with a car.

My other half once made the remark that it is a pity that during his studies, I am already retired and have less money to spend on him. We tried to be fair to all our sons but circumstances differ from one son to the next. Thus, there will be variations on how we can help and take care of them. My prayer in early morning today that our sons will be matured enough to understand our situation on this matter. It is important to me to ensure my children will not go hungry though we are aware they sometime skip meals. Sometimes I regret that I did not apply for professorship so that I get a higher pay and hence a bigger pension. At the time, there were several things going on and I sort of gave up on that opportunity (perhaps some would consider me not worthy enough?).

Currently there is rivalry between two factions in (s)electing the 'next' king (called Yamtuan Besar) of Negeri Sembilan, between the sitting Yamtuan and a challenging contender, made complex by Adat Perpatih. Social media is rife with competing narratives on who should be king; some can be very rude and unruly. I told my family to stay out of this dispute, though for our sons who are born in Negeri Sembilan should take better note of the situation. While I'm not a N9er myself, there was this 'name' that cropped up during the current controversy namely Pagaruyung, which I recognised from my younger days. I never had a proper knowledge on this but what I was told while I was very young, that our great, great grandfather had a royal lineage related to Pagaruyung. At that age, I had no understanding of the matter and of course, I did not bother to find out further. My elder brothers and sister whom had the opportunity to live with our grandfather in Tapah might know more on this. In some way, I wish I had know more of my roots coming from the Rawa tribe. I tried to teach my kids Rawa language which is similar to how the N9ers speak but there was little interest.

On scientific front, I'm going through second revision of my former PhD student's paper which had detailed comments by the referees. It sort of disrupted my work on a (possible) semitechnical popular article. Perhaps I will blog on this at another convenient time.

Just a few minutes ago, the serviced and repaired car is ready. Here is my youngest (the driver of the car) with our dinner tonight.

Six Series

Yesterday was the 60th birthday of my other half. So she has joined me in the community of senior citizens, beginning her journey within the six series. Me, I'm almost half way through the six series and I should remind myself that time is running out.

To celebrate, my eldest son bought her a chocolate cake.

In the evening our third son gave us a dinner treat at the new eatery Boorak Chill & Kitchen in Centrio, Seremban 2. The location was previously Polperro Steakhouse but it has now closed. Business is hard these days; another one that has closed is Nasken Coffee. Shop rental is expensive here and business owner has to make sure there are enough customers  just to break even. Here is a picture of us at Boorak:

Now back to the worries mentioned in my last post. On the data on external hard disk, the freeware can only recover small amount of data, so that I had to buy the licence for an advanced version of the software. On top of this, I had to renew MathType license last week. So both of these cost around a thousand ringgit.

For my youngest son, he has found a house to rent just nearby the campus (see video below). Despite being near the campus, it is not of walking distance. Thus, there is still a need for a car. We hope to get our Chevrolet Aveo to be serviiced (another financial worry).

This coming weekend, we will be sending him back to UiTM. Will miss him.

Troubled on Malaysia Day

My youngest son will be going back to UiTM Jasin before the end of this month. So I will need to worry about the upcoming semester fees. As if this worry is not enough, we just heard yesterday that he will not get a place in college for his accommodation and he will be required to find a house outside the campus to stay. Staying outside woud mean higher expenses plus the trouble of getting into camous for his classes. An idea is for him to bring the old Chevrolet Aveo car but the car has problems and I m certainly uncomfortable with the idea. Food relatively is more expensive outside but this is a lesser worry.

Yesterday too, our Malibu car sent out a warning signal probably in need of a service. Just this morning, one of my external hard disk (which was my internal hard disk before and where I stored my work before) went unresponsive after my computer restarted. Right now, I'm trying to retrieve the data on that disk (unsure how well it works with the freeware downloaded) and there are around two and half hours to go till it 'finishes'. Still thinking where I should store the data if it works.

What a way to start Malaysia Day today! Would now have to consider seriously of side income generation. Here we are, having our breakfast together, courtesy of our eldest son (not working this public holiday and not in pic).

Auta-Gate

"When the going gets tough, the tough gets going", they say. Or probably the second half should just say, "act or pretend to be tougher". 

In my last post,  I mention about my other half was down with fever and bad cough. The fever has subsided, but there is still residual cough and had to buy more medication for the phlegm. Medicine are getting more expensive these days and one feels the financial pinch.

To add more financial worries, our auto-gate stopped working. This has happened before and at the time we only replace the battery for the autogate motor. Apparently, the problem did not stop there. The reason that the battery died is because the electrical wiring for the auto-gate was faulty, causing a blackout for the front portion of our home (living room and porch). This time, we call our usual handy-man, Lan, to help diagnose that wiring problem. The unfortunate thing is the wiring are all concealed. To check where the problem is would mean to break the floor tiles and the wall, a thing that I would rather not do. From what Lan was saying, the auto-gate was a quick job done improperly and for concealed wiring, it should be done with 'aro' cables. The auta-gate affair (Note: 'auta' means untruthfulness).

My first workaround is to let the gates be opened at least temporarily. But then we had a visitor (a stray dog) that did not just sntered our property but caused some mess.

Thereafter, we figured out to open the gate manually and for nowuse whatever temporary workarounds to help our gate to remain closed (particularly at night).

Hopefully we can find a better and more permanent solution to this.

Yours Insignificantly

Ever since we got back from Kuching, most of us were just relieved that the travel was over and we are now facing the (financial) consequences. Not only that, my other half was down with fever and bad cough. She was already having a bad cough before the travel as she was seeing several patients who had influenza (and even covid) the week before. The tiring travel and then the bad haze must have worsened her physical condition. So yesterday we went to the clinic to get an RTK kit to test for influenza and alhamdulillah it was negative, which means the current ill spell is from bacterial infections.

So today, we decided to get some stronger antibiotics from the clinic where she did part time as well as dropping off the Sarawak layer cake that she bought for her staff there.

On the way to the clinic, she received a message from her friend (used to be her business partner when she works in Port Dickson) that her younger sister has passed away. We decided to travel all the way to UPM mosque where the funeral prayers will be conducted.

Being there, it brought back memories of my long service in the university. All seemed come to nought. Even when I did my frequent scientific reading and note-taking, I have doubted myself on what use of it. I contemplated on making side income from my writings to help me pay bills and support the family but I doubt whether people will be interested in them. Over the years, I've run my blogs to collect small donations and have run adsense, but I could not even get over the minimum for getting a payment. Scrapped the idea. Some colleagues asked me to write a biography but I don't feel that I'm that important or significant. 

Being in the mosque, maybe I should just focus on my next life. Even then, I have not done enough and fear all the deeds that I do will be thrown to my face. As we have left the house vacant during our Sarawak trip, I felt that I could not protect the family from spritual disturbances, despite my recitation of Surah Al-Baqarah every now and then. All that I have now is just hope and prayers.

I took over the wheel on our journey home to find myself rather tired and having leg cramps thereafter. What hope is there left with this old age.