Taking Leaves

Today I am on leave, taking some rest (after a day out yesterday attending a wedding). Essentially, I was on standby on whether I need to drive to Kuala Lumpur and was worried being exhausted and hence the leave. Luckily, it was my son who drove. It is the season of weddings (December) here in Malaysia but due to Covid-19 worry, we often limit ourselves to weddings of close relatives. The month before we had my brother Nordin's son (Nizamuddin) wedding reception, which was postponed earlier due to the MCO travel restrictions.

It was during this wedding that I learned about my eldest brother being bed-ridden. Yesterday, while travelling to my brother-in-law's son wedding, I got the message from my sister that my eldest brother being hospitalized in Selayang, unable to speak. We are still waiting for his development, hopefully by today, when the specialists go for their hospital rounds. The news dampened the mood for that day. Very sad after all that has happened to our family. Nevertheless, we attended the wedding yesterday as promised, to be seated at the table near the bridegroom and bride. Some pics below:

The next event will be in Segamat and I will be taking leave on Friday, 17 December for this.

The department has probably noticed that I have been taking leaves more frequently towards the end of the year, very much due to weddings & conferences flocking at the end of the year. I was reminded of settling all my duties before taking leaves. I hope I will be spared from the lecture of our leaves being merely eligibility and not entitlement. I have been in the management long enough to know about absenteeism. Whatever the 'problem' is, I never lose sight about sense of humanity and that we are emotional beings, not mere machines to serve others. I think most of us know our sense of duty but sometimes we had to make the hard choice between work and family matters. Already last Saturday, we have excused ourselves from the akad nikah ceremony since I need to attend to my marking (as well as other problems) whose deadline was before midnight yesterday. I did finish all my marking for my two subjects in time and late evening yesterday, we are reminded about the need to send reports about the Test 1 results.

God willing (if there are no emergency matters), I will be at work tomorrow. I will be taking leave again this Wednesday to attend a conference from home (for better network utilities). I will be conducting the JBNU-UPM joint seminar from office on Thursday and I pray that our network will be ok for that.