the short wanderer

"Manusia kini lebih banyak termenung daripada merenung." Kata Ustaz Zahazan, dalam bukunya 'Himpunan Kisah Benar Tapi Pelik: Mendidik Ummah di Taman Kisah'. Daripada kitab-kitab sejarah yang muktabar, malah di dalam al-Qur'an yang kita baca sehari-hari pun, ada banyak ayat, peristiwa serta kisah yang bukan saja boleh memberikan rasa kekaguman dan keinsafan kepada insan yang membaca, tetapi juga menuntut kita supaya berfikir dan melihat dengan teliti (dengan kata lain, mengkaji) peristiwa-peristiwa ini untuk kita ambil iktibar dan pengajaran daripadanya. Namun, pada masa kini manusia tidak tertarik malah bersikap acuh tak acuh terhadap 'kisah-kisah teladan' ini walhal itulah yang terbaik untuk dijadikan pedoman dalam kehidupan. Daripada 38 kisah yang dimuatkan dalam buku setebal kira-kira 200 muka surat ini, ada satu kisah yang menarik perhatian sebab sangat relevan dengan situasi semasa. Tak seperti kebanyakan kisah lain yang ada menceritakan peristiwa lua...

Hello beautiful people :) It has been a period filled with a bunch of mixed feelings for the past couple of months. I began July feeling very excited about getting a lot of things done. I was looking forward to reading more mystery novels, more sharing and writing, and completing a few online courses. It started well but halfway through July, I was feeling rather unmotivated to get anything done. It wasn't too much to say that I feel like it has been the period I have felt the least motivated in life. I even tried avoiding social connection and human interaction - not wanting other people to get the ' tempias ' of my negativity at that moment I guess. That probably explains my (kinda) quiet blog too I suppose. And I'm glad I took some time off - or else, I'd end up dwelling over the same thing over and over again, which is of no good to myself and to others as well. But that's July - August has been storing a whole different story. I haven't been sharing any...

The month of June has hummed a strikingly different tune. From the life of living up to people's expectation (mine included), chasing after deadlines, and anxiously getting a number of things done on a daily basis, I was thrown into a life where there's no need to feel guilty about just chilling, yet I am still struggling to keep my mind from thinking about doing any kind of work. (God knows how many times I have to suppress myself from sending out CVs and cover letters to companies because it is just not the time yet...for me. But oh well, I still couldn't help writing (and completing) them all anyway - the drafts in my emails are soon gonna be filled with job applications waiting to be sent I guess huhu)  My last submission was in May, so I had June completely free to myself. Apart from being unofficially assigned to supervise Adam's homework (as well as taking the place as the opponent in his (almost) daily chess routine lol), I have been burying myself in... books -...

Cuba korang bayangkan... Disebabkan pandemik covid-19 ni, kita takut nak keluar rumah. Sebab bila keluar, kita takut kita  akan terkena jangkitan virus yang tengah menular ni, lepas tu jatuh sakit. Tapi pernah tak korang terfikir, ada orang yang sepanjang hidup dia memang sentiasa takut nak keluar rumah, malah sebelum adanya penularan wabak ni lagi memang diorang dah rasa macam tu? Bagi aku, mungkin tu la perasaannya kalau jadi golongan minoriti di sesetengah tempat; when you're a black in America, when you're an Uyghur in China, when you're an Asian in European countries, when you're a Muslim among a community who look at Muslims as terrorists. Sedihnya, hidup takut-takut macam tu. Rasa takut nak berhadapan dengan orang bukan disebabkan ada risiko jatuh sakit, tapi sebab ada risiko yang korang mungkin menghembuskan nafas terakhir bila korang keluar. Aku rasa aku ni kira bertuah la kan, sebab hidup dalam negara yang boleh kira selamat, sebagai rakyat majoriti pulak tu....

Naja.  Das Leben ist nicht einfach. Es ist schwer und ermüdend.  Geduld und Dankbarkeit , no matter how many times I have heard of it before; no matter how many times I have talked about it, ist leichter gesagt als getan. I realise that some of my posts for the past few months have been a bit sloppy and gloomy - this might be just another one of the kind; I wish getting over things is as simple as telling myself, "get over it je lah, duniawi je semua ni uhuk" But of course, I have to put this here because life is not a bed full of roses; neither it is a garden full of thorns, and I can't express enough how important it is to manage negative thoughts by being aware of it and acknowledging what was going on. So, here it goes.  I was a bit sad (again) as the fasting month brought its curtain down - not because Ramadhan was leaving, but because I was yet to move on from the fact that these unanticipated things happened. I have never thought that I would find it quite dif...

Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah. The past month has been a long ride, especially with a lot of unexpected things that were happening - the sudden travel arrangement, the cancelled flights, the unexpected transfer and much longer quarantine period, and so on. Looking at how stressful the situation was, I thought I was coping with it badly, but I was surprised to find out that I was actually dealing with it better than some people. Nonetheless, the past week has been physically and mentally draining! I guess God knows I couldn't bear with anything more than what I've went through hence I am where I am at this very moment. No words can describe how grateful I am to be where I am today.  I don’t usually write stuff that I don’t feel good about. But since this was an exceptional situation, I think it forms an important part of my life. Also, since our perspectives change as we grow, I hope there's always something new that I can learn from it whenever I look b...

Kira-kira lapan bulan yang lepas aku ada tulis satu ' post ' tentang subjek arkeologi, atau secara spesifiknya, aku cuba nak kongsi sikit (berdasarkan pengalaman yang tak berapa nak ada ni) apa yang ada dalam bidang arkeologi ni. Tanpa aku sangka, susulan post aku yang tak seberapa tu, aku mula dapat beberapa soalan dekat ruangan 'comments' dekat post tu pasal bidang yang aku tengah belajar ni. Mungkin selepas aku dah terangkan serba sedikit apa yang ada dalam bidang arkeologi ni, ada segelintir pembaca blog aku ni yang berminat nak menjadi ahli arkeologi. Alhamdulillah, rasa bangga pun ada, rasa terharu pun ada... TAPI Saudara sekalian, aku bukanlah orang yang sudah pun bekerja dalam bidang ni, apatah lagi orang yang berpengalaman dalam bidang arkeologi ni. Maka coretan kali ni ialah coretan secara rendah dirinya sebagai seorang hamba yang baru saja berjinak-jinak dalam bidang ni selama 15 bulan... (bukan 15 tahun ya!) Kepada sesiapa yang dah pun ba...

I just came into the washroom when I heard somebody weeping at the sink area. Not long after, another girl came in and they started talking to each other. The girl who cried was ranting impatiently, but I didn't intend to eavesdrop hence the only phrase I could clearly comprehend out of the conversation was " My life has been constantly shit. " I stood quietly, having no idea what her life problem was, but the fact that I was in the washroom reminds me of a post by @orphancare on their Instagram about a teenager who died after giving birth in a toilet in her own house. She must have had a tough time too, or even worse. The unfortunate baby didn't get the first chance to live as his mom let go of her second chance to begin a new life. A new beginning? Something that might sounds easy to say, but God knows how much it takes to even make a first step. Though it might be a bit too late for me to say this, but I believe they deserve a better ending. From the m...

"Happy tak duduk sini?" asked Pak Cik Mokhtar. No word can express how grateful I am that our lines crossed one year ago, and for the fact that God has written this place as one of the destiny of my long journey. "Happy hehe" Too happy to describe my feeling that I actually lost my word. If it's really up to me, I would choose not to leave. "Jadi, inilah keluarga arkeologi kami. Very small. Kita buat semua daripada A sampai Z." I smiled at him. The fact that we are a small group of Malaysians who are passionate in working on this underrated field is the reason why we are a very close-knit family. Who would have guessed, this small family that I have got to know for barely a month could have made me cry on my last day of internship at the office. Ehem, I am not a good storyteller, so bear with me as I share with you the things I did during my four weeks of internship. During the first week, we were organising an internat...

"Are you born in Britain?" my Romanian teacher once asked me. "Is English your first language?" asked my British friend, Alex, a friend I made from my summer school. "Did you go to any English tuition class?" asked Ong, my internship colleague. Disclaimer:  do not put a high expectation on me! I can assure you that my English is not that good... well, the fact that I had to repeat my IELTS last time is one of the proofs hehe But I just feel like looking back at how I get to speak in English, (though not really fluently, just enough to be able to have a conversation with other people) given the fact that I am such a kampung girl and English is undoubtedly something very, very foreign to me. My family speak full Malay at home. My dad speaks Perak dialect in his hometown, while my mum speaks Javanese with her family. So maybe for the sake of simplicity, all of us have been using standard Malay as our first language despite living in Terenggan...