Changes

Yunuss got married today. Only a few weeks ago we met during GEMA meeting. I recall him embracing all of us before we parted ways, predominantly because the next time we met he's no longer a bachelor. Gee this feeling is strange. Seeing somebody’s life changed right before your eyes, especially when that somebody is a close friend.

In fact this month is all about changes – the first month I started my life as a 27 year old lad. My Lumia 1320 broke down and it couldn’t be started. I went to the Mines to get it repaired, only to find out that the Microsoft store on the 4^th floor has been closed – for good. It started off as a Nokia shop, with the Nokia blue signboard hanging above the entrance. It was where I bought my first smartphone – the Lumia 800.

I bought my third Lumia phone there as well earlier this year; the 1320 when it has been converted into a Microsoft store. Black backdrop, with the Microsoft logo in the center. The day before yesterday I went there and another different shop was in its place - totally unrecognizable signboard.

It is unnerving to learn that the Nokia legacy has been killed off totally. Nokia has always been shoved aside by the competition, but it was always an option albeit an unpopular one. Now it’s just gone – Nokia phones are not even a choice anymore. That is sad, I was hanging on to the hope that one day it would make a comeback and I will stay loyal until that day comes. Guess the second coming will not happen anytime soon.

The nearest Microsoft store right now is in Petaling Jaya, and Lord knows when it will be closed.

All the troubles aside, I went to Alamanda to buy a new phone. Samsung Galaxy J3 is just RM259 with one year contract with Digi, and judging from my current financial situation, this is a deal breaker since the retail price for the phone is currently at RM599. I could save at least RM200 after buying all the accessories and paying whatever thingamajig they put in the fine prints.

So I went to change my current Celcom simcard to a 4G one. I’ve been with this simcard for more than 9 years, it still keeps the most important SMS’s within. Another change for me. Gee my eyes teared a bit just by remembering the messages. One congratulations from Bonda after I won Anugerah Perdana Yayasan Pelajaran Peladang back then in 2009, a Selamat Hari Lahir message from a crush, a good luck SMS from an old friend. 

So I am now an Android and a Samsung user; both were what I had tried to elude as soon as the smartphone war exploded. It felt so mainstream and common. I hated Android complicated OS, Windows Phone was using a minimalist approach. But like kak Sarah tweeted at me “It’s just about changes. Not about android nor iphone nor windows”. I guess I’m just scared of the unknown. 

Starting from last week, I’ve moved to a new workplace. Our company managed to secure a tender at another site, so I will no longer be around at my current office all the time. I had to divide my time between the two sites, and as much as I wanted to grow as a person career wise, sometimes sacrifices are hard to be done. 

My Iranian housemate is leaving the house soon as his contract with the owner will end by this 25^th December. It’s either me leaving the house, or I’m staying here as the new head of the house by signing a new contract with the owner. I chose the latter.

Now I’m staring outside of my window, thinking how amid all of that’s happening, I feel so lonely inside. I feel like all these changes are chipping away my sanity, that after all in my life that’s changed, what is left of me? 

Then I realized that all my writings deal with loneliness. Oh wait, or is it just because I write only when I feel lonely? lol

This is all about changes, like kak Sarah said. Nothing personal, just business.

You'll Never Know

I too, long for happiness. I too, long for a chance of happiness. I too, long for you.

Dreaming of quitting my job one day, of getting married, of traveling all around the globe. Of not writing anymore interim reports every other month, of writing emotional, deep piece of writing. And through these, you would be along the way. Supporting me from behind, not that I’m asking for it but that’s just you being you, and that all that I would ask is for you to stay with me.

We would sit, a few inches apart on the edge of a cliff one cold night, when we only have heat from each other’s body to warm us, while we witness a thousand million stars in the sky. When the freezing wind blows, I would move closer to you, until our skins touched.

You would ask me, if this is enough, if this is where I want to be. And I would answer, though the cold wind sends shivers down my spine, like I always did “As long as you’re by my side, everywhere is paradise.”

If love is selfish, then I am selfish for wanting you. I am selfish for dreaming this about you and me. I’d only be truthful to myself, was that so selfish?

We would walk a thousand miles in the middle of nowhere, we would get ourselves lost, we would be nowhere near anybody else, for between us is the world. We don’t need nobody else. We are family. We are not lost. We are home.

How badly I wanted to tell you this, that every time our eyes met I was drawn into you, I feel drowned by the ocean in your eyes, basking in your heavenly scent, dancing to the sound of your words and laughter. I wanted to touch you, to feel like this is the end of a dream that has culminated into a reality.

Alas in your eyes I am just, well, ME. And sadly, it’s all I could offer and I could be; ME. That you could not comprehend how my emotions were built around your presence, that it would be all that I could offer. That my life was incomplete without you, and you are the missing puzzle piece. You are the wildest dream that could never be real.

In your own mind, in your heart, you needed somebody else, that your missing piece to complete you was never me. Will never be me.

We were like the sun and the moon, you are the light that lighten up my life, yet we revolved in a never ending cycle of a rat race – me trying to catch up to your ray in the day, while you hide in the night, only willing to emit a glimmer of your shine – a beacon of false hope shining unto me. But isn’t a glimmer of hope is all needed to hang on to something that is not meant to be? We are not meant for each other, and just like the moon to the sun, what I could ever be is only a reflection of you. We would live our lives in perpetual teasing, yet we can never unite.

I had tried to dissuade myself from you. But when I thought I would be further from you, all these small threads of coincidences, of fate, are entwining us even closer. I would hide from you and you could still find me in my most vulnerable state, in my deepest hiding place, in my most sacred sanctuary, unable to defend myself from your stares and your voice. Your smiles bring me back to my childhood naivety, when life is pure, magical – and they are drawing me even closer to you, without you knowing and without me willing. You are a glimpse of what was once a part of me – innocence, purity, LOVE.

I wish amid this course of events, I had met you when we were younger, so I would have known you longer. That I would walk my life again with you by my side, and I had no regrets of living, aside from letting you go. I am still hanging to the last thread of hope, of having you walking along with me in life. Of dreaming how my life could be different to be living it with you.

When this dream is finally over, I would see you walk away with somebody else. Every step you take, moving further away from me, I could feel my heart dies, beat by beat. If that’s the price of wanting to possess something so pure, I am willing to pay it ten times over. But you’ll never know.

The Negative Side of Positivity

Some people told me I’m a positive person, because I rarely show negative emotions in the face of disaster or conflicts. I would be the one who always says ‘Calm down. There’s always a solution.’ I freaked out at first, but afterwards, most of the time, I would stay calm when the storms blow.

(Source)

I see myself as a socially awkward person, because I hated the fact that I feel out of place in a crowd. But my friend strongly opposes the notion, stating that during a picnic at Sungai Pisang, I could playfully push a person who I had just known for a few hours, and I prepared sandwiches and handed them to every person who attended the picnic. “Don’t claim that you are a socially awkward person, people like you makes people like us look bad.” He said.

To spare you the debate, let’s just assume I’m a relatively positive person.

I might not feel like a positive person, because trying to be positive is sometimes draining, and more than a trait, it feels more like an attempt.

Being positive is the product of years of conditioning and desensitization towards negative happening in my life. It’s more like the end product of not giving a damn, in a sense it’s more like a bad thing than a good thing. It means that you cover up your vulnerability by being a floating, cheerful personality to avoid from showing your inner soft side. Being positive is like putting on the mask to cover and combat the negative feelings trying to dominate yourself, because there is just no other way to be.

For a person who was broken down into pieces time and time again, and each time you have to go down and pick yourself up by collecting and combining all the pieces again, you sort of have to muster all the strength that you have in order to do that and each time through the process the strength is becoming more and more amplified.






I was severely bullied in school. Strangely enough, the word bully itself means that it was my general idea on the whole situation. It took me years to liberate myself from the victimhood complex by seeing the events in a new perspective.






During those events, I see myself as helpless and weak, and every time negative words are being hurled at me, I see them as threats and I took them in. I was lacking the capability to turn them around back at the person hurling them in a good playful manner. It is with time I found the wit to counter the confrontation and I found that it was all about my reactions toward things that constitute my standing in a society.






People generally love positive people, who smile when they are being joked about, or worse if they are being ridiculed, but they could still maintain a smile nonetheless. People love being friends with people who are not self-conscious and who are not too sensitive about every other thing.






But being positive has an ugly side. Being positive means I took it hard on myself. I blamed myself for every unhappy thing that has happened and will happen in my life. For when something bad happened to me, I tried to rationalize them by saying it is my fault all along, and that I could choose to face them with a smile, or I could feel sad and be mad about it.






Feeling sad and bitter is easier, and contrary to what you believe, it took less effort to feel sad than to feel happy. Feeling happy means you have to step up beyond the negative things and put them beneath your feet.






Feeling sad means you just take the situation in, internalize it, and then wallow in self-pity. Self-pity is the number one enemy of your happiness. It renders you unable to feel grateful, to feel content, and ultimately to feel happy not just about yourself, but for everyone else. It fills you with jealousy, it makes you stay in a victimhood mindset.






People who self-pity themselves are the worst. The number one telltale sign is those people who always scream ‘Why it’s always me?’ when bad things happen to them. These are also the people who would always post pretentious quotes on social media about relationships and about feeling underappreciated or wronged by a spouse, their family and friends or the society at large.






Being positive for me, starts with a point of reference that should be your flag whenever you feel negativity is taking over. And that point of reference for me is feeling grateful.






When I feel like I wasn’t loved enough, I reminded myself that there are people, even among my close friends, who were generally disliked by whom they call friends, and it’s a situation even sadder than mine.






When I feel I have a bad life, I reminded myself that there are people working in the same company as I am, making only half of my salary even though they are older; much older than me. But smiles never fade from their face.






When I feel jealous looking at people traveling all over the world, I reminded myself that I did get my chance of traveling and doing so much more even within the country. And that maybe they have a sad life that they only feel alive by traveling and they had to exaggerate and gloss that part to give an illusion of their real sad life, and I could relate to that. I posted happy pictures of myself on social media, but it is only me who knows the real ups and downs of my life.






When I feel down that I could not pursue a life I wanted to live, I started to write, and feeling glad that there are people who are still reading and appreciating my writing. And whatever they say, this is a gift from God to me.






When people make fun of me, I could come out with 10 worse things about them that I could make fun of, but I would rather be a greater person and smile because I would think that they have nothing against me and they were joking about me in a good spirit.






When I feel like I am physically lacking, I reminded myself of those people, yup even those people that I communicated with on a daily basis, who live with permanent disabilities.





All of these make me feel grateful of being me. That I had no reason to be mad or sad about anything in the world, because if life is cruel to you, then think about all other people that have it harder than you.






But being positive means I had to have it all under control, that I had always have to stop and assess the gravity of a situation, and applies a feel-good filter on them and it is hard sometimes. When the situation is relatively calmer, you could always definitely remain your composure. But if you are under constant pressure with lots of input from your surrounding, you have a harder time to convert those input as positive thoughts and it could be a disaster. As a person who got nervous very easily, remaining positive is a real life challenge.






Lastly, being positive does not mean you don’t have negative feelings. But 1- you appreciate the people around you so much that you don’t think you should show them your negative side, 2- negative feelings should not be your master, but you should be theirs, and you should have them in check 3- why would you want to ruin your day by feeling sad or mad about something?






With that, I conclude this late night ranting. Be positive and have a good day ahead.

Why I'm Loyal To Nokia

I’ve been using Nokia for about 6 years now. In fact, Nokia 5230 was my first full touch screen phone, and my first smartphone which I bought after the Nokia 5230 broke down was a Nokia Lumia 800.













After I crashed the screen of the Lumia 800 to the ground, I bought another Nokia, a Lumia 900. And recently, I bought myself a phablet: Lumia 1320.






After about several years of using Nokia, I always get that stare when I flaunt the Nokia phones I’m using. People find it strange that somebody is still using Nokia in this age. Come on, it’s 2016! Why are you still using Nokia? So they said.






For me, using a Nokia is like making a statement. Buying Samsung, or Lenovo, or Apple, is just too common and mainstream. When all the people are going to an obvious choice like a herd of sheep, you might want to take a step back and reanalyze the choices that you have.






First of all, Nokia might not be relevant now, but you still can’t deny the quality of its products, especially the hardware. The reason being why Nokia is not as popular as other smartphones is because Nokia phones utilize Windows software as their operating system, which in the populace’s opinion is not easy on the eye. The tiles –based interface for them is not as great as icons used in Apple OS and Android. However, some people love the tiles over icons, to each his own. Windows OS also makes it very hard to customize your phone, which might come off as unappealing to the users.






However, the real win relies in the durability and longevity of the phones. One of the signs that Nokia really thinks carefully about the hardware is when you can balance the Nokia on a flat surface. Smartphones now are designed solely for the user’s experience, which is not a bad thing at all. But when you can stand your phone on its bottom, it’s a sign of the designers going for the extra mile. My Lumia 900 can stand on its own, which means something about the design is so perfectly calculated to give the balance to the phone. Samsung can brag all they want about the designs of their phone, but can their phone stand? That’s an interesting question that can open up a whole debate about phone designs and the ingenuity of the design.







See? It can stand on its own!










Apple started off their lap in the competition with a box design, and Samsung phones mostly look similar. Nokia was the braver one in terms of design variety - the leaf phone, the soap, the Nokia N-gage and many more other designs that worth recognition. If the shift is going towards Apple's and Samsung's favour, we the consumers have played our part in killing diversity of phone designs.






Secondly, when Nokia becomes the loser in the marathon, you could rely on one obvious consequence – the price drop. For this though, you’ve got to be patient. My Lumia 900 was bought below the market price with an RM600 rebate for stock clearance. Once Microsoft took over Nokia, many more of the phones were subjected to stock clearance to make way for new Microsoft phones, and that is how I got my Lumia 1320 below market price as well, with an RM300 rebate. Just like the idiom, one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure. You don’t want to buy Nokia, it’s totally fine, but you’ll help in reducing the price indirectly, and that is where I come into the picture.






Third, the loyalty. I know Samsung and Apple are the frontrunners for the smartphone race, but there is something so human about Nokia that is always attractive to me. The tagline ‘Connecting People’ perhaps come into play when Nokia is designing its phones that you could feel something so genuine in the phone. Maybe it’s another Goliath vs David tale of underdog vs the giants, or that Nokia did no evil compared to Apple, or even Samsung yet still manages to fail miserably, but I just feel that Nokia should remain in the competition. It would break my heart to see the once mighty Nokia go and being sold off like Motorola. If you think about it, if Nokia left the smartphone market, we would lose a very classy and strong phone maker, and leaving the smartphone race to the likes of Samsung and Apple, which would also means diversity would be killed.






Unlike Apple, with the late Steve Jobs’ arrogance and the suicide-inducing condition of the Apple factory in China, and Samsung’s employees getting cancer, or even Android’s Google shady policies about privacy, Nokia remains as a company that is consistent in its welfare and treatment to the workers and to the users as well, which in hindsight perhaps is the downfall of Nokia. Being the nice person means Nokia took less risky approach in its ventures, and if you’re not willing to tackle the big risks in the smartphone market, you’re going to have to go home.






If I’m writing this a few months earlier, I would have to say Nokia offline GPS navigation is the best so far and is a big plus when you’re considering Nokia, but since HERE Drive and Maps will no longer be supported in Nokia phones, Nokia really is in the losing end now.






I’m a realist person, and though I’m very keen to see Nokia to turn this around and that circumstances work in their favour, if nothing groundbreaking is being done by Nokia to win the market again, then it’s a goodbye. However, Nokia was a very resilient company, surviving the competition of the fittest by shapeshifting from one form to another. It was not even a telecommunication company back in the olden days, to start with. Nevertheless, judging from the current trend, I’m expecting Nokia to go completely vanished a few years from now, and while waiting for that time to welcome the smartphone overlords, Samsung and Apple, I’m going to stay loyal to an old friend.

Stories for My Roommate

Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start

Coldplay - The Scientist 

I was woken awake at 1:00 am earlier tonight after 2 hours of sleep. I barely sleep now, and even if I do, it’s when the lights are all on. The first thing I noticed when I woke up was your replies to my messages on WhatsApp. Before I dozed off, I was asking what you’ve been up to, and you told me you just got back from teaching tuition. You said life was tough, *crying emoticon*. I smiled a little. You still haven’t lost that childhood part of yourself. Maybe that’s what you’ve been holding on to to remain sane in this crazy world, I reckon. I wanted to ask if it’s because you’re expecting a child you feel like life is hard, but more than my worries that it’s an uncomfortable subject for you, it is me who is not ready for an answer. 

Nothing good comes after 2:00 am, we both learn this from How I Met Your Mother from those hours of marathon in our room cum occasional cinema theatre. Perhaps best explain why I’m writing this at 4:40 in the morning is a bad decision. I was about to reply your messages but darn it, it was 1:00 am. Your wife would scold me. 

The last time we talked about lots of things, I was still so very young. Or at least relatively very young. You would shock to know that hey, now I know my family has a saka (or lots of ‘em, I don’t know), and I’m likely the next in line. Yeah, cool stuff ain’t it bro. But nay, won’t tell you that. There are things far more important than family heirloom to be discussed between us.

If it’s a short update, then I’ll tell you I wrote a book about you. I know it would sound funny, because I wasn’t aiming to write that book as my first book. More importantly, hey goddammit, it’s a book about you. That itself raises a plethora of questions. Why? But it came off naturally one day, when I realised that it was the only thing feels closest to heart. And boy was it easy to write. I felt like you were talking to me the whole time I was writing. I sent the book to several publishers, KopiPress remained indifferent about it, LejenPress rejected it straightaway, and I’m waiting unexcitedly for the next rejection from DuBook Press. 

And if it’s even a shorter update, I would tell you the same thing like you would. Life was hard, and still is. The hardest part of living life is living one without you. I live the same routine, growing weary with each passing day with no friends to talk about it. You would be pleasantly shocked if I told you that I have nothing to look forward to except for my once a month outdoor activities, because my life is so depressing I needed a brutal escape from it. And more importantly, you would be pleasantly shocked because like you said, I’m not the outdoorsy type, and I was so very keen in proving you wrong. 

In case you’re wondering, I’m going to clear it once and for all that I have given up cooking. Be free to feel proud that you tasted my last cooking, because after we part ways, I have no motivation at all to continue that passion. I handed over my box containing all those utensils to my mother, and she gladly accepted them all. It was a hard decision because all the pieces contain traces of memories, but I needed to move on with my life, and letting go of those utensils are one of the many steps of moving on from a past life. 

I still drive past your faculty on my way to work, and no matter how much time have passed and how I consciously tried; I would still search for your motorcycle in the parking lot. That was a natural response to what was natural to me. I was looking for the remnants of your memories, the memories from the age of my life when I could not have been happier. That I had a best friend and no matter what happens, he would always be there for me. Sadly, I am all alone now. Searching for your motorcycle is like trying to search for your presence, trying to feel like nothing has changed. 

That would finally bring me to the last thing I wanted to share with you. I missed you a lot, like a whole ton lot. Sometimes when I’m bored, I played our conversations over and over in my mind, because they were so inspirational to me. With you, I never had to hold back from saying things. I don’t have to conceal my true feelings at all, because you were always listening (and then we both laughed at my stupidity).  

Things have changed, and we are both two other people on the world, trying to love and live with what we have. But no matter how much things have changed, I just wanted you to know that you are still my best friend. And I hope you still feel the same way about me.

A Place to Live

My last housemate, the one with the cat left to live with his wife two weeks ago, passing his room to a father of one. 

Now I am living with an Iranian, a 30-something Malay father, and his 10 year old son. I would not delve into details of how each person made me feel, but we are a strange combination. A few months before my last housemate left, the washing machine broke down. Nobody seems to be interested in repairing the washing machine, so now it just stays there in the balcony, gaining metaphorical dust, and a very thin layer of literal dust as well. 

The Iranian housemate has just gotten back from Iran, and he stuffed the fridge with food from Iran, both in the freezer and in the bottom compartment, leaving no space for everything else. 

Last time he was with his friend, a guy called Yahweh or something (I didn’t pay attention because I just don’t care) in the living room while both are shirtless, chit chatting, he insisted that I should take something they were eating. They were eating strange nuts, still in the shell. 

“What are those?” I asked politely. My housemate turned to Yahweh for an answer “It’s aiman nuts.”, said Yahweh. 

My housemate repeated the answer “Yeah, aiman nuts.”

“Err, you mean almond?”

“Yeah, aiman.”

He handed me a fistful of those nuts. “Thanks.” I muttered.

While I cracked open the shell, I could confirm it was almond. Never did I know Iranians buy almonds in their shells. Yeah, new knowledge.

The father of one and his son are acting like ghosts in the background. You could hear voices, but not their physical apparitions. If not for their shoes, I could not tell there exist two other persons in our house. 

The singularity of the parents, seeming to raise his kid alone, leaves too much for speculations. My first guess was that he just lost his wife, perhaps in a divorce, of perhaps in death, and now he couldn’t afford to live in a proper house, thus he rents a room. 

I pretty much don’t have any second guess, so that’s it. 

We seem to mind our own business so far, and so far so good. Since I couldn’t really talk to them or see them, I could only make up their characteristics and social background from their shoes and their toiletries in the bathroom. The son only seems to have a pair of slippers, while his father, who I assume to be working in a uniformed body because he has a pair of boots, has like 10 pairs of different assortments of footwear. The father seems to be taking a good care of himself, with too many shampoos, skincare products and body washes in the bathroom. I on the other hand, have three – a bottle of top-to-toe Bad Lab shampoo, a bottle of Antabax antibacterial shower gel and a tube of Fresh & White toothpaste. 

The father keeps his son in his room, never lets him out, which gets me into questioning the quality of upbringing the son is being subjected into. I really pity the kid, but at the same time I really appreciate it if I don’t have to see him running around the house. 

Being almost 27 and still have to live around strange people and under strange circumstances like this kind of, well, strange. You know, I started to think how blissful it is to live alone, but I don’t have the money and the courage as well, so I’m stuck with this situation unless there’s divine intervention. To be frank, I stayed solely because of the Unifi because I'm shallow liddat. If anything changes soon, I'll let you know.