Blank!

I stared at the laptop screen, idly drumming the black ballpoint pen in my hand against the empty mug. I looked up and caught my reflection on the laptop’s screen.

“I need a progress”, I blurted out with a lump in my throat. 

A pen and a paper always give me new ideas, but not this time. Doing the same things through the months is defined as ‘no progresses' to me.

My monthly income is strong enough to support my growing family. But my salary and liabilities can't grow equally. I need the umbrella before the rains. I subscribed insurance last few days to protect myself. “In your case, protect yourself means protect your family”, Mr. Firwan the agent advised after hours of discussion. I’m the main and only source of income for my family. So, the theory is straight forward. No me, merely no family protection.

That was a small chapter of progress. My life is now 'insured'. Hahah!

I’m looking forward for something bigger. My career is stable but not sure for the next 20 years. I don’t expect to lift >75kg machine at that age. Or hike the 7-8 floors buildings with my tool bags when the elevator stuck. Or spend 6-7 hours driving during outstation. I need a formula to settle down with minimum risk.

The moment I writing this post, I’ve few things in my mind. If everything going fine as planned, I prefer to share it in my future post. It is my next progress of life. Cheers!

Training Tour- Germany

As I reached the hotel lobby, a lady slowed her pace and softened her face. She greeted me with her welcoming smile. Mdm. Monika, the owner of the Centro Hotel. We had a casual talk before she received my cash. “My staff is working on your room, someone just checked out. Maybe around 2pm?” Mdm. Monika explained in her most soothing voice. “Okay, any places to suggest while waiting the room ready?” I replied gently with a smile too. “Ehmmmm.. There’s a castle with some sculptures and… nothing much”. Then, I started to walk just to get myself familiar with the town. She was true, nothing much.

The right side of the hotel occupied by residential area.

Looks familiar? Somewhere in Malaysia?

One of the ancient sculptures

About 10pm at night, in front of Selzgold Hotel.

Castle is undergoing maintenance.

 I hadn’t been on a good long walk for months. Alzey was a pleasant place to go while having training in Wendelsheim. It is a cute town with not so much going on. The town is so quiet and occupied with migrants mostly after 7pm. No shopping center or subway, Alzey is just a plain town. Of course I can see some of the ancient sculptures, castle and walls but those are the things that people typically do- preserve them as much as they can. I didn’t feel well, had runny nose and fever on my first day. So, that’s all I got for my first day.

It was summer. I prefer to sleep after Subuh prayer (1.40am) and every 4.30am in the morning, I woke up for shower and wandered around the street. I became a regular customer to a Turkish bread shop. Not to mention the ‘Ali Family’ minimarket, I can get all halal foods as much as I wanted.  I got to know that they are Muslims when I saw the shelf of religious books and al-Quran. I got 1L of apple juice, 1 khabab, 3 plums, and 3 Turkish sweets with €8.00. €8.00 is definitely enough for lunch and dinner if you are not choosy. How heaven! What can I get for RM8.00 in my country? While visiting other countries, I can’t stop comparing, please accept my apology.

The Turkish bread shop selling religious books and al-Quran

Turkish bread shop. From raw wheat to various bread. I can feel the floury fresh bread.

Wendelsheim, the adjacent ‘town’ where the training center is located. I don’t know how to describe Wendelsheim. By ‘google image’, you can imagine what Wendelshiem is. Not really a town or a city. My half-an-hour car riding to Wendelshiem was confusing. Left and right of the roads are wheat fields, wind turbines, scattered houses, and grape fields. Mostly green. They made me hard to memorize the route to the training center. The signboards not really helped for a new comers like us. As I walked out from the Mercedes MPV, t he wind whipped my face so hard, chapping my lips and made them dry. The place is not concentrated with people, thus they never know what peak hour is and why do people hate traffic jam so much. 

Next day was the first day of my training. Knowing that I’m the only Asian and Muslim, it doesn’t made me uncomfortable. I’m here because I wanna be here. It wasn’t difficult to get along with them. I easily made them laugh and they made me LOL too. Some of them were curious about my practices as a Muslim. I made a chance to explain some of the misconceptions about my religion. I wish I can do it more often.

View from the pantry.

Peaceful surroundings

With Mr. Helios

Farewell dinner with technocrats.

As always, the training for engineer was focused on hands-on rather than making notes. As we dissemble and resemble the instrument, we kept the notes in mind, mostly. We touched instrument more than the pen and paper. We shared same background and we enjoyed the whole training concept. We know we are gonna have an evaluation and a test at the end of the session to make ourselves certified to operate and service the instrument, but it didn’t bother me at all. Learn as much as I could.

Immuno Fluorescent Assay (IFA) technology is a new thing to me and thus, it was a fantastic experience. I have something to compare with ELISA which I’ve familiar for years. Factors like result efficiency and effectiveness of the process are comparable. Of course they are so significant. 

My activities were not so much different from day to day. I made more friends and tried varies of local food. On the last day, I felt better than the days before as my flu didn’t affect me so much. During evaluation and test, we were allowed to use all resources we have accept discussion. We were allowed to play with the software, refer the notes, open the instrument, but no discussion. I obeyed. Compared to the tests I had before, this is a little bit tight but I don’t care.

LOL!

Messing around with Mr. Helios.

After half an hour break, the trainer announced the marks for each of us. Surprisingly, the top scorer goes to the only Asian participant from Malaysia. I got one minor mistake and the score was 78/80, 98% in percentage.  I was thinking I flunk as I have zero experience compared to anyone else in that room. Or maybe because of that I was being too focused. I just kept the presence of mind, how to get the high score for the technical quality as well.

Thumbs up!

After business card exchanged, alhamdulillah, all done here. I grabbed my suitcase and it’s time to say “lets meet again” to everybody.

A Brief Note

When was the last post? I know, half a year ago. I’m always ready to speak my mind and share about important events through this blog but things happened- my mood not always at its best to do that. It is mainly because my laptop spoilt and in ‘beyond economic repair’ condition. In addition, I terminated Unifi services since I moved to Klang. Telekom Malaysia doesn’t provide their services within my compound. Not even Streamyx. Anyway, this is the best time to experiment my life while living in limited resources

All happened at once- Major car breakdown (cost me ~RM10, 000), bought a house and renovations (of course it wasn’t a little expenses), house refurbish (it was an abandoned unit). My wife was at the early stage of pregnancy (morning sickness and cysts operation). You can imagine how a bunch of money flowing out from my pocket.

It seems all of the carefully constructed walls I’d built around myself collapsed overnight. I was left as exposed and vulnerable as a turtle without a shell. But hey, what done, is done. So, I just use whatever existing resources I have to reconstruct the wall. And of course, writing down my thoughts and feelings was the key to more than the therapeutic progress. First things first.

Later I found, really, this is normal. Every event went off as what it supposed to be. My wife quit from her job, but she can focus on the kid(s) more. I don’t have to worry about baby sitter services and the monthly payment too. It is not everything we owned is a ‘forever liability’. I must expect that. 

After months, there are still a lot of things for me to look over. But I surely fix them accordingly. No matter how hard my time was, there was always a way out. This is a brief note from Him to His every servant. Allah has given so much to you and me.