Personal Charter

Just thot I'd need to post this in a public space:

PERSONAL CHARTER

April 5, 2011

Realising that secular objectives, no matter how interim, is both misplaced and destructive, that I shall strive insyaAllah and with Allah’s guidance, to fulfill my fullest potential, and also to bear responsibility of realising the potential of those under my care, which includes my wife and children, and be the most positive influence I can be to others that I come into contact with, to benefit the purpose that Allah has given to His creation.

September 18, 2009; 28 Ramadhan 1430H

For the next 5 years, my financial planning mission shall be:

• Benefactor to others

Work only for a worthy cause 

Secure dependents

1 Jan 2007 (with minor edits)

• I will ensure my life and my family will live a life of integrity according to values approved by Islam and social order;

I will be determined in ensuring we reach that goal while at the same time ensuring my parents are safeguarded;

including my wife and children; and our relations

• I will have determination that I build up through persistence and tenacity;

I will pursue those goals with bravery and courage, and not be stopped by fear

• I will pray that Allah protects my objective and makes it easy

I will also have understanding and tolerance for other people's viewpoints, perspectives, problems, concerns, and make it my own

• I will use my rational thought coupled with hope and prayer to its fullest ability and find the opportunities that life brings for the betterment of this life

Calibrating My Personal Charter

PERSONAL CHARTER



April 5, 2011

Realising that secular objectives, no matter how interim, is both misplaced and destructive, that I shall strive insyaAllah and with Allah’s guidance, to fulfill my fullest potential, and also to bear responsibility of realising the potential of those under my care, which includes my wife and children, and be the most positive influence I can be to others that I come into contact with, to benefit the purpose that Allah has given to His creation.


September 18, 2009; 28 Ramadhan 1430H

For the next 5 years, my financial planning mission shall be:

• Benefactor to others
• Work only for a worthy cause
• Secure dependents

1 Jan 2007


I will ensure my life and my family will live a life of integrity according to values approved by Islam and social order

I will be determined in ensuring we reach that goal while at the same time ensuring my parents are safeguarded;
including my wife and children; and our relations



I will have determination that I build up through persistence and tenacity;

I will pursue those goals with bravery and courage, and not be stopped by fear


I will pray that Allah protects my objective and makes it easy

I will also have understanding and tolerance for other people's viewpoints, perspectives, problems, concerns, and make it my own

I will use my rational thought coupled with hope and prayer to its fullest ability and find the opportunities that life brings for the betterment of this life

Return to the origins

1. Bahasa has this nice proverb saying "kembali ke pangkal jalan" to signify life's typical journey of returning to fundamentals whenever we veer away from where we intend to go.
2. I've always had this feeling of chasing after money, no matter how interim, that objective becomes a domineering overwhelming instinct that eats up all our efforts, time and resources. No matter how noble the intent can be, ie looking after my family's interests and financial demands, it then becomes the mechanism where the original direction will be lost. There will be no balance, no proportion, and looking for proportion no matter how clearly it resides outside of the workplace now, it would be imbalanced when we lose the sense that Allah is the overriding, primary aim of life.
3. It has taken Sarah's leaving to ignite that need, now becoming a temporary single parent would naturally increase that reliance on Allah which I had quite conveniently left it by the wayside. It is time to return.
4. Just to add to the sense of unrealness, RTC has now initiated a video screening of proof that Anwar cannot control his Thamby. Talk of the inadequacy of someone raising libel on others. I cant visualise any other person with this kind of background displaying such a disregard of personal embarassment and shame, inability to find remorse and accountability, and no feeling of political responsibility to chase a personal vendetta. Society needs clean, clear-thinking, above this dirty politics that UMNO has become so synonymous with. I do feel a personal calling in this regard, and the call of money seems to be the only obstacle holding me back.
5. Elsewhere, Fukushima will result in a much increased cost of nuclear generation, and it remains to be seen if coupled with variability of oil price whether this could really push the envelope for RE generation, no matter how un prepared it is to become mainstream currently and the demands of subsidies to get it up. Certainly a business opportunity.
6. Wifey is overseas for the next 2 weeks - I'm bearing the brunt of the work at office and home in that period. I'll have to decide if this is worthwhile as a full-fledged career. Nevertheless, the demands of a PIBG Secretary, a business matching organiser, a scientific advisory technopreneur and a trainer could certainly be a productive alternative. 

Learning Points a-plenty

Learning Points a-plenty in the past eventful week.

 

1.       Mak needs her space,and even if that is not agreeable by my standards, I’d need to accept it and move on. She has her own way of dealing with things, and my role is to provide an alternative viewpoint, not to force it on her. This would a valuable learning point to be taken from the Menang perspective – you must work hard to ensure your perspective is heard, your spin is acceptable, and the logic impeccable. These are the main barriers to support to the ideas, and the task orientation arising from overcoming these barriers would be invaluable to the action and execution mode. Similarly, this is the mode that I’ve got to take up in dealings with other stakeholders. Witness the effect of explaining why “Gemuk” moniker is unacceptable. The little time invested into explaining the situation has caused a complete drying up of a simple unwanted behaviour amongst my first three boisterous children. Subhanallah for Allah’s creations, and for His ordering of the universe, and for His sending of the Prophet to teach us the simple, most effective ways of dealing with people.

2.       Execution mode – listing, reminders, task, productivity tools on the Berry are useful complementarities to Task-orientation. Make sure I’ve got this covered, and may Allah continue to bestow the ease with which to continue doing this.

3.       BHAGs – property in Damansara area, opening up of Islamic school in Damansara, driving a 5-series, masterplanner of agri land for recreation, rehab and commercial agri, large funder of  worthwhile causes – the Magic of Thinking Big to drive motivation. And why not me? I’ve had experience in project delivery – dealing with DBKL,other agencies, private developers, consulting – selling ideas, creating spin, masterplanning, managing resources, objective-centred activities though results may have fallen short in some ways, investment – financial management, due diligence, investment evaluation, and in many ways, quite well-placed to bring critical, overwhelming leveraged results from important endeavours, insyaAllah.

4.       On item 3, the World Cup is a wonderful eye-opener. England, Italy, Germany, Spain are unsure of their place in Round 2, though I believe they will all still qualify (unlike France), and South & North Korea and Japan are still in with a shout (tho I believe only the first will make it). It just goes to show that money isn’t everything, and heart and determination is a more important factor. I’d have to decide which I should have more of. This is now my biggest crossroads since 2002 when I thought that TNB will not be my long-term career choice. The (mini)-pilgrimage effects are still felt.

5.       and that brings me to yesterday’s Ikram launch. The opportunities are there. The battle lines are slowly being drawn. But perhaps the capabilities are more of the same? The question is, how can I be the catalyst to drive this, and myself, upward?

 

 

 

Losing my way, and trying to find my way back

Just finished reading Dreams From My Father by a certain Mr Barack Obama. The story began with his Origins, detailing out his families’ genealogy and life and what caused him to begin questioning the role of his race in the world. In part 2, upon his graduation, with a confused state of mind to his racial identity and belonging and his worth to the world, he left a well-paying job to become a social activist in Chicago. He found his true purpose helping the downtrodden and needy, yet the questions he had from childhood never really answered. He found his answer in the 3^rd part, in Kenya, with something I felt was an overtly exaggerated dramatization of his epiphany about his true calling.

Regardless of whether some parts were fictionalized or not, it was a wonderful narrative, and the context and the framework for the questions playing out in his mind anout his identity very frankly admitting the fragile self-esteem of those used to be at the behest of those used to become conquerors. Today’s Guardian had a nice review on Avatar which pointed out the metaphorical nature of the movie to the violent genocide done by the European conquerors of America. There are many parallels also to Malaysia’s situation – a fragile “ruling” majority living in worry of being superseded by other more agile, dynamic races here in Malaysia.

On a personal level, I find it imperative I find my peace and overcome the bitterness and enmity which characterized Obama’s life. The calling to the cause took place after that was settled – to find our way, to find the right thing to do, the right level to act, the right interactions to cultivate….

This to be continued.

Travelogue- Singapore trip

Our sojourn down South had a convenient excuse for its ‘unplanned’ nature due to Naeem being hospitalised on Sunday and being discharged the next day for what seems to be fever caused by mysterious unknown elements. His muallim made a comment about the ‘keras’ nature of Ulu Yam, site for Naeem’s camping adventure a few days before, and though I’d have my doubts on this, I cannot argue on the features of what seems to be a strange fever rising up to 40C before receding just as strangely. Anyway, it was this excuse that we unashamedly plonked to Nik and Hamidah for gatecrashing Simei that rainy Tuesday evening, despite almost 2 months of missed opportunity to lockin hotel accommodation.

Tuesday night saw us have dinner at Tangs in Bedok, a short 10 min drive away from Block 102 Simei, which is a nice Chinese restaurant certified halal by MUIS. Nik seemed to enjoy his dinner, and we spent that night catching up since when we last met. The kids were pretty well behaved and warmed up to Nik and Hamidah very quickly. After dinner, Nik turned babysitter for the non-babies who were already exhausted, whilst Hamidah turned tourguide to bring us- the adults- to Mustafa. It was a fascinating place, a gargantuan mamak retail shop the size of a whole block (or 2 or 3) of 4 storey shophouses along Little India selling everything that you can think of under the sun at cheap cheap streetware prices. (well, relative to the bloated Singaporean retail shops anyway) I was unimpressed by their toilets though, which seemed to reinforce the stereotypes of old despite Singapore’s best efforts to maintain its hygienic standards. After securing 6 1kg basmati rice packs, we got home after midnight via the AYE interconnection, a scenic “coastal” (inverted commas as the boundaries are redrawn all the time as Singapore continues its expanding reclamation works in its quest for more landmass) road, and Hamidah pointing out the old redlight areas and pointing out that Batam is the place old men get their kicks and have some boogieing fun away from the straitjacketed Singapore culture.

Next day was a further demonstration of our indecisiveness in travel planning. We set out about 10 to Singapore Zoo, again our generous hosts deciding to show the way and patiently waited until we secured tickets and were ready to move in. We had Sentosa in our mind later in the afternoon and thought we could meet up later, but after 5 hours in the Zoo, and after seeing the animals and viewing the shows, I thought that it was just a larger and perhaps a more organised version, though not by much of the A Famosa resort. We were hungry by then, and decided against having lunch at the fast food joints (they had Ben and Jerry) in the Zoo and wanted to try out the famed food of Arab Street. Through the GPS, at last we managed to locate Arab Street after some difficulty and had high tea of nasi campur just as the azan for Asar was proclaimed from the nearby Masjid Sultan. Hafiz was beginning to get accustomed to Singapore by now, after sleeping in the Zoo’s explorer trolley for almost 3 hours, and was getting acquainted with pavement stuff. As a show of the Singaporean culture, as I was leaving, a number of the restaurant visitors called me to point out that I had left my bag containing the cameras and passports under the chair – kudos to Singaporean powers of observation and kindness. We had Asar in the Masjid after a visit to an Islamic bookshop – which had a lot of Sufi-style books, but had interesting musical CDs. We went to Golden Landmark Hotel to ask for accommodation and as expected they were full apart from a suite, which we can sagfely conclude will be inferior to Nik and Hamidah’s anyway! Dian managed to find time to go shopping for clothes, and I must agree that the quality of textiles there were pretty good and attractively priced, though that is without being able to compare to the Jakels of Jalan TAR. Lesson learnt - information asymmetry is fine when you’ve got dosh to spend on things that you like.

By now, we had already communicated with our (hopefully not reluctant) hosts that the Sentosa plans were off and we were making up our plans as we go along – and we drove to the Esplanade via the commercial side of Singapore. These guys are impressive town builders. The level of urban planning detail and the execution to achieve their stated objectives were impressive. There’s a lesson there somewhere for DBKL in urban city management. This part is built for people, those who work here, those who play here, those who LIVE here. Walking, or cycling, or just hanging out- they have thought of it and everything’s a cinch. Try walking in KL, and I have as per a previous entry, and the feeling of suffocation abounds. We here are really in need of a regeneration, whilst those folks down south, their challenge is to fill their impressive structures with “life”, outside of their utterly dominating presence of capitalism.

I digress. We spent about 2 hours in Esplanade not really doing anything other than walking around aimlessly. Hafiz has now fully recharged his batteries and we spent most of the 2 hours trying to get him to follow our general direction, and not wherever his feet take him. After one month of learning how to walk, his new-found skill is being used most enthusiastically, resulting in fatigue for his minders. We had dinner in Geylang, again after I announced that I have had enough of eating places at convention centres given my working premises is next to one here in KL. Little did I know there are interesting night-life activities in Geylang, and it didn’t seem that way when we were there. The verdict on the food? Well, Malaysia is still a foodie’s heaven! The GPS gave up on us that night but we made it safely to Simei about 11pm and Nik already in dreamland.

Next morning, we had a good chat over breakfast on the differences I observed between our countries, so close in proximity but so far in outlook. We talked about regulatory enforcement and fines being such a major part of life in Singapore, and lo and behold, as I went down to check on my car there’s this white slip sticking out under the wiper of the Odyssey. Let’s omit discussions on what was done next from this blog however. We made our way to Sentosa that morning, again our most beneficient hosts showed us the way up to the Bridge leading to the small isle. There were a few places we went to – Imbiah lookout, we saw the luge, the cable car, the nature observation centre, the history gallery (didn’t go in though), but the highlight for the kids were the 4D Pirates show, and the virtual reality Log ride. We had snacks at Coffeebean (I think!?), then made a short tour of the islet before heading back to the main island. (it’s just wrong to call it the mainland!) Again GPS-free, but we made it to Jurong Science Centre around 5pm after I made a spontaneous detour to Biopolis and Fusionopolis via the NUS exit. From what I can see, the facilties are fully utilized, though I could be wrong, again, an abject lesson for our policymakers who designed Cyberjaya, and maybe Biovalley, the object of a recent misguided and wrong Economist article. SILC and BioXCell are recent developments, so I will save the abuse for now.

The Science Centre had a Plastination exhibition, which closed as we walked in, being as it were already New Year’s Eve. So that counted as a missed opportunity for me, to be counted together with Songs of the Sea for Ummi. We made our way to the IMAX theatre instead, which had this absolutely ginormous circular 3D screen and a full auditorium of people – Singaporeans must really be into science! Hafiz’s eyes were so wide as he looked at the 3D projected images life of sea creatures, it must be so real to him. At the close, we again made our way to Arab Street, this time to try out the murtabak. The City Centre was surprisingly relatively quiet and we found our parking quite easily, again illegal, but I’m beyond caring at this juncture. Nik called to say he had an appointment with his friend, so it was up to us to amend our impulsive “itinerary” and it was back to Mustafa for last-minute shopping. We were back in Simei and chatted to close to 2am.

It was then Friday, and it was time to pack up. After breakfast at a food court, we bade our goodbyes. Nik and Hamidah were the perfect hosts, we were the unashamed guests barging in onto people’s homes but again we’d pray for their well-being and hopes to be met. It was a quick trip, rather packed in its spur of the moment itinerary, but hopefully provided for memories to cherish and thoughts to ponder on the fates and destiny for these two neighbours, both intent to go their separate ways, and still maintain a semblance of cordiality.

Living in the present tense

Part of my rehabilitation as a responsible person and member of society, as well as humble servant of Allah trying to imbue concepts of habluminannaas into my psyche, yesterday was both instructive and humbling for me.

One, the bonds of brotherhood that I share during my experience in Chamberlayne endures, and I should leverage on that and allow to be utilized in the surest of ways to achieve overall Islamic objectives. There is an existing platform to use, and my existence would need that I try my best to utilise it, including helping to shape its direction as best that I can. That presumes of course, that I am the best in what I do, and would need further effort on my part. I would need to use previous blogs quoting Abu Iman’s dilemma as an inspiration to move ahead.

People I met yesterday included Azmil, Farid, Zun Arif, Ust Aziz and Dr Salmi.

Two, is the family ties that both bind and choke at the same time. Resolution would involve magnamininty and overlooking faults of others, and thereby clearing ourselves to see where we stand and what we can achieve for others.

Pak Long Safri’s daughter Mimi Mastura got married to Salmi yesterday in AU Keramat. Rather odd, but educational in terms of what “sibling” brotherhood should be like, was that due to Pak Long’s illness, wedding was helped out by Mak Long Ani’s adik beradiks – which total 11 in number. I was humbled by what I saw was my mother’s genuine familial love for her cousin, for both Pak Long, and Pak Ngah who I narrowly missed.

A note on the family relationships knowing how bad I am at remembering relations – arwah Wan Beranang’s sister, Alang Bibi married Pak Lang (ranks to Mak, it should be Wan Lang and Pak Lang to me) Hamid, parents of both Pak Long Safri and Pak Ngah Zul. Mimi is the only daughter and the eldest. The sibling I met yesterday included Izzudin in Form 4, who’s famous for the incident of screaming for a luxury toy car worth 44,000 at Mofaz’s showroom when smaller, and apparently there’s a younger one in Standard 2 who I did not meet. Another elder son I met, in true fashion, demonstrates my failing memory as I can’t remember his name now.

Whilst I’m at this, I should also note that Orang Tua Ali, who fathered Acik Tun, also fathered (Makcik) Itam Ani, who now has a daughter (?) in Cheras Perdana and remembers us from our hajj trip. For obvious reasons, Mak does not share the same sentimental love for this side of the family relations.

Where to now? Pak Long’s illness yesterday caused me to think of how I can contribute, and partly I thought of giving a job to Izzudin if I had my own company. Although again this means that I’d need to develop leadership skills to mentor people.

Now that brings me to a different tangent. Why am I always living in the future tense when we all need to live in the present. To have this balance, I’d need to think of implications of the here and now. Enjoy the life given with fullest gratitude to the Giver, think through what needs to be done for immediate impact rather than continually justifying its halo effects in the distant future, where everything is rosy.

ADDENDUM:

Pajam Initiative needs a bit more finesse now that it has transpired that PR assuming Selangor state leadership has repercussions on Kg 6 Kaki’s penghulu-ship. Rosli, entrusted with keeping Mak’s portion of arwah Wan’s house (btw the land title has been passed on to me – hence, rightfully I should be paying Rosli), is under pressure from anak Mohd Nor, who is now part of the PAS penghulu cadre. The small plot of land is now subject to childish pulling to ‘tanam serai’. Whatever Pajam Initiative looks like later, these subtle undercurrents need to be addressed as it has a direct impact on Mak Long Posah’s reputation and Angah Aluih’s memories.