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Friday, April 27, 2007

The Weird Sides Of Me...

I had been tagged (twice) by Ryzah and Ija, to write about the 6 weird things about me... The thing is, as I examine myself (in my mind, I mean - no funny ideas ok, hehe...) I found out that I actually have more than 6 weird things that I do (talk about over-eccentric huh?). But then, not wanting to down-grade myself from eccentric to a total wacko/weirdo, I think I should just stick to six, don't you think, and the six weird things involve various of my body parts/organs.

Me Weird No. 1 - Nose

I always find myself pinching my nose. It's not that I want to make it look like David Copperfield's nose or something, but my self-conscious over how my nose looks like was probably started when I read this email many years ago, that nose never stops growing (is this true?). Being an introvert person just makes the habit becomes worse. Sometimes, I pinch so hard, it triggered a sound like how you snap your thumb and middle finger. But now that I have my wife to accompany my time, I have gradually managed to control this habit, and with our son growing up, surely I don't want him to witness this particular weird habit of mine.

Me Weird No. 2 - Mouth

Sometimes this mouth just can't stop humming and singing, and most of the time, I do this when I'm by myself or when I'm sure nobody is listening. While singing, this mouth can also create music and sound effects (remember how I used to imagine having own tv shows while
taking a shower). And when I say music effects, is not that I can do like what Blake (of American Idol 6) and Jamaroqui can. But still, it's fun!

I also tend to talk to myself, for examples, like when I'm looking for something or figuring out what to do (more like thinking out loud kind of thing). Also, when I'm reading, especially if I find it hard to concentrate, I will start to read out loud...

Me Weird No. 3 - Face

Be careful over who's behind you while you are in the elevator........ especially if that person is....... ME! kik kik kik kik..... When I'm at the back side of the elevator and there are other people in front of me, I tend to make funny faces behind them, like rolling my eyes or (slightly) sticking my tongue out, etc. I don't know how I catch this habit, but the idea that they have no idea what I'm doing behind them excites me. Of course, I won't do such a thing if the elevator has mirrors as its walls. I will also probably stop this weird habit if one day, I'm caught in the act.

Me Weird No. 4 - Hands (Wrist, Fingers and Elbows)

When I'm singing to myself, if not 'accompanied' by mouth creating the music effects, I would start banging on the table like drums, using combination of my fingers, wrist and elbow. Not that it's a masterpiece or anything, but the real music would play in my head while I'm doing this. You might also probably see me banging on the hand rail while taking the escalator or on the steering while in the car (real music from car stereo usually triggers this and I'd do so when the car is not moving of course).

I also like to break knuckles especially after a while of typing or behind the wheel. Sometimes, I don't need one hand to break knuckles of the other. I can do so with one hand only (sounds like proud huh?).

Hmmm... one other thing. Talk about elbows - until today, I still rub and slightly pinch my elbows to help me get to sleep or until I fall asleep (while lying on bed or a comfy sofa laa, not while sitting down or talking to somebody hehe...). This (cute?) habit amazes and tickles my wife 'coz sometimes I was so engross with my elbow, I don't realise my wife is looking...:)

Me Weird No. 5 - Mind

I don't know whether it's age or it's habit but I always find myself forgetting things and over-panicky. My wife said menyanyah (a Malay colloquial for err.... half-senile?). Like the other day, after picking my wife up from the hospital the day after Ikhwan was born, it was raining. So, I dropped off my wife, our baby and mother-in-law in the basement parking of our condo before I went parking the car somewhere else. There were so many stuffs in the boot at that time and you know what, I went straight upstairs carrying nothing home. Then when my wife asked for one of her things, I was having a hard time recalling did I bring them up or I placed them somewhere in the house already... Hmmm...

Me Weird No. 6 - Overall self

I'm a safety freak - I would check on the locks and switches of all the rooms in my house at least twice especially if we are leaving the house for a few days. If you try to enter my lane while on the road without giving any signal (despite it's quite apparent that's what you try to do), chances are you'll hear me honking at you, or see me flashing high beam lights at you.

I'm organised and disorganised at the same time. All the necessary things that I need to carry with me everytime I leave the house like keys, handphones, wallet, card holder (with cards in it of course), handkerchief, watch etc. are all placed together. All my (paid) bills and documents are easy to find. I have files for different matters - articles on marriage and raising children; health tips and excercise routines; Islamic articles etc etc. I also bring all the medicine wherever I go. Not that I have a terminal illness or anything like that, but you know the usual ones like paracetamol, Vitamin C, medicine for diarrhoea and alergies etc. Heck! I'm so well prepared, even my wife comes to me at the time in need, hehe...


But the thing is, I can also be disorganised when it comes to 'planning' things to do. Like for example, I come across an interesting book to read, pick it up and buy it. Then a few days later, another book grabs the attention of my eyes (and wallet), despite I have not started on the first book yet. The same goes with buying DVD's or how about that book I write, that has been put on hold for so long now? I guess, I try to accomplish so many in a short period of time huh? This rather disorganised habit may have probably lead to my menyanyah habit?

On my previous
Birthday, I referred myself as a big boy for a reason. People (including my wife) have commented that I (now) look (more) matured and can make adult decisions and opinios. However, there are times when I'm still a big boy and all cheeky. Think Joey of Friends and Hiro of Heroes, then you'll have some ideas.

You've seen my
work-cum-play area before, now here's a glimpse of the inside of my car. On the front windscreen, at the front passenger side, I recently stick up Spider-man on his web (see photo above). When the time comes, my son would enjoy that of course . But at the time when I bought it, I was actually thinking about pleasing my inner child... hehehe...

I don't really want to tag anybody on this topic. Everyone is welcomed to write about their own weird sides of course, whether in the comment section or in your respective blogs (so long as you lemme know about it laa ok!). Meantime, here's parts of the lyrics Unwell by Matchbox 20. Enjoy...

But I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know right now you can't tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
A different side of me
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired
I know right now you don't care
But soon enough you're gonna think of me
And how I used to be...me

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Friday, April 20, 2007

What we say quietly and in our heads...

Papa:
Hi Ikhwan, Assalamualaikum... It's Papa... be a responsible man when you grow up ok, a man who is kind at heart, who treats women right, who loves and obeys your parents, strong, healthy and full of life and most importantly, never to forget Allah...

Ibu:
Subhanallah, Maha Suci Allah, look at how serene you are, safely under this mosquito net. So, you are the cute baby who had been moving around in my tummy, hehe. Looking at you makes me wonder at how amazing human creations are. How Allah, in all His glory, create humans with eyes, nose, mouth and ears, bones, fingers, hair, internal organs .............. all that is formed in a mother's womb.

Ikhwan:
Hmmm......Papa is taking my photos again. If I'm not mistaken, there has been more than a dozen right Papa? By the way, this method of putting a piece of tissue paper on my forehead seems to be able to 'cure' my hickups. I'm not sure how, but as long as I can sleep in peace, that's fine by me. So, papa thought that me sleeping in this position, as something intriguing and should be caught on camera... If only he knows that in a few seconds, I'm about to squeak since my diaper is all soiled... hehe...

COMING SOON: The Weird Sides Of Me..... ready or not?

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Monday, April 16, 2007

You are Served!

Now that my wife had safely delivered our first baby, as a government servant, she is enjoying her two-month maternity leaves. That may sound a long time, especially to those fathers who wish they could have the same duration of leaves hehe. But to mothers, two months can fly by very quickly; what with all the confinement to go through (which include things you cannot do, stuffs you cannot eat and routines you need to follow); encounter post-partum blues (if any); breastfeeding and taking care of the babies etc etc. I guess that's why Dato' Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, a Women, Family and Community Development Minister of Malaysia had proposed to the cabinet to extend the maternity leaves from 60 to 84 days - so that the bond between mother and child can further be strengthened in the early months of the child's life.

Last Monday, 09 April 2007, I went to the NRC (National Registration Centre) to register our baby's name. We have agreed to name our baby Ikhwan Rasydan, instead of Muhammad Ikhwan Rasydan, due to the latter being too long. It was a second trip for me, for I had forgotten to bring my wife's original identity card (IC) the week before.

Many relate that trips to government offices can be somewhat unpleasant. What with the long wait, crampy conditions and not-so-friendly staff. That may be true to some extent, but in my opinion, I can see that the Government is striving to improve the quality of service of their staff. Like in my case, the officer in charge politely told me my mistake during the first visit and was more than keen to help speed up the process when I dropped by the second time.

Being a government servant has its perks. Nowadays, most of them work 5 days a week; they can easily request for housing and car loans; there are health benefits for them and their loved ones; they have more than 2-hour lunch break on Fridays (to give way for Friday prayers) etc etc.

The recent rumour said that they would probably enjoy another increment from the Government this year. Let's just hope that when the rumour turns out to be true, nothing else would increase. It's like a new version of Newton's Third Law or something, where for every action (bonus and increment of government staff) there is an equal and NOT-opposite reaction (price hike on everything else)...sigh...those who are self-employed or work in private firms, also have to suffer forking out extra money from their wallet to buy stuffs.

Many of us also think that the government staff enjoy multiple coffee breaks in a day and thus, public has this general perception that government servants are lazy, slow and incompetent.

Again, to some extent, this is true but we should never fall into the trap of 'hasty generalisation'. If you happen to be one of those with this perception, please at least make an exception towards those in the Education and Health sectors.

I remember a time, my wife had to work from 8am to 6pm (at least), for 15 days in a row. On the 15th day (a weekend), we arrived earlier than her clock-in time (I was the one who sent her to her workplace). After clocking in, we decided to have breakfast together. When I sent her back, it was about 5 minutes after the official time.

There was already a blood donor waiting. After calling him in, she apologised for having to go and get her breakfast. The donor gave a sour face and mumbled, "This is typical in government offices. Staff always not around, always on breaks and keep people waiting..." Upon hearing that, she just smiled. She might be extra-patience that day, probably because, she was also tired and it would only waste her energy if she were to drag the conversation.

My blood boiled when she relayed the story to me. If I were there, I would have tell this to his face: "Hey mister! My wife is not here to serve you ok! Give her a break, she's pregnant and has been working like 15 days straight. What kind of a person who goes to a blood centre at 7:30 am on a weekend morning anyway? Shouldn't you be enjoying your extra sleep or something? And what is waiting for less than 5 minutes compared to her having to wait for two weeks before she gets her well-deserving day off?........." Luckily I'm not a doctor huh?

Another incident where I think she had worked her energy off, was when she worked non-stop on each day (other than going to the loo or having short meal breaks), from 8am to midnight for three days straight from Friday to Sunday, and then resumed working as usual the following week. Mind you, she was more than 9 months' pregnant at that time!! It really saddened me that my wife (and our baby) had to endure such stress...

Working in Health sector is no laughing matter! Whether a doctor, a specialist or a nurse, we should respect them all. They have to deal with long hours of working compared to many of us. So if they are a few minutes late in attending to us, or if we see them taking a wink, let us not pass any nasty judgements on them, let alone scold them....

P/S: In case you haven't noticed the joke behind the above cartoon, fyi, doctors don't use stethoscope to examine a patient's throat. You may laugh, but according to my wife, on many occasions, movies and TV programmes (locally produced or from abroad) also portray inaccurate scenes involving doctors. Among them are:
1. stethoscope is worn wrongly.
2. X-ray slide is put up and examined on the reversed side.
3. a 'patient' may be bed-ridden with a cardiac monitor next to the bed, displaying Electro Cardio Graph (ECG) of his health condition; however the monitor shows graph of a normal and healthy person.
Hehe, talk about being dooped huh?

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Freakish coincidence?

Before I hung this one small calendar in our room early this year, I jotted down the national public holidays on their respective dates (since the calendar shows artistic photos of Greece, obviously it doesn't come with dates of Malaysian holidays). I erroneously wrote 1st April (instead of 1st May) as Labour Day and Wesak Day (two separate celebrations here) and immediately crossed them out after realising my mistake (see above photo). It turned out 1st April was indeed my wife's LABOUR DAY. Freakish coincidence huh?

Had a great weekend with my family, especially my wife and Ikhwan. Ikhwan was recovering from jaundice and getting cuter by the day. He has also gained 0.7kg since the day he was born, Alhamdulillaahhh.

Like father like son? Hehe, I wasn't really sleeping here - just pretending. Otherwise, how could I take the photo myself? :o

Bond! Father-son BONDing....
Current nursery rhymes that I sing to my son:
Nursery 1
Baa.. baaa... cute Ikhwan,
Have you any wool?
Yes papa, yes papa, three bags full.
One for my papa, and one for Ibu,
And one for little Ikhwan,
Who is so comel lote (translation: cute)
Nursery 2
Kung kang king kong kung kang kung kung king kung kang kung........
(this had made my wife laugh. She said there goes all those CDs and books on nursery rhymes coz all I get to sing to him is this. Guess I'd better do some revision on those songs huh? Haha)
Nursery 3 (especially when tucking him to sleep)
Laa....ilaaaaa.....haillalahhhh.... (3x)
Muhammadurrasulullaahhh..... (to fade)

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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Days unlike any other….

It was Saturday, 31 March 2007, and 12 Rabiul Awal 1428H (based on the Islamic calendar). It was a Maulidur Rasul day - the Prophet Muhammad pbuh’s Birthday (peace upon him).

My mother-in-law had been staying with us for the past few days, for the preparation in case my wife delivered. That day, we were ‘confined’ in the house. Nothing to do with my wife (the confinement) but the contractor who had been hired to fix our kitchen cabinet finally came after two weekends of postponement. So, that day was loud, with sounds of drilling and knocking echoed in the house. Probably, it was loud enough to ‘awaken’ our baby in his mother’s tummy and made him want to come out. Here, the story unfolded….

In conjunction with the Maulidur Rasul, some events had been organized by the condo’s surau committee starting from after the Zohor prayer till about 9pm. When the kitchen contractor finished the job, it was already late in the evening. After cleaning up the kitchen, I was getting myself ready for the Maghrib prayer and planned to attend the ceramah at the surau afterwards.

I noticed my wife had spent quite some time in the toilet. She then revealed that some signs that she was going to deliver soon were already happening. I wanted to cancel my (ceramah) plan and preferred to wait with her (for further signs) or brought her to the hospital instead. But she insisted that I carried on going to the surau, since the signs were still small and considering that her mother could accompany her in the house and let me know should the signs got stronger.

After the ceramah and having dinner with the rest of the jemaah, my wife called, saying that her water just broke. Off I went, with a speed of a man running in his slippers and after waiting for a few minutes for the elevator to take me up to my house; I quickly got everyone and everything ready and drove off to the UKM Hospital, which was about 5 minutes’ away (by driving).

It was already 4cm when the doctor checked on her. My wife needed to be sent to the labour room immediately. Since only a family member is allowed to be with her in the labour room, I sent my mother-in-law home.

Back at the hospital, here were some of the thoughts that crossed my mind as events unfolded (not all are disclosed here of course):

Her contractions grew stronger and more frequent. I sat by her bed and to her right, asking her to squeeze my fingers and hands everytime the pains came. As often as possible, I kept watch in case her drips ran out and looking to the monitor that displayed the baby’s heartbeat rate and the intensity of her contractions.

During one of the nurse’s visits, we were told that they would check on her cervix dilatation again at 3am, more than an hour to go. The nurse may have left after that, but my wife’s contractions remained and got worse. Words were exchanged between me and my wife, including some heart-wrenching ones.

It was close to 3am. As her pains somewhat dwindled, she told me it was ok to sleep for a while. I then leaned back on the chair and had the wall as my pillow (hopefully you can imagine my sleeping position here). About 15 minutes later, I was startled from sleep when the nurse entered with a houseman. After checking on her, the houseman told us, it was still 4cm. With all four of us in the room, I found it to be a bit crampy, so I decided to step out for a while and then sat on a couch.

The couch hadn’t even received the slightest heat from my body, when the nurse suddenly rushed back to get me. I got up and followed closely behind the nurse. The minute I entered the room, my wife told me that now, it was already 9cm.

I thought, ‘What? Didn’t the houseman just tell us it was still 4cm? Gulp, this is the moment right, Ayang?’

4:30amme and wife were becoming very much concerned when the baby’s heartbeat rate grew slower. I decided to call a doctor. Soon, the room was full with two MOs, a houseman (a different one) and a nurse. I told myself, 'No matter how full-house the room can get, I ain’t leaving her this time, that’s for sure!'

Everyone told her to push. The baby’s head and hair was already visible, but somehow, the baby was pulled back inside. ‘Push Ayang, push… you call that push? Push harder!!!’ were the things I said in my head as my eyes kept exchanging looks between the monitor and my wife.

Since the heart rate had drastically slowed down, the MOs agreed to use the vacuum aspiration to avoid any prolonged episode of hypoxia (lack of oxygen). ‘What? Oh no, not the vacuum!!!’

As the MO used the vacuum, my wife kept pushing harder than before. After a long hard push, the miracle of God was granted and the baby was born. It turned out that the umbilical cord had encircled our baby’s neck and caused the baby to be pulled back inside after every push. It was a baby boy and he was rather bluish in colour. Obviously, he was lacking oxygen. Then, the nurses ‘shoved down’ some tubes into our baby’s throat to remove fluids from his lung, so that he could breathe in more easily and freely. Only after a few seconds, the baby started to cry.

I managed to remain calm throughout the whole ordeal, but seeing the baby in bluish colour and watching that ‘giant’ tube went into our baby’s tiny mouth and throat, got me slumped onto my chair. I put my hand across my fore-head and breathed out a sigh of relief after hearing his cries. His first cries!

During the third stage of labour, I just had to go out and get some air……

Our baby boy, Muhammad Ikhwan Rasydan was officially born at 5:23am on Sunday, 01 April 2007, a day after the Prophet Muhammad pbuh’s Birthday (which also happened to be my sister’s wedding anniversary - but there is NOOOOO way I’m associating my son’s birthday with April Fool’s day).

Tuesday 03 April 2007 - a day after wife and baby had been discharged from the hospital and a day after having a little practice on taking care of the baby, my parents-in-law brought them both back hometown, to stay there throughout the confinement period. I couldn’t come along as I had to work tomorrow, but I’d be going back every weekend, Insha’ Allah. Heck! I’m already starting counting the days before this coming weekend - first weekend with my wife and our cute baby. A few days sure feel like eternity when you eagerly wait for the time to come….

'Huhuhu, uwwaaaaaaa, uwwwaaaaa…… I’m here all by myself while my son is…huhuhu, uwwaaaaaaa, uwwwaaaaa with my wife over there… sob, sob….'

P/S: To those who have never seen but have the guts to watch your (future) wives giving births, I strongly recommend you to. You WILL appreciate women more, especially your wives and mothers of course, after witnessing all the hardships that they have to go through to bring lives into this world.

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