malam yang sunyi...

malam yang sunyi....
aku tersendiri...
menyepi..

siang yang panas...

hari-hari yang ganas...

aku tercari-cari...

erti hidup dan mati...

pasti aku terus tersendiri...

malam yang pasti sunyi...

dan siang esok nya mungkin panas...

ganas...

dan ngeri...

apakah bisa aku tercari...

dan mengerti....?

My Mother...

My mother would have been in her eighties if she were still to be alive today. She died in her early forties when I was only in secondary two of the boarding school in Ipoh. I was only 14 or 15 then...

How little I remember of her! I must have repressed most of my thoughts and feelings about her as I do not think that I went through the whole processes of grief when she died. She never told me that she was sufferring from cancer ( of the breast), and the whole family conspired to keep that information a secret from me ! I guess they all knew that I was a sensitive boy, an emotional kid who was still struggling to get used to being away from home.

It was my mother who first broke down at the time of seperation when I was left to be boarded at the residential school. Until then I was quite oblivious as to how painful a seperation could be. For months I used to weep in bed every night, missing my family and more specifically my mother. I would get very excited during every term break and my mother would never fail to cook my favourite dish (laksa kedah) during every holidays. And two or three weeks later, when the term break came to its end and it was time for me to return to the hostel, I would loose my appetite and become withdrawn and down again. That was what my elder siblings said about me..

My mother was a talkative lady with a warm and friendly character. With her short and rounded physique, she was the opposite of my asthenic and introverted father. My mother must have married very young, as my eldest brother is now already if not almost already seventy! So, she must have married in her late teens if not early twenties...

She bore the eleven of us in the family including a pair of twins who unfortunately did not survive the Japanese Occupation. And my mother did a great job of bringing all of us up to what we have become today...

She was always up early every morning and breakfast for the whole family would be on the table by the time we were up for school or whatever. I remember my regular breakfast would be a plate of fried rice some times eaten with a few fresh green chillies and dipped in thick sweet soya sauce (kicap), the fired rice was usually cooked from the balance of the rice from the dinner the night before. Only my father would have his two half-boiled eggs and toasts with his coffee.

On Saturday or Sunday mornings my mother would take me to the market to help her carry the basket of vegetables, fish or chicken that she would buy. And as I became familiar with her selection of food, whenever she was unwell to go to the market, I would be sent to do it with a list of stuff to buy. I would sometime help her out in the kitchen, picking the husks out from the rice, cutting the vegetables, cleaning the fish etc. As such I did not feel akward about helping out in the kitchen even up to until today. In fact, more often than not, nowadays, I am the one who does the marketing and sometimes the cooking for my family! It must have been my mother's influence..

It was my mother who taught me how to read the Koran. She would everyday devote the time between Maghrib and Isha to teach me how to read the Koran. Being a good student, of course, I had no difficulty mastering the skill. Furthermore, the only newspaper that was subscribed in the house was the Utusan Melayu. So that also helped in my mastery of the Jawi. But the daily contact with my mother over the Koran-reading sessions was an important aspect of my relationship to her which cemented the mother-son relationship.

My mother was a model of responsibility, loyalty and love to the family. She was there to see the whole lot of us through life but unfortunatley she did not live long enough to see all the fruits of her labour.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running...

What I love about holidays and travelling, apart from the trip itself, is that it gives me time to catch up on my reading. The past month saw me travel to Japan for 2 weeks for golf and for family time with my son and subsequently for a short golf outing with my high school buddies to Indonesia. And during that short period of time I found myself to have finished reading 3 books ! A sort of a record for myself.

I have bought another of Murakami's books some time ago but have yet to read it, but this one caught my attention before my trip to Japan. A short and simple book yet very fascinating as it allowed me to get a glimpse of Murakami, the person. The introvert writer, the university student who ran a jazz bar in Tokyo before he gave it up to go full-time writing is also a marathon runner, having participated in more than 20 marathons in different parts of the world. In this book he wrote about his thoughts as he ran the long distances. He also describes his preparations for the runs and what what he has to endure to keep himself fit for the marathons. Such determination and perseveration are probably equally necessary for writing.....

Murakami will be the pakdokter's model to help achieve this year's sets of objectives in golf........

Pakdokter was introduced to Isabel Allende by pakdokter's partner's friend, Harriette, from Sweden who came to stay with us in 1994. Pakdokter found the book, The House of Spirits, very absorbing. And of course, pakdokter had also bought the DVD of the movie starring Jeremy Irons, Antonio Banderas, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Vannessa Redgrave, all of whom are pakdokter's favourite actors! The Sum of Our Days is Allende's latest book written the year (2007?) after her daughter, Paula, died at the age of 26 from ?drug complications for a treatment of pnuemonia due to the underlying porphyria which she also sufferred....The book, which is a memoir of Isabel's life, is in the style of a communication to Paula, keeping her abreast of the goings-on in the family intertwined with memories of family events from the past. In the process, I suppose, Ms Allende had helped herself work through her grief from the loss of Paula. Although a memoir, the book is first-class story-telling, which is Allende's gift...

Isabel Allende's uncle was the socialist leader of Chile who was democratically elected as President until the USA decided to topple him by assisting a coup-de-tat led by General Pinochet. This forced Ms Allende to emigrate , first to Venezuela then, ironically, to the USA. She was a journalist to begin with, and the discipline from the demands of a journalisitic career had been useful to enable her to produce almost one book a year for the past decade. Looking through pakdokter's library, pakdokter discovered that there are 5 of her books already there on the shelves waiting to be read!

Ridzwan Zafir is one Malay who rose to become one of Singapore's top beaureaucrat. This is his autobiography and pakdokter picked up this book because of an interest in finding out how a Malay could make it in meritocratic Singapore. Pakdokter finished the book with further conviction that if you are good and at the same time you work hard at it, you will be recognised, no matter where you are.

Of particular interest was pakRidzwan involvement with MENDAKI and MUIS, two organisations which looked after the interests and welfare of the Singapore Malays and Muslims. Through pakRidzwan's leadership, the Singapore Government channelled direct aid to the organisations by giving dollar for dollar contribution for every dollar that the bodies can raise with their own efforts! Both organisations have millions in their coffers and carry out many broad-based programmes for the benefit of their community.

The Staroba Medan Masters 2009 (1V)....

The overall champion of the Staroba Medan Masters 2009...pakAlewi Ariffin












pak Hyder, pakZul Rauf and pakMazlan Salleh..














pakMazlan, pakZul, pakRais, pakdokter and pakFakhrunnasri...















pakHyder receiving one of the prizes he won....














pakdokter receiving the 17th overall prize for the 3-day games...












pakMazlan proudly taking his prize after scoring 47 stableford points on the 2nd day at the Martabe Golf Club. This broke pakdokter's record of 46 points achieved 6 years ago in Surabaya. ( pakdokter will not mention here what handicap pakdokter played to then...)

The two birthday boys during this trip....pakYuzer turned 56 and pakHyder became a young 62...

The Staroba Medan Masters 2009 (111)...Graha Metropolitan Golf and Country Club....

After the second game at Martabe Sejahtera Golf

Club, about half the entourage went to the RAS Spa for a round of massage to their tired body. Pakdokter signed up for a 2-hour traditional Javanese massage and slept through the whole process from sheer fatigue after 2 days of golf.

The third and final round of the Medan Masters 2009 was played at the Graha Metropolitan Golf Course, which was a short half-an-hour ride from our hotel. The Graha is a walking course, so pakdokter and pakHyder had no worries about this as we had been regularly walking in our own home-course at the Royal Selangor Golf Club.

The Graha is a relatively short course but in almost every hole, there is water that came into play. The fairways are generally narrow and slope steeply into the side waterways or lakes which demanded straight drives and shots all the time. The presence of cross-winds made it more troublesome all the time.

Pakdokter played with pakHyder, pakRahman and pakRaja Ramlee. After only managing a stableford score of 30 on the second day, pakdokter's handicap was again generously adjusted to 27 from 25. Having had difficulty with the driver, pakdokter decided to tee-off with the wood 3 and this helped pakdokter return a fairly good score enabling pakdokter to collect 37 stable ford points altogether.

The other golfers had great difficulty taming the

course and this helped pakdokter to be among the top-scorers of the day.

And of course, pakdokter was happy to collect a few hundred thousand rupiahs from the others....

The SGC Medan Masters 2009 ( 11) ...The Martabe Sejahtera Golf Club...

The second day of the SGC Medan Masters 2009 was played at the Martabe Sejahtera Golf Club. It was an almost one hour drive out of Medan through the country-side. The course is located in a somewhat remote country highland district.

Pakdokter's flight of pakAli Ariffin, pakWan Husin and pakZul Rauf was made possible after our request to play together was granted by the organising committee. We had played together last year in Medan and early this year in Surabaya and several times in our monthly medal competitions at home. So the committee understood that the four of us had many scores to settle!

Our handicaps were adjusted accordingly based on our performances at the Royal Sumatra in the first game yesterday. Pakdokter, who played to a handicap of 23 and returned a stableford points of 29 was given a handicap of 25 for the second day. PakAli who scored 36 points at Royal Sumatra remained at handicap 22 while pakWan Husin and pakZul Rauf were given handicaps of 25 and 24 respectively.

The Martabe Golf Course is somewhat shorter than the Royal Sumatra but it is challenging by its very hilly terrain and narrow fairways. Furthermore if you were to hit wild and sent your ball into the rough or valleys, forget about looking for your ball unless you aspire to tame the cobras!

If you play badly, then enjoy the scenery and chat up the 'girls'.

Poor pakWan Husin....he was completely off form that day. At the first tee from the 10th hole which required a drive over a lake in a deep valley he sent his ball into the bushes. He sent his second shot from the drop zone also into the wall of the valley and gave up on the hole. It was not just his bad luck because pakWan Husin was also pakdokter's partner in our on-going battle against pakAli and PakZul.

PakAli too did not play too well. Pakdokter wondered what he was up to the night before....

Some of the pictures here are evidence of how difficult it was if one were to hit into the rough. Both pakWan Husin and pakAli were photographed here braving the cobras and inspecting the vegetable farms ( as they put it...)

At the end of the day, we all played about the same standard of golf except for pakZul Rauf who helped his partnership destroy pakdokter's effort at damage control due to pakWan Husin loss of form.....


No problem.....a return match will be fixed at the Jakarta Open 2009 in July.....

The Staroba Medan Masters 2009 (1)...The Royal Sumatra Golf and Country Club..

Pakdokter returned home from Tokyo on Monday April 20th and managed to play in the RSGC Tun Hussein Onn Competition which was based on a bogey-play format. Although pakdokter did not win any of the top positions, pakdokter managed to make a small amount of money in the individual game against pakdokter's flight mate who played to a handicap of 14.

The Wednesday after that weekend pakdokter and 26 other golfers left for Indonesia to play in the SGC ( Staroba Golf Club) Medan Masters 2009. The SGC is the golf club of the alumni of pakdokter's high school .

The SGC had made a tour of Medan in August 2008 but being a rather rainy season then, we had to deal with heavy rain on the days of our games. This trip was originally decided upon by pakdokter and pakAli Ariffin as part of our planned monthly golf tour under the umbrella of the SIGC ( the Staroba International Golf Club) but as the number of participants exceeded the minimum of 12, this event was immediately sanctioned by the SGC as one of its official event for this calendar year. And we had 31 confirmed golfers until the last week when a flight of 4 golfers from Perak had to withdraw for some urgent matters.

The first day game was played at the Royal Sumatra Golf Club. When we were here last year the clubhouse was still under construction and we were promised that the clubhouse would be ready this year. As evidenced by the above picture, the clubhouse remained uncompleted and looked unlikely to be completed soon, what more with the current economic crisis which has affected Indonesia as badly as everywhere else.

.

About half of the entourage flew in on Airasia which arrived early morning and were shuttled immediately to the club. The remaining half which flew MH arrived about one hour later and had a later start of their game.

Despite the sad condition of the makeshift clubhouse, we were rewarded by a great golf course which was a pleasure to play. Playing from the blue tee, the course measured a total of 6018 metres.

As the course was relatively empty, pakdokter and the other 2 flightmates in the third group decided to start from the 2nd Nine, which was the more difficult Nine of the course. Pakdokter played with long-time rival pakAli Ariffin and a junior, pakFakhrunnasri, who was a first-timer to the SGC Overseas Tour

Due to the early morning flight and lack of sleep from staying up to watch the Barcelona-Chelsea game in the UEFA Cup semi-finals, pakdokter could not concentrate on the game very well. As a result pakAli Ariffin, who decided that we play a match-play game for every hole with a 50,000 rupiah award for the outright winner of the hole started scalping both pakdokter and pakFakhrunnasri right from the start.

Poor pakFakhrunnasri.....although he is a stronger and better player than both of us, he must have been intimidated by the cool and collected senior gentlemen. Nothing worked for him that day and he ended up being the biggest loser. Pakdokter returned a score of 55 for the 2nd Nine but started out well in the 1st Nine with a birdie on the 1st hole. This was followed by several bogeys and 2 more pars which probably affected pakAli's confidence. In the end pakdokter returned a score of 48 for the 1st Nine, good enough to win the 3rd best ball-sweep award for that Nine.

And the caddies, at least pakdokter can say so for his caddy, were good with their reading of the putting lines.

We had lunch at the clubhouse and their 'sup buntut' was a favourite amongst most of us. We checked into our hotel Emerald Garden in downtown Medan and went for a delicious "nasi padang' dinner at a nearby restaurant. Pakdokter took an early night to be better prepared for the second game.