Rite. Write. Right.

Kadangkala, dalam keadaan kecewa setelah tidak mendapat apa yang kita impikan atau ingini, kita mudah sangat untuk marah kepada Allah. Kita akan berkata: "Kenapa Allah tak mahu tolong aku? AKu dah berusaha sehabis baik tapi Allah tak mahu tolong jugak! Kenapa Allah tak adil??"

Ataupun, ketika kita berada dalam kesesatan, membuat dosa-dosa (sedangkan kita sendiri tahu apa yang kita buat itu berdosa), kita harapkan agar Allah akan bantu kita supaya kita kembali ke jalan yang benar. Kita mahukan pertolongan Allah tapi kita sendiri terasa terlalu keji untuk berada dekat kepadaNya.

Apa yang patut kita semua sedari ialah, Allah itu adalah Tuhan sekalian alam. Kita pula, hanyalah hamba-hambaNya. Hamba. Orang suruhan. Maka, apa saja yang kita lakukan, perlulah mendapat restu dariNya. Contohnya, seperti hubungan kita dengan bos-bos kita di tempat kerja. Apa saja yang kita lakukan perlu mendapat kelulusan daripadanya. Jika tidak, beliau berhak mengambil tindakan disiplin terhadap kita. Samalah dengan hubungan kita dengan Allah. Cuma, bezanya, bos kita hanya berkuasa ke atas kita di tempat kerja tetapi Allah berkuasa ke atas kita sepanjang masa, selama-lamanya.

Maka, bukanlah ‘tugas’ Allah sebagai Tuhan sekalian alam untuk menuruti segala kehendak dan keinginan manusia. Allah juga tidak perlu menolong hamba-hambaNya yang telah sesat. Malah, Dia berhak memilih siapa yang mahu Dia bantu atau tidak.

Kadang-kadang, Allah beri apa yang kita minta kerana kita telah berusaha sebaik mungkin. Ataupun, Allah berikan kemudahan kepada kita bukan kerana kita berhak mendapat kemudahan itu tetapi kerana Allah hendak menguji kita dengan kesenangan dan kemudahan. Allah juga berhak untuk tidak memberi apa yang kita mahu samada untuk menguji kita ataupun untuk menghukum kita.

Maka walaupun kecewa setelah Allah telah takdirkan bahawa saya sendiri tidak boleh pergi menuntut ilmu di luar negara untuk mendapat ijazah sarjana, saya sedar itu adalah ketentuan Allah. Kerana Allah itu Maha Mengetahui. Mungkin Dia menyekat rezeki saya sekarang untuk memberi peluang yang lain kepada saya.

Oleh itu, bersangka baiklah kepada Allah sentiasa… kerana hanya Dialah yang tahu semua yang akan terjadi kepada hamba-hambaNya.

"Ku pohon kepadaMu, Ya Allah, berikanlah segala yang terbaik buatku. Berikanlah peluang belajar yang terbaik, jodoh (suami) yang terbaik, anak-anak dan keturunan yang terbaik, pekerjaan yang terbaik, kehidupan yang terbaik untukku. Aku yakin dengan KuasaMu Ya Allah."

                                I AM A TORTURED SOUL.

The thing is, I couldn’t care less when I found out about it. If that’s what all of you think, then fine. I can’t change your minds. Just because I didn’t spend my time ‘bodeking’ you and I went against your ideas, that doesn’t mean that I was doing something wrong. I did what I had to do and I stood for what I believed was right. Or was I not allowed to point out that you were wrong? If so, then don’t call yourselves intellectuals that you claim to be. Plus, I never did any of you wrong personally and intellectually.

So basically, you can all say whatever you want to say but make sure, next time, pandang-pandang and jeling-jeling dulu when you talk bad about someone. He or she could just be around the corner to listen to every word you say.

I won’t hold grudges against you. You were, after all, the ones I (used to) look up to. Those I (used to) respect. But I tell you this, one day, you are going to beg me to be a part of you. I am going to be so much better than you are and much more than you will ever be. That’s how I’m going to get my revenge. And you damn well know that I can do it.

And to YOU, stop bragging, stop showing off! Can’t YOU see that your friends are so turned off by this attitude? It’s not like you are the smartest person alive! SELF-OBSESSION IS NOT HEALTHY!

A simple visit to one of my former lecturers in IIUM turned out to be an insightful discussion on the failure of the education system in Malaysia.

His honest and most shocking opinion is that he thinks that between 60% to 70% of the students studying in IIUM do not deserve to get a university education. Don’t get him wrong, it’s not because these students are unintelligent per se (well, they are after all smart enough to be admitted into a public university) but because these students do not bother to put an effort to do well in their studies.

He told me of his experience in teaching there. He always makes sure that he passes the students every semester, not because he thinks the students deserve to pass (on the contrary, he thinks a lot of them do not deserve to pass) but the university will question his decision to fail his students and will force him to pass them. Apparently, the university thinks that passing students is a must, no matter how bad a student is in a particular subject. What is worse, even students who do not bother to study will also pass. That is why it is so easy to get a degree in Malaysia which makes me think, perhaps the reason why many foreign students are entering Malaysian public universities is simply because it is so much easier to get a degree in Malaysia rather than to study in Singapore or in countries in the West. That does make sense, doesn’t it?

In his opinion (which I strongly agree), he believes that while education is for all, higher education should be made exclusively for those who deserve it and for those willing to work for it. Some people are just not born for higher education because their abilities are more technical. They will not do well in educational environment but will perform in their working lives which does not require constant attachments with books and research. Thus, it’s better to have institutions of higher educations which focuses on technical rather than intellectual abilities.

In my point of view as a quite-fresh graduate, I have to say I agree with my brilliant professor. This is because in almost 5 years in IIUM, I have met some of the most lazy people I know. I thought I’m lazy but once I met these people, I believe my mother should be thankful that I actually made the effort to study no matter how small the effort may seem to her. Haha. Anyway, these students (mostly boys, naturally), are in for a free ride. They are here in IIUM not to study but mainly to have fun. They skip classes because they’re just plain lazy to wake up slightly early and also because they sleep really late at night watching movies and playing games on the pc. They pass up their assignments really, really late, they never read, never pay attention in class and never bother to actually score good grades. But nevertheless, they still manage to go through every semester even though their results are below average. Sometimes, it pisses me off that in a few years’ time, these undeserved individuals will obtain degrees. But of course their results won’t be something to look up to and they will definitely have problems getting a good job. I know from experience that successful and established companies, especially multi-national companies will only select those with at least a CGPA of 3.0 to attend interviews. Which will then lead to the problem of unemployed graduates.

So who is to blame here actually? The students who are just too lazy to study or the administration who pampers them so much that they force the lecturers to pass all students and to spoon-feed them?

My opinion: the administration is largely to blame. If only we had emulate the education system in the UK, US or even Singapore, we would have more quality graduates. If they push the students to work harder, then they would have no choice but to study much harder. If only they forgo the ‘dasar kasihan’ attitude, the graduates would be better prepared for the working world.

It is no wonder that every year, we are all dropping out from the list of the world top universities.

Honestly, I don’t think I want to be my own lecturer.

Haha.

So… while other people are partying hard like dogs out there to welcome the new year, I spent my New Year’s Eve alone in front of the tv watching a documentary on E! Channel about filthy rich celebrities. (Did you know that Steven Spielberg makes $60 million per year without exactly doing anything??? He makes that much money from the royalties of his old movies. And he gets more from his newer films! Damn him and all those rich Hollywood people! =p)

So how was 2007 anyway? Quoting Chris Gardner in the movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’: This part of my life is called ‘Growing Up’.

Truly, 2007 was the year that I had to grow up. I left school in May. I officially graduated with a CGPA lower than what I hoped for when I first enrolled in IIUM. It was quite disappointing (and it still is!) but I learned to deal with it. I got something else to make up for that 0.07 lost pointer but I kept thinking it would have been far greater and more satisfying if I managed to grasp that tiny, minute point. Oh well… that was not to be, it seems. Anyway, leaving school was a reality check for me. Suddenly I had to actually figure out what to do with my life. Oh sure, I had plans, big plans indeed but graduating actually meant that I had to execute those plans. All by myself. No more ‘group work’, ‘team mates’, ‘good friends’ - for the first time in my life, I was all alone trying hard to kick-start the rest of my life.

I spent the next 4 or 5 months jobless and in despair over my failure to get a job. Or at least, my failure to get a job that I wanted! I had everything worked out when I was a student and when reality came knocking, all my plans flew out the window. It was very frustrating and disappointing. Especially when one by one, my close friends started working, leaving me lost and not knowing what to do. But Alhamdulillah, Allah heard my prayers and helped me achieve my goal to join the academic world. But being in an environment where the people are all intellectuals and experts and all with higher degrees scared the hell out of me. It seems that every word I say is nothing as compared to the words of my esteemed colleagues. While I still talk about trivial things, they talk about how to resist colonialist perspectives presented in the works of literature. While I read popular novels by Mitch Albom, Khaled Hosseini and John Grisham, they read articles, critiques and books by Edward Said, Fazlur Rahman and Noam Chomsky. While I graduated only 7 months ago, they are training future literary critics, writers, thinkers, teachers, intellectuals. Tell me then, where do I stand?

Not to forget that I also started re-learning Arabic after swearing to never bother to learn the language ever again once I left IIUM. And guess what? I am actually enjoying it! It’s very satisfying to learn more vocabularies and learn how to apply those grammatical rules they taught me in IIUM which I never really understood until now. I am still far from achieving fluency but I hope, one day, I’ll be able to read the works of Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish and other great Arab writers in their original language. And of course, to be able to read the Quran and understand even just a little of it would be amazing. InsyaAllah.

See what I meant? 2007: Growing up.

But nothing beats the event of the arrival of my niece Amni Nadira Amin two days before my birthday (sadly!) in the year 2007. She is now a healthy (really tembam!) three-month old baby who doesn’t like to smile and likes to be carried around like a big girl. She will start fidgeting the moment her Ayah or Mama or anyone else puts her in a lying-down position.  And she’s adorable and precious!

Apart from these, I think 2007 was just like 2006 except that I got older. But I hope 2008 will be more eventful. I hope to meet new people, go to new places, read more intellectual books, articles and journals, argue less with my mother, tolerate Anas more (considering that now, he’s the only little brother I have at home - HAHA!), spend more time with Iman and Amni, try to keep the mess in my room at a minimum level, learn to cook more dishes, read Quran more, perform sunat prayers more, bla bla bla. All the usual stuff about self-improvement. I don’t really have specific New Year’s resolutions but my biggest hope for 2008 is for me to finally begin my Master’s degree. Where? I hope to go far, far away (where no one knows my name) but things do look bleak right now what with the possible economic downturn, a predicted rise of inflation, competitions from doctorate candidates from other faculties, the current standing of Malaysian Ringgit as compared to Pound Sterling and how a lot of (ignorant!) people seem to think that the study of language and literature is trivial and unimportant. The odds are actually very much stacked against me but I really, really, really, really am hoping and praying for my dreams to finally come true as I don’t think I can wait any longer… huhu. *BIG sigh!*

Let’s pray that 2008 brings the best for all of us. InsyaAllah.

   HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS! HAVE A GREAT YEAR AHEAD!