Happy New Year Everybody!

2006 has been a tumultuous year for the two of us and more so perhaps for the whole family. The good news is we now have another grandson. He is Izzat’s and Aida’s 3.43 kg Tunku ‘Uzair born at 4.46pm Wednesday the 6th December at Sunway Hospital, Subang Jaya and circumcised on Friday 8th December 2006 and had his "kekah" ( Islam makes it compulsory to slaughter two male goats for the male born and one for the female born ) done within the week too with the slaughter of a goat, leaving another one to be done when all our children are home, hopefully in May 2007. The gyne who delivers him at the Sunway Hospital is our very own Dr Aini Kassim, who has attended to Yasmin and other family members and friends.

It feels great to have an additional member to our growing family. In the olden days, having just two children is considered inadequate and shows a sign of non-fertlility in the couples concerned. My grandparents on my mother’s side have fourteen children between the two wives of my grandfather, whilst my father came from a family of five. I myself have five sisters and two brothers, one of whom passed away when he was a mere three years old . That happened during the Japanese occupation of our country in 1944. Talking about number of children, a cousin of mine the late Tunku Razak has seventeen children. Of course he has only one wife ! Ainul however came from a family of four with a sister and two brothers, one of whom just passed away on 19th December 2006 leaving behind two wives, six children and seven grandchildren.. Of our children, it looks like Izzat and Aida now equals Ghazali and Aini, with three boys each. The lack of girls is evident though with only Maisarah, Marsya and Aisya to show off, whilst the remaining eleven are boys. I suppose with the prevalent economic conditions of the modern society of today, it seems financially prudent not to have too many children. Today’s cost of living places great handicaps and hardships to the parents to feed, cloth and provide good education to their children. Even in those days, with eight children, my parents must have faced great financial difficulties bringing us up. Now that we are grandparents and previously parents to our children, we know what it is not having enough money to enjoy ourselves. Working on stringent budget in those days, we somehow managed quite well to be able to take our children to overseas trips such as to the States, Europe , Russia, The Philippines and even to the Holy Land of Mecca and Medina. God is Great ! What else did we go through in 2006 ?

We have had John and Farah at home for the first time in years, with John’s frustrated attempts to try to find a decent job unsuccessfully which finally forced them to leave our shores again towards the end of 2005 to Chicago but not without first being blessed with Aisya Iman. Farahat and Mazuin settled themselves to very stable careers of their own, whilst Farazil has a very short stint at Labuan and got a place in Kota Kinabalu, much to the relief of Yasmin to now enjoy a decent town life again. Izzat of course seems to be doing quite well with his tourism career which occasionally provides nice outings for Aida and the children. Fairuz and Ranthy show stability in their daily life whilst a lot of things seem to be happening to Ghazali and Aini’s family though. Whilst theirs were full of skin diving activities which take them to as far away places as the famous Sipadan Island of Sabah. Ghazali decides to be on his own when he resigns his job with Petronas. Faiq their eldest son will be the family’s first to get a place at Tuanku Jaafar College in Mantin, Negeri Sembilan. Recently too he had his "khatam Quran" which is another life time achievement for him. The religious ceremony accompanying the completion of the reading of the whole Quran by any Muslim is a historical and cultural ritual in a Muslim society all over the world, with the difference being the way it is conducted. In our country it involves the presence of the reader’s teacher who will foresee the final reading of selected verses of the Quran to be read in front of closed family audience, which was what took place for Faiq recently. Less we forget to mention, at 4.30pm the 15th of the month , Shahril and Fenti was blessed by the birth of third child Ray Adam Izwan. Congratulations to you both !

Of course the memory of my mother’s demise still lingers in my mind. Going back to Seremban where my mother used to live with my younger sister Jauza or Mas for a short visit seems less wanting these days. I feel a great guilt however, that I have not frequent my mom’s home although in Seremban I still have my elder brother and my sisters families there to contend with. Recently during the short noticed open house we had for the Hari Raya Puasa, I felt touched with the presence of my two younger sisters family for the occasion. I cannot forget the efforts they have made to come over to our house then. Something else is even more indelible to me when my younger sister Sarra or Sha for short made a surprised visit merely to fulfill my desire for a banana pudding for which there had ensued argument between Ainul and I over its preparation. It all boils down to misinterpretation of common word usage for two different things for Kedah and Negeri Sembilan. The word "pengat" means something that has gravy to the Negri people but the same thing is called "serawa" to the Kedah people. Hence whenever I call for "pengat" I always get their "pengat" which has no gravy ! Hence the endless conflicts. It takes Sha’s visit to partly clears the air for the two of us - something that used to happen in our early days of marriage when we were then in Kuala Trengganu. In those days it was my late granduncle Nek Haji Abdullah, who was my grandma’s younger brother, who intervened in our arguments on these differentials on food names ! To come to think of it, what’s in food names after all. As long as the foods are tasty, that is all that matters. We always make waves for things that are not really important but then we are human after all.

2006 also witnessed the demise of Haji Abdul Fatah on Tuesday 19th December, the third of four in Ainul’s family. He had a heart failure, leaving behind his two wives , six children and seven grandchildren. The late Fatah had a a very colourful life, humorous and adventurous too. He is very well remembered by his college friends as the first rugby captain for the College and was responsible for making the game famous for the college by beating the established rugby teams of King Edward V11 School of Taiping, Anderson and St Michael’s

Schools of Ipoh in the annual Perak Schools Rugby competition. During his captain ship, the college team toured the whole country to play against schools that played rugby, and winning 90% of the matches that they played ! It was this phenomena that made the MCKK rugby team the team to beat by all the schools in the country from then onwards till today !. He had tried his hands at the planting industry of rubber and oil palms, and in tin minings too. He had his hands at animal husbandry and being the pioneer at deer rearing, not to mention goats and even toads ! He had tried to be farmer of sorts and at engineering projects such as the excavation and exporting of sands from the sea to Singapore, and the divination and creation of new river outlets for Putrajaya. He was also into the tourist industry in his early days and even chartered the whole plane to fly home by himself from Sarawak in order to meet the date line for a project back home in KL then ! Overall, he had tried to be a successful entrepreneur albeit not quite successful because of his lack of patience to follow through and oversee the completion of the projects. However, Fatah left an indelible marks to all his college mates and business associates which stretch to as far as Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. We feel sad indeed to have lost him and we can only say our prayers to Allah that He will Bless his soul.

2006 also makes history for the Sabri family in that Sabri was admitted for possible heart by pass as a result of two major artery blockages. It was interesting to see how a doctor faces the thought of going for a heart operation. Sabri cut a very amusing figure for this when we saw how nervous he was on that day of his scheduled operation at the Glen Eagles Hospital. Tried as he might to conceal his nervousness at his ward bed, we could see through his hidden fear. True enough when he completed his angiogram and back to the ward we were surprised by a hearty greetings from him. Never have we seen Sabri so chirpy throughout the time we were there. When his consultant Surgeon Datuk Nik Zainal and wife came to visit him he told us why Sabri was cheerful. It was the resulting effect of valium which was given to him earlier on prior to the operation ! On the advice of the surgeon the family had to meet and decide if a by pass was eminent.

2006 did not see us making many overseas trips. If at all, we did go to Orlando and Chicago taking along Maisarah with us and as mentioned in my earlier articles we had John, Farah and Aisya with us in Orlando and later on to their place in Chicago where their house is situated at the very shore of Lake Michigan. Recently however we made a trip to Kota Kinabalu, paying our maiden visit to be with Farazil and family. They have a very nice apartment overlooking the coastline and islands of the sea. The scenery gives us both a feeling of complete relaxation but for the enegetic demands for attention by Aiki and Hibiki, who are both growing up pretty fast. Yasmin has caught the bug for bread making and she really makes very nice bread for our breakfast and evening meals. We made a nature adventure trip to the southwestern part of Sabah which was a one and a half hours drive from Kota Kinabalu. There we experienced walking through the longest boardwalk in the wetland before we took a fiberglass guided boat tour of the famous flat nose monkeys and other monkey species and wild birds. Although we were told that crocodiles too could be found there, we did not sight any but a special night tour of the place would reveal the presence of these reptiles. Somehow, this trip was more interesting than the Florida’s Everglades that we did a couple of years ago when we were in the States. The State of Sabah has many more interesting places to visit and for the adventurous there is also the white river rafting which Farazil expressed his desire to experience doing some time later on during his stay in Sabah. This is the kind of adventure that both John and Farah enjoy too or for that matter the rest of the family too. It seems pretty obvious that we Malaysians have neglected exploring our own country’s outdoors entertainment avenues at possibly quarter the cost of those found overseas. What we all need is to slot our time for these adventures.

What is in store for all of us in 2007 ? Well , to begin with Farazil and family will be home for a short holiday in mid-January to be followed by John and family in late February. Our gin rummy gang will have its weekly sessions as usual whilst we will look forward to see how Maisarah will fare in her standard six exam and Faiq’s dream place of study at the Tuanku Jaafar's College. The rest of our grandchildren will be at their respective places of study. Overseas trips for us ? More likely it is not going to happen due to reasons of our own. As to Ainul and I going to the movies, this is a certainty because we just love that ! To all our readers, we wish you the very best for 2007 !