Dear Madame, I quit!

It was not an easy decision.  Having spent my entire professional life constipating endlessly among the zombies, I finally decided to make a life changing decree. I decided to write a love letter to my boss and quit the job.

Dear madame,

I am typing this memo to you because I can't write properly. My vision especially in Kebun Getah Sekangkang Kera is becoming blur and increasingly hard to focus.   My sight now is not good and with slight astigmatism I am seeing double. If you care about me you should have known of my poor condition earlier.  The least you could do is to give me special allowance for  Lasic treatment.  Now the smell around my office is also stink. But that is not comparable to your infertile antic that from time to time is getting worse. You seem to walk on the cloud and never look down. I know it is kind of lonely up there. But to make things worst, you are surrounded by clowns who don't know to make a single joke. This make the whole circus appalling, except for the schoolchildren.

As you can see, starting next year our lush Kebun Getah Sekangkang Kera will be converted into  another Kalahari desert full of concrete jungles. I am am expecting by December next year during the Monsoon, the whole Subang Bestari (my house is only a 5-minutes drive to the office) will be wiped out and buried under a mile thick of flash mud.  I am sure you wouldn't  know or even care about all this because you seldom come down from your comfortable laurel up in the sky kingdom. It surprises me of your ignorance as the rotting minds that linger in the field and in the canteen had reached the Seventh Heaven and all the celestial beings are complaining.  

I think my time here has come to its end. In short and after serious deliberation, I want to resign commencing last month and please let me go in peace.

Wishing you, the clowns and the zombies all the best.

Yours truly,

DrSam

p/s:  BTW the password to my PC is "jangan kau rayu" - everything in capital.

That is the actual resignation letter to my boss, after I carefully translated it from Bahasa. Seriously.  Upon learning on my Kamikaze decision, a friend said I should reconsider and write a short memo with a line something like this :

"...I want to withdraw my resignation, I heard a rumor  that  the company which is hiring me is going to hire you too..."

I am sure this is not gonna happen.

It has been 20 wonderful years and I enjoyed and cherished every single moment while constipating in my beloved Kebun Getah Sekangkang Kera. I am not sure about the clowns but many zombies will miss me. I am hitting the road for now and soaring high reaching for the sky.  I believe we are born to be free and free is the feeling right now.

Note : I am on leave until the end of October. Anybody who feel the itch for a leisurely teh tarik session and some tips to write a better resignation letter, you are  most welcome. Everything is on the house.

Now I can see my future

After a lifetime of having  a perfect vision and almost a supernatural power of x-ray capability scrutinizing the unseen and beyond the obscure, I was informed recently by a very young and petite optometrist  that my eyes need some serious overhauling.  What I mean to say is that, I need to replace my old single focal lens with a multifocal which allows me to read, watching ASTRO and monitoring my kids doing their homework at the same time. A multifocal lens enables me to do multiple jobs which is brilliant and cool. I can recommend this to my colleagues especially in the Public service  to have one. In fact I should recommend it to my maid as well.

The problem started when I realized that I need to put my book a mile away in order to make out what the introductory part was all about.  That explains why I just could not finish every single book that I bought from Kinokuniya, Borders, MPH and Amazon.com in the past ten years. The only book that I've so far managed to finish in a single sitting is on "How to Manage your Menopause Boss". That was while waiting for my connecting flight to Rio de Janeiro after a 5 hours delay.  

This is clearly a syndrome. Our friends in the optical department single handedly coined this  syndrome  as presbyopia.  A simple example of this awkward condition is when you start to have a feeling that your arms aren't long enough to hold a newspapers or a love letter from your sweetheart at a position where you can read it clearly. Simply putting it - I am getting old and almost every part in my body is deteriorating.

Having a multifocal lens is supposed to be fun, but it is not. It makes you look like a handicap person.  Apparently, having a defect eyesight with a pair of specialized glasses don't put me in the same league as a mutant or X-men.  At first I felt like walking on the cloud drifting and floating along with the wind. After a while, I can moonwalking like the late Michael Jackson, the skill I've never known I had before.  Using and trying to comprehend this artificial eyes accessory though doesn't require one to be a genius or having an elephant brain. It needs a special skill which is patience. Initially I have to train my eyes to perfectly align with the designated regions in order to focus. They did and they behaved very well.

"up" and the eyes go up when I want to focus on the TV screen. 

"down" and the eyes struggling to focus all the objects down and beneath my belly. But something is not right as I am having difficulty to focus around this region as somehow my expanded waistline seems to obscure the most beautiful sight every man should have.

This starts to sound a bit weird, but actually given that all middle-aged people are bound to start going wrong in every department, a defect eyesight is not that bad either. First and foremost, I am constantly reminding myself that something is being taken away from me in the most fashionable way - by the Maker. Secondly, it knocks the socks off having some dreaded terminal illnesses such as the 'Malay PHD' which translates as a person who cannot see others better than thou or the 'mata keranjang' syndrome. Both  diseases   so far have no known cure.

Finally I am quite contented. With this newly acquired skills of multitasking, successfully training my eyes to see the unthinkable and having a double vision, now I can see my future bright and clear.

Don't trust your GPS, a buffalo is a better bet

When the brainy guys out there invented something new or come out with  brilliant technological gizmo, they do it with good intention or at least for the betterment of all humankind including the aliens and  the whole inhabitants that roam the galaxy. But of course along the way they would have expected their bank account will be filled to the brink from the promised royalties of which in many cases seldom materialized, at least in the Bolehland. There are of course many who had made millions or billions of moolah from their invention or innovative mind but the number of success stories in our own backyard  is still a far cry from that of the Far land or even our neighbors that are becoming more prominent these days - the Africans with their innovative black money scam.  

Not so long ago, my hand felt a bit itchy to give a try using a very important travel companion called GPS, an acronym for a Gadget that occasionally Piss the S*#@ out of me. This gizmo similar to any other technologies out there is supposed to make our good-self smile behind the wheel and maintain my jolly good mood throughout the journey.  This GPS however, on many occasions had caused me moonlighting to the Atlantis and on one instance had almost caused the whole family the  worst gastronomic catastrophe  ever. This gadget is either point you to the right direction or send you head on with the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

It was our first ever trip to KB, or for the uninitiated this place is simply known as  Kota Bharu via the East-West Highway (Grik-Jeli). It was also a perfect opportunity to test my newly acquired gadget I just bought from an underground dealer at Low Yat Plaza, Kay El. After we picked up my eldest son from his College and a sumptuous lunch of ikan sungai at K. Kangsar, we continued our journey Eastward through the scenic kampungs, beautiful lakes and across the Crocker  Range. I was told the trip should take approximately 3 hours from Grik to KB and not more. To cut the long story short, we took 5 hours to reach the hotel in KB through flood laden kampungs, small winding canals, inching through smugglers trail near Sg. Golok  and almost reroute into our neighboring country, Siam via Rantau Panjang. All because I trusted my GPS. 

Wife :  Why  did you blindly follow the GPS darling? I thought your sense of direction is spot on. 

Me :   The night was dark and my tummy was grumbling. I could not see properly as my head was full with nasi  kerabu and budu.

Perhaps this guys who invented GPS should take some lessons  from the sperm. The successful one who has such precision to reach the target (egg) and later grow to become the inventor himself. Perhaps next time I travel, I should hook my head with an antennae that has a direct link with the North Korean Spy Satellite to direct me to the nearest public toilet at Kedai Payang. 

Migratory birds, the white egret have a very good sense of direction. Each year they migrate to the same spot right in the sawah padi of my blissful Kampung.   They have been coming to visit that particular area.   My younger brother told me that  the kampung folks, who I supposedly have  never heard of H1N1, adding this beautiful bird into their exotic menu regularly. The unlucky birds left their tags and serial ring numbers as the grim souvenir.

The post traumatic Raya reminder. This iconic photograph becomes a testimony to the lack acquaintance (ignorance) of the available technologies in photography - a wireless remote shutter release. I inadvertently set the camera to a 2 second timer and the camera managed to capture my own unique zapin style -  and  my backside with all its glory. Classic!