Slap

Salam.

If there is one thing that God want to tell me when I have to go for a meeting on the following day, via flight at 6.30 am, so I have to wake up at 4am to get moving to airport at 5 am, were informed at 5pm the day before or 13 hours prior, to have a meeting just in the morning and to overnight there because there is no return flight available for 2 consecutive days, and to go back to town via land transfer that is supposed to take about 6 hours but ended up to 10 hours - is to show me the reality of others.

Their reality involved modest (please imagine modest - modest) house with 7 family members staying in it, with the lawn at most of the neighboring houses a bit flooded from bad drainage system, bad traffic just in front of house because the road's width is only able to cater for one car at a time, the road shoulder are foreign here, and everything so manual, like when we were stucked to move forward because like I mentioned before, most of the road are able to have only one car at a time, the standby driver need to go out to control the other cars, either for stopping the car from other direction from moving forward or to seek understanding from the car behind us to reverse so that we can reverse too, and make way for the car (or cars) on the other direction so that they can move forward, and finally, we can move forward too. That is the kind of austerity that they face on daily basis here.

Having to face this kind of  hassle everyday, their work commitment was never affected by this. They even perform and commit better.

Their reality was so different, the not complaining part that amazed me most. I was instantly reminded on how ungrateful a person I am, that keep complaining on petty things like why can't I travel 3 times a year, why can't I buy this and that, why can't I have this thing that I really wanted, the many whys. Oh God, I felt bad knowing this because by now I know how ungrateful I am as a person, but without this kind of experience, I would always think I am the one that always not granted enough. This is like direct reminder from God that, 'Anis, see what others are facing everyday and yet they persevere, how about you?'.

Like Malay wisdom : 'Baru tahu langit tinggi ke rendah'.

Run

Salam.

My 6th book for this year is about Running by Murakami and it was suggested by my dear friend. Boy, I really could relate with both, Murakami and his running preference.

Running was something that I enjoyed doing alone, I don't understand why people don't enjoy it as much as I do but I think people who don't run, on top of despise running are also puzzled with obsession of  those who enjoyed running.

Of course my running not as cool and as frequent as full marathoner but that doesn't deny the fact that I always enjoy running. The satisfaction of running, while doing it is best explained by Murakami in his book. When I read that book, I thought, 'yes, I felt that', something like why am I doing this, while prepping my stuff to run but when my body already in running form, all the confusions are gone, almost euphoric.

Book : What I Talk About When I Talk About Running