Happy father's day to me.

It was tradition in the family for boys to be treated misleadingly, spoiled, overshadowed by lovely figure called mom. I still remember when I was little, I used to tail my mother footsteps by grabbing the end of her skirt - anywhere, everywhere she went, talk by repeating her words like a parrot, and so to speak, I was well-brought-up accustomed to her style.

Years after years, the small boy has now, grown up into an adult man. According to a popular belief, this kind of man is called as a mummy's boy - lack the quality of real man, independent, or even worst, cannot maintain a healthy partnership with a woman. Despite of public's judgmental, I personally think that a mummy's boy, on contrary, has an advantage of treating his wife the way he treated his mother, with full of love and respect.

Before I got married to my wife, Dayah, I was deeply  ingrained with the stigma of being a mummy's boy. There were to much of what if I.....what if I....what if I.....  The biggest question that I have to endure was; how I am going to juggle my life as a husband and dad?

To cut this long story short, we had our first baby, Azkiya a year after the marriage. Being a young parent, I have no first hand experience on taking care of baby, and it was even worst when I have to take care my (another) babies (namely Mycobacterium tuberculosis) at the lab in the mean time. My wife is now, a medical officer, but Azkiya was born during her housementship (HO). The life during HO was really suck, but my wife was very patient/passion with her job. Most of the time, my wife will completely turn into zombie  mode as soon as she reached home after work.

I have to take care my baby on my own. I am missing the moment when Azkiya was came down with flu, and had difficulty to sleep. I firmly cuddled her on my chest and tried to put her into sleep by humming songs that I have forgotten, until both of us fell asleep.

The life during that time was not easy, but I enjoyed every moment of it. The bitter, sweet, sour, salty are the tastes of life as a father.

Happy father's day to me.

Capybara and a girl.

Taken elsewhere from the net.
www.themarysue.com/capybara-rainbow-park/

I love this photo.

Petai

Hye folks.
This is a quick update, and I am going to update 'bout petai via mobile phone.

Kinda challenging, I tell you!

In any case, we arrived Ipoh (a little) late for family gathering, and it seems like the preparation for the event was well prepared.

I brought back a bouquet of petai, to be eaten with patin tempoyak (authentic Perak fish curry). Since this event was set to celebrate older members of Mat Isa's clan, I think the idea of petai is genius.

The big and ugly decision.

To be able to work in a place that produced 6 noble laureates is a golden opportunity. In fact, it will be good for my CV, especially in carving my career path among the scientific community. However, I have never felt right about it since the first time I decided to accept the conditional offer letter from Cambridge. It was a strange and indescribable feeling.

For that odd reason, I decided to forgo the offer. However, I need to write a very nice and apologetic letter to him, so as not to jeopardize the chances of Malaysian who intend to study there.

So I wrote one.

Dear Dr. XXXXXX,

How are you? I hope you're doing well.

I would like to inform you that, sadly, I will not be able to join your research team at Cambridge this year.

I was unable to obtain sponsorship from my school on the account that my scope of study is viewed as redundant, having been pursued by another colleague at the school.

It is suggested instead that I explore studies in industrial food microbiology, which has potential for further development in Malaysia.

I am truly disappointed to say the least, and I apologize to you for the turn of events. I would like also to apologise for the long silence as I was trying to work out for the sponsorship too.

I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to explore the possibility of me being a student at your lab, and I hope I may someday have the chance to collaborate with you.

Wishing you all the best in your future undertakings.

Warm regards,
Fauzan Ahmad

Almost in a week, I got his reply.

Dear Fauzan,
My apologies for the slow response - I have been busy preparing for a meeting next week in London, and time has been short.....
This is not great news, since the project is a nice one and I think you'd have fitted in well. 
If you are still interested in re-applying for next year, do please let me know. 
By the way, we do also work on one aspect of food microbiology.... the "other half" of the lab works on the potato pathogen, Pectobacterium atrosepticum, and we have projects availble there too.

Kind regards,
XXXXXX

He is very professional. Salute.

Start.

I used to have few other blogs, but I have lost count of them. I don't even know how to trace them back now! So today I decided to start a new one. 

I just feel the urge to write, for fear that my writing skills has tremendously declined. It reflected on my ILETS result where I was only able to score 7.0 out of 9.0 on my second trial. I took the test twice, where my first attempt was really bad. Sigh.

I just feel the urge to write, where I need a personal place to spill my beans. I used to assume that a blog is just like a tree with many branches, where I have to climb every branch to cling my story of my life. If the tree grows taller, I have to climb higher.

I just feel the urge to write, for a fear that one day in the near future, I may suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Actually, none of my family members were diagnosed with the disease, but who knows?!! I may someday lay on my rustic armchair, browse through the web, try to trace back this piece. 

I just feel the urge to write.