Time to move on...

Dear Friends, Bloggers, The world,

Its getting harder and harder to update now. I know its lame to say, I'm busy, a lot of stuff lah to do and what not..but, thats it I guess. Some can just feel content in knowing that they have updated their blog with something. Nope. Not me. An update should be monumental. Thats just me I guess.

Ok, updates..I'm going through this dilemma. Ok, at this point people who know me will say, why talk about work Amad..again! Well hang on, hold your horses, whats wrong with being passionate with what you do? Ok, so I was offerred to take control of engineering. I was from engineering for 6 years ago, then was sent to production and now they want me to replace the current manager. Problem is..he is a friend.

Me and Francis. Good title for a movie ya. Francis and me go way back. He was my mentor and my boss when I started. Here's the thing, there is still sentiment in the plant that Malays know less and technically unsound on the technology/engineering stuff compared to the Chinese. Sad to say, its kinda true. But I decided to prove the masses wrong. I took every single abused lashed at me as an encouragement to do better. Those who know me then knew that my life was all work. This resilience started to take notice and Francis started to open to me by saying," ..one of these days I'll probably drop dead due to something.., its about time I teach someone what I know." Thats exactly what he did.

Francis was the first son of a char kuey teou peddler. He was taken in as an apprentice in 1977 and ascended to his current post as Plant Engineering Manager. He was involved in 90% of the commissioning of machines and technology training in this plant. He has also single handedly save the company 2.3 million with his developement of our own mixer controls and assisted Sumitomo industries in Japan for the developement of the now much acclaim RJS 7 PCR making machine, a best selling making machine from this manufacturer. You bet ya when he wanted to hand down his knowledge it was an honour. And I incurred the silent wrath and jealousy amongst colleagues as he never, I repeat never revealed his knowledge to anyone till I came.

The trainning was tough. Just like the kung fu movies, you need to crawl to get the knowledge. Biasalah chinamen style. After all the abuse, and even making me cry twice..I never gave up and sought to acquire as much knowledge as I could from Francis. Times past, I was known by my colleagues as Yang Mar - Dragonblood Malay. A name that harboured 2 meanings; one that i was not a typical malay and two that I was also like a vampire who sucked knowledge from the sifus. I was fine with it becouse the efforts were starting to show.

To put it simple, I wouldn't be where I am now if it wasn't for Francis. And the best thing was, we became really good friends. We hang out a lot after work. Talking about life, the hard times, Malay-chinese relationship, family values and all. I started to build a friendship that I thought could never be built. Then we seperated. Francis was assigned to take up half a project and I was promoted to take up the other half. So, from subordinate, now colleagues. The friendship never ended.

In particular, there was a time I was having a problem during commissioning. It lasted for nearly 40 hrs straight. It was then the chinese new year holiday. By chance he heard the problem from my technician who spoke to him by phone asking for advice. Francis called said if I needed help. I said no I'll handle things. That time we spoke was at 2.30am. However. Francis, without any professional obligation to be there, came at 3am. We went through the problem togather and had the machine up by 10am the next morning. I asked him why he came to help and he replied," I knew you must be in trouble and I came to help". It was his holiday. He had a family who needed him to drive them down to Penang the next morning. He just said, " Nah get my wife to drive maaaahh. At least now you can sleep kan?"

So, later I became a business unit manager and he took helm as Plant Engineering Manager. Thats when the problem came. Technical people are good at what they do but somehow, in the eyes of top management his management skills were perceived as insufficient. I do not know what people saw in my form of management but by the grace of Ar-Rahman I was blessed with results. So management put two-and-two togather and figured to try an engineering-based production business unit manager will be a good angle to try and shape the engineering since he has married the 2 core manufacturing functional teams into one.

But that wasn't the final reason. Unbeknowest to me, in Francis's personal file he cited my name as his immediate successor. And in his last employee dialog he mentioned again when ask of his succession, he said," I do not know of your plans for Amad..but I hope that you consider him as my replacement should something ever happens to me". Tis he answered the HR Director.

And the person to break the news to me was Francis himself. It was hard to take it in as I feared that maybe he was being lett-off. I rushed to meet the HR Director to get a final confirmation and he told me that I need to decide how to use Francis, and that if he stays.. he reports to me.

Francis..my friend. You have always been there for me and always had my back. And now I look blank on my org chart trying to make his function work..still staring.....but I think I found an angle.

So, as said, thus that is my monumental event so far. I will, I think, will not have time to update about my blog anymore. I'll still keep it on, just to flip through to read my ol post for nostalgia. Maybe update if the time permits and something does come up worth blogging about..maybe just to announce if i'm getting married hahaha. But the new job is tough.

I wanted to write about something else actually but thought why should we write about stuff emotionally and regret the consequences. What is said can never be taken back. And scars will heal but deep ones leave a mark. I guess the reason I thought, of all my other monumental updates, like falling in love-being dumped again, new found freindships with uni friends and the status of my social activities like salsa, the one most important was the realisation of a friendship lifecycle.

And like Francis..we do meet other people. Other important people that come into our lives. To stay on and keep a single friendship alive is a behemoth task, and many painfull roads down the way. And sometimes the ones that were once close to you..moved on. You know this when they cant have a decent conversation with you but keep asking about, 'ade girlfren ke tak?' After that..awkward silence..Sometimes the other half that pines for the friendship should realise the futile hope when the another moves on. And like Francis, and like Feizal and like Rambo and like..all the other important ones, old or new in our lives, a friend is one that above all puts others needs before their own. And the world still holds a portion of these people in population. I guess at this point we just say goodbye to the the old and cherish the ones that are relevent to us.

In conclusion, thank you my fellow bloggers for your supports, and honest comments. Thank you for even just reading the first 3 lines couse I know i can be overdramatic when writing. Thank you for being patient for the ones that actually took time to read through till the end, only realising that I lost the plot half-way at paragraph 3. And thank you for those whom have included me in their blogs to follow, I appologise if I had directly or indirectly hurt anyone along this course of blogging from my views or opinions or comments. To all, I wish you all the best. Goodbye...... Thank you.

Thank you...

Soundtracks....

I was checking out some blogs the other day and came across this young blogger, Hanis, who wrote about the song of her life. After reading through, it made me reflect towards the songs in my life. She ask her fellow bloggers to tell her what particular song were important to them. Thats when I realise that for myself, it was'nt just a song... but songs. And with that here are some collection of songs that for their reasons have left an impact in my 29 years of existance:

THE EARLY YEARS
Nursery rhymes. My favorite..Incy wincy spider. Reason being my late mother would like to geletek me with her fingers whislt singing this. It was so much fun..and back then mengeletek budak kecik as they call it was an incessant habit amongst the elders. Like lahh the elders had other better things to do. However, the point that I had this cute small dimple when I smiled did not help my relentless efforts to plead the elders to stop mengeletek either. Ahh aa but then..thats the best part of having a younger sibling..thou shall be mangsa seterusnye. Kesian Suraya...in my defence; Its Tradition!

FIRST MUSIC INFLUENCE
Back in primary I started to actually take interest in music at the age of 11 years. Back then Muzik Muzik was hip and trust me, before Astro created a storm with Akademi Fantasia, even before American/Malaysian Idol was dominating the media viewers..Juara Lagu was the Bomb. Who could not forget the clash of 1990 when Search's Isabella went head-to-head with Wings's Taman Rasyidah Utama. It was a close fight, with each band trying to outdo each other vocally, musically, style and ball-squeezing-butt-clenching leather pants and hair-curlers. It was amusing to see the more uncomfartable the pants looked, the more stable and higher the pitching of their voices. Alas it was Search's Issabella that triumphed and for the next couple of years nothing but.."Dia...Isabella, Lambang cinta yang nyata".

How influential was this song? Let me just say, sampai nenek-nenek dan makcik-makcik from 60 years till 80 years were even humming the song. Not to mention it was even a proud moment for parents at that time to showcase how their new child, at a timid age of probably 2/3 years, would sing the chorus to that song. It was a song so recognisable, so instantaneously acknowledge and had the longest airplay in M'sian history (then!). And for me..it was the first song I was able to play on the 1st string of a guitar.

YEAR OF THE RAPI do not know what possesed me at that point. But I gues thanks to radio shows like American Top 40 (on radio 4 then) it was the age of rap. Two very important things happened in the 90's , rap and Will Smith. The opening to fresh prince of bel air theme was more or less the catalyst to the generation at that time. The tv show was a much watched and popular show shown on TV3. It was considered un-hip to have not watch or missed a fresh prince episode. It was at this age that I had my first crush on a girl. And she liked rap music. Specifically vanilla ice. It was a competition amongst my classmates to see who could sing Ice Ice baby without making a mistake. And I remember that this period was also giving birth to the age of the baggy pants. God...what was I thinking!!!

IN MY OPINION ROCK SAVE ME

In my early teenage years, I started to take up guitar playing seriously. This led to me buying a lot of guitar magazines to grab hold of tablature transcripts to popular songs I wanted to learn. It was hard to find the songs you wanted to play on magazines. It usually depends on whats famous that time, and thats only when it would get published. It was one fatefull evening, I got a guitar mag for my birthday by my late mom. It did not have any songs I wanted, but, she knew I like reading them and bought it regardless. I never took any attention to the album review section but decided to perused and read through to see what was interesting at that time. What cought my eye was the review of the Soundgarden album, SuperUnkown. I miss-intepreted the concept of 'melancholy and beatleisque' to mean the band was a happy-happy melodic ensamble. Bought the album and to my shock, was blasted with the infusing angst and banshee wails of Chris Cornell. Here I was standing in front of my radio speakers being impaled by the wall of guitar distortion, welcoming grunge rock in its most finest.

It was hard to swollow at first, but after awhile it all kinda sinked in...and I was then totally converted. Maka bermulalah zaman rock grunge and alternative music saya. Though later on, my list of listening evolved to Pearl Jam, The Stooges, Velvet Undeground, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo Fighters..and and and, it cannot be denied my admiration for them them stemmed from that first scream and thumping riff of The SoundGardens.

As my skills in guitar playing progress, so did the hunger to be technically proficient. In simple terms, that means nak jadi a bad-ass guitar player. I had enough of power chords and riffing highly distorted guitar. Also going up and down on the guitar neck playing scales as fast as humanly possible is a skill but not a musical expression. I wanted challenges and wanted to explore guitar playing at its finest. That got me into jazz. Acid, funky jazz to be specific. And the song that did it all was Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai. A friend set up a challange for me to figure out the piano opening using the guitar. It took me close to a month to figure it out but once I did it was so cool to play. You see Jamiroquai did not showcase the guitar extensively. No. But it was the successfull attempt to transcribe the song in guitar and improvise accordingly opened up my eyes to music interpretation, styling and soul. I guess it was the song that told me anything is possible with the guitar. And I never looked back.

As we get older, we accumulate experiences. The good and the bad. But mostly the bad sometimes overwhelm the good even if it is as minicule as an atom. The harder the challanges, the higher we go in life, the harder we fall. Being a Muslim its hard not to fall into the trappings of the comfort pill. But with every indulgence, regret is close by. However in spiritual grace comfort is more meaningfull. And for that the greatest loss that Malaysia have is the parting of one of the greatest lyricist of our time...Loloq.

But in M Nasir, he lives eternally in these songs. Nowdays, its these Nusantara and M Nasir's earlier works that lullaby me to rest from the humdrums of the hectic and ruthless world.

So thats it. The songs of my life. It can all be well described by Loloq when he said:

"Sedang tuhan, tahu sesiapa..untuk neraka untuk syurga. Aku kan terpaksa, memilih syurga, demi pengertian ku pada hukum alam. Dan sesunggunya, aku cinta, padamu tuhan walaupun sesat jalan."

Oh my God, what was the fuss all about?

Its Ramadhan. Thank God. Its the one and only month that its actually hip to be holy. I cant imagine I said that. But lets be honest...even my true blue clubbing friends are staying it off to attend Terawih prayers. Reasons are obviouslah...nak mintak ampun dan maaf.

Not that I club that much. Just sometimes I hang around some friends who do. But that is running out of the topic I wish to mention.

I had this sudden epiphany while driving to work 3 days ago. Standard stuck in a jam coz decided to take a few minutes (which ment extra 2 hours) of sleep after Subuh. Things got me thinking. Trust me as all would realise after leading quite a free-wandering life for a bit..I must say I accumulated a fare share of things I was not suppose to do. Ya ya you might argue that whats right or wrong is ones point of view...well at some point a person must define himself..and for me I feel I wish to define myself in what I believe in..

In short..life is kinda easy, if you think about it. Its the sticking to your principles and holding strong to faith thats what hard. Senang je nak concentrate in what your doing but try to do that to your ibadat? Very sure most of us fall flat on our faces.

The reasons I keep referring to ibadat is becouse..after all the care that my friends have been giving, and support from family.. I find peace in knowing that all cobaan dunia comes for a reason. And part of the thing here that helped me get over my recent heartache was...yes you know it..getting closer to God.

Ok..some will argue where does salsa fall into this? I'm not saying I'm perfect kan! But the crowd of people in that community are nice and most of them are not half drunk on the dance floor. So ..one step at a time Ahmad..one step at a time.

This brings me to my problem of love. So whats the big deal. I know now what really matters to me. And yes I know now what I have lost. And what I want to have back. So its a responsibility to find that soulmate. The one partner in your life.

Hang on. Found it. Yup. It was staring me in the face. Whatever I have denied cannot be denied. Though the feelings might not be there as what it use too. Over the years the desire I guess had faded, but faded it has just been. In time hopefully with a small but clear efforts to polish it up..it shall shine as bright as it was before.

What is important..what matters..a good heart, stable, fluent english (dont ask me about this), sweet, beautifull, kind, respective to elders, able to converse with my friends and accept me as who I am, knows everything about me but embraces the differences, intelligent..very intelligent, succesfull, independent and emotionally stable...what more..most importantly unhitched!!

So what am I waiting for? Exactly. Nak kawin kan? Want a great mother to a child and one that your children look up to kan?. Also proven track record of caring for your late mom when she was ill..translated to know what to do with your dad when he's is under the weather.

Thats it Ahmad. Go out there and get the girl. She already exist. Will you end up togather again?..Only God knows but here is God giving you a chance again..and with His blessing I seek that it be true.

So what if I failed again. At least I bled trying. And thats life.

Too many thoughts....

Funny how we have soo much to say, but fall short once in front of the computer. I have been wanting to write about many stuff, but couldnt find the time. Told myself, "Alah, just open up your blog and start writelah." Well, now in front of PC...and still blurrr.

What can we say ya. I find my other friends who have blogs juat update themselves about almost anything. Then again, the thing about blogs is, we hope somehow or rather people will read it and comment. Ahhh but then if its so, then blogging becomes some kinda commercial interlude, which defeats the purpose of an onlie diary eh!

First things first, all hail the arrival of Princess Jada. So happy for my best bud for his first daughter. Hmmm banyak muka Juan. Baguslah ikut mak dia yang hot! Haha. Wishing for one of my own now. Also Eju and Mus also hails their lil bambino. A warm welcome to baby Noah.

Ok. Latest is salsa. I've been trying to get on it since I was introduced to it by my ol friend during one night merayau-rayau at bukit bintang. Long ago Little Havana was..as the name described..little. It was a small lot which is now occupied by this pub called Brasil. I was amazed at how friendly the atmosphere and how people were having a great time. Also the moves..ohhhh those moves. Ok, how can I lie that certain portions of the ladies were clad in their bustiers...most propably the reason I was game.

It took me 2 years to realise this. A friend Aishah got my interest back into this becouse she agreed to be my partner. Took it beginning of the year and was one of my best decisions I made this year. Now I'm in improvers 2, which technically means I'm not bad, but honestly I need a lot of practice to smoothen up the moves more. Which comes to the next problem...practice. Soo limited time, but frequenting clubs help. Problem is, the man's role to lead is very important and I am struggling at the moment to convey clear leads to the ladies. Working hard people, working hard on it.

Strikes an interesting story..most of the ladies in the clubs are really good. So much so, I dare say at certain advance level. So here's the thing, as you progress in class, most moves that was covered in basic would be the base for routines that combine different complex variations. The trick is to have clear leads to have the partner responding correctly to what you want them to do. Hehehehe, so mua had a horrible time when i was dancing with this gorgeous lady, called Vivian and basic open break moves, due to my confusing pressure/signals from my hands/body momentum got her going into these complex turns and side steps. I had to go,' Whoah whats that..hang on aaaaa what do I do next?"

Sheesh that was embarrising. But heres the beauty of salsa. Vivian was very supportive and guided me through her routines and now...tada...Senor Zaf is of certain smooth operator nu. Alah baru dua move je. But still, with more practice should be able to take on the next moves to come.

Orait, enough of salsa. My good friend Johann Ting was in town. Short description, Johann is a good friend of mine but was a rival in the beginning. You see for awhile back in college, I was once the champion at guitar, till Johann came along. Ok, here's me being a sore loser...I am self tought whislt Johannn studied the instrument..so Hah! No lah the guys brilliant. So we jam a lot and from their our reputation as the 2 amigos came about. Fast forward..met up with the guy and he lost weight, grown a goatee and is now an accomplish musician himself. So met up and whats a meeting with Johann if there's no jam, kan? So off we go jammming!

As a result, suddenly my love for music is starting to grow back... at an alarming rate. I'm practicing at least 2 hours everyday now. The session with him also included some pointers. You see, I work with instincts. I learn new skills by listening to establish players, and then experimenting with their styles to see what works. Never knowing the mechanics and theories of my actions. Johann pointed out that I have acquired a lot of advance techniques over the years but find it sayang that I am not able to understand the rationale of these licks. He explained many things and had a more-or-less idiot guide to guitar arpeggio theory. This got me started exploring my normal scale warm up routines in a different way. The result ....sonic and melodic bliss guys. I never knew all these hidden elements within the knowledge that I have till now.

Hmmm...ok so whats next for Amad. Let me see...there's the house that needs grills and a decent kitchen. I am hoping to fully pindah by early next year. Whoooahhhoo. My own pad. Anyway, list of items start to roll but memandangkan keadaan ekonomi yg tak menentu...maybe I'll hold back on most lavish Items on the list.

I might not be around in M'sia that much next year. InsyaAllah, I will be sent for an international assignment for 6 months. Will be globe trotting for awhile doing this IMP pogram the company has set for me. So this means i have to maximise whatever I can for this year. Enjoy it to the max. As much as i could.

Right...things are cheering up. Though nothing happening in the social circle...but gain back friends I thought i lost. The Warwickians have been excellent lately. I started to open up about my break-up and heart break and they took me in and comforted me in times of trouble. Best part was they made a lot of effort to distract me from my sorrows. Special mention must be Feizal and Aliza. Their husband and wife combo effort is worth mentioning. Even though they lead hectic lives and a kid...still made sure they had time to follow up on my progress and keep me company in times of need. Thanks guys.

With that...I have actually exhausted this session. Kepala dah drain. Takde ilham lagi nak tulis. Ok, till next one see ya'll.