MrM turns 44!

26 April 2010, MrM turned 44.  We decided to take leave on this day and just have our own special day.  After much deliberation on whether I should get him a snow capped pen or a pen knife, I did not get him anything.  He wanted to have steak at Jake's Grill but after walking around at Pavillion,  we had lunch at Al Amar,a Lebanese restaurant.  Food was great, the mood was calm even though both of us were tired.  We then had coffee and dessert at the Loafand bought some bread and pastries for kids at home.

MrM at 44

I liked this and the artist who did this is the same artist that sold us the paintings that you see in my house.  Those days he was selling, depending on size, around RM1500 to RM4000.  When I called him to ask how much this one cost, he said RM35,000! OMG!  I should sell the ones I have in the house (all four with one thrown in for RM100 and make a tidy profit!)

Carpets at Nassim Carpet.  We bought one and Nasir gave us one for trial, just to see if we liked it with the color and furniture that we have.

And little bundle of joy Harith, climbing on me, typical after a long day at work.  Look at his eyes.  Melts this heart all the time.

Becoming What I am Meant to Be - The Discovery 3

When I was younger, I wanted to learn to play the piano.  There was this toy piano, it was light blue in colour, and I would make songs from the limited keys of the toy piano.  Seeing such interest, my mother enrolled me in Yamaha Music School and I was ecstatic at the thought of getting formal piano lessons on a real piano!

Fast forward MRSM days.  There was my good friend Kim, Mei Ling, Azni and a few more that seemed so much better than me at the piano and more advanced in their grades.  They would take turns playing the Negaraku song on the piano during assembly.  I wanted to be like them, at the very least able to play that Negaraku song during assembly.  I never did.  I never even learned to read the notes and play that song during assembly.  That comparison remained inside me, though, that I was never as good as them because I never played that song during assembly.

All the years of living a life of wanting to be seen to be good, to achieve, get married, have kids, have a meaningful career, being a good mother, and the list goes on and on......the expectations that I have built for myself came about from this flawed logic that I have, and that is how I am seen in the eyes of others and how they perceive me.  It is this flawed logic that I set such high expectations of myself and in that process, I became a perfectionist.  It has to be perfect or not do it at all.....

Another greater flaw is comparing myself to others and I think this is the real root cause of my anxiety. In that, I wanted to be at par or perhaps even better than others in terms of skill, ability or achievements. And in a work environment that I am in now, it gets even worse. I tell my direct reports to not be lead by fear of underperformance where the truth is I fear of my own underperformance.

As a mother, I want to be the mother who sends her kids to school, cooks them their favourite foods, help them out with their homework, bakes cookies and cupcakes....and that image compared to the reality of a working mother who is tired by the end of the day and not able to supervise their school work, let alone bake anything, is always in my head and creates even more anxiety.


The humbling truth for me is that I can never be and should not aim to be anyone else.  The choice is mine and I choose this path.  The humbling truth is that there will always be someone who is better at doing something than I am.  Comparing myself to someone else in every aspect of life should stop.  I should just focus on my life, my needs and decide what is best for me.  I don't have to be the best at everything.  I should just try my best.  Not being perfect and being just "good enough" will probably make me a happier person.  I do have talents and should just use whatever talent I possess.

This year, my stress levels demanded that I make a change.  I need to focus on being focused.  I need to decide on what is good for me first, before deciding on what is good for others.  Stop multi-tasking and worrying and more importantly, the state of being busy does not mean I am delivering value.
And now I only need to remind myself every now and then.....

Productivity and My Moods

I am inclined to believe that productivity at this age seems more effective when done through people.  But stewardship at this juncture of my career is a given.  Then how am I judged?  Judged by my ability to identify the next leap for FRM or the incremental 10% to 15% that we have been delivering?

With such a responsibility, my mood towards work wavering, and reality sinking in that I need to maintain a certain level of productivity to remain relevant.

Some people do little leaps and clap! clap! clap! that was such good performance.  I do little leaps and what?  that just meets requirement.  Some people steal ideas and call it theirs and again clap! clap! clap! that was a strategic alignment towards what we want to be.  I call that idea originated from FRM and they say, why are we keeping scores?  after all we need to work as a team to achieve common objectives....

Now you understand my ambivalence towards this environment where I am supposed to earn a living.....and I guess as leaders you need to lie, be selfish and opportunistic, not really do the right things.....

Harith is 9 months

Dua gigi atas, dua gigi bawah, suka berdiri at his cot, pandai cakap Mama, pandai cakap Naneh (when he wants to go to me), still bangun malam 3 kali, tak nak merangkak, nak berdiri saja, tak suka makan bubur, kuat minum susu.

He knows when we go to work and looks forward to car rides with us.

Suka main dengan Kakak Aliah and ketawa berdekah2 dengan kakak Aliah.

Harith besar cepat sangat, bulan Mac dan April ni Mama terlampau sibuk, malam saja jumpa Harith itupun kadang2 dah tidur.   Mama wonder sometimes whether all this is worth missing your growth and key developments, tapi Mama kena juga bekerja demi masa depan Harith, abang dan kakak2.  Itu saja determination Mama.

Harith kegembiraan kami.

Becoming What I am Meant to Be - The Discovery 2

This is perhaps the last of the discovery series of trying to find my true self.  It is about my schooling years in MRSM.  When we first entered MARA Junior Science College in 1979, school was without uniform at least for the first semester i.e. 6 months until MARA introduced uniforms in three different color codes.  Cream shirt with dark brown skirt or pants, light blue and dark blue and the most ghastly color combination was light green and grey.  Don't ask me why, I hated the green and grey combination.

MRSM those days (and not to be compared to MRSM of current day) taught us rules but we were so free-spirited that rules were just rules that had to be obeyed.  Rules didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves.  What comes immediately to my mind is the basketball games, taking photos in sweaters and pretend that we are abroad, maggi mee groups after lights off, watching free mason from D14, making a cup of Nescafe with cold water, sneaking at seniors' room before sahur and making noise with mercun tarik, band practice in the music room, the glee of listening to Cikgu Juriah scolding the next door class (juniors usually) for making noise while she taught, bathing at the room balcony with only one pail of water, fights, crushes, admiring cute guys from afar (the late Mustaza, Rahim Thani amongst them) and the list goes on and on.

MRSM life shaped me into what I am in many ways than I realized.  I think if I had gone to TKC I would have turned out differently.  At work, I almost always will take a break from the seriousness of the discussion and talk about something that I read in the newspapers that morning or just something humorous to break the monotony of the discussion.  News of a colleague's plight, be it struck with a debilitating or fatal disease, having a child with special needs, involved in an accident makes me feel that anytime I could also be in their shoes and pause to reflect, esp. with my immediate reports.  Doesn't bode too well when you need to be objective and move on, despite all that.  I can't be in a meeting the entire day from morning to evening without taking a break and go out of office for lunch.  I hate having lunch in the office unless it is a working lunch and I rarely have work lunch.  I like structure and yet want to be creative within the structure of whatever I am working on, ALM, Compliance, Approach and Methods.....and finally, I hate to be nice when everyone wants to be nice.  I get into trouble a lot just by that last statement.

That is just the way I am.  It is part my DNA and part my upbringing, of which MRSM life was a significant contributor.  This realization actually helps me channel my character into how I can be effective the most, without antagonizing other people and yet deliver results.

But then again.....

could I be better in an environment where I have flexibility in how and when I choose to work and yet deliver based on pre-determined targets?

could I be creative and generate more ideas when I am not constrained by time?

Flexibility and Creativity.

Happiness is Seeing My Sister Happy

When I heard about my eldest sister getting married again and after 12 years of being a widow at that, I did have reservations as to whether marriage would be the right thing to do for her.  He is 78, my eldest sister will be 61 in June.  Today 3 April 2010 was the akad nikah ceremony followed by lunch attended by her children, his children, my siblings, two aunts and our neighbour Mak Yah and Pak Junus, and Kak Mong is now wife to Ahmad bin Dahan, the wali being my father's youngest brother from same mother, Acu Halim.

Something about our culture that tend to attach a stigma to a woman when she re-marries.  In fact, it is a double standard that when a man's wife pre-deceases him, then culture accepts that men do get married again but not a woman.  Poor Kak Mong was too embarassed to be by the ceremony perhaps because of that.  Haji Ahmad was relaxed, cracking jokes in his Queen's English, trying to ease the situation for my sister.  All eyes were on him and for me, I was trying to imagine him 30 years younger and thought that he looked good for his age.

Seeing them together made me think how much I take for granted MrM's presence.  And how different my life would be without him.  When one has been married for so long, I for one, can't imagine life without him.  And for that reason, I rationalised that Kak Mong's choice to get married again has more to do with companionship, having someone to be around, than anything else.  Seeing them again at dinner tonight confirms that when both of them are a bit more casual with each other, and Kak Mong looking absolutely glowing, which is a look I have not seen for a long time.

Call me a sentimental fool, I couldn't help shedding a tear in seeing how emotional the ceremony was for Zanariah, Haji Ahmad's eldest daughter, who happen to be MrM's colleague at Exxon.  She was trying to contain herself, without much success, from crying.  Cry of happiness for her father or sad to let him go, I don't know, but I had tears in my eyes, perhaps for my father who would have been happy to see my sister happy, or for Abang Kutar, her late husband, in remembering him and his philosophy in life, and perhaps for having to accept that Kak Mong is now someone's wife after many years of being alone and for sure, for the years lost in my silent anger at her when Aliah was born and I broke into a rage after two weeks of giving birth over something so trivial. 

Puan Jemilah Ismail and Ahmad bin Dahan.  Kak Yang, her usual self, was teasing Kak Mong to no end about now Kak Mong has a "dahan" untuk berpaut.

From L to R : Zanariah (his eldest daughter), Azah (third daughter), my mother, Kak Mong, Haji Ahmad, Zanariah's daughter, Zanariah's husband

From L to R :  Kak Yang (Lutfiah), Mak, bride and groom, Kak Cik (Norsalma) and me.

I pray for your happiness, Kak Mong, and for a blessed marriage with Ahmad Dahan.

What Harith Can Say at Almost 9 Months

After Bababababababa.......now Harith can say Mmmmmaaaaaaaa........

Such excitement for us....and then there is the usual "Mama, nak makan apa Ma?"  "Mama, cikgu seni suruh bawak kotak besar Ma!" "Mama ni! kita tak suka Mama marah kita tau!"

Which makes Harith's "Mmmmmmaaaaaaa....." a welcome relief, for as long as it lasts......

Harith is not crawling at all.   He is so impatient and prefers to stand.  I think this little one will most likely skip crawling and will walk first.......his true traits, MrM says, is already emerging, just like his Mama.....!