Football saved my life

Aku, seperti mana ramai yang tahu, tidak begitu mahir dalam bidang akademik. Malah, subjek "power" (english kononya) aku masa di sekolah dahulu tidak setanding mereka yang lain di dalam kelas aku. Untuk cuba elakkan dari tertinggal jauh di dalam bidang akademik aku menumpukan separuh perhatian aku kepada sukan. Apa kene mengena dengan masalah akademik aku tadi? Aku tak tau. Tapi pasti itu sudah kamu tahu, bukan?


Aku dari kecil memang aktif di luar rumah, berlari-lari sakan di mana-mana ruang yang ada untuk menghabiskan tenaga aku. Dengan pengaruh rakan-rakan dan juga famili, aku mula meminati sukan bola sepak. Tetapi minat aku dengan bola sepak bukan sekadar minat aku terhadap bola dan pergerakan kaki, ia (aku rasa) lebih dari itu. Inilah sukan yang telah membuat aku rasa buat pertama kalinya kepedihan didalam kekalahan dan juga kepedihan apabila tangan patah. Ha ha.

I fell in love with football as I would later fall in love with women: suddenly, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain it would bring.
-Nick Hornby-

Bola ini secara ringkasnya mengajar aku tentang kehidupan.


Bola bagi aku, suatu sukan yang boleh di mainkan di mana sahaja dan dengan sesiapa pun. Tidak kira kelas, posisi, warna, dan agama seseorang itu. Di sinilah aku belajar tentang pemisahan kelas. Sukan bola sepak ini bukan seperti sukan berkuda yang hanya untuk mereka yang punyai status elit sahaja. Aku mengenali pelbagai rupa manusia tidak kira status mereka. Di sini mungkin juga di mana aku berminat mengetahui tentang sejarah pemisahan kelas, politik dan seantara dengannya. Bola membuat engkau bergantung pada orang lain dan mereka juga bergantung kepada engkau. Dalam kata lain, kerjasama.

I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.
-Mia Hamm-

Apabila aku mencuba game football management yang di berikan kepadaku oleh saudaraku, aku mula memahami akan penjagaan kewangan dan pengurusan sebuah entiti. Ya, pada esensinya, aku belajar bisnes yang kini sedang aku cuba pahami lebih mendalam. Sedikit ironis. Di sini juga aku pelajari komunikasi dan interaksi diantara manusia (lagi-lagi dengan karekter aku yang kurang ingin bersosial ini). Minat aku dalam sukan bola sepak ini juga dimana aku pelajari geografi secara am dan lebih penting budaya-budaya yang terdapat di dunia. Juga kultus-kultus tempat-tempat tertentu. Ha ha.

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.
-Jean Paul Sartre-

Aku cuba, sehingga kini, mengaitkan bola sepak itu dengan pelajaran aku. Sejak dari sekolah rendah sehingga kini. Jadi, adakah ia keterlaluan jika aku berkata bolasepak hero hidup aku?

Pressure cooker

I often come to school excited but not about school. More often than not, the memories I have of school is when I'm not learning in class. Does this make me odd? Perhaps. But I do believe this is relatively a normal occurrence among students especially students here in our country.

Why? My theory is that it is because of the over bearing responsibility we have to score on our exams. The reason why I eventually chose to stick to the science stream in my school was because it has the highest probability among the streams of a high grades. More emphasis is put on the science stream to score and with that in mind, most of the top students and teachers are put into the science stream classes even if in a holistic look at a person it may not be the most suited of streams.

The other reason is because of the environment. Yes we do have a lot of time when the noise level in class is akin to that at the race tracks but it still is in a normal mode when considering at the daily average. Most other classes are somehow bound to have "trouble". And you think that the unity problem in our country is all about race. We are stereotyped at a young age and brought to paths that are "ideally" the best for us. Perhaps it is, eventually. Perhaps I will scuff at the fact that I thought otherwise. But even if so, aren't we the ones who are experiencing it?

"Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.”
-Pete Seeger (folk signer) -

The most I remember throughout my schooling especially at the senior level was the experiences I had when I was out of school during school hours. I would meet different people with different backgrounds at different places. From representing my school in sports as well as educational activities, to the outdoor visits we had, I knew more about the beauty of the world's interaction than I could have had in the classroom looking at the blackboard. Of course the time spent inside the classroom was equally important to me in terms of growth as a human being but too much of something is not any different from too much of nothing.

The cliche answer of peer pressure? Well I think its just a sub and insignificant part if it was not for the core problem of limited freedom. Teen angst? Perhaps. This is why somehow, I think, sports changed my life. How sports, specifically football, changed my life? That's for another day.

Tauhu tak habis

Conversations between me and strangers are never smooth or even interactive. I have awkward conversations with people I know, let alone the ones I don't. But on that day, it became more than just awkward. It went into somewhere not many people have seen before. Most people go into this zone in dire need.

That day I went into the personal zone with strangers.

"How old do you think I am?," tanya si kakak menjual rojak secara tiba-tiba sambil memotong bahan-bahan dengan pisau yang kelihatan terlampau tajam untuk hanya memotong tauhu.

"I don't know. Mid 30's?," aku menjawap tanpa memikir apa yang telah dituturkan. Aku terlalu khusyuk melihat pulut panggang yang sedang di buat oleh makcik tua stall sebelah ini.

"What?" si kakak itu bertanya seakan-akan tidak mendengar jawapan yang aku berikan.

"Mid 30's" aku sebut balik hanya atas sebab aku berfikir dia tidak dapat mendengar jawapan aku dalam pasar yang kecoh ini.

"I mean I've seen people in their 50's looking more youthful than you" aku cuba jelaskan sebab aku memilih jawapan itu.

"What?!" tanya kakak itu yang sudah berhenti memotong buat seketika.

Aku melihat mukanya bertambah garang, lalu aku cuba mengelakkan daripada perkara itu masuk ke zon deep shit dan terus berkata "Err... I mean...I like your hair?"

Aku ambil makanan aku dan membayar pada kelajuan cahaya dan beredar dari situ.

Apabila kembalinya dirumah aku dapati rojak aku seperti kurang bahan dari dulu.

"Mungkin sebab ekonomi global teruk" kata aku dalam hati.

Part 6: Caught in between

I tried to focus on what majestic beauty I just saw but my neurons heading towards my brain had a doughnut break because of the traffic. I scrubbed my eyes for awhile to try and stabilize any sense of gravity inside my head. When I finally managed to meet the horizontal line with the vertical I realized she was gone.

I was confused. Distraught. I searched around to see if I could find her. Or so I thought. I was actually just spinning my body at a 360 degree angle, the angle in which a multisource assessment is achieved. Hence my logic to have spun. Maybe it wasn't my day, I thought to myself or perhaps it was because of all those feel good complications I had before. Whatever it was I tried to let it go.

Snap! Flash! I was caught by Elm a few meters away from my dazed self. Elm a 6 foot 5 tall cat-loving man from a Swedish background was surprised that I didn't try to run. With striking blond hair, it should have even been caught by people who died in the titanic hundreds of feet under the sea. But not me. Not that day. I was still fixed on the girl I barely remember. Who barely smiled. Who barely said a word.

After everybody was caught, we headed to get something to eat. After running like a bunch of little children after eating all those Halloween candy, we perhaps lost as much as half our body weight in less than a day's time. Then again, perhaps that was the mushroom side effect talking. As we were eating our not so fresh manufactured pizza we bought at your not so local pizza place, I still couldn't get her out of my mind.

With ash brown hair flowing smoothly up to her shoulders and perfectly proportioned eyes and lips, her gentle smile made the world stop for awhile. I think. It was perhaps a faulty memory plagued by a sense of fantasy. I couldn't actually remember her exact features as I was dazed. Or if she wasn't actually a he. But for that brief second, the world, my world, stopped to enjoy beauty.

Past

Ramai yang mengatakan hari-hari "kemeriahan" kini tidak semeriah dahulu.


Aku?


Sama macam dulu. Bagi aku itu lebih kepada mentaliti dari perkara fizikal. Tapi itu cerita kedai mamak.


Aku hanya ingin mengimbas kembali bulan puasa dahulu kala.


Alhamdulillah aku telah berpeluang berpuasa di luar negara. Di 2 negara asing. Tapi, seperti pengalaman-pengalaman yang lain, aku hanya menggunakan memori selektif. Seperti mana aku perlu bersahur di tengah malam akibat imsak pada 3 pagi atau berbuka pada 9 malam pada musim panas. Ini semuanya memori selektif.


Tapi ketika kecil dahulu, hari jadi aku banyak jatuh pada bulan yang mulia ini (ini mungkin sebab mengapa hari jadi aku tidak memberikan signifikasi yang lebih mendalam setiap tahun). Di Amerika misalnya, aku perlu bersahur pada tengah malam sebab imsak awal. Apabila di sekolah, aku hanya duduk diam di dalam kantin ketika rehat (salah satu perkara yang aku suka tentang Amerika, mereka mewajibkan berehat dikantin, dan kemudiannya memberi rehat yang sama panjang untuk berehat diluar.) Seperti kanak2 kecil dahulu, aku banyak meluangkan masa lapang aku di luar rumah. Bermain di padang, misalnya. Bulan puasa pun tidak berubah, aku tetap berlari-larian di dalam hutan seberang rumah aku dahulu. Bila balik ke rumah sudah pasti penat, dan rasa seksa tunggu buka pada 9 malam. Tapi aku sekarang lihat itu sebagai pengalaman.


Ketika aku berpuasa di tanah suci, kami sekeluarga membuka puasa di masjid. Mereka membentangkan kain putih dan menyediakan kurma, roti dan yogurt untuk kami berbuka. Selepas pulang dari sembahyang baru kami makan "berat".


Dan di sini pula, ia lebih bermakna kerana manusia-manusia disekeliling dunia aku. Ketika masih di bangku sekolah, kami pasti bermain bola di petang hari sebelum balik berbuka. Sehingga hari ini teknik dan cara bermain aku banyak diambil dari pengalaman bermain di dalam gelanggang tenis taman aku (the academy we called it). Malam pula lagi meriah, tapi itu cerita lain.


Sekarang, pada tika ini, banyak yang berubah dari fizikalnya, tapi signifikasinya masih sama. Tidak pernah lagi terlintas bahawa bulan puasa dan raya baru-baru ini tidak meriah. Mungkin aku naif. Mungkin aku tak dapat lihat. Atau mungkin aku terlampau selektif dalam memori.
Macam mana pun, kehidupan ini banyak blindspot. Kamu pilih blindspot yang betol?

Waste

Since I've got loads of work to do, I thought it would be an appropriate time to actually put a post up for the heck of it. The one thing I know how to do perfectly (I think) is to annoy people. Its like an art to me personally. Heck, I annoy myself most of the time.

To me there is certain degrees of how to annoy a person because of different personalities. Different people get annoyed by different things and I seemed to have mastered what those different things are whether it was consciously made or by accident.

There's also different levels of annoying. From the first slightly mild level of annoying that makes for some awkward giggles to the mother load of doucheyness, asshole. Then there is the angle of which the "attack" is made. Be it verbally, physically, subconsciously and other known specimen of movement.

At the end of the day having annoyed somebody deserves some kind of reward. Usually its in an edible form. Or drinkable. Sometimes its just the mere pleasure of knowing it happened with a cup of tea.

So,



care for a drink?

Kereta Laju

Watching hundreds of cars passing by,
I just stand still here,
at this spot,
this lane,
this way,
as cars pass by speedily,
awaiting the bus.
Knowing the inevitability that,
I will be in one of these cars.

First Step

Working productivity is not the priority of the day as we embarked on the holy month of Ramadan. The main priority I guess is self productivity in a holistic sense. Not to get too preachy so I'll just make this virtual toast, here's hoping for a good and wonderful time during the month of fasting.

There have been a lot of things I intended to write but now is not the time. A month++ to go. Come on!