Friday, August 24, 2012

Getting it out of the chest

You know that you can do absolutely nothing,
You can say nothing wrong,
You can try to be nice by smiling or greet people good morning,
You can dress appropriately without letting your hair loose or your tits hanging by the cleavage of your blouse,
You can try to remain at the sideline all the time so as to not interfere with other people's way,
You can go to a great length to plan your experiments so that others still get the chance to also use the equipment that you would otherwise hoard,
You could pick up all gloves that people threw and missed the garbage bin, 
You could pick up all empty pipette tip boxes, threw away the insides and arrange the empty boxes ready for refill, 
You could clean the benches, 
Change bench coat, 
Clean fume hoods 
and dirty beakers 
and bloody, smelly pestle and mortars that others used but forgot to clean, 
You could refill the paper towels, 
Change empty glove boxes, 
Rehang coats that have fallen to the floor, 
Walk to MCS to buy dry ice so that you and others could also use them, 
you could nicely ask for help or for information, and remain calm when others rudely dismiss you, ignore you or ask you to find it yourselves..
You could do all these and more..

BUT some people would still.. just hate you or no reason,
hate the fact that you smile weird, 
hate that you dress weird and baggy and ugly,
hate that you are selfish for hoarding the machine at night (when no one wants to use it).
hate that you are so into yourselves that they never see you in school social gatherings.
Hate the fact that you are a muslim,
Hate you for the fact that you already have a medical degree, what are you showing off doing PhD here? Go BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY!!
Hate that you think you are so good, so awesome that others would have to abide by what you want or what you like,
Hate that you never ask around, do you think you are so good already?

And then, one day you would make a human mistake...

By doing your experiment at an inappropriately empty bench at one empty corner of the lab,
or switch off the light for 15 minutes for a light sensitive assay,
or bring the shaker to the cool room,
or suffered poor internet connection that you were unable to cancel an equipment booking,
or had an bleeding emergency that made you unable to attend a meeting or a booking,

That is all that it takes for everything to blow off proportion. 

for an angry mob to come complaining to the authorities for your general unprofessionalism, 
unhelpfull-ness, ego-centric working attitude.

THIS IS A TRUE STORY.... 

And you would only whisper to yourself,
6 more months..
only 6 more months to go..

and when the 6 month is up, I will gladly mention each and every one of these people in my thesis, or in an all-school email. 
to thank them for an unforgettable experience I had over here. 
and may be mention a little bit more than that too...










Thursday, August 23, 2012

And Ramadhan leaves us eventually...

Alhamdulillah we have all performed our duties as Allah's servant during the last Ramadhan and finally the fully anticipated Eid is here. I disagree with the saying that the older you get, the less merry it feels to celebrate Eid. However, it is kinda obvious that the childhood merriment of Eid is somewhat muted now that we are older... not because we put less effort into it, but because as we age, we learn to feel the sorrow and to feel the emptiness when Ramadhan leaves us. Well at least that was exactly how i felt. 

It is bizarre that Muslims talk about Ramadhan with such passion and devotion. It is bizarre that despite not being able to eat and drink during the day, despite having to go to mosques every night for tarawikh, feeling tired and thirsty and just plain weak sometimes... we still adore the month of Ramadhann to bits. There is no explanation for this other than "the eyes can not see what the mind does not know." 

It is enough to say that if happiness can be touched and if peacefulness and calmness can be physically felt, then the blessings that the month of Ramadhan brings to all devoted muslims are quite close to palpable. Bring on the thirst and hunger because it only makes us understands the thirst and hunger of the less fortunate better. it's one thing to perform money transfer to a charity to stop famine in Africa from the comfort of your own office, but it is an entirely different experience to actually suffer the thirst and hunger for 12-14 hours yourselves... But owh, I did not suffer, no I did not. It was far from a suffering. It was more of an offering to show that for Allah, the greatest and the almighty, I'll do anything. It's a prove of devotion more than anything else. 

So it is sad that Ramadhan is no longer here. I hope to meet next year's Ramadhan and preferably as a better person all in all, insyaAllah.


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