The Man I Ought To Be.

I know it is a bit late, but I had a lot to talk about as I was starting to write about my dad. I had to omit a lot of things due to time constraints. But, here goes.

My dad is the type who rarely talks about his work. When I was still in school, whenever people asked me about his job, he just told me to answer, "Ala,pegawai kerajaan je.(Just a government servant.)" Now that I'm in a working environment, I just got to know that his job is one of the highly regarded job that people would compete to get. He never told me how hard it is to get oneself into his profession, which I would say can be rewarding at times. He never bragged about his job, being humble is his choice, I guess. But now that I passed the exam to get myself into his profession, I can see that he is actually proud of me, which I gladly did.

He actually wanted me to become an engineer. I vividly remember the times where he would proudly claim," You're going to be an engineer one day " which I'm not right now. We had our arguments about the choices that I made of what I wanted to do, but I stood with my decision which though he reluctantly accepted at that time, I can see now that with the offers that I'm getting, I hope that I made him proud. We rarely had our bonding time with each other, but I know that he likes something that is related to current issues. So I trained myself to read a lot of newspapers and get myself updated with current issues so that we would have things to talk about. It worked, actually. We always have something to talk about. At the same time, it helped me in a way that I can talk about anything with anyone. I always have a topic to talk to. That actually builds up my rapport which is quite useful when you have to deal with a lot of people.

Not only that, he is actually one of my readers whenever I write something in my blog. At one time, he called me just to say that I made a grammar mistake in one of my postings. After pointing it out, he would proudly claim that his English is better than an English teacher (read: me). Oh, whatever.Haha. It is one thing to read my blog, but it is another when he promotes my blog to his friends. He even promoted my blog to one of his friends who is a chief editor of a news agency. Because of that, I was called for an interview and was offered a job as a journalist. Though I had to reject the job offer, I still owe it to him for promoting my blog, which I myself wont be doing as much as he did.

"It's ok, just make sure that you wont do the same mistake after this," my dad said to me.

You see, I was into trouble for a lot of time. So everytime I was in a deep shit, I would get the dont-do-it-again lecture from my dad which he would end with that sentence. Whenever I did something bad, the first thing that I would think about is him. I was very afraid of what he would say or do if he found out about what I did. I can still remember till now when I was a kid and I didnt want to take a bath, he chased me around the house just to get me to take my bath. He was quite strict when I was small but now that I'm grown up, he only told me to learn from my mistakes and not to repeat it again. In a way, I learned that whatever bad things that people did, try to forgive them and try to encourage them to learn from their mistakes rather than punishing them and condemning them for the rest of their life. It took me some time to realise what he tried to teach me so now when I can see that, I tried to be someone who is more forgiving towards others and to give others another chance to learn from their mistakes. It's not easy but it surely gives you self satisfaction which you can't get from all the riches in this world. That is my dad. My abah. He taught me that. So thank you abah, and happy father's day.