As a tribute to Merdeka 50, I decided to pen down my encounter with the magician and magic man around me.
MAGICIAN 1
It was a very important occasion for my daughter who scored straight As in her PMR recently and the event was organized by the school to honor more then 100 students that have scored straight As in their SPM and PMR 2006. By 8.30 am the hall have been filled by parents, excellent students and teachers, more then 300 in total. The VVIP was YB Dato’ Dr. Aki who is going to officiate and honor the students. The event was scheduled to start at 9.00 am but by 10.00 am there is no sign of our YB. Everybody was restless including me.
Finally at 10.30 am the YB arrived with his Toyota Harrier, shakes hand with the reception party and went on stage to deliver his speech. There is no apology for being late and he started to tell the students about latest issues including his schooling day’s adventures. He was proud to inform the audience that he was not a bright student while at school and somehow managed to further his studies to PhD level despite having to repeat some of the examinations in his life. He informed the audience that he could not stay back because he has two other political events to attend. In fact right after his speech he just walked straight to the door to his car. The poor organizer has to chase him and gave the memento to him at the car.
A very disappointing act to the hundreds of excellent students and family. I really hope he will never be appointed again as YB next election .
MAGICIAN 2
At our get together meeting it was decided that a Cooperative or Association to be set up as a platform to carry out activities that assists our home town especially the students and community. In fact I was told that the idea came from a deputy minister that hailed from our home town. Everybody was excited of the prospect on the support and opportunities that can be given by our deputy minister. After a few coordination meetings it was agreed that a team will make an official call to our deputy minister to discuss on the formation of the cooperative and seek his commitment. The meeting was scheduled at 9.00 am at Putrajaya and everybody assembled at the deputy minister office well before 9.00 am. It was not until 10.30 am that we get to see the deputy minister and he pledged that he was not aware of our visit and could only spare 10 minutes for us. Most of the team member was his super senior and one of them in fact is his uncle. In the meeting he informed us that he could not promise to support our initiatives but advised us to collect as much money from members as possible ( RM 500K ) so that the association will be financially strong for him to recommend us to the Chief Minister for project award considerations. One of our members told him that our main intention is give back to our home town community since we have already made it in KL. To my surprise he unashamedly told us that we should take care of our self and members first and don’t worry about contributing back to the home town. In our post mortem meeting almost all of us agreed that we have been mislead on his interest regarding the formation of the association and definitely he has different value then us in term of sincerely contributing back to our home town community. We have decided that we will move forward and formed the association without hoping of any support from him and maintained our key objective of serving and giving back to our community back home.
MAGIC MAN 1
For the past seven years Ustaz Idris has carried out his Silat Gayong class at the playground in front of my house. His students are mostly the neighborhood children ranges from 4 to 18 years old. Sometimes the student’s enrollment dwindled to ten only but he kept his class and teaches the children the heritage art of self defense which instill discipline, comradeship and honor among the pesilat.
In fact he also conducts similar class at other places on other nights including UKM, Kajang, and Bandar Putra etc. He has few hundreds students under him now. Each student only paid a mere RM10 per month. I am sure that for most of the time he has to fork out his own money to ensure his silat class moves on. I began to wonder the amount of patience and love he had in ensuring the art of Silat Gayong live on for hundred years to come. This guy never thinks of money to ensure he serves the society and mankinds. I for one benefited from his noble effort with three of my children now holding red and green belts.
MAGIC MAN 2
Hj. Sam has been my neighbor for more then 14 years now. He is a very simple man who will do most of his work personally instead of farming it out. He is always thoughtful of his neighbors and ready to give a hand to anybody in needs. When one of our neighbors has a martial problem he became a shoulder to lean on, motivating and encouraging the wife to be patience despite the husband taking a second wife. They divorced for a while but later on remarried and now happy ever after. I could not imagine how the wife could make it without his support and empathy.
As for me I very much blessed to have him as my neighbor. Every time I am out station he is there to assist my family on whatever problems that may arise. When my alarm system goes off at 3 am, he will be the one calling me asking if everything is ok and even keep a lookout from his house to ensure we are safe. Sometimes when we were all out of the house the alarm goes off and without fail he will take the troubled to climb over my fence and look around to ensure my house is safe. In fact when one of our neighbor mothers suffers a depression he took the trouble to help her through encouragement and traditional healing.
When the world is going haywire caused by the Magician we kind of lost hope but then there is always the Magic Man that ensures goodness prevail.
