saying bye to my cats

As I am approaching the end of my journey here in Medan, one of the things that bothers me is what am I supposed to do with the four cats that I have. We adopted Ubu our first cat in 2010. She was a small kitten shivering somewhere near Pringgan, Medan when we first found her. We stopped our motorbike and she got on my foot and stopped crying. So we took her home to become part of our family.


Ubu, the mother.

Since then, she gave birth couple of times. Demok, her first child is (now) really a huge cat who was also my fluffy pillow at night. This morning someone came and asked me to adopt him. Although it was such a sad thing seeing him taken away but it's for the best.


Demok, he just loves to stare.


He also loves to stand in front of computer screen to get some attention.

Abu the youngest one died two days ago, ran over by our neighbour who also has buried the cat without telling me. I am very sad as he was really manja and not scared of anything or anyone cause I never hit him even once, but I think that costs him his life as he not even scared of car! But my friend said maybe it's for the best that he's gone during my very last day in Medan. Is it..


The late Abu.

I sent one of my cat to Dr Rosdiana's house. She is such an amazing cat lover. She has lots of cats in her house, I mean a lot! like around 100 cats. And she spends Rp6,000,000 just for the cats' food.

She adopted her first cat in 2002 when the cat she called Nenek Unyang came playing at her house. Since then her very productive cats producing even more cats some of them new ones from the outside.

She is the example of a good cat lover. Well you know not in a kind of annoying way. As we know some cat-people tend to humanize their cats, cutting their nails, bath them every day even dress them up. But not her! And none of her cats have been sterilized. She really thinks it's their right to keep on breeding and producing new off-springs. Though I'm not totally agree with her on sterilizing cats, but it shows how pure her love is towards cats.


Dr Rosdiana with one of her cat who has just underwent surgery!


She has so many stories about her cats to tell.


My cat, Dubuk that I've given to her as a new owner.


Looking at her for the last time.


Some of her many cats.


Super nice of her as she invited us to have some kuih jala and Surabi. yum yum!


Her first cat, she called her Nenek Unyang. haha 


Me in front of her practice.

Cats in some way have contributed to my well-being as I tried to keep myself sane from the stressful and crazy world and being such good companies when I was lonely. Cats are simply awesome. they are innocent and their behavior is actually the reflection of how we treated them, really!

crossing the finish line.

The much awaited time of.. my entire life maybe? is finally arrived. I've finished my medical study a week ago. Now I have 2 more days left before going back to Malaysia for good.

I feel very much relieved after all these years of stressful works, exams, not to mention complicated immigration stuffs and financial problems but I've done it all! it's time to say bye bye.

But this week I feel quite sad, almost everything I see around me makes me realize that I'm gonna miss them. I've lived here for 5 years and a half, that's definitely quite a long time. Lots of places I have been to and lots of things have happened to me here.

Now I realize there's gonna be a lot of things I'm gonna miss. Honestly I feel quite sad now as I type. I woke up this morning and immediately thought 'how many days left? Is today gonna be the last day I'm here?

During my 5 years and a half here, I learn about freedom, friendship, self dependency, trust and having fun. yeah really! I also got the chance to see my country from the outside, far from those biased government controlled media in Malaysia, I got to meet new people, to understand their feelings, cultures and what they really think. Oh, also learned about hardship ones has to go through in their life and all the inequalities in the world. Looking at children begging/working is the most difficult and heart wrenching.

the most precious that I'm gonna miss forever are friends. It is here that I know how a friendship can help you to live in this world, how they ease your hardship, or how much fun they add into your life!

time, move faster!

Currently I'm in ObGyn Department which is the last department for the clinical cycle that I have to complete. Since it's the last one, one should be happy thinking about the prospect that the long 5year+ study is coming to an end.

Somehow as day goes by everyday, I feel like time is moving too slow even though 1 month and two weeks is all it takes to reach the finish line.

Reading my previous post, obviously I was quite stressed out with the endless oncalls, exams, papers and being the servant for the residents. I just want all this to end, and get paid for what I'm doing! haha

So I started counting down and hoping time to move faster!

But two nights ago I had a dream in which I was holding a baby, my baby, and saying 'how times flies' and thinking in disbelieve. The alarm clock rang and I was back to reality.

Man, I'm glad that I still here, in 2011. I should stop asking to forward time to the future but cherish every minute and second I'm having right now instead. Those times will come, but the now, it's passing by, leaving us. With no chance of getting back to it.

I will finish my study on 14th January 2012. Insyaallah. yay!


from my album: sunset at Danau Toba.

feeling blue.

I don't know what is happening to me right now, I'm kind of feeling blue. I'm a happy person for most of the time, sometimes it shows and sometimes it's within. But now it's neither.

I think without me knowing it, I'm a bit stressed. I think I'm too tired. I just want a long holiday. Without having anything much to worry about. I want all these things that I have to go through everyday to stop. I'm exhausted of worrying too much.

I want all these to end. Maybe I just want to have somebody here that I can talk to, more than the regular what's-going-ons, about something else, that even me don't know what it is. Maybe I'm just lonely.

Maybe seeing sick people everyday is depressing. Having someone else to control your life is annoying. Having lots of thing you have to know is worrying. Having exams now and then is tiring.

Maybe seeing how unfair the world is adding more stress. Maybe I should stop thinking too much, though it happens everyday in front of my eyes. Maybe I should just have faith in God. Maybe I should try to.

I'm hoping that this phase of my life to end soon. It's been too many years. It's not that life here is too miserable or what. It's just that.. sigh!

The only things that make me happy right now are The big bang theory and How I met your mother. They make me forget what's happening for awhile and make me laugh.

I'm gonna regret writing this. haha.

smoking is idiotic

The first thing that disappoints me when I first got here in 2006 was the fact that there are quite a number of medical students who smoke cigarettes. Some of them smoke openly in the no-smoking area like inside campus.

Not only locals, Malaysian students also seem like enjoying the 'opportunity' given as many of them are smokers, some have just picked up the habit here.

Not only that cigarettes are available almost everywhere, these young smokers are also influenced socially plus with the fact that big tobacco companies are still allowed to advertise their products widely here.

I really think that those young people born in the late 20th century, growing up and living with a well known fact that smoking scientifically proven to be fatal, are totally idiot to be smoking. There are also massive campaigns warning about the danger of smoking. Yet they let themselves addicted to the nicotine that comes with other carcinogenic substances.

Smoking is forbidden in Islam. Off course those addicted to it will come up with many excuses to justify their 'harmless' or 'beneficial' habit.

What happened to me earlier today triggered me to write this. I was in a air-conditioned room with several people smoking in it. I felt like a guinea pig, put in a closed box filled with cigarette's smoke to see the how many ways I can die. I'm not exaggerating.

If you still choose to be a smoker, please at least think about others who are not, have some considerations and ethical values.

"Do no harm, yourself or others"- Prophet Muhammad pbuh.

use condom to prevent pregnancy, idiot.

It is really really really disturbing to read the news about baby dumping now and then. These 'unwanted' babies not only dumped into trash bins, left at the mosque, by the road side or in the toilet or any other unthinkable places, but also some of them killed unintentionally. Or intentionally! gosh. It really has come to the limit. That is too much.



But sadly, ironically, or stupidly our self-righteous community still in a state of denial. Most of us cry foul every time such heart-wrenching things make the news. Not to mention those which didn't make it to the news and remained unknown.

This is what happen when we let those not wanting to have babies, to get pregnant and give birth. It's that simple.

The questions that are worth to look into are: why are they committing unlawful pre-marital sex, why the unprotected one, why not resort to legal abortion, and why can't they just let the babies being taken care of and live?

Some of us might blame them, the ones who did it. But it's obviously not totally their fault, but ours! No thanks to the hardship ones have to go through to get married, the complicated and expensive wedding, and the stigma that young unwed mothers have to face.

I said earlier that we are in denial because some of us won't admit that the usage and promotion of protections e.g. condoms can reduce the number drastically. Compare Malaysia with any western country. Those countries openly allow free sex and we say it is a bad western culture. But with cases of baby-dumping on the rise, what kind of better culture we have here? From this comparison we can see that the aetiology of this epidemic is not from the so called free sex itself but the ignorance that wearing protection and practising safe sex cam cure this 'disease'.

Our self-conscious friends and family worry so much that condom will promote free sex, which they worry so much about, apparently more than the fact that many innocent lives being dumped and some even murdered by those heartless murderer!

it's a relieved that there are some quarters aware of this fact and also pushing for the promotion of the usage of condom although some are against it.

So dear friends, I think it's about time to put our idiocy aside and remind each other to wear protection to prevent the unwanted pregnancy. Yeah, there must be other solutions to tackle this as most of us think but to ignore this one is moronic.

Prevention is better than cure.