A special seed

        There was a king who was growing old and being without any children, he was worried and knew that he needed to find a successor for his beloved country. Eventhough he was the wisest king the people had ever knew and respected by friends and foes, he still had sleepless nights thinking  how  to find a suitable person to replace him.

      One day, an idea popped in his mind. He called young people in the country together and told them , "It is time for me to step down and choose the next king  and I have decided to choose one of you."

     The people were shocked and there were an uproar of chattering in the large gathering hall. But then he said, "I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One very special seed , carefully selected by the explorers  from the soil of a distant land. I want each and everyone of you to plant and take care of the seed and come  back here after after 6 months  with whatever  you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next king!"

      A boy named Malik was there that day  and he also  received a seed. He went home and excitedly told his mother the story. She helped him get a pot and planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.There were different colours and types of plants. Malik kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew .  Weeks went by and still nothing. Malik started to feel very ashamed and he was very convinced that he was a failure.But deep down inside he knew that he just needed to be honest and  keep trying . 3 months went by, and his pot looked exactly the day he planted the seed. The supposedly special seed .By then ,he  just knew he had totally killed his seed.

       Everyone else had trees and tall plants with nice smelling, colourful  flowers and all, but he had nothing. Malik didn't say anything to his friends and he just kept waiting for the  seed to grow.

        Six months  finally went by and all the youths of the country  brought their plants to the meeting hall for inspection by the king , with the hope of being picked as the country’s next king . Malik told his mother that he wasn't going to take an empty pot . He was embarrassed and there was fear in his heart that the king might get angry and even sentence him to death. His mother told him just to be honest . He took his empty pot to the palace and when he arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other youths. They were beautiful in all shapes and sizes. There were  captivating flowers with combination of striking colours and the hall was turned into a perfume factory overnight just by the smells of all the flowers brought by the people. Malik put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kinds laughed at him and some even asked him if he had a death wish coming here like that.

       Malik was thinking of only hiding at the back when the king arrived and greeted them. "What great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the king. "Today, one of you will be appointed the king!"  he uttered.

        All of a sudden, the king spotted Malik at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered his guards to bring him to the front. Malik was terrified and he could only imagine the king’s wrath upon him. "The king knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me killed , so long, world !" he whispered to himself.

        When Malik got to the front, the king asked his name. "My name is Malik," he replied. All the kids were gathering around, laughing and making fun of him. To them , this was just too funny to be missed. The king asked everyone to quiet down and the chattering stopped abruptly. He looked at Malik, and then announced to the crowd, "Behold your new king! His name is Malik!"

        Malik couldn't believe it. He couldn't even grow his seed. How could he be the new king? “Is this some kind of cruel practical joke before my execution? “, he thought . Then the king said, " Six months ago, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the supposedly special seed, plant it, water it,take care of it  and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds, which would not grow. All of you, except Malik, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you, hoping to impress me and be selected as the next king. Malik was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with the original seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new king!"

        Malik was flabbergasted.He didn’t expect such words to come out of the king’s mouth.He just realized that if he was different than everybody else, it didn’t mean that he was wrong. He was glad because he was just being honest and stay true to his colours , and the whole story showed him that if you plant honesty, you  would reap trust.  Trust goes  a long way, as Malik discovered that day.

Post-near-accident rant

      Are you satisfied with the level, quality and behaviour of  road users in Malaysia? Has it ever occurred to you that something else can be done for improvement? It is very frustating to see motorcyclists, drivers and even pedestrians ignoring traffic rules and regulations,let alone not having  proper etiquettes on the road.Although we can't say that to all road users , there is  quite a major proportion of them who are like that.

        Ops Sikap  recently carried out by the Royal Malaysian Police showed that there were 248 deaths recorded, just slightly lower than last year's 265 deaths.You might say the figures were lower but I still think that is very unacceptable especially when the statistics  were recorded just in  2 weeks duration of the road safety operation. Road safety could still be improved further if motorists were more mindful while they were on the roads.

      While it is very important for the enforcement of rules and regulations by the authorities, it is also equally important for motorists to be exposed and educated to road etiquettes. A friend who wasn't a native of this country once told me that  Malaysians were friendly and pleasant to be with but when they were on the road, it was the exact opposite.I could only laugh and nod.He was right.

       I have an idea and it has been  on my mind for quite some time.It is probably not going to make our roads totally accident free and safe but it might help . I dont know if there is already something of equivalent being applied .I am thinking of why don't we have something like 'speed estimation course' in the syllabus of the driving school. Numerous times I saw and heard cases where accidents happened when the motorists couldn't guesstimate the speed of other motorists either when going in or out of junctions or overtaking. It is like they have a totally different way of estimating the  speed and distance of other motorists to control their vehicle accordingly to what are they going to do. This may not sound like a brilliant proposition,but I just have to let this off  my chest .Thank you for reading   :)

There Is No Fear In Love

        I will tell you  about a moment in my life that I think, has  a very profound effect on me  and somehow alters  my  world .

        This is a story happened more than 12 years ago involving me and my mother. When we were living in Terengganu, we had a fruit orchard about 10 kilometres  from our home. You see ,my father and mother were very fond of gardening and planting fruit trees such as durian , langsat , dokong , orange and  rambutan just to name a few. We usually made trip to the orchard during the weekends and sometimes spent a night there. We had a small wooden house built just for the purpose and also as a temporary place to gather and store fruits. Have I mentioned that the orchard was on a piece of land cleared from a forest and the surrounding area was well, pretty much still an untouched jungle?

         On that eventful day, my mother asked me to go to the orchard with her as she wanted to check on her fruit trees as it was the starting of the fruit season . My father had to skip the ‘fun’ as he had an emergency  work meeting. I agreed as I had nothing else to do anyway although I wasn’t just  that  into all these kind of activities. My other siblings stayed home and off we went just the two of us. On a motorcycle.Usually we went with our trusty suzuki jeep.

        Make no mistake, she is good if not great a driver. She is the only female driver among her many siblings and due to work she frequently drives long distance with her car. But that day, we overlooked one thing, it rained last night and the gravel and red soil path leaving the tarred road going into the cleared forest was wet and slippery. We were going slightly downhill on that road when the motorcycle’s tyres lost traction. We fell down quite dramatically. I hit my head quite hard on the road and the ‘thump’ sound produced seemed to be a testimony to that. My mother slid a bit more downhill with the motorcycle. She had lacerations just below her eyes from her broken eyeglasses. Luckily we both had helmets on and there were bruises here and there on us. As we were already very close to the orchard, we walked to the wooden house, leaving the motorcycle at the side of the road.

        I didn’t think we would be able to ride back out after what happened. Moreover, my mother looked a bit shocked and shaken. I was scared and that was an understatement. But at that time, there was only one thing that lingered in my mind, my mother safety , so I  gathered up courage to use a shortcut through the forest and abandoned rubber plantation to the tarred road in effort to get help from my father’s friend who lived in that area.

        Fear as they say, is about the unknown. It was creepily dark because of all the big trees and I couldn’t help but notice all the sounds that the forest had to offer. The insects somehow started to perform their own ‘orchestra’  along with singing from birds and continuous vague shouting of some unidentified mammals from a distance. I swore I could hear someone calling my name in the distance at that time.

     I managed to get through, luckily with my sanity intact and I had to walk for a few hundred metres on the tarred road before I met a boy who offered to give me a ride on his bicycle to the house belonged to my father’s friend ,not far from there. I told father’s friend what happened and we went to get my mother with his car. My father arrived about half an hour later after I rang him.

      Thankfully, we had no serious injury or anything, just a bit shocked and bruises. Even the motorcycle was functioning normally. It looked very serious to me so that had led me to make the decision to use that shortcut through the forest. I was 10 and  that possibly the best I could do .However it made me realized that I would not let anything happen to my mother even if I didn’t notice that before. I conquered my fear because of love to my mother.

A memory in the orchard