Hello. It’s 12: 43pm here in Malaysia.

I was lying down on my bed when I woke up to check my phone. It’s 13^th of April. 31 more day till I leave. Funny how time flies so fast. Fast indeed. Back when I first started blogging, if you’ve been following my blog, I wrote “6 more month to leave” and “5 more months to leave” and now it has come down to 31 more days. A month. Scary? I know.

Anyway, that’s not the reason as to why I wanted to write this post. I recalled an odd memory as I woke up this morning. I recently came back from Saudi Arabia after performing my Umrah for the 3^rd time. When we were in Mecca, we had no choice but to mix with a lot of people from around the world. To be honest, it was amazing to witness such unity. As I was there, at times I had to squeeze in to pray because it was full. There was an incident where I sat an hour early to find enough space. 10 minutes before the adhan was heard, a certain lady from a certain race squeezed in for space but there wasn’t any space left between my mother and I. Being the hot-tempered woman I am, I was annoyed when she started to push my head and body to squeeze in. I was telling my mother how rude and smelly she was and that she needed deodorant and so I pinched my nose to vindicate how smelly she was since she couldn’t understand English. My mother told me to calm down and recite the Zikir. But no, I was too pissed to even do anything. After all, I came an hour early just for that spot and it only took 10 minutes for some idiot to squeeze in as if she’s small.

The next day, my mother bought tasbihs ( a certain kind of beaded necklace for us Muslims to recite the Zikir while counting ) and she distributed it to all those who looked like the lady who squeezed next to me the day before. As usual,  I got annoyed and I asked my mother “Mama, why are you giving out to this people? They’re annoying”

She replied me with a simple explanation:

“Anis tahu tak,some of these people come from (a certain country) and they had to walk all the way from their country because their country is going through poverty. Some of them do labor work. Imagine having to walk how many miles just to worship Allah at His House? Would you walk that far? Tak kesian ke? Look at their feet”

True enough. These people had feet that weren’t as manicured or pedicured like mine. They had rough soles and some of the skins that were intact to the feet were damaged. I felt guilty after what I did.

The main point here is, my parents are always teaching me lessons in life that will help me realize what the world is made of one day. I may not know what they know now but I do know that they’re the most humble people I’ve ever known for 17 years.

My parents are a vital figure in my life. Sometimes when I look at how my friends treat their parents, I feel blessed that I have a relationship with my parents no other people have (in Malaysia, I guess). When we speak about being open-minded, some parents can tell their kids “You have to be open-minded” but they don’t show their kids how to do so. My parents on the other hand are different. They make me think out of the box.  My parents allow me to do things that certain Malay parents restrict for as long as I don’t go against my religion and that I know how to take care of myself, it’s fine with them. I’m attached to a string where my parents learn how to pull and let go. When I was growing up, my parents made sure that I grew up, where one day, I would tell them “I had the best childhood”. True enough, I did. I watched videos of us when we were kids and told my parents they did a remarkable job at handling the four of us and that they gave us the perfect childhood. Which parent will build a mini farm just so that the kids could learn how to interact with animals? Which parent would build swing sets and other gymnastic equipment for the kids? Which parent would be a sandbox for their kid? (I’m talking about parents in Malaysia, not elsewhere). Yup, my parents. I was big enough to know the hard work they put into just to build a swing set that is still intact till now.

Every parent would want the best for their children, no doubt about that. Who wouldn’t want their children to get straight As or a scholarship such as Khazanah or Bank Negara? Truth to be told, I would want such a scholarship myself. The thing with my parents is that they don’t have this Malay mentality where it works as such: “I’ll send my kid to a local university and let her work it out on her own”. No, my parents are determined to deport me to another foreign country (yes, I literally meant deport because they want to get the hell out of Malaysia. For real) so that I could be independent and think differently. They’ve always told me to study but never really forced me to do so because to my mom it’s always “if you want it, you would do everything in your will to do so”. If I had a problem with my studies, I would go to them and complain as to why I failed to achieve something and then they would do something about it. Find me a good teacher or enroll me in a tuition center where they think will help me.  True enough, I got the best teachers during my SPM year with the help of my mom. I was shocked to see my results as well. Didn’t expect such a thing coming from someone who’s lazy as I am. Point is, you should never force a child to study or beat him/her up just because she got bad grades. Instead, advise and help them. Encourage them to think BIG. I told my parents I wanted to take Aerospace Engineering and the were shocked. “Are you sure,Anis?” my mom would repeat repeatedly, over and over again. I told her I was sure. Certain parents would think “Mana nak cari kerja dekat Malaysia? Mana ada benda macam tu. Susah nanti” but not my parents.

My mother’s comment about my major:

“Good. Stay in America, get a PR, work for Boeing and don’t come back. Instead, I’ll come and live with you”

My parents have and always will be a role model for me in every aspect of my life; past, present and future. My parents thought me that there’s no other way to get your kids attention other than support, love and encouragement. I mean, as a teenager what more do you want from your parents?

My parent’s are a kind where they never tell me they don’t have any money left. No matter how they struggle to earn money, they’ve never denied my request. Not a single one. (I’m talking about money wise here). My siblings and I would always get books that at times, we don’t even use but they never say NO.

My parent’s comment:

“I struggled to get money for education. I don’t want my kids to go through the same thing I did”

If you noticed, my family and I tend to travel a lot. My parents have this habit of checking cheap flights and when they do, they immediately book it without our concern. When I look back at videos of us all since we were a kid, my parents were never too strict like certain parents. They let my siblings and I run free (and believe me, we ran like wild pigs everywhere) and made tons of noises. I saw how struggling it was to raise 4 little kids who were so annoying back then. People tend to ask them how did they manage such a thing but their respond was “I don’t know. I love to travel with my kids”. Through traveling, my parents opened up my mind to a lot of different things. They didn’t want my siblings and I to focus on what’s happening in Malaysia but they wanted us to explore something different than what was offered back at home. From there, my siblings and I learned how to think BIG and to never settle for less. We started thinking “If my parents can do this, I can do better than them”.

I’m so blessed. Amidst all this, my parents taught me to always be humble in life and that everything that we have didn’t come from us. It came from the big Guy up there. My parents thought me that “you should never forget Him. After all, He has given everything”.

This post is dedicated to both my parents for all the struggle they went through just to raise a hot-tempered, materialistic and one-of-a-kind daughter ;) No matter how annoying I can be, know that my love towards you both are unconditional and ever lasting.