The Fellowship of the Bloggers..

As you probably would have guessed , this entry is about our Bloggers meeting which was held on the second day of Hari Raya, at the Berjaya Hotel located in Times Square. Our gracious host was none other than the mysterious Pycnogenol and family.
I was a little late because I actually arrived more than half an hour early so decided to run an errand at the nearby Low Yatt Plaza, not knowing that parking was going to be rather difficult, we ended up parking at Basement 5 and then proceeded to go to the computer supplies store to exchange a defective item ..which we finally managed to do, after some argument..it seems that the particular store I had unwittingly bought from has to be dealt with in that manner. My only regret was that I had wanted to pretend to be angry, not get angry...We knew how the store management operated based on the experience of others who dealt with the store!

So we ended up being second last to come, just before Hiyoshi.

For me it was an anticlimax because the mysterious Pycnogenol and family turned out to be quite ordinary. Now I don t meant that in an uncomplimentary manner. They were ever so pleasant and nice ..and not controversial nor mysterious or flamboyant ..just a lovely sweet looking family that I feel belong to the top 5% of citizens in Malaysia in terms of pleasantness and achievements.I am not talking about money here. The children were charming and yes, little introverted. Pycno was charming and a wonderful host..The food was very nice, and I finally found my kacang ,,I was searching for kachang in all of the houses I had been to earlier and there was none served. So I was very pleased to find it as well as a lovely carrot cake!

As you know in my comments in Hiyoshi's blog, I had a conversation with him over study smart and study hard... I was sitting next to Ikelah and he told me something of the happenings in Balakot and also Aceh . It is quite depressing really, to hear of the tragedies and the degree of help or rather the lack of help that the earthquake victims are getting.

You would want to know about Dr Roza and Inositol as well as the rest of the people who came to the meeting.

Inositol was also lovely, I believe she brought some of the food we ate. She did not say much to me but it felt as if we were good friends and Dr Roza also felt the same way to me. We seemed to share a lot of things in common and I immediately felt very much at home.

The most difficult thing for me to do was to actually leave the gathering, there was so much to talk about , so many things to discusss but we finally had to go anyway.

As I said earlier , I felt that Pycno and family represented a very small section of Malaysian society and even if we narrow it down to Muslim society , they and the rest of the bloggers present represented a small section. For one thing , all of those present spoke good English, for another , most of us there were bloggers. Another difference was the emphasis on education , that was pretty clear since many of the children were in IPT and of the adults present all were graduates and some had gone on to Phd's. I probably am going to go off on a deep end over this but suffice to say this group represents the conscience of our society and not only that, they represent that part of society who are empowered , whether they realise it or not. In what way will each member of this group contribute to the betterment of our country..and the world? Insya allah, I hope through the years to follow the progress of our Fellowship. We may not at the moment have a Quest but who knows, perhaps the Quest is taking shape even as I write for nothing happens without reason.

Later in the car when we were driving back to Melaka, I asked my 3 children who were with me about the way I had brought them up ie in a very relaxed hands off manner . providing them with whatever support they needed but not doing much forcing or supervising except to lay down some groundrules , do s and don ts as well as the basics of prayers and other Muslim practises which we enforced and showed by example ..the answer and feedback they gave is interesting .
It turns out that all my children think differently from their peers , are nonconformists, get along well with different groups of people .They are also regular with their prayers and conscientious about religous duties , are well mannered children but love their fun. I think my children have somewhat experimented and tried out things on the edge of the tenets of religion but having done so have probably decided that it is not for them...Because my way of bringing them up is based on trust, I have never ruled over them with an iron hand, neither has my husband .There is the downside of all this . Since I never enforced on them any compulsory studying , my children do not get excellent results that enable them to get scholarships and I have to fork out money for their tertiary education although their natural intelligence and the amount of effort they put in places them above average in their studies. On the other hand, because of my free style, they spend a lot of time studying other than their school subjects and learn about cause and effect the hard way...It makes them more worldly wise, as well as creates in them independent thinking..I cannot wait to see how they do in terms of getting jobs and earning their own money as well as contributing to society. A mistake I and my husband have made is to overprotect them and over indulge them by providing for them too well..more hardship in their lives would have perhaps prepared them better to face life in the real world, not the world their parents bought for them and provided for them. I write my thoughts for the sake of my blogger friends who have children who are still small..perhaps time to rethink what you as parents are doing for your children and how you are preparing them for the real world. We older folks belong to a less luxurious time, we belong to a more hardworking generation, we had less priveleges ...As for my children who read this entry, well children, time for self direction , time to tighten your belts and time to assess how you are going to be the responsible adults of the future , the Khalifah of God and be responsible not only for yourselves but for the direction the country and the world is going to take .