Raison d’être

If you are, you breathe.
If you breathe, you talk.
If you talk, you ask.
If you ask, you think.
If you think, you search.
If you search, you experience.
If you experience, you learn.
If you learn, you grow.
If you grow, you wish.
If you wish, you find.
If you find, you doubt.
If you doubt, you question.
If you question, you understand.
If you understand, you know.
If you know, you want to know more
And if you want to know more, you are alive

Mak aih. Lamanya tak tulis belog! Ada 5 tahun gamaknya. Ada? Ada?

Well, entry ni pun saja nak rasmikan ‘keyboard baru’ hik hik hik.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

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Baru-baru ni, banyak juga la melepak di luar waktu tengah hari rembang. Panas sangat-sangat panas. Zaman dulu-dulu tak pernah pun panas macam ni.

Ke dah besar ni aku yang makin pandai merungut?

Apa-apapun, pada kadar sekarang, memang boleh bikin salin kulit. Mintak hujan hari-hari pelis.

Beberapa minggu lepas, saya pergi dengar ‘ceramah motivasi’. Ada seorang kakak ni, ajar tentang “bahasa cinta”. Ada words, touch, quality time dan sebagainya.

Kemudian, dia cakap kalau siapa-siapa ada lebih daripada dua ‘bahasa cinta’, contohnya perlukan ‘kata-kata cinta’ dan ‘masa berkualiti bersama’ at the same time, dia tak matang dan keanak-anakan. Saya pelik.

**

Walaupun muqaddimah macam tak ada kaitan, tapi sebenarnya saya nak cakap pasal cinta juga. Bila kita tanya pasangan kekasih la misalnya, “kenapa kau suka dia?” Mungkin si lelaki akan cakap, “Oh well dia manja, dia suka mesej-mesej saya sebelum tidur.” Dan si perempuan pula mungkin akan cakap, “Dia gagah. Dia boleh tumpaskan 6 lelaki yang kacau saya sekaligus.”

Ok contoh merepek. Balik pada bahasa cinta tadi. Katakanlah si suami sukakan touch. Hari-hari si isteri kena touch si suami. Satu hari, nak dijadikan cerita, si isteri yang kerja kilang proses sosej termasuk tangan dalam mesin sosej. Kudung tapi masih hidup. Tapi sekarang dia dah tak boleh nak touch si suami. Adakah cinta si suami tu akan berkurangan?

Ya aku memang tak pandai buat example. Sebenarnya aku cuma nak cakap, pada pendapat aku cinta ni tak perlu ada apa-apa sebab. Love is an energy – you can’t see it but you can feel it – and it must be sustained. Love can grow, love can die and we are the fuel. As long as we provide the fuel, it will burn through the night. Kalau pakai RON97, dia akan burn dengan lagi efficient.

Cinta ni kalau bersebab tu namanya hipokrit. Cinta sebab nak harta, sebab nak nampak cool, sebab dia cantik. Kan dah drama Melayu. Any act, if it’s sincere, is involuntary - kata Pakcik Mark Twain.

**

Tapi aku tak kata hanya sebab kau rasa cinta kau terus nak bercinta, atau cinta sahaja dah mencukupi. Benda-benda lain wajib dinilai juga supaya nanti tak ada timbul masalah “aku simbah kau dengan asid sebab aku terlalu menyayangi kau!”

Faham lah tu kan?

I still can’t believe Din Beramboi is gone. Just a couple of weeks ago I read about him and his career, and had a good laugh after knowing his real name – honestly I don’t see a ‘Meor’ fits that guy in any angle! Hahaha. Ok this is supposed to be sad, why am I laughing?

Because Din Beramboi’s life is all about making people laugh. Guy made joke for a living. Although some people saw his ‘artworks’ as lawak bodoh but truth is I dig his stupid jokes. The first time I heard about Din is from Ujang comic. Till today I’m not sure whether they are the same person – the comic mascot and the celebrity.

Anyway, back in 2002 or 2003 my childhood best friend Pali ringed me up one evening and invited me to go to his house along with other friends. “Important matters,” he said. We went to his house only to find him laughing on the floor, hard, with somebody talking in the radio.

At that time, Pali was listening to a recording of “Mari Berbalas Pantun” segment by Din Beramboi which he recorded (or did he bought the tape? Can’t remember) when he was a DJ in THR I guess. Come on, it was 2002 and I never heard people doing jokes (even stupid ones) on the radio before. LOL. To this day I still can’t forget that ‘segment’ and many others as and we still use some of the jokes every now and then whenever we met.

His passing is too sudden. Leptospirosis or ‘virus kencing tikus’ is on the rise due to the hot spell and I wasn’t that shocked when I first read the news. But then it was confirmed that mosquitoes are the culprit – resulting in him infected with haemorrhagic dengue fever. I only had a normal dengue fever last year and it already sucked as hell.

Let us all be reminded that the world is just an illusion. Whatever worldly achievements you achieved, it’s not for you but for other people that you leave behind, especially your kids and family. Al-Fatihah.

ps: perasan tak ramai orang mati mengejut sekarang ni? moga kita mati dalam iman..