Short Story | Part 3: The Night of An End

"Why isn't Aiden joining?" Lan asks, pointing his question to the two girls sitting opposite him at the dinner table. They didn't answer right away as their eyes directed to glasses and plates that have been emptied since 2 hours ago. Smokes from cigarettes and flavoured 'shisha' permeates the atmosphere at the mamak restaurant. It was getting late that night but around them, there are several circle of people still chit-chatting, laughing and all other forms of life who are enjoying their food or simply being there to get some 'fresh' air.

"She's probably doing her revision." One of the girl replies while shoving some peanuts into her mouth. She chews the contents in her mouth and before she even swallow it, she shove another round of peanuts into her mouth, and chews again.

"Eat slowly, Lina. You're such a fat-ass." The other guy called Riza mocks the girl while throwing a peanut on her face. Lina shrugs, annoyed.

"I'm not feeling well, guys. Let's head back to our hostel now, shall we?" The other girl suddenly voices out, not amused with her friends' jokes. She straight away leaves the table and walks to the cashier to pay for the bill.

"Wait up, Mel!" Lan shouts as the three of them followed along to the cashier to pay for their bills.

Back at the hostel, Lina and Mel tip-toes into the room, not wanting to wake up other housemates in the apartment. They pass by the kitchen and notice a splatter of liquid on the floor. It was really dark as the light has already been turned off so they could not see clearly but the smell was familiar and it was strong. For a while, they look at each other for awhile and try to fathom what is actually happening. As if they are telepathing their thoughts, both their eyes go completely wide as they started panicking. Lina quickly switches on the light beside her and in front of them, they are seeing a a small splatter of blood on the floor and a few footprints of it leading to a room.

"Aiden!!!" Both of them shriek hysterically.

                      ✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂

The moon was bright and the gushing of night breeze rushed on his face, giving him chill and tranquil. With his closed eyes, he inhales deeply and exhales slowly while tugging himself tighter in his white coat. The view of the entire city from the rooftop is vivid and picturesque. While enjoying the view and the breeze, he was sitting on an old sofa that he dragged from the hospital store to the rooftop in which he was surprised that no one caught him doing such business. From that moment, he becomes more assured that no one is going to come and trespass his serenity spot, his favourite place and his little escapade- the hospital rooftop.

'Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On a-Jupiter and Mars'

His favourite song, 'Fly Me to The Moon' by Frank Sinatra starts playing from his Iphone's speaker, filling the night ambience with the classical song. He has another 15 minutes before his night shift making rounds at the patients' wards. He closes his eyes for a moment and tried to doze off for a couple of minutes but before he managed to do it, he feels uneasy. The instinct of being watched suddenly creeping up his back.

He quickly opens his eyes and realize that there is a lady standing at the other side of the rooftop, behind a dark shadow as she fidgets with her shaking fingers, hesitating.

It has been 6 months since he was posted to this hospital and ever since, he never caught someone else on the rooftop with him. At that moment of time, all the stories of unhappy souls who passed away in the hospital, gallivanting around the hospital and haunting people, as told by his senior doctors fill his mind. He never believes it but as the lady behind the shadow starts taking her steps towards him, his eyeballs are at the midst of getting out of their sockets.

He starts shaking.

Decision Making | Medicine or Engineering?

Hi earthlings!

so recently, I've received a comment like this.

And in case you've read some of my posts, you would know about my dilemma in choosing whether to do these two fields. Here's something you need to know about my case because your case might differ. I've always wanted to do medicine since I was little but when I reached 16 years old and when I was in Form 4, I realized that Physics and Add maths were interesting and easy for me. On the other hand, I took a longer time to understand what we learnt in SPM Biology and even though I got A+ for that subject in SPM, I'm still doubting myself because I always get A- in other internal examinations. 

In order to make the decision, I listed down all the pros and cons for each field to make it more clearly when discussing with my family. One more thing that you need to know about my case is that I was also considering the two scholarships offered which were PETRONAS and JPA. Both of them were too precious to me, therefore please don't think that the decision that I had to make was easy. In fact, it was the toughest one I've made in my whole life :')


I made a list of pros and cons of both courses so I can see more clearly the pathway that I would be living in for another 5 years ahead, firstly, I made some research on each field. Dig up a deeper information of what mechanical engineers do, their internship, where they'll be working, the positions they have before becoming a senior mechanical engineer, their starting-off salaries. I did the same for medicine as well, graduating with Gred41 after 2 years housemanship, 4 years as MO before deciding whether to further studies for sub-specialization. Medicine field would surely take the longest time in becoming a specialist but after all it would be worth it, right? Simply said, you can't easily have a small picture of what doctors and engineers do like 'doctors have to cut and fix patients' body', 'engineers create and fix machines' only. That kind of knowledge is not even close to enough yet. You need to imagine yourself doing what they're doing for a day. Think of the journey as a student in the years of studies, can you keep up with the subjects? Anatomy and body defense mechanism or applied maths and physics?

You should count these aspects;
1. Duration of studies
2. Your interest in biology & chem subjects (if you want to do medic) and to physics, chem and add maths (if it's engineering)
3. What do doctors and engineers do. Which lifestyle do you want?
4. Assess yourself for what kind of career that suits you. You can take the tests on internet.
5. Last but the most important thing is, your passion. Which career has motivated you since the beginning and that you'd stick with it until the end bcs you know you'll be happy with it?

I'm not sure whether this post would help much but all the best in making your decision friends! Hopefully, you won't be too optimist (read: overestimate yourself) or too paranoid (read: underestimate yourself) when making the decision.

Someday, we should sit down and have coffee once all of this educational dilemma is over.
Signing off, xoxo

Short Story | Part 2: Lonely Weekends

She opens her heavy eyes.

The room is too bright with the lights on and the fan is spinning at maximum speed parallel to her, comfy enough to doze her off for the second time to the dreamland.

"What time is it?" She asks herself while looking at the clock. 11.30 P.M.

She pulls herself up, feeling a bit dizzy only to realize that she had been sleeping on the floor all this while, with her telekung on. While struggling to stand up, she pulls off her telekung and starts folding her prayer mat to the side, clearing the way between the two beds in that small room.

The swimming drill was probably too tiring that she went blackout right after her Ishak prayer but now, she's feeling fresh and ready to do her tasks. Oh wait.. but before that...

Her stomach growls.

This is for 1000th times of regret that she feels like slamming her head on the wall for skipping her breakfast and lunch. Her eating routine is not an exemplary act as a future doctor. 'I'm not hungry', 'I'll get some food at home', 'I'll buy myself dinner', she said but now, she's sitting on her bedside, looking at the clock with a sad face. No restaurants around her hostel area are open past 10 PM and her stomach could not starve any longer.

At times like this, she wonders where her roommate and housemates are. They're probably outside with their usual group of friends, having a proper dinner while chit-chatting until past midnight. They must be laughing and enjoying the company of funny people in the group, feeling of being accepted and celebrated by the crowds. At times like this, she wonders,

is she invisible to them?

She stood up and walks to the kitchen to get some water to freshen her throat. Then, she opens the fridge door, scanning through it before setting her eyes at one part of the compartment. Her dinner. She grabs two raw eggs from the egg shelve, boils them in a water-filled pot using the induction cooker and after a few minutes, the hard-boiled eggs are completely cooked. After several more steps, she had her mashed hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise ready on the dinner table. Voila! There goes her personal recipe that she thought her mom would be proud of. The dinner was done in less than 15 minutes and after doing the dishes, she went to her study table.

'It's okay to be lonely at times', as she starts flipping through her physics lecture notes.

'You don't need friends to know your worth. You can be happy on your own', the voice in her mind continues as she unzipped her stationary case.

'What's the point of spending hours of your time doing something you don't like just so you can fit in
?' This time she already have her pen in between her fingers, spinning around between her index and middle finger. She's thinking.

A polaroid photo of three smiling girls, embracing each other so dearly suddenly attracts her. It was glued on the white wall in front of her desk, placed in between the sticky notes of Le Chatier principle and some basic rules of integration that she wrote a few days ago.

The photo was taken only a month ago, when everything was going exactly the way she wanted. She couldn't remember where they were at that time but she knew that she was feeling happy at that time. She missed that moment although it probably was just a false sense of feeling belonged and accepted.

Sometimes, she hated herself for what happened and for being too demanding, selfish and anxious. She overthinks for every single second she spares in her nights, thinking of any other way she could do to reverse the time she screwed up. The time when she thought she needed a space for herself, also when she thought it was the transition time to find friends of the same momentum and same goals.

She's too kiasu and as much as her friends told her about it being her strength, she knows that it's also her greatest weakness, especially when it comes to friendship.

And now she's at her study table, distracted by the loneliness that's eating her up every weekends while the sound of her spinning table fan occupying the empty room and the chilliness filling her empty heart.

For a moment, her eyes suddenly focus on a shiny razor blade in her pencil case.

Short Story | Part 1: Underwater Thought

The water was warm that night, as usual.

She gasped for breath on the surface of the water as her chest rose up and down vigorously. She held her foggy goggle on her forehead, letting her eyes set with a clearer vision on the dark purplish sky. The cloud was no more to be seen and at the side of the swimming pool, she could only listen to gushing of water as it flowed into the outlet, down the drain before getting reheated and flowed back into the pool. Cloudy, her vision. 

"What a mess," she murmured under her breath as tears rolled down her red cheeks, feeling hot. 

Once again after God knows how many times, she held her goggle back, covering her red puffy eyes while inhaling deeply at the same time. With closed eyes, she plunged herself underwater and started to release bubbles of air slowly bit by bit until her body remain static, not floating back to the surface. She remained underwater, with her eyes now wide open, in a cross-legged sitting position.

All she saw was a clear space around her and as she looked further, the shades become darker until she can't see anything. Clearly, no one else was in the swimming pool with her. For a moment, she enjoyed the solitude when no one can see and control what she do. 

10 seconds passed, and she was still holding her breath tight. Seconds after, her lung felt squeezed and gasping for air but she remained in her position. This time, with her eyes shut.

In her mind, everything that happened above the water, in her life, continued playing like a fast-forwarded video. It kept replaying over and over again and that made her so angry. She hold her fist tight as her forehead puckered, her heart beat faster. 

"Time's up," a voice in her head whispered and in less than a second, she pulled herself to the surface, gasping for oxygen she owed on her lung and muscles. Her heart was still beating fast and her face had turned totally pink and hot. 

The feeling of suffocated, hot and oppressed that she felt at the moment was not something uncommon. They were pretty much similar to her life on land, she thought. Crazy how when you're living a life as a normal human being, doing whatever other people is doing and thinking, but the only difference is that you're feeling drowned but you can see other people breathing so perfectly. 

She scoffed a small laughter. 

"What a mess,"

She pulled herself out of the pool and off to the changing room. A moment later, she already had her clothes and hijab on as she walked back to her hostel.

It's been a while.

Hi, I'm Syahirah Omar and as much as I try to make a cool, jargon-filled opening for this post, I know I failed terribly.

So here's my first post for 2017.

Months have passed super super fast and it's already in the middle of April. Only God knows how my life goes like. Busy? Hectic? or Happy? Excited? God knows.
One thing I know for sure was how much I learnt from whatever that happened.

I have a lot of thing to share about my life, especially the terrible dilemma parts when I was being adorably fickle-minded about my life decision. Yes, I'm a self-proclaimed adorable mess.

Last year, in 2016, after I received my SPM result, and ALSO after I received some scholarship offers in which I had some hard times deciding on which one to take, (not intending to sound ungrateful. Alhamdulillah for the offers, I love all of them but surely I had to make decisions to pick out one of them duhhh) Well, I picked medicine.

On May, I registered myself in a college called Kolej Teknologi Timur to do 2 years of A-levels under JPA-MARA sponsorship. After over a month there, I realized that I wasn't feeling happy about that place since the first time I set my first step there. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY. I mean my friends there are super nice, witty and funny (legit loving them so muchieee), the lecturers are great and they are the ultimate miracle workers. Well, the seniors told us that but even without them telling, I knew it after having classes with them for a month.

So after a few processes with withdrawal forms and the check outs and some payments that needed to be made, I left the college and enrol in other university, Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences. Here, I'm doing my Foundation in Science while being sponsored by JPA bursary. How's my life here? Hmm probably will need new entry for that haha.

I'm about to finish my foundation in June and InsyaAllah I'm planning to pursue my medical degree in other university under JPA scholarship. While it haven't been decided yet, I'm living my current life through semester 4 which will commence in a another 1 week.

Everything has been great. Great. Such a vague one-word description of 'everything' wasn't it? All my ups and downs, mental exhaustion, hectic schedule, unstable emotions and problems with friends and grades? I'd say that those are parts of life. Spices of the curry of life. Because in the end, the spicy, sweet and hotness of the curry will only matters. Therefore, I can really say that everything has been great!

'There's time when I think all these efforts will go vain.
Tired and perhaps all the distractions.
Allah will help me, that whisper goes.'

Signing off. xoxo

A letter to 30-years-old me

Hello future me!

How are you? I hope you are doing fine and in the pink of health. In case you are confused, I am the 17 years old you who still wear a large square-framed glasses with some Hello Kitty stickers on it. I could not stop hoping that you will not be wearing this in the future. Anyway, it feels funny writing to you but realizing that we are having 20 years age gap, I know we are not having a common feel about this. Don’t be scared, okay. This is just me.

I am writing this letter to convey some of my hopes for our lifetime achievements. I was thinking of keeping this matter to myself but I reckoned that it would work out better in a team work. Therefore, I choose you as my partner to accomplish great things in our life and make the sixty years old us proud and happy as she goes down the memory lane. I just could not wait to set the ball rolling!

Gruelling and eye-opening life I have up to this age taught me that we should not be self-centred upon planning our dreams. We ought to share it with our family, friends and the society because they deserve it. I hope you are still holding on to this mentality. With this in mind, I hope we will involve in more voluntary works and charity movements so we could ease the burden laid on the shoulders of the people in need. In the meantime, I hope we will elevate to higher pace by helping needy people in other countries too. We surely could kill two birds with one stone because we are able to travel to many countries in the world. We will learn new languages and cultures besides sharing good times together with less fortunate people.

Apart from that, I hope we grow up living our dreams to be a successful surgeon. Despite having intense competition and narrow opportunities, I hope we will get through it and gain the scholarship to further our medical study. Remember how tiring it was to maintain good grades in every examination? How about the sleepless nights we had just to make sure we could finish our revision on time? And do you remember how many days we have to bear having a dark spot under our eyes? I just hope they will soon be reimbursed with a roll of certificate in our hands. Anyway, if we made it, we should work at the National Heart Institute of Malaysia so we could help to treat people with heart problems. By working there, I consider it as a blessing in disguise because besides meeting a lot of optimistic patients with a strong heart, we are capable of putting smiles on their faces and build up a wall of hope for them. It would be the greatest satisfaction of all time.

As for our social goals, I hope we still befriend Julie and Marzia because they are very fun to hang around with. Julie who is always cheerful and talkative, makes the atmosphere alive with funny jokes and endless laughter. On the other hand, Marzia who seems to be a lot more timid and shy has always been a good listener and the wisest one. The presence of these two people paint colourful rainbow in our life. I hope this friendship would last until we age and become old.

I also hope that we will have a great teamwork with Marzia and Julie in the national water polo team. Although we joined the team a little bit later than them, I hope we could cope faster and be among the best. Therefore, there will be no impossible that our team are going to be the greatest with the will of the intelligent trio. Hence, we should work harder with other teammates in order to be qualified for the international water polo game.

As for our personal achievements, I hope we will work out for a jaw-dropping beautiful body like our favourite idol, Jennifer Lawrence. We should eat healthily and have a balanced lifestyle to accomplish the goal. With that fit body, it is a bonus point for us to make another goal becomes reality which is to set new national record for longest distance sea swimming. I realized that this quest is nearly impossible and not a bed of roses unless we put our effort for an extra miles and enjoy doing it. Our family would be proud if we could make it.

Apart from that, I hope we could develop into a better writer from time to time. We should read more and practice writing as much as we could as writing is like doing art between blank spaces on a piece of paper. The beautiful thing about writing is when we are able to express every hopes and feeling that is bottled up in our hearts, just like how I feel when writing this letter to you.

Dearest future me,

I would end this letter telling you that you are most capable for anything you want in life. You are the king of your soul. Time will run and we would grow old but we should always live up our hopes so we can be proud of our lifetime achievements. I strongly believe that we could get through any obstacle and all we need to do is to take time to embrace every moment in our life. You are probably in your 30s by now and I wonder how much have you discovered in life. Anywhere you are right now, I shall give a piece of tender advice that ‘life is a journey and not a race so enjoy every second of it with your whole heart’.

                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Sincerely,

Syahirah Omar

What social medias are to me?

Facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat are the kind of social medias that I'm always down to. I always feel like they're like an ocean and we are the sea swimmers, floating in the middle of it and the seashore seems very very far away, almost out of sight. When we're lucky, we'll be swimming to the right direction following the high tides while enjoying the sun, the natural view and the chilly splashes. Sometimes, there are high chances that sharks would come and attack us or there is a sudden thunderstorm that makes the wave turns monstrous. We are either survivors or victims in this wide ocean that exist within a single click of 'login' on our 5.7 inches phone's screen.

I'm not sure if you get the message from that analogy but I get it if you don't because I'm the most terrible at making one😂.

Here, we have social medias in which the users are humans (or a computer-generated robots?) with different backgrounds and mentalities, mixed together in one place. No one could actually indicate their purpose of being there at the first place so if we're in control of however we use the social medias, then we'll get good benefits out of it (altho there's a low chance to get to that). But if we're unable to take control or to get prepared with whatever that comes up on the timeline, we're very very closed to get doomed (by mean, got distracted and to the extent of being depressed, if u get what I mean).

It's all about how well you use this social networks.

Twitter can be a great platform to get connected with friends, a perfect place to give opinions about an issue and get feedbacks from other people with the same or varying thinkings and probably the site you'll go to when you have an ample of unproductive time to spent in real life. You'll be exposed on how diverse and unique other people's mentalities are due to different cultures and educational background. Twitter however, has its own fractions of input on which some are educational and inspirational while the other fractions consist of silly arguments over something very very petty, or something very very sensitive and I called it liberal fraction. There's also a large fraction of zero purpose inputs, where teenagers share relatable funny jokes and judging others' ignorant actions. I personally think that twitter is detrimental when it comes to corrupting minds about one-sided and false informations apart of taking much of my time.

Instagram is the perfect place for a visually stimulated person as there are a lot of pictures and short videos to watch. We'll get up-to-date with what our friends, families or our favourite celebrities are up to besides able to keep up with the latest fashion updates. I think instagram is great but not when it instills a mainstream idea of living life and having a certain beauty standards, creating a narcissistic nation or a group of people with inferiority complex. This problem is not significant but trust me, it exists and everyone needs to constantly reminding themselves that they're worth it and beautiful in their own way.

I'm not sure why I used snapchat at the first place haha but it's fun to have some weird filters especially the flower crown on your face or head. Snapchat is more casual and outgoing and I get to see LIVE what my friends or my favourite celebrities are doing. it's only time-consuming if you follow many people so there'll be more stories to watch.

This time around, I am going to see how much my life would change without access to social medias. The result wouldnt' be much surprising because I've experienced living without them when I was in MOZAC(boarding school where phones and wifi are restricted).

I'll be signing out my twitter, instagram and snapchat account within these few weeks, hoping that I find something else more interesting and productive to do (e.g reading or writing short stories hmm🤔).

They say, 'you'll notice more about what's there in life when you raise your head from your phone and start seeing the world'.

We'll see about that. Till then !