Jueya, my friend.

Forewarning: This is going to need concentration reading because so far, this is my longest post and somewhat emotional.  Only read it when you are physically and mentally ready.

Last week, Wednesday, I had dinner with Jueya.
Who's Jueya? well, we went to the same secondary school. We had a few 'kyoutsuuten'
that made her one of those persons I still remember strongly after
(believe it or not, sigh*) almost 13 years having left secondary school.
#1: we were both from Terengganu
- although she was from Kuala and I was from Hulu, we spoke the same dialect. We boarded the same night bus back to Terengganu every semester break.
We even attended the same computer class after SPM.
#2: We were in the same English set since form 3.
- We made fun of the same teachers. Miss Choy with her clock tower story and her bulging eyes and strained neck whenever she tried to explain something to us.
Miss Choy was always upset when none of her students wanted to be an English Teacher .
Well, we were very ambitious young ladies then, right Jueya?
I myself wanted to be at least, a cabinet minister then.
Hahahaha.. now, no more politics for moi.
I am trying to live in denial of whatever it is that I (politically) disapprove . I don't want to be angry no more.And of course, Puan Ashidah. How could we ever forget her.
Well, Jueya and I weren't really her favourite, I think. But at least Jueya got better treatment. Puan Ashidah remembered her name! Where as for me, Puan Ashidah only remembered me as 'mm.. the one with 'r' or 's''? ' Well, my deskmate was another girl that went by the name almost similar to mine except for the difference in the 3rd letter in our names. Hers was 'r' and mine is 's'. And to think that she taught us for 2 years in a row. Tsk..Actually, I admired Jueya 's talent when it comes to creative writing. She was full of ideas and imaginations.I still remember one of her 1119 essays.
She wrote about the Titanic.
I forgot the details but it was about the love between husband and wife. I liked it.
And I think she had more emotions than I did. By the way, just for fun, I am going to list
Puan Ashidah's favourites here. They are: ( in no particular order)
Haireen, Fern, Liza Fisal, Linda Noordin, Suri.. and a few more.. but never me, not even once.
#3: Our third language subject was Japanese:
I was very lazy when it comes to Shukudai. And I think Jueya was not very keen either.
But I like the fact that we actually had actual Japanese for senseis.
We got to learn all those Japanese songs, ate Japanese food. We had our own T-shirts.
T'was fun. Once, when we were in form four, the sensei deducted 20 marks from my exam result because I didn't send in shukudais on time ( and sometimes never even send any..)
# 4:We were classmates in upper secondary.
- We were both in the pure science class : form 4C and 5C
( C , not because we were stupid, Ok! C was for College)
For I don't know what reason, Jueya had the most front seat when we were in form 5.
I can still picture her mountain high textbooks and references on her desk, almost covering herself from the teacher's view.
Our upper secondary teachers were also one of their kind.
Encik Ahmad: Taught us Maths only for a few months in form 4, then he surrendered? Hehehe..
Mr Tan Jhi Seng: Very funny add maths teacher. But half of the class had to re-sit for the year end paper . And I think Jueya was one of them ,together with yours truly.
Puan Romas: Also a math teacher, made us stand on our chairs for not doing our homework . Sometimes she powdered our face with blackboard eraser when we were very naughty. But that was more than a decade ago. Puan Romas never got sacked because we knew we were wrong. Why should involve parents in this matter?
Mr Lim Kim Oh: Actually, he's one of my favourite add maths teacher. Very strict!He was our school's discipline teacher. I still remember his favourite motivational line: ' do u want to wave to your friend, on the tarmac or from the tarmac?' Something like, do u want to wave to your friend bye because that person is going somewhere far because they succeeded in their studies and get to board the airplane but u just get to go to the airport and wave from the ground, or.. do u want to be on that plane instead, waving to ur friends on the ground.?
Another favourite line is.. ( while staring right into our eyes, and his face was just like 10 cm away from our face) : "are you with us?". Thanks to him, the whole 5C passed add maths! with quite a number of distinctions.
Mr Nathan : Oh, who could ever forget the late Mr Nathan. Our beloved physics teacher. It still hurts me to think that I never got the chance to see him and thank him after I left school. To him, we girls were all 'hopeless la..'. Well, the average marks for our physics paper was around 45 ..
Encik Zainal: I still blame the school for assigning Encik Zainal as our BM teacher in 5C. Encik Zainal was ok.. but not for an exam class. please.. He was not the type that we would be scared and rush to do his homework. He was fun because he talked a lot, and he rarely gave homework. And even if he did, I rarely finished them. Ok, partly my fault la.. I didn't get an A1 for my BM. But if he was as garang as Mr Lim, I could have done better!( go on naa.. blame other people for your failures.. .. hehe..). And if Jueya ever read this, I am sure she could still recall the images of the stories.
The list is still quite long. I think I will write a different post dedicated to these teachers, later.

Jueya and I weren't really the goody two shoes type ( or were we? nah.. no.) We talked a lot, we made noises, disturbing other people who were busy studying. Together with other samsengs from 5C , we once organized a 'gusti rambut' ( hair wrestling- I'll try to write about this later ) and Miss Vicky  the discipline teacher shouted our names from across the block, begging us to shut up. We were that loud, She didn't have to come and see who were the culprits. She recognized our voices.

But the memory sharing stopped because we took different paths in life.

We went to different universities. Took different courses. Now we have different jobs at two different places. The 13- year- gap is huge I think. I have changed. Jueya has too.

I am now married with one daughter. Jueya is still free to go anywhere she wants, do whatever her heart tells. Though I never asked, I think I am only getting paid less than half of what she gets monthly. Well, me working for the government, and she, a consultant for a private company. She spends more than my basic salary a month.
We live two totally different lifestyles.

To me, she looked  and sounded very ambitious, with lots of thing to do in life.
And me, myself? Mmm.. I think I am not as driven as I used to be. I remember when I was , 'younger' ( if you consider 30 is old), 
I believed that I could do anything that I wanted to do, 
provided I work hard enough for it. 
'Yareba dekiru' or the famous malay equivalent: Yakin Boleh. 
I have proven it right through various stages of life. 
The sweetest was when I was the first malay who passed the Japanese board of dental practitioner license exam ( shikaishikokkashiken). After several seniors failed , after being mocked by those damn prejudists and racists saying that malays are stupid and can never achieve anything, After being emotionally disturbed by questions from japanese friends who were fed stupid racist infos from non-malay , after being insulted by one of the dental school teacher saying that we all malays must never sit for the kokkashiken because we will fail anyway and that would bring the university's ranking down.
After all those nasty remarks, I proved them all wrong!
At first I didn't want to sit for the exam because the license was only valid in Japan. Furthermore, we had to pay to sit for the exam. But I was so sick and tired listening to those people, I decided to take it. And I thank God for giving me the strength to fight. To prove that, victories (or losses) do not belong to only one race.
They belong to those who deserve.

Time has passed. I have changed.

I have decided to be the best mother to my daughter and the best partner to my husband.
This is my choice. I chose to obey the rules of Islam. I am not a preacher but I also don't want to be someone who talks a lot about Islam but at the same time refuses to follow the doctrine.
It is not that I am 100% contented with life, I just want to live my life happily with my family and friends. I had the choice of between continuing my studies to the higher level and be a successful career woman but will have to sacrifice my time with my family ,or, have a decent job but I get to be with my family all the time.

I chose to be with my family. I have calculated  and gave a lot of thoughts,
I could never have both. 
 No matter how positive I wanted to think of the outcomes, 
I know my limitations.
I don't want to be the sore old woman who regretted not spending more time with her children when they were young.

I hope this change will not intimidate any of those who knew me before.
Just because I have decided to wear tudung, doesn't mean I am going to strap myself with bombs and be a martyr. Just because I don't do karaoke anymore doesn't mean I don't like music anymore. Oh, I still do sing, dear friends.. I just don't do it in public anymore.

I don't really know how far the 13 years had widen our gap, but what I really know is, to me, Jueya is still the same bubbly girl whom I spent 5 of my most precious years in life together.

And I also want her ( and all of my long lost friends, wherever u are) to know, we may have different views in life,  but that doesn't stop me from being your friend. 
 Lets  respect all the differences but that doesn't mean that we
 must agree with each other all the time.

I love all of my friends and I cherish all the time I have spent with
them. They have became part of my history. I have never erased or deleted the cookies and files of my friendships throughout my life.  And I never will. 

I hope you won't erase me too.