5 minutes and never a title

Safiyya.

Safiyya is now 4 months old. Her weight by now have gone up to around 7 kg.

Not that any of those numbers matter to me, since it hardly mean anything when you got nothing to compare it against with. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the figure is somewhere near that dotted line in that monthly medical check up chart of her's - guess that's good enough for me.

People have been telling me that she's quite big and heavy for her age. But again - as long as the numbers are within those dotted lines in that chart - that's normal enough for me.

While I love to go on and on and just write about Safiyya, I guess that wouldn't fairly reflect the life that I'm living on right now. It probably won't matter to me now - but I guess when I'm old and forgetful (and would probably wet my pants every now and then) - I'd also want to know what else was going on with my life back then (the time when I'm not pissing in my pants) at this very moment. And while I would love to say that it was all about caring and loving and giving that huge, long kiss on her cheek everyday morning and night (and repeating that on the next day) - I could not.

I do other things as well. Yes Hafidz, you do other things as well in case you've forgotten about it.

You go to work. You have a wife. You have that brother up in Purdue who's still in some weird dilemma on how to lead his life. You have your parents who've just got back safely from Amman, Jordan. And your big sister is about to give birth to a baby girl next month insyallah. And that baby's name is probably going to be Aleesha Qaira (thanks mom for "accidentally" slipping the name out).

Work is ... well it's getting dull I guess. But one would probably expect this sort of things when one have been with a company for quite sometime. After awhile it gets kinda repetitive. And unchallenging. I guess what I'm trying to say is I need something to challenge myself with. Might be a new job scope. A new responsibility. A new side-project. Or maybe, a new job. For now though - I'm just working on my Oracle SQL certificate. Has been quite awhile since I did one of this things. I kind of missed it (the studying part) as well I guess (the last one was CCNA). These journey-to-get-that-certificate really kinda motivates you in wanting to study those things which you know would benefit your career but sometimes are just simply lazy to do. And after that -well probably another Oracle cert as well. DBA? PL/SQL? Haven't really given much thought about that yet. Baby steps...

I like studying I suppose. My brother loves it too. He likes it so much that he's probably gonna end up doing a PhD after he finishes his studies next year. Personally I'm kinda hoping that he does it oversea since their universities have that conducive learning environment that is so scarce (IMO) in Malaysia. Not that I have an insider's view or anything - it's just my general perception of how things are in Malaysia. I might be wrong.

Myself? Though I don't see myself pursuing a PhD in the near vicinity - I wouldn't scratch that possibility just yet. I might do it - though not yet. I prefer to do it when I have achieved financial stability for my family. I prefer to do it when I'm doing it for the sake of learning and the better understanding of things I love to know more about - like stuff on telecommunication for instance. Hurmmmm..now that I think about it - nahh. Haha. I'd rather appreciate the knowledge that people already has discovered and make/innovate something useful/fun using them rather than discovering new frontiers. Guess I'll just leave that discovering part to my brother. :)

But yeah - people should love studying. I'm not sure how things will fare in the future - but I have a gut feeling that people (or rather our kids' generation) will eventually define the process of studying/research as "the ability to write a successful google query on based the given question at hand". While I have to admit, googling have saved me a lot of valuable time getting me that useful bit of information - it still does not equate to a proper, methodological process of knowledge derivation (in which I might add would also give you more substance to your understanding).

The process of learning is actually quite simple. You always start at the beginning. And you would end at the very end. If you do somehow find something from the middle pages (like googling) - chances are you won't know what to make of it anyhow. After a few clicks and hours of confusion - you realize that you might as well just pick that book off of Amazon and have a go through the whole thing.

From my experience, I find that everyone that I've met along is not, in any way; stupid. Some people just learn faster than others, while some are slower. So far I haven't had any chance of meeting any geniuses along the way - but I guess those people are few and far between.

So that just leaves us average folks who has to learn/study the way normal way. The hard way. Sometimes I hear people arguing - "owh, but you don't have to learn it that way - learn the smart way instead". Bulls. It is correct I guess up to certain extent - but it only can apply to a select few. Try preaching that "study smart" idea to the class at the end of the hallway where their teachers can only dream of having their students ace-ing their papers. They (the students) don't learn the smart way because they choose not to - it's because they can't. Repetition method would probably work best with those bunch. But don't make the mistake of labelling them stupid or anything. To me, it's just a simple fact that they don't learn things they way most people do. Well actually most people I think don't even learn the smart way - they still do the it the hard way - but think that it's the smart way. Go figure.

Sometimes I feel really disappointed with our exam-oriented education system. How people who aces the UPSRs, the PMRs, the SPMs - would be perceived as smart and intelligent and be given all the help they can get to pursue their dreams on achieving greater heights. Is it even actually fair to do that? To make that judgement call - to say that so and so is a smart person whilst so and so is not; when the latter student probably had not been given the learning environment that would give him a better chance or an equal footing with his/her peers in acquiring knowledge?

What am I talking about?

I am talking about the different methods of teaching and knowledge acquisition by people. You see, people are different - when it comes to how they acquire knowledge. Some learn best by listening, some learn best by viewing, some uses repetitions and others - well they have their own methods. My point is - there is not a one sure-fire method that would ensure that knowledge be acquired in it's "wholesomeness" (for lack of a better word). Different people rely on different method.

So it's quite astounding that some schools (if not most/all) are using the same method to teach kids around the nation and somehow expect them all to ace the papers. I guess it's OK if children here in Malaysia are cloned from a single copy and would all probably share the same learning method - but that's just fantasy. As a result, some would eventually be penalized due to their "different" way of picking things up. Hence - perceived as a failure.

Parents and teachers. IMO, those two should play a crucial role in identifying how their student/children would learn best. If you wanna wait for the kid to actually tell you how they learn best - it's probably gonna be too late by then.

In my ideal dreamlike world - a series of tests and interviews should be run prior to the your kid submission into a school, so that they could identify the most optimal method of teaching. And even the school is not your typical everyday school that you see nowadays. The school would function like our modern day colleges - they don't have to learn everything under the sun - just a few. They pick the subjects that they want to learn about - where their interest and strength lies in. There's no point in sending your kids to learn heavy maths if the only thing that he/she could see when they look at the books are numbers and alphabets going upside down and sideways (that's a known disease btw). Let them learn art or craftsmanship instead (or maybe even bakery).

Let them enjoy learning instead of them having to feel sorry for themselves. Empower them. Encourage them. Support them.

Personally, I don't think people are stupid. They've just been taught the wrong way.