Three reasons to be proud

Whenever there comes a need for me to reflect on my achievements in life thus far, I always fall back on the fact that I have three smart and responsible sons. I may not have hit my ambition of making my first million by forty. I am not yet a big tauke and I still have large credit card debts to settle. But despite all the problems and struggles, I can still look at my three sons and say that I have at least done that part of it right, the raising of them I mean.

My first and second sons did very well in their studies and are now pursuing tertiary education overseas. Both are taking up medicine.

Yesterday, my third and youngest son Imran Azizi showed that he is as clever as his elder brothers by scoring in the PMR exams. My hope is for him to continue to study well and proceed to the highest level. He has indicated that he is not interested in becoming a doctor but that's okay by me. He can be anything he wants to be as long as he puts his skills and knowledge to good use.

When my son was taking the exams a few months ago, I decided to be the one to drive him to school everyday. This was after hearing advice from a close friend who said that being there for my son would be the best support that a father can ever give. By coincidence, two situations abled or perhaps forced me to carry out the task. Firstly, I was without a steady job at the time and secondly, my wife was still recovering from ailment which caused her to be hospitalised the week before. So like it or not, it was something that I had to do... and I wanted to, anyway. So everyday on exam day for almost 2 weeks, I drove my son to school, dropped him off at the gate, got out of the car, say a short silent prayer before hugging him and wishing him luck. He may not have required it but there's nothing to lose and it feels good doing so.

There was even one day where there was another exam paper in the afternoon which meant he couldn't come home for lunch. On that day, my wife and I bought him his favourite nasi ambeng, brought it to school where we had lunch together. I enjoyed doing that and hope I can do it again some time in future. Pretty soon he'll be all grown-up and there's no more child of school-going age left in the house.


I am sort of going through a rough patch on the workfront since a few months ago but the good results from my son yesterday really brightened up my day... so I hope readers can pardon me for this post of self-gratification. I am pretty confident things will become better for us in the coming days. Thanks also to my better half for helping raise three lovely boys. Most of the credit should go to her...