So, the other day I had dinner with C at Ben's in KLCC ... It was my idea to have a meal at Ben's because some time ago I had a meal there with the friend who I visited up North ... The food wasn't too bad, as I recall, and it was also recommended by C, so I figured, oh well, C paid for my drink at the coffee shop the other day, so why don't I treat him to a nice meal ... By the way, there is no comparison between a drink and a good meal between friends ...
C ordered Hainanese Chicken Rice ... If I had wanted Chicken Rice, I would have gone to the Chicken Rice Shop, which is cheaper and tastes just the same ... But, of course I did not say this out loud ... Do you always agree with the things your friends say or do, much less the things they like or don't like? ... I ordered a Ben's recommended meal - spaghettini with spicy soft-shell crab, or something like that ... I'm not much of a fan of cream sauce when it comes to pasta, but I thought I'd give it a go ... Then C wanted the house salad, so we ordered that as well ...
Of course the salad came before the main meal, so while we were having that, we played what I suppose you would call a dinner party game ... The restaurant had a stack of cards at each table and on each card is an open-ended question, ranging from really silly ones like "If you had to face off a ferocious animal with a weapon, which one would you choose and why: A lion with a sword or two bears with a gun that has two bullets?" to really good ones like "In a game of chess, who would win - Magneto or Prof X?", to which I answered Ian McKellen without giving the reason why ... Then C and I started talking about Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, both of whom I found out from C are apparently the best of friends ... Well, I didn't know that ...
C and I really had a good time laughing each other's ass off ... At one point, we started laughing for no reason ... I think it had something to do with the question at play, but I cannot recall what that question was ... All I can recall was the fact that we laughed ourselves silly ... I kept saying to C at the time "What's happening here? We're not even drunk", or something like that ...
The point is, I cannot remember the last time I had such a good time having dinner with a friend ... and might I add, a male friend ... I think the last time I had a nice meal with a guy who was interesting was most probably with my ex-boyfriend, who I broke up with in 2003 ... Yes, more than 10 years ago, you are allowed to be shocked ... I don't consider meals with male professors, colleagues or acquaintances as dinner with friends because they weren't really my friends, just people I happened to be involved with because I worked with them or studied under them or know them at some stupid event or something like that ...
Yes, my social life sucks, but I'm not here to talk about how pathetic that section of my life is ... I'm here to talk about the topic of this post - Love, Friendship, Jodoh & Pertemuan ...
What is Love actually? Of course, as everyone would know, there are many types of Love ... I have yet to know what Love at First Sight is ... It wasn't Love at First Sight for me with my ex ... More like Like at First Talk ... We shared a lot of things we both enjoy - books, music, poetry, philosophy, science, a perverted sense of humour ... Well, maybe not music 'coz our tastes in music differed somewhat ... And most of all, my ex and I loved the movies ... We'd go watch a movie almost every week, if not at the cinema, almost always at his place ... It was a comfortable kind of relationship and we hardly fought ... Ours was not the full-on drama with the throwing of precious paraphernalia at each other over the minutest of disagreements ... But, deep down, I just knew by gut that I wasn't ready to be involved with him for the long-haul ... Put it down to the fact that I felt we were both still immature to handle relationships, despite the fact that we were in our 20s at the time ... For me at least, I just felt that he wasn't The One ....
However, I had grown to love him as a friend, and up until today, this is the one thing I regretted losing ... I lost my best friend because I didn't know how to handle our relationship at the time ... I just simply did not have the insight at the time to look where we would be heading ... All I cared about at the time was the fact that everyone I knew had a boyfriend, and there I was, already in my 20s, about to graduate from college, and still no boyfriend ... I don't want to say that my ex and I became a couple out of desperation on my part, but looking back, maybe it was ...
Maybe Love can come out of Friendship, but where my ex and I were concerned, it was Love as Friends ...
But then again, had I been a Muslim with undivided faith back then, I would have prayed to God with a special kind of prayer, seeking some sort of affirmation whether my ex was really The One ... There is no point crying over spilt milk, but I wonder now what if ... However, having said that, I remember clearly that my ex was not a person of faith, despite the fact that come Ramadhan, he would fast and that every third Friday, he would go for Friday prayers ... Muslim men are required to go for Friday prayers every single Friday ... If one misses three Friday prayers in a row, he will become an apostate ... Five years ago, this matter about apostasy would not have mattered to me at all, but now it matters to me a lot ... So, maybe breaking up with him was some sort of Divine intervention ....
And that was it for me ... That was the only meaningful relationship I had with a man .... There were, of course, other men I met along the way, but nothing came off of it ... There was P, for example, an Aussie who lives in Newscastle ... I haven't actually met P in person ... I got to know him while working at a call centre for this American ATM company where I was a service coordinator and he was a field engineer ... Funny thing was, only very recently, I started to have really hot and heavy thoughts about him, so much so that I sent an email to him ... Of course, it went unreplied ... I don't understand why I'm still hankering after things that will never ever happen, which is why it is very important for me as a Muslim to turn to God for guidance ...
I guess some things you just never learn, despite all that wisdom and faith ... Like when I went after that American writer who turns out to be gay, when I already suspected that he was ...
Incidents involving men are few and far in between for me, especially these days, when I'm just too caught up with stupid work ... Not too say that I have stopped thinking about men ... Or the one who got away ...
In the summer of 1997, I went on a backpacking trip through Europe with a bunch of my college mates ... We stopped in Paris first, then Milan, Rome, Venice, Nice and Madrid, before I made it all the way back to Bognor Regis in good ol' England on my own, while some of them continued with the trip ... I just LOVE Venice ... I don't know what is it about Venice that is just captivating ... I think we even passed by the place where Lord Byron lived when we were on the boat ride, though I couldn't be too sure as the plaque was too small from where we were to read ... Anyway, I'm not here to talk about Venice, I'm here to talk about Nice and the guy I met there that changed my whole perspective at how I looked at men ... In fact, it could have very well been Love at First Sight ...
We arrived in Nice some time in the afternoon I think ... We had a meal at a restaurant that served Indonesian cuisine, if I'm not mistaken ... I remember one of us had to purge herself after almost swallowing what she suspected was pork ... That was the highlight of the day, I think, for them at least ... For me, it was the chance meeting with a stranger at the railway station on that fateful night ... Ah yes, Nice + Railway Station + Night + Handsome Stranger = Romance, oui,oui ... We were all seated apart from each other ... Some chose the floor, others chose the bench circling one of the station's pillars ... I sat at one side of the bench facing a photo booth, quite away from the others ...
There I was, busy writing in my journal when a strange sound like something being dragged across the floor came to my attention ... A guy who could have been 18 or 35 was pushing his heavy backpack across the floor towards the photo booth ... I was just looking at him without paying too much attention to any part of him ... He could have been an American, a European or an Australian for all I know ... I recall his hair was blonde, because he was busy combing it while looking at the photo booth's mirror ... So, I was looking at the guy combing his hair, when our eyes met in the mirror ... He was looking at me, actually, and the look he gave me melted me on the spot ...
*Sighs* Yes, I know, the worst kind of cliched chance meetings ... But, the look in his eyes, those gorgeous eyes of his, literally took my breath away ... I was slowly being gripped by a panic attack - my palms started to sweat and my heart rate shot straight out of the roof ... If it weren't for the fact that I remembered to inhale and exhale, I could have fainted on the spot and that would certainly have been the most classic of cliches there were about romance ... But, my hands were trembling as I wrote what was to become the stupidest note in my non-professional career as a writer ... I wrote how he had affected me so, I wrote that I wished he would stay away from me ... And then, with trembling hands, I handed him the note ... He stayed away, and my heart caved in ever since ...
To this day, I carry the regret that was the abominable note, along with the regret that I lost my best friend in 2003 ...
Seriously, it took me years to put behind the chance encounter with the handsome stranger in Nice ... There was one point in my life, one of the lowest points, in fact, when I came down with this long bout of depression in Japan ... I think this was around some time in early 2004 ... I started to daydream about the man I met in Nice, yearning and wishing to undo what I did ... But Wisdom and Faith teaches me now that the longer I yearn for something that could have happened but did not happen, the more I was going to break myself into crazy, which literally happened, of course, but for reasons altogether different ...
When it came to my new friend and colleague C, I'm not hankering after him because I know he is not interested in my type ... There is no sexual tension whatsoever ... I can truly be my plain messy self without having to talk in a certain way or act in a certain manner when I'm around him ... In other words, I could just truly be my whole self when I'm with C ...
All this talk about men and friends and chance encounters brings me to the whole point of this post, Jodoh & Pertemuan ... Pertemuan literally means a meeting, while Jodoh is a little bit hard to explain ... According to the Kamus Dwibahasa Oxford Fajar Bahasa Inggeris - Bahasa Malaysia; Bahasa Malaysia - Bahasa Inggeris (Literal translation: Oxford Fajar Bilingual Dictionary English - BM; BM - English), it means marriage partner ... But, put in context, it most closely means potential partner, or you could even say soulmate ...
Somebody told me a long time ago, or maybe I read it somewhere, can't exactly remember, that there are four instances where our potential soulmate is concerned ... The first one is the most common one ... Simply, the people we meet everyday ... That guy you're kind of interested in at work ... The sweet but a little weird girl serving coffee at the store around the corner ... The rugged-looking CEO you meet at a business conference ... That backpacker you meet at the railway station ... All these people are our potential partners ... What makes any of them The One is simply ... an act of God ... Yes, it is already written by God who will be our partner in this life and the next ... You don't believe in this, that is fine, but I believe in it wholeheartedly ... Yes, cynical little me ...
Because I'm going to explain about the second instance, and this is where Jodoh comes into play ... We meet that person, and with the power of chemistry, or to me something by Divine intervention, find each other attractive on a certain level ... It could be something totally physical, it could be purely cerebral, it could be both and whole lot more ... I guess where my ex and I were concerned, we were mutually attracted to each other's intellect, and as any Muslim would describe it, we both had Jodoh ... Yes, my ex could have been The One, because we met and were attracted to each other in some way ...
Person A and person B may meet and are not attracted to each other simply means that they do not have Jodoh ... But they become friends and somehow along the way, an attraction develops, which could turn into love ... What kind of love that is, is really beside the point ... The point is, now they have Jodoh ...
A and B get married, have kids, build a home .... And then, maybe one fine day, A wakes up and finds that although he/she still loves B, he/she may no longer feel attracted to B anymore, again I would say by Divine intervention ... The relationship becomes an awkward one, and before you know it, A asks for a divorce ... As a Muslim, I would say that A's Jodoh with B has run out ...
Islam looks down on divorce, but I cannot explain any further than this because my own knowledge of Islam is limited .... However, I would like to have a little side on the topic of polygamy ... According to the footnote to the translation of ayat 28-29, Surah Al-Ahzab (The Confederates):
The wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him) possess a very high status and hold a very big responsibility compared to the other Muslim women. Thus, Allah the Almighty commands His Prophet (pbuh) to give his wives two choices: One, if they seek this life, which is not suitable for the Prophet nor is it suitable for someone who is the wife of the Prophet, they will be given a provision and released honourably. Two, if they are prepared to live moderately, follow the way of Allah and His Prophet and seek the riches and blessed life of the Hereafter, then they will get an incomparably magnificent reward.In most modern Western societies, polygamy is not only looked down, it is constitutionally illegal ... In Islam, it is allowed so long as the husband can be fair and just to the four wives ... Let's be honest here, can any man be fair and just to all his wives? If a man loves one wife more than he loves the others, he is not fair ... If a man gives more property to one wife compared to the others, he has become unjust ... One cannot compare the common man to the Messenger of God as he is a special person chosen by God to be His Messenger, therefore he has qualities that the common man lacks ...
Now, we move on to the third instance on Jodoh and Pertemuan ... The people we do not meet and do not have Jodoh with, who are basically 99.99% of the world's population ...
The fourth instance is the most interesting one, the one that I have wondered since this Jodoh & Pertemuan aspect was brought to my attention that long time ago ... The fourth instance is the people we don't meet but have Jodoh with ... How is that possible, right? ... I've been wondering about it for the longest time, and then it just hit me very recently when I keep mentioning about this Hollywood actor that I have a crush on in my other blog ... That's right, the person you don't meet but have Jodoh with is simply the person you don't meet but are attracted to on some level ... Like P ... I haven't met P, but I got to know him online and found myself attracted to him ... Of course, I only realized I actually liked him a lot after I turned him down (There I go again, another regret) ... The point is, now I know what the fourth instance is all about ...
As for me and the Hollywood actor ... Well, as I mentioned above, I will not deny Divine intervention ... If God wills it so, it will happen and vice versa ... But, I have a side to me that will always remain pessimistic, cynical and a tad too realistic ... I mean, come on, get real ... I'm just another fan in the crowd ... How could a Hollywood prince fall in love with a common fan girl? Well, of course this has happened in real life, but William and Kate and other royal couples like them is just a real life fairy tale to me ... To be fair, I have actually sent a message to that Hollywood actor via his Facebook page, asking him to read something funny I wrote about him on my other blog ... I did not ask him to write back to me, considering the very fact that six million other fans, most of whom are just like me who have insane stupid crushes over him, would have written the same thing to him ... I'm happy enough with the thought that he may actually have read the funny thing I wrote about him and find it amusing ... That alone gives me pleasure and joy, that the things I write about can make others happy, even when they are halfway across the world ...
I am also consoled over the fact that in the Qur'an, specifically Surah Yasin, ayat 36, it states that:
"Limitless in His Glory is He Who has created in pairs all things that the earth produces, as well as men's ownselves, and other things of which they have no knowledge"I know with certainty that God has created my pair, my soulmate ... He is out there somewhere, it's just now is not the time ... I may meet him when I'm 69, I may never even meet him in this life but the next ... But, for sure, he and I will be reunited, and that is, well, Fate, Destiny, Kismet, call it what you like ... To me, the person who is my soulmate was chosen for me by God prior to Existence .... That knowledge gives me comfort, because like I said, God knows more about me than I myself, therefore it should only be common sense that the person He chooses for me will be just perfect for me ... Not a perfect person, mind you, because nobody is perfect, but simply The One ...
Lastly, I would just to remind anyone who reads this particular entry that they should digest everything I've written here with a pinch of salt ... I am not a learned Muslim scholar and I can only dream to attain the level of Islamic knowledge such as that possessed by Imam Suhaib Webb, who is the current imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, for example ... I recently went to hear one of his sermons at a mosque nearby .... Just read the Wikipedia entry on Imam Webb ... Did not imagine at all that he used to be a hip hop DJ ...
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