Long Overdue

It has been more than two months since my last posting. Much have happened since. Ram and I have been spending time away from home more than being at home and mostly in the east coast of the peninsular. I have alot of commitments to attend to, mostly facilitating the technical training of new employees and the training scheme is for one year. So, it looks like Ram and I will be commuting to the east coast more often now and for about one year. This may be extended if there ius an extension of the scheme beyond the initial one year plan. Ah well, it keeps us occupied though.

This commitment takes us away from the regular activities we were used to, like attending to the community services near our home, attending to the activities and classes at our favourite charitable foundation, attending to the Retirees Fraternity for which I am the secretary and others. We manage time, however, to visit mum in the south and to attend to weddings and major family gatherings. This is essential and is one way of maintaining and preserving family and social contacts and camaraderie.

My brother's mother-in-law, staying with him and family in Melaka, passed away while we were in the east coast. She was 80 years old and had been quite sickly at the time. We could not attend her funeral, but we had the opportunity of meeting her a few months ago. She was very frail and had then asked us to offer special prayers for her. Now that she is already gone then only we realised that she was indeed asking us to pray for her. We made an effort to visit my brother and family as soon as we could get away from the east coast.

We also held a simple gathering of nephews and nieces, Ram's sdie, in our house recently, to offer special 'thanksgiving' for various happenings amongst family members and to seek the Almighty's blessings for our well being. There was a good turnout of Ram's family members including her two sisters who came up from JB to be with us for the occassion. A birthday of one of Ram's grand-nieces was also celebrated that night, complete with cake-cutting. There was alot of family banter and I think everyone had fun. Too bad Shaffik and Sita could not join us for the occassion, being too far away.

My family grouping, TCC, held a meeting recently to plan activities for the upcoming annual gathering of family members. Although I am the Chairman, my schedule was too tight that I could not attend. It is quite a distance to travel from the east coast to the south and it is a one day travel one way!! Instead of postponing the meet everyone agreed that the meeting should go on without me and another senior family member took the chair for that meeting. Praised be to the Almighty that the meeting went well and that specific action plans were set in place and in motion.

I hope I can still find time to post here as regularly as possible. I will try ... I will try.... with the blessing of the Almighty....

MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Petaling Jaya