The Sanctuary TALES | Close Encounter in Teganung Kite'.....

Hamzah and myself, we were paddling our canoe around Terusan Pulau Besar yesterday at dusk. Pulau Besar gained its notoriety some 30 years back in the 80's when the post Vietnam war Vietnamese refugees first landed in Teganung in huge numbers. The then Minister of Defence, Dr M wanted them shot at sea. The numbers swell to the point finally all of them were transferred to an off shore island, Pulau Bidong.

Terusan Pulau Besar enveloped Pulau Besar between the raging South China Seasea, separated by a thin strip of sand, and the muara of Sungei Merang. It's water is murky and dark, typical of all mangrove swamp within the Setiu basin.

Both of us know that there were incidental sightings of juvenile crocodiles, three to four feet in lenght,, basking in the noon sun ,on the bank of the  abandoned almost completed massive club house and twenty or so abandoned exclusive bungalows near The Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary happened to be a small piece of heaven on earth, on that thin strip of sand,[ opposite Redang Island ],sandwiched between the raging South China Sea  in February, and a small 'alor' called Sungai Telaga Papan, and shortly joining into the dark calm water of the Terusan Pulau Besar, at  Pantai Telaga Papan, Merang, Teganung Darul Runtuh.

[ why Darul runtuh?......Everything in Teganung are in a state of possible 'runtuh', from the stadium, the masjid and even the yet to be opened Lebuhraya Pantai Timur. I do not foresee any possible drastic  change in this state of affair until we send one or two present or past numero uno of Malaysia behind bars! Only then will there be a change of our paradigm of governance and accountability,  hopefully percolating from the top down. But of course this is another matter worth writing a post doctoral thesis on. But who is going to write and act on this. Our professors in the universities are at present 'kangkong' professors!. Our AG and IGP, nothing to shout about! Both extreme example of mediocrity.....this is a digression, of course, an important one for me at least, otherwise I end up shooting some blokes somewhere. ]

Three weeks earlier while passing a group of fisherman manning and repairing their boats on the river bank, I jokingly asked whether 'there is anything big' in the water. One of them shouted back, in local Teganung/Kelantan linggo:

'kalu demo rasa gedeguk, tu jolo lah!'. [ if you feel something bumping your canoe from underneath, that is it! ]

Hamzah and myself, we took that as a joke and carried on, but not for long. After about half a kilometre around the terusan, we turned back. The water looked too murky and still, to our liking.

This time on I told Hamzah we were going full scale around the island and explore further. We planned to go round the island and head back to al Qalwa in a round about fashion. But when we reached the deepest segment of the terusan, furthest away from our pondok, about one kilometre, we  notice a school of fish jumping out just suddenly over the surface.

'Ada benda besar ni Dakto!.......', Hamzah , my Pattani carpenter/builder muttered softly but with some anxiety and panic . Understandable. He was paddling behind while I was  in front in the 2-men canoe. He was in a position of watching my back while his was fully exposed!

Just shortly after that I felt the canoe  being shakened badly and grazed from below. Just to reassure myself, I shouted to Hamzah,

'Guano demo nih Mezah tebolah sangat nih?!' [ why!,, why are you so clumsy, Hamzah? ]

' Tidok ambo Dakto!' [ not me Doctor! ], Hamzah answered, and I could detect  a sense of panic and urgency in his voice. He must have been thinking on the same line as me.

Both of us looked back and saw a bronze hump separating two icy eyes, surfacing to the left of our canoe, some 40 feet away.

The snort to the eyes was about 2 feet something!

'OMG! This is the infamous estuarine crocodile, the ' buaya tembaga',...and they don't get to this colour unless they are fully matured', I thought to myself from my previous reading  about estuarine crocodiles found near Sungei Linggi in Nogori, Endau Rompin in Johor and Sungai Kinabatangan, Sarawak.

Both of us , we did not have the time to say any prayer at that moment . We just paddled hard and fast towards the river bank.

Up till now I still cannot fathom why the croc did not come back to make a second 'pass' at us or at least  'ngap' poor Hamzah from the back, since our canoe is quite flat and we were sitting ducks!
It has the speed and the ability and natural instinct to do just that .
That is just in its gene.
That  would have toppled the canoe easily.
But it did not!

Was it my solat Tahajjud and  solat Tasbih the night before or was it the size or the lack of size of the croc that prevented it from coming at us for a second pass .
Probably both I think.
Anyway it is nice otherwise both of us would had a different 'address' by today....
HE is not yet ready to see both of us or rather we, in our varying degrees of heedlessness, are not yet ready enough to be presented to HIM. It is a mercy and rahmah from HIM for the 'delay'.
Mashaallah, al Hamdullillah.

Over dinner that night Hamzah confided to me ,
' Ambo dae Jani, sokmo senok perok bilo Dakto ajak kito gi main kanu...'
[ Myself and Jani, we get lumps in our tummies when Doc invite us to go canoeing..... ]

That reminded me of a poem we standard six pupils used to commit to memory some 5o or so years back. The Charge of The Light Brigade by Lord Tennyson, a poem on an actual happening and 'bungling' due to a gross miscommunication during the Anglo-Prussian War of 18something :


" Forward, The Light Brigade! "
Was there a man dismay'd
Not tho' the soldier knew 
Someone had blunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die. 
Into the Valley of Death,
Rode the six hundred.

" OK Mezah dae Jani, lain kali kito gi main di Kenyir atau pong di Sungai Paka  atau  Sungai Teganung. Sana ambo dengar tak dok boyo! kito bolih main sining tapi tok leh lepah dari club house.",

I tried to reassure both of them.
I am not sure that is enough reassurance for Hamzah and Jani.
From their perspective,The Boss is always right, even when he is wrong!

I love Teganung.
Teganung Kite'.

Still water runs deep.......200 metres beyond these boats is croc territory.

Pedro, retired ex-polo, Dr Nik, retired, ex endurance rider....

Old man and the sea.....

A one kilometre horse, a show horse,or an endurance horse, it is all about working on the 'mind'......working on Pedro to not fear the wave!

OMG!...I am getting prosperous!

The raging sea in mid February

The Sanctuary.......far from the maddening crowd in kl; far from the national clowns of ntr,pandi and nazri; just the wind,the sun and yourself. 

Beneath this calmness lies a secret.....

 

Some photos of The Sanctuary : work in progress.
http://translandjourney.blogspot.my/2014/09/toyota-land-cruiser-hj-47.html

On Exercise and Longevity: You don't Have To Be A Marathoner..

Longevity and Exercise are inter-related but you need not be a marathoner to achieve good, prolong health. In fact, excessive, intense exercise has been shown in most studies to be detrimental to health in the long run. It increases morbidity and mortality.

Listen to Dr O 'Keefe on this issue:

....my own personal addition to this is from the Islamic perspective.
Don't just exercise...do something to your mind while you are burning all those calories and moving all those muscles !

Read on.......
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2009/03/exercise-mixing-profane-and-sublime.html

On Obesity..Modified Cambridge diet...and EXERCISE

Waalaikum-mussalam Rifqi,

TQ for reading the assignment I gave you on 'Modified Cambridge Diet' [ click here ] At your level of obesity, 15 to 20 kg excess weight,diet alone is not enough. You also need to 'burn' more.
EXERCISE I mean. 5 times a week is better than 4, 4 better than three, everyday better than 5, and once weekly better than nothing at all !

Exercise is boring unless you make it interesting. If you have 'socially pleasurable and interdependent self motivating' group exercise like badminton say 3 times a week, that would be excellent in terms of attaining constancy and frequency. But given our 'cari makan' status and work commitment in a city like KL, to get a similar minded group of people doing such kind of activity on a regular basis with that level of frequency, that would be next to impossible.

Self exercise [ threadmill at home, long brisk walks, swimming, etc etc or even gym work at clubs or Celebrity Fitness Centre even could be difficult to sustain for months], could last for at most a couple of weeks , after that the activity dies off by itself.

People like you need to burn minimum , 300 to 400 kcalories of work at exercise, minimum I think 3 times a week, better still five....minimum 30 minutes per session.
You are already feeling faint ! Okay to keep your spirit up let me tell you of my own predicament. I am, to put it bluntly, in worse predicament than you.

I am carrying an excess of 7 kg from my ideal weight of 70 kg [ height in cm ,minus 100 +- 2 kg, the formullae, I am 168 cm in height ]....small problem but I have 2 sons who are much heavier than you. One has not yet being 'converted' and currently a 'walking time bomb' waiting to explode. While the younger one, has joined me regularly in the late late evening/night swimming at the club, doing 1 kilometre of continuous slow crawl and breast stroke, 40 minutes per session, 3 to 4 times a week. We have tried brisk walking in the neighbourhood at night, but have given up due to safety issues.

The main issue with maintaining exercise on an individual basis is MOTIVATION and a main issue in this is : What do we do with our minds when we are exercising. 20 minutes on the threadmill is too damn long and boring, let alone an hour or so of continuous exercise!...Boring and painful.

Listen to your I-Pod to your favourite music if you are musically inclined. Do your sum if you are mathematically inclined. Think while you exercise if you are philosophically inclined.....but if you are Muslim and get to be my age, in my experimentation, continuous dzikr during exercise is the best option. One can go on for hours without feeling tired.

Choose the simple ones, Asma ul Husna, would probably be the easiest and the simplest. You have multiple permutations and combinations.

I called the formulla : Mixing the Profane and the Sublime.
It works well for me. I now look forward to exercise all the time and get depressed whenever it rains or there is a thunder storm preventing us using the pool!

Enjoy yourself Rifqi !


Nik Howk


Related articles in the blog:
click here, Mixing the Profane and the Sublime
click here, Elixir of Youth
click here, Some Random Thots on Obesity

Elixir of Youth...

Performance of the year: Lew Hollander.
Equestrian endurance rider extra-ordinaire in his youth,[ and late youth ie at age late 60's and into 70's ] now changing his 'religion' to more rigorous endervour, IRONMAN.....He IS eighty.



By Matthew Dale, Ironman.com
12/22/2010

In another of our "Performance of the year" stories, Matthew Dale catches up with a man who provided one of the year's highlights with his amazing race in Kona. Keep those e-mails coming to kevin@ironman.com - we'll be posting some of those here on the site tomorrow.

Memo to journalists contemplating writing a story about Bend, Oregon’s ageless wonder, 80-year-old Lew Hollander -- do not begin your line of questioning as follows:

“What type of work did you do before retiring?”

“I resent you using the past tense,” said Hollander, a physicist who still works in his chosen field. “I think I’m still functioning.”

Still functioning? Uh, yeah. In October, Hollander finished the Ford Ironman World Championship for the 21st time (out of 21 starts), jogging down Alii Drive well ahead of the midnight deadline, coming home in 15 hours, 48 minutes. Four weeks later he completed the 70.3 world champs in Clearwater.

When Hollander checked out of his Clearwater hotel, a person at the front desk made a big deal about his feat at 80. A gentleman apparently in his 50s looked at Hollander and asked, “What do you take?”

Warning. Warning. Another foolish question.
“Do you want to spend a day with me?” Hollander told the man.
The guy thought for some time, then said, “No.”

“It’s like (the guy’s asking), ‘Is there a magic pill? I don’t want to do any of the training crap. I just want to take a prescription,’” says Hollander. “There isn’t any pill. It’s (and here he spells out the word) W-O-R-K.”

Work. Move. Explore. Be active. Be involved. Be curious. Splice them all together and you’ve got a peek into what makes Hollander tick...
...................

Dr Nik
PS:The secret my friend is...
Exercise, exercise , exercise....that is the elixir of youth.

Exercise : Mixing the Profane and the Sublime

Exercise, that magic word in this very narcissistic modern world, where any form of formulae promising a 'long and healthy life' will launch a thousand best sellers, rightfully is the' sine qua non' to living a healthy life at best. On statistical ground, [ even Muslims are allowed to use this phraseology when discussing life and death ], exercise does prolong life. No doubt about it. Proven scientifically and demographically . Here we talk about numbers not individuals per se, in case 'purists' do take offend at my suggestion and conclusion.

Exercise is the perfect 'elixir of youth', full-stop. One of the common denominators of the long living octagenarians from Okinawa, the Hunzas [ not Hungas as earlier stated ] of Northern Pakistan, the Vilcambe people of Ecuador and the Abkhasians in Central Caucases, Georgia, is continuous physical activity throughout their childhood and adult life.[ see Some Random Thots on Longevity, July 13th, 2008 , Health Section ]

Exercise reduces obesity and the potential for 'metabolic syndrome' accompanying it: diabetes, ischaemic heart disease, hypertension, hyperinsulinaemia, strokes . In short, a life with a 'short' fuse, in the worst case scenario to put it succinctly and in not so much words [ how I wish my 2 sons read his dad's blog for they are both obscenely obese! ] , and at best, to couch in better diplomatic language, a life without vitality ! To see Dr M riding his horses at age 80,bullying a much younger but 'slow loris' Pak Lah , at 74 ,over his lack of 'cerebration' is to comprehend the true meaning of vitality! Most people at 84 could not tell the difference between 'yesterday' and 'today'. [ read : The Four Jokers, Monday 5th January, 2009, Health Section ].

Increasingly, more meaningful for us modern inhabitants of this planet's cities and suburbs caught up in a highly competitive material world, recent scientific data also had shown another benefit for exercise: increasing brain power in the young and the old due to more potential for brain neurons regeneration and repair. Exercise, according to a recent Scientific American article releases potent 'brain-growth inducing factor'.

What exercise and how much?
Combined aerobic [ brisk walking, jogging, swimming, mountain climbing etc etc , anything that moves that damned muscles, sinews, ligaments and bones ] and some moderate weight bearing exercise. From 9 to 90. From 30 minutes, 3 times a week minimum to several hours per day, 7 times a week. The more the better.

Exercise though, as always , is hard work and keeping to a regime day in and day out can be difficult for most people. Not many can be as disciplined as my friend, for example, a CEO of an IPP company, who exercises daily,think nothing of cycling from Putrajaya to PD and back on a weekend, or complete an 'ironman competition' in say 14 hours at the young age of 52!

How to keep the boredom away and be able to keep going days and months, doing it on a regular and sustainable basis and at the same time enjoy it. This is what I want to discuss today.Most would exercise while listening to their favourite 'orchestra' on the I-Pods, others do their 'sums' and problem solving, while some do 'mental yoga'.

My favourite 'hobby' and formullae is mixing the 'profane' [ possibility of delaying death, delaying that 'inevitable interview', a longer and god-forbid, less[ not more] kufr existence, insyaallah, on this planet Earth, more enjoyment, big muscles and more good look, and lastly but definitely not the least, a better more vibrant sex life ] and the 'sublime' [ The celebration and remembrance of Allah, constant reminder of death and the eternal life after death ] .

Years back when I took up scuba diving in order to 'conquer' the fear of depth and the deep unknown, I got more fearful of the inherrent and perceived dangers that 'lurk' down there . To help overcome that primal fear I used to' tasbih' and' tahmid' 80 feet down on the sea bed with every breath I took but alas! Even this did not the push the 'fear factor' away. I subsequently gave up Scuba.But looking back it is actually a great mental and spiritual exercise! At 80 feet down, your personal space is only that one inch of air infront of your face and the highly compressed mask you wear .To a frightened 'soul' like me who took up the sport to conquer my own fear of death and depth, each 'subhanallah' alhamdulillah' and 'allahuakbar' at that depth with sharks etc etc had a greater meaning than life itself. That made me comprehend the 'sufic' expression that 'life is nothing more than a finite number of measured breaths' and the fragility of life is just that,one breath at a time. Nonetheless ,the sea was too much for me and I finally freaked out and gave up that experiment and sport.I found to my dismay I had to pray 'hajat' longer and longer the nights on diving trips while my diving buddies slept like logs left ,right and centre .On a desolated beach somewhere ,that itself was mind bending and torture. So much for trying to conquer fear.

Chose equestrian instead at a ripe 'young' age of 45. Doing endurance means riding competitive rides between 80 to 160 kilometres in one day. For my 1st International competitive ride for Dubai World Endurance Championship, involved a selection ride over 120 kilometres in 1998, done at UPM ground involving going round the farm over 25 times from 5pm Saturday to 12 noon the next day,a total of 17 hours riding time,with some short rest periods in between .Mind over matter .Allah has 99 names and attributes: one name for each kilometre and the rest covered by repeating short surahs. World Equestrian Games in Jerez, Spain in 2003. 160 kilometres of hills and dales in heavy rain, soggy ground and lightnings. Same formullae , no surah this time but just 'Asma ul husna' but too much 'ya Mutakkabbir, ya Mutakkabbir'. Horse died of exhaustion 10 kilo from the end without showing signs of exhaustion on the 'on board' heart rate monitor! Could more 'ya Rahman' or 'ya Rahim' make a difference? Allahualam .

Why equestrian endurance you may ask.I have looked at the jumping and the dressage group and even the polo group.I could not blend in...different philosophy. Endurance....yes, it is much nearer to sunnah rasul. If I have the time I would pick up archery as well.Perhaps next year!

Exercise, amongst other things, activates the 'endorphin' cascade at the neuronal level in the brain giving the person a sense of euphoria and decreased pain sensation . That is only the'profane' part. The 'sublime' connection I 'dunno' what it does exactly but why not !? A friend with some 'sufic' leaning the other day asked me a simple question as to why we give' salam' all the time at the conclusion of our formal prayer . I could not give a decent answer. It is for that 2 'chaps' on our left and right , he said.

Very plausible answer from these 'sufi' people, you tend to get over any life's issues . Plausible indeed ! The 2 chaps , they connect our every thoughts, actions and intentions to 'people of the higher plane'.
in your solat you are supposed to be in a different plane.
you are on your personal' mikraj'.
when you come back to 'this dunya', you say 'salam' to your two companions on the left and right who temporarily have to leave your presense, in the presence of a much  higher being.....so to speak,

"The people of the higher plane" through a complex system of vetting and revetting, connect to Him ,the One and Only. The humoral-neuronal cascade from lower down interacting with 'people of the higher plane' ,why not ? Non sufi, mere mortals like you and me call this 'barakah' . No venture, no gain. Try it for size.

Yes,my friends, do try mixing the 'profane'with the 'sublime' occasionally during your mundane exercise, you will be able to do more and enjoy more. In fact you will be more addicted to exercise.
mere mortals like you and me , we are not blessed to be in continuos remembrance of HIM.

we eat, we sleep most time, we exercise, we go about with our 'cari makan' business, etc and etc.
but if we master the art of mixing the profane and the sublime , we can emulate the people of ihsan.
even if we cannot be in continuos zikr, we could be counted to be one almost in continous zkr!

insyaallah.