Forthnights

Oh Brother...

Is there no end to just how absurd and crazy life can get some times?

Top of my list of 'latest annoying and crazy things that could happen in my life'.... my father and his crazy ideals again.. Only, this time, its more than just an idea.... and its more than just plain crazy.

Some background: He is just going through a divorce with his third wife. His not even out of it yet. The court proceedings are not finalized yet, and it will be a good 6 months before anything moves I think. He moved out the place and came to live with my brother in a rented apartment. He got a job as an operations manager in security company... but due to the lousy pay and raw deal he is getting... his looking for other jobs... with not a lot of success I must say. My brother and I have been partially supporting his over the past half a year.. giving him money to live on (he was out of a job for a good few months)...

You know how the word notorious is the negative opposite of the famous? Well... I'm looking for a similar opposite to the word miracle.... because.. SOMEHOW... through some sort of 'miracle'... he met someone new..(can you see what's coming next?)

When I first got wind of this matter, I chose to keep silent. After all, my father was a full grown man.. he was free to do as he pleased, and socialized with who he pleased.. And after all..... well.. he is my father.... I'm hardly in a position to even forbid or bless anything he does. After all... I understood if he was feeling lonely and needy. What could be wrong with having someone to talk to right? For many months, he would frequently called my brother and I just to chat... and sometimes complain how we seldom called him back. I think he was lonely.. And my brother and I were just too pre-occupied with our own lives to go and comfort him and keep him company.

So after he started seeing this new mysterious woman... the calls stopped... and he dropped off the radar just like that. He would not come home..... hardly saw his face.. and the most annoying part to me.. he only texted me when he RAN OUT OF MONEY. Though I gracefully just gave him cash with no questions asked... I did in all honestly start feeling very annoyed at what was happening. Over the weeks, bits and pieces of information started coming through... mainly from my brother......

She was a foreigner.. from the Philippines.... she was a nanny... or WAS a nanny.. she was currently out of a job... and she had overstayed he visa. How on earth did my dad get involved with her I do not know.. but I did know that he was helping her in some way.

Finally, just last week, he broke his silence. He invited my brother and I out for coffee... wanting to tell us something it seems.. Oh brother.... whatever was coming.... it can't be good..... So out we went... and started chatting about everything else... from local politics to car prices to banking crisis before coming down to the real deal.... And that was when he dropped the bomb.

According to him.... He has been with this woman for a good 4 months..... She has been through a lot of tough times.... Divorcee... 3 children.. youngest in high school and so the story goes.

I seriously have no idea what has gotten into my father in wanting to go out of his way to help this woman. He has helped out with her expenses here and there (thus explaining the lack of money)........ and now he wants to eventually self the apartment we have, split the money, move to the Philippines, get married to this woman, and start a food business or whatever.

Oh brother, can you believe that. I don't know whether to laugh or be mad at such an absurd notion.

There was no beating about the bush, and for the next 3 hours as we sat there, I let fly everything i had to say about the matter, how silly it was, how rash and foolish the idea seems, how he doesn't know a damn thing about this woman and now wants to invest his last remaining money and property in her country with her, and get married. He game us some flimsy reason as to why doing this is good.

#1 - The Pilippines is a good place to start to kind of business he wants to do
#2 - He can't convert out of Islam while in Malaysia; and they can't get married without her converting too
#3 - His not getting anywhere in life. He's middle aged and close to the end of his working life, and needs to do something to sustain himself.

He tells me his now some giddly little school boy fallen in love with a woman. And this woman is not some young gold digger out to get his money. They are both just trying to make a living in a tough world. Here was my rhetoric ( a condensed version rather )

How much do you know about this lady? Please be serious, don't come and tell me in the past 4 months that you have known each other, you have really 'come to know' each other. Have you told this lady everything about you, including your deepest darkest secrets? No? Well, do you really think she has come clean with you then? No? Then why the hell are you even talking about 'getting married'? What is this, a business transaction? How can you invest you money in someone you hardly know?

Philippines is a good place for you to start your business? First question; what do you know about the Philippines? How do YOU know its a good or bad place? You have either been there, dealt with people there, or even taken an interest in that place up until you met this woman, and suddenly you think its a good place? You have been living in Malaysia your whole life; you know the people, the places, the customs, the culture, the language, yet you think business prospects are worse here than in the Philippines? What support do you have over there? Whats that? Her brother? So basically you want to sell you house, get married and move there, totally dependent on her to integrate and guide you through the society there and start business? That must have been some pretty special 4 months.

So you want to repair your mistakes and convert out of Islam? Well, you are paying for the mistakes you made, and its not like you didn't know the entanglements and difficulties of converting muslims in the country. You did that for a woman to remember? Just like now. In any case, this is a big joke. Religion and faith is not something that is written on your IC. What is officially written in the records is irrelavent to what is inside. If you truly are serious about wanting to return to your true faith, why haven't you? What has been stopping you from getting up every Sunday and attending church? Is it the words on your IC? Or are you afraid that the government will hunt you and lock you up for attending church? Faith is intrinsic.... regardless of what is written on paper, or even where they bury you at the end of your life, muslim or christian burial ground.. it is what was inside that matters.. So please don't give me that excuse... it does not hold water.

So you want to do something with you life? Thats fine. But does it have to be in such a dramatic manner? Again, you know nothing of this woman or her country. You have no real basis for trust. The both of you are just looking at each other as a way out of your current misery; financial or otherwise. Everyone flocks to you when they see that you bring hope of success & hapiness. But how many will stay when the chips are down and you have just lost? Isn't there some line in marriage vows about for better or for worse... I honestly do not think the 2 of you are looking at the worse part.. Because things that can go wrong will go wrong, and when it happens, everyone else will turn their backs and flee. Maybe very few will stay... and you know.. your family will stay. Your 2 sons will do their best to help you, regardless of how badly you screwed up. But.....Will she stay? Marrying her makes her family by name... but again, its just a name, like the religion on your IC isn't it?.. what matters is what's in the heart and the fact is, YOU DON'T KNOW HER HEART YET. You do not know the depths of how serious or committed she is to you.

It really boils down to that. If you do not have a committment to each other first, all this talk about building a new life, starting a business etc remains just talk.. You are in fact just committed to making your lives better and you both think being together is the means to that end. You share a common will... but I do not think that's good enough.

Sigh........

I never thought the day would come where I was expected to give relationship advise to my own father. You would think that being twice my age, he would be twice the wiser.. what having 3 failed marriages.. Barely coming out of the third failure, he's getting all tangled up with another person.... Life really is stranger than fiction.

posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 10:44 pm Comments: 0