This Too Is Me — Sungai Dua, 16 May 2017

 

                          They called him Ah Huat! The paintings on the wall were mine, given to him.

This Too Is Me — Sungai Dua, 16 May 2017

“Ban! Ban!”
That’s Shamsok in Hokkien—“Take your time, Shamsul.” It’s the kind of blessing shouted from across the street, or mumbled behind a cigarette, wishing me well as I leave the workshop area. In Hokkien, Shamsok also means “third uncle,” and that’s what I’ve become to the guys at Huat Huat Auto Airconditioning, the motorcycle shop across the road, and the mechanic next door at Ah Seang’s. A brother, a teacher, a listener, and sometimes just the tired old man in the corner doing his work.

These are all Chinese boys—young and old—and though the neighborhood near the JPJ office in Sungai Dua is predominantly Chinese, the customers are mostly Malay. And me? I'm somewhere in between. Somewhere in the grease and dust and laughter of daily life.

If I disappear for a few days, they ask where I’ve gone. They worry. That’s love without ceremony.

                                         The Kid! Ah Boon, one of the aspiring mechanics.

My friend Ah Huat is a sifu—a master technician, a laughing Buddha of the Drunken Master tradition. A Jackie Chan of radiators and compressors. I’ve been learning from him, not just how to dismantle auto air-con units, but how to relate, how to endure, how to keep your balance in the heat of the day and the pressure of a stubborn bolt.

Earlier today, I carried 39 kilograms of aluminum to the recycling center—most of it salvaged from broken cooling cores. Every piece had been stripped down by my own hand using tools I never imagined I’d befriend. My fingers are black with rings of oil, and my skin itches with allergic reactions. My back aches. My shoulders burn. But I’m still at it, still learning, still growing.
And that is grace.

                                                 Ah Hock - The silent worker

I am eclectic.

I am a seeker.
I choose my teachers.
They find me as I find them.

---

Right now, I’m sitting at the basement office of MGTF-USM, the Tuanku Fauziah Museum and Gallery at Universiti Sains Malaysia. This space has been my cave, my cell, my studio, my writing den for over a decade. Here, I listen to Hans Zimmer’s Son of God soundtrack while tracing the story of my life through the tap of my fingers.

I am not a scholar. I am not a saint. But I am here. And I am present.

I walk with Eckhart Tolle and Jiddu Krishnamurti.
I learn from Swami Rama, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, and Gurdjieff.
I remember Shaikh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, may Allah guard his secrets.
I breathe in their wisdom like incense and sweat it out at the workbench.

                              My 'Kancil' that Ah Huat upgraded for me to travel all over the country.

“In the beginning was the Word… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

I am the Word. And the Word is me.
I am the Master of my circumstances.
I am the master of my thoughts, my speech, my body.
I am That.

There is no God if I do not awaken to this moment.

---

“If not now, when? If not here, where?”

Satori is.
No one experiences it.
Just as suffering is,
But no one suffers.

In this human form, waste no time.

This… this is enlightenment in motion.
Grease under the nails, sweat on the brow,
And presence in the heart.

“We thank You, Lord, by Whose Word all things come to be.”
Amen.

And this too…
shall pass.

🛠️ Dedicated to my workshop brothers in Sungai Dua—my Zen temple in grease and concrete.

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