Azlan ****** bin Faidzal Haslah

Azlan ****** bin Faidzal Haslah, more photos here

Right after Radin's wedding, Allen and I finally came to the conclusion that both of us needed to visit Aini and Pejal and their new-born baby lest Pejal found out how much the batch really valued him. We were trying in vain to get more people to adjourn from Radin's wedding to Hospital Pantai (Bangsar) - but everyone gave the excuse that it was too far, they wouldn't have minded if Pejal and Aini were in SJMC (as if it was much difference between SJMC and Pantai Bangsar if you were in Kepong anyway).

From the moment we met them (Pejal and Aini), we knew that they meant to name the baby after us. I was quite touched, but what do you expect knowing all along how much Aini and Pejal adored the two of us. We gave our blessing and although they were quite shy about the whole thing and wanted to keep it hush hush, they (especially Aini) couldn't hide her excitement when we told her we didn't mind the baby named Azlan ******.

After a while trying to get the baby to talk, we had to excuse ourselves when Aini wanted to do what mum does best - menyusukan anak! So in order to spare us recurring flashes of images late at night (the ones opposite of fantacies), we excused ourselves after that. The discussion was also getting a bit too graphical when we were talking about the baby's hair (the fact that it was quite thick considering he was only 2 days old), Aini said that the baby followed their gene (I didn't want to elaborate further here, but we took it that she was trying to share the population of their bodily hair with us).

On the way out, we met Kuchai, Tuti and the daughter. So there were other people who did think about Pejal apart from us.

We managed to get Pejal's hotel room at Shangrila Putrajaya for the night. Having driven all the way to Putrajaya, was not really in the mood to go back to KL for movie although we had bought the tickets.

The next day I met Ben, Pokyeh and Brawn (all from the Class of 90) and we had lunch at Wisma Central. All of us were in agreement that the level of respect accorded to older people (be it junior to senior, present boy to old boy, teenage to older people) has decreased tremendously compared to our time (a polite way of saying "budak makin kurang ajar sekarang"). There were a few instances that we all had encountered from our experience coaching koleq teams (Pokyeh was a Cager) that highlighted the general tendency of the younger generation to disregard adab when they conduct themselves among older people. But then every generation blames the one before and after...

* ps - I hope you did not buy the story about Pejal and Aini wanted to name the baby after us....