A Lesson from the Thundering Jet Engine

Subang Airport was once the busiest airport in the country before the operations were moved to the new world-class airport in KLIA.

At the end of its runaway to the north, there is a residential area called Kg Melayu Subang. It stands as a small township on its own with all the necessary facilities available in the commercial area known as Pekan Subang. During its heyday, it made a good choice for people who are serving with MAS and AIROD to stay there.

My sister who lives in Sepang now used to stay there. It could either be closer to her workplace at the airport or due to marrying a local man there. Or both! When I first came back from overseas, yet to find job, I stayed with her.

Being close to the airport runaway, it is not uncommon for the deafening sounds of airplanes taking off or landing for the residents there, come night or day. During the day, one could clearly see the belly of the airplane with the wings spread like a flying monster sprawling and screaming atop the roof of the house. And they are used to it.

But I am not.

I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to the blend of a scene in my dream with the reverberation from the jetliner taking off in the background, befits the quaver of an earthquake if not a volcanic eruption. The rowdy racket that rattles the glass windows makes me feel like being trapped in a war zone and had nowhere to go. It takes me a few long seconds to get back to my senses. Only to find it hard to continue sleeping even long after the jetliner has gone, perhaps already hit the sky of the Indian Ocean.

I would be there at the bus stop in Pekan Subang, 5-minute walking distance from the house. I would take a ride to Kuala Lumpur in Sri Jaya bus no. 47 at my leisure. Hoodwinked – I would then develop a pastime to wander around like a homeless lad, exploring all nooks and corners of the town with a “good” excuse of acclimatizing myself to the place where I would later work and play.

My own people with my own culture seem a bit strange when you are away for too long. Let alone when you are still young the time you left the country – having no benchmark on living the life in your own homeland – no comparison, no nothing. What more when you spent your life like a “prisoner” in the regimented boarding school before you went abroad. So to speak, the living skill (in your own place) is close to zilch.

I would sit there like a fool adjusting my mind to accept what’s in front of me and learning the life by the day. I would be baffled with some attitudes displayed by people, serves as a point to counter-check my own. I’d be whining over something that I had seen it could and would be done better and more systematic in the foreign country, just to dish up as a truncheon or rather as a baton for my turn to contribute to the society when the opportunity arrived. And to have it changed for better. Easy said than done!

Little wonder the folks in Kg Melayu Subang never had complained over the roar of the engines of the airplanes. Without their realizations, they came to accept as what it is – spellbound in circumstantial. You’d be amused with the answer when they got asked whether there was any airplane taking off, a few minutes after it did. You simply cannot take the answer like, “Tak pasti laaa….” (I’m not sure…), when it did pierce your eardrums minutes before. You know what that means?

Anyway, my sifoo had loudly warned me not to be enchanted by the unruly circumstances, as much as not to be trapped in the complacence of any achievements that have. And a voice from my spiritual guru thundered in my head just as loud – as loud as those jet engines, telling me “Be complacent with what you are destined to have, for it’s the sign of gratitude”

I think I can figure out the meeting point between those two schools of thoughts. Can you?

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