Hope Addict Anonymous

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‘For you, a thousand mile over’ - said a friend to another.

It has been a while since a book could make me cry. So, this book took me by surprise. I have had it for a few months, shelved among my to-be-read list. I picked it up last Saturday and took it home to PD, just in case I get bored when he goes fishing with his brothers. I opened it, got hooked by the first sentence and couldn’t put it down.

It is a story about love, courage and cowardice. The love and courage was easy to understand. Everybody loves courage, everyone covets it.

It is the cowardice that grabs me, of how one learn to live with it, learn to accept the coward in him and learn to convert it into courage at the end of it, of making it through when God gave him a second chance.

It takes another kind of courage to live with cowardice.

I cried, once at the middle of the book and once more at the end. And I cried all over again when I reread the book. Right after I finished it the first time.

(photo from www.khaledhosseini.com)

Our mailbox was full of advertisements & flyers of warehouse sales everywhere. Starting on Thursday, which was a public holiday in both Selangor & federal territory and stretching over the weekend. Timberland, nike,adidas. LG, sanyo, samsung. I would have loved to go browsing, if it wasn’t for the nightmare of a traffic jam hanging over such a holiday. Shudder….

Instead, we opted to leave the kelang valley for a day and went fishing with some friends. We left early after loading our cargo into the car.

Ours: cucumber sandwiches, banana chocolate chip cake and mineral water.

His: fishing rod, assortment of baits, cans of redbull.

It took about an hour to get there. The silence of the morning accentuated the scenery along the way. This was what we passed through on our way.

The highland air was cold & crisp, I inhaled bountifuls of it, preparing for the hike up. Walking up to the campsite on a dirt road flanked by high shrubberies, I could hear the gurgle of the water getting louder and louder until it became a roar. I took a peek through the folliage of trees and this was what greeted me.

A few minutes later, we arrived at our campsite. We took about fifteen minutes to set up camp and off the guys went to fish while the ladies supervised the children. They had shrieked with delight at the sight of the waterfall, and was impatient to get in. As were the adults.

The water and the rocks.

The angler

The book

(picture from www.torey-hayden.com)

Catch of the day

Fresh ulam picked from the ground

I sat on the rock with my book and feet dangling in the cold water. I daydreamed about a house with a nearby stream I had a good day. I wish for more.

~Hope you had a great holiday too!~