Thesis...but it ain't mine

When I entered university, I took up a course in electrical engineering, instrumentation branch. Some call it mechatronics, and some electromechanical. Anyway, throughout my current semester, which was recently wrapped up by the final examinations, which too has been wrapped up, I had lots of free-time.

In fact, taking up only three courses, I had all the free time any UiTM student would ever want, despite the fact that my schedules were organized in a way that one would have thought that I had no free time.

At first, it was 'fun' thinking that I had time for almost anything. Until about a month, I felt the boredom of having too much unattended time, though I tried to fill it up by doing assignments and other academic-related activities.

One day, as I was chatting with my housemate, I suddenly realized that a reasonable number of friends of mine had trouble with english profficiency.

And thus, I said to myself,

"Hey nonny nonny, why not take the oppurtunity to brush up on their english, and communication skills?"

It turned out a few months later to be a session of inspecting reports, thesis, and final year projects for grammar or vocabulary errors.

Among other things, the reports handed to me were unrelated in any way to the discipline of electrical engineering. The people who asked me of my favour were from various fields of study; Civil Engineering, Office Management & Technology, Accounting, Hotel & Catering.

Of all who did ask me of my favour, only those from Office Management and Civil Engineering (which makes ~98%) handed their reports to me.

I faced the 'horror' of having to reconstruct, rewrite, replace whatever that was written, or in this case, typed down. And, to perform so, I had to first understand the statements being typed.

Nontheless, despite all the troubles I went through, I found out that while trying to understand the typed statements, I was actually gaining knowledge regarding the fields of the respected reports.

By the end of the day, I learnt how a fast-food outlet regaulates its service quality, I learnt the difficulties and obstacles faced by a contractor. And all of these, had nothing whatsoever to do with Electrical Engineering.

Four years ago, I worked as a Food & Beverage personnel, under catering services. Among my job was to transport food from the kitchen to to wherever the heck a function was taking place.

Consequentially, I left after a fortnight due to the fact that my left thigh had to bandaged almost at all times and could not handle any heavy loads or activities (as a result of falling from the roof a year earlier...having found out 6 months after my resignation from the job, that there was a fracture in my kneecap). Besides, I couldn't cope with their policy of wearing shorts.

Despite having worked only for a fortnight, the foods that I handled were no ordinary foods. They were top-of-the-class cuisine, rich man's lust. Amazingly, I found out that the so-called luxury cuisine, were made from basic and common ingredients. The same ingredients we use in our kitchens at home.

The only thing that deviates between luxury cuisine and home-made cooking is the touch of art. While the latter was simply chucked from the pot to the serving dish, the former was heavily pampered; every grain of rice, every garnish of parsley, every grate of cheese is arranged in a way that, one look at it can be mouth-watering.

Furthermore, having worked in the respected field, I realized the pressure one has to encounter daily. That is why, whenever I go to a fast-food outlet, hawker stall, restaurant, I avoid being harsh towards them (employees), because I've been in their position, and I know how one would appreciate the kindness shown towards him/her despite the working pressure currently being encountered.

It is true when the say that the amount of knowledge Allah spreads throughout the land, is beyond the boundaries of man.

The knowledge of a wise man who spends his lifetime studying and learning, is but a mere drop of water that hangs from the end of our finger, compared to the amount of knowledge that has yet to be discovered.