The Last Days

It was a short ceremony, sweet enough but lacking in its lustre. The time my family and I had in Johor was too short, and the tight schedule was made worse by the evil Joyous Asia who won't permit us to use the robe for too long. Adding together that there are so few good pictures of me on that day I feel a little bit disheartened because there will be no more days like it. No one in my family is a good photographer (really, I shouldn't whine about this, astaghfirullah) but overall the whole thing went quite well so alhamdulillah.

It felt weird, but with a slight feeling of longing, when coming back to NUMed. To visit the university brought me a tonne of memories. This time I brought my whole family here where I became the tour guide and showed them what my university is like. My mom never set foot in here before, but I think she remembers it well enough from the many hours of calls I made, describing it from when I was in the campus, whether to update her on my studies or to complain and whine about the problems that I had faced.

I shall think that there is no place to study like NUMed. I had grown fond of the bean bags and the spacious study table, with the open-space library where carried whispers from the ground floor lobby could reach me who was studying facing the big glass wall on the first floor. Of the female voice of the lift announcing 'First Floor' before the sound of the lift doors open and closed, the hum of the air conditioners that abruptly stopped when it was half an hour before midnight, and the muffled conversations heard coming from the enclosed study rooms. Those little things that you had grown accustomed to it and wishing just maybe, you would like to have it again.

I brought my family to see the lecture halls where I  spent most of the first two years there before going on with the clinical years. The halls were empty and dark. When I switched on the lights and gazed towards the rows of chairs, I remembered the stupor of long hours listening to the lectures and the fatigue from trying to understand things from anatomy to physiology to pathology to pharmacology to ethics to statistics, public health, and more. I searched for my favourite spot in the hall, the one place I must sit every time I am in this hall. There used to be people walking up and down the aisles left and right, and I would be in my seat watching all of them. When there are handouts to be given, I would catch the attention of those at the front or those who were going to get them, asking (very loudly, too) for an extra copy.


So as much as there were tears spilled here in NUMed, there were joys of laughter as well. The time spent studying together with different bunch of friends in different pocket of places, the odd hours being in campus instead of relaxing at home, and the silent nights of praying alone in the surau, all of these are the true moments I would not forget. The congregation (convocation) day was just an official day to commemorate the achievements of graduating from the medical school but forget the unrequited photoshoot moments, it is worth it just to be able to be back at school, even for just a short while, even for the last time.


Thank you for everything, NUMed,

and farewell.