It has been a surreal week for me. I am now in Uitm, among kings and queens, whom I am not sure whether I could ever live up to. It didn't really strike me, until Datuk Paduka Azalina Othman walked onto the stage in her trademark ski cap, laughing about being the only person at the Antartica base camp who wears makeup! I was happy, thinking about the weeks ahead when I would finally start my classes, and do assignments for a subject I actually cared about.

But something weighed me down. It came when it was time to wash my laundry. It came when I had to sit among a few dozen s to watch my favourtite television programme. I was homesick. I am one of the privilieged few who live rather close from home. Kajang being less than an hour's drive to Shah Alam. However, that feeling intensified as I found out over the weekend that my grandmother in Terengganu has passed away. I could almost hear the sigh of relief in my mother's voice when she said it.

My grandmother has always been a rather unlucky woman. Strife and tragedy always seem to befall on her. Ever since I could remember, everytime we balik kampung there was akways some kind of ailment she would suffer from, they were never the odinary kind either. It was always along the lines of, a coconut dropping on her head when she was 50. A motorcycle that scraped her back a few years later. And to top it all off, a bullet, shot from the nearby military camp grazed her spine.

But she was a fighter all right. She complained a lot, but she was still strong and able to cook the best beef rendang I have ever tasted till today. Her passing has been a series of incidents, that when I look back upon, marked her demise. There is no need for me to indulge in details, just that it suprised me when I did not cry or even dwell in memories like I know I should.

But I know that I will miss her. Wishing in my heart of hearts that she could have died in a different way, and that she could have been happier. For I came here intending to write about something else, but ending up writing about her. I coudln't go to her funeral at the old house with the coconut trees swaying in the sea breeze, and for the past few days, walked with the desire for some kind of closure. To somehow pay my respects to the formidable woman I call Tuk Wan.