Father and Daughter Reunion

I didn't have much time to spend with Durra, my eldest daughter, eventhough she is currently on a three-month semester break. She spent the first two months swotting up her books on a short semester just to get another subject out of the way. After the completion of the short semester, she came back to spend the rest of the semester break at home. That was the original plan.

First day at home, she was out looking for a job and managed to get one as a barcode inspector at a factory in Prai. She spent a night at home and had to move out the next day to bunk up with one of her friends because the job was to start immediately the next day and our house is not on the bas kilang route.

Yesterday was her off-day and it was one of those rare moments we got to spend time together. We had meals together and tried to catch up on the father and daughter conversations. We talked about her university life, her siblings, what the grandma had been up to, her job at the factory, etc. She told me about pathetic attitude of the full-time factory hands and took pride in being able to motivate an 18-year old girl at the factory into considering further studies. In return, I passed on to her some wisdom of the elders, particularly on what it takes to partition the harddisk of her laptop. Yes, we did spend some quality time, me and my girl.

She is starting on an early morning shift on Monday, so she had to go back to her friend's place last night. As I drove her back to her friend's place in Pinang Tunggal I offered my blue Kristar for her to use as I knew moving about on the vast campus can be quite an effort. She thought for a while, shook her head and declared that she couldn't.

Durra explained that she had two close friends at the university. They do things and go places together, on foot or by public transport. If she were to accept my offer, she could only take one friend riding pillion. It wouldn't be fair, she reasoned. So, the Kristar stays with me. I was overwhelmed with unexplainable feelings as we drove through her friend's front gate and as we hugged and kissed each other goodbye.

Raised her right, didn't I?