I don’t quite believe in karma over the years..

.. only after I stepped into their shoes recently, then I know how complex it was.

Five weeks of miserable musculoskeletal system has flashed pass as if it was just started.. and just when I thought I would eventually have the break to revise few systems, community medicine comes next and adds tones of misery to my already packed time table. This time it is not the early morning lectures that drive us students nuts, but countless questions and surveys being bombarded into our brains.. and what happen next is totally beyond my imagination..

Two days of community medicine lectures and off we go to Kampung Pandan, a small neighborhood located in one dejected part of Kuala Lumpur which is purely dominated by Malays. Ever wonder what the heck we ended up there??? Alright, my group was assigned to conduct a survey about breastfeeding around that area. Sounds pretty weird huh when a guy like me approach the aunties and ah-mas there. Here’s the fun part.. target any women who actually go well with my eyes (duh.. to make my life easy mah) at places like Kilnik Kesihatan (main aim), bus stop, mamak, along the road side, market, or whichever place that my legs can walk me to.. and conduct this survey based on the relevant questionnaires we prepared.

Walking around targeting women at the above places wasn’t that difficult after all. From decent looking women who dress baju-kurungs elegantly with layers of makeup carrying Gucci-s and Versace-s, to office workers waiting impatiently at the bus stops, to the typical housewives dragging their respective shopping baskets picking groceries in the pasar, to the mak-ciks and kakak-s selling goreng pisang at the road-side stalls. Friendly ones will just cooperate with you and will take some time off to have a lil’ chat. What a time to start off with my morning survey and it certainly drove me into a more enthusiastic guy to approach more aunties. No doubt that some will just brush you off when they noticed a formally dressed person with a backpack looking oh-so-desperate, following anxiously behind their footsteps, thinking we are just yet-another-much-hatred, annoying salesperson. However, the worst nightmare was attempting to obtain survey from housing areas and flats. Knocking the doors of the residents in the flat area and feverishly pressing the door bells of houses have mostly proved to be fruitless. We saw figures peeping out through the window slit but subsequently backed off, leaving us standing under the scorching sun pressing the bell over and over again till hope evaporates. Who would want to respond when again, a formally dressed person, holding sheets of papers, looking exactly like a typical salesperson standing over the fence or door?? Indeed, lesson learnt no.1. It is payback time.

Two days of tireless efforts and we have reached our target sample size of 157 women. Report writing and slides presentation coming up next. And oh, lesson learnt: I used to ignore ‘people’ like this when they came knocking at my door, especially when my sleep is disturbed. I’ll just leave them ringing the bell till they got uninterested somehow.. and yea, it’s karma now.

The next day when they come knocking at my door again, I’ll be the first one to step up and answer all their questions, willingly. What a meaningful outing indeed and I’ve now experienced how bitter it was to be blindly ignored.

For whatever reasons, I do believe in karma now.