On The Train (Fortunate or Unfortunate), April 26, 2010

By their behaviour I was certain the main thing they craved for was the love of parents. They may have everything else catered for them, even care takers or surrogate mum and dad, but they were completely missing the real thing in life. Seeing them I could not help thinking how lucky my children are and how they take life for granted. This sure begs the question of who actually are the fortunates and unfortunates. To me this depends on how you see the world and all of us see things using different lenses. Some of us see the world using a wide angle lens, the big picture and normally from a far. You tend to see things on the surface. Those that are using a close-up micro lens would be able to see a bit more detail and the tendency to be a bit more involved trying to understand further and help whenever we can. A lot of us also use our standard zoom lens and not sure how to react but just to pull in and out of view searching for something that you also not sure of. No matter what kind of lens you use you need to really explore an understand a bit more of your images. The first time I saw the kids when we arrived at the Rumah Kebajikan Ash Shakur I saw smiles and excitement on their faces. Probably because that day was the best day of their life to be able to go to The Lost World of Tambun that they probably never heard of before. Maybe just simply because they got to be away from the ‘home’ for a day to enjoy other parts of the world. Or maybe, just maybe, they were, because they were told they will be given a mum and dad for a day, looking for that unfulfilled needs to be loved. After few hours at Tambun I was certain it was the later and I was more certain when we were about to part ways at the end of the day when we sent them ‘home’. My ‘assigned’ daughter was a twelve year old Julia Azira Mohd Jamaluddin and son Mohd Hasbullah Mansor. Like the others both came from a different background.