Opportunity to do good.

Just came back from my weekly cycle. It was good. Not a soul was in sight and I had the estate to myself. The solitude brought to mind a certain SOS sms that I received on Friday.

It came from an old friend from the maritime fraternity who has fallen into hard times. Knowing him, he will be mad as hell if he knew that I am blogging this. I am taking my chances, for one he can't afford internet access thus the chances of him reading this is almost nil. He has taken ill and became an invalid for quite some time now. Unable to work with school going children. The wife is also not working as she has to take care of the family. I presume he has been using whatever savings he has to survive all this time. That, supplemented by his wife caring for the kids of neighbours.

This friend is not the kind to ask for help or beg for his existence. Whatever assistance that was provided to him in the past was accepted grudgingly. In this instance, I presume that his situation is really bad that he had to sent the sms to me. It was short, translated "Please provide sincere assistance". Knowing him and his family, this will mean that they have reached a level where they don't even have rice anymore, not to mention sugar or nescafe. Maybank2U is a real blessing. I wired whatever I can which in real terms is minuscule. For that is all I can afford to sincerely assist him in his hour of need.

As I was cycling just now, a thought came to me, perhaps I shouldn't be selfish and keep this to myself. Perhaps I could share this opportunity to do good with others. Perhaps also, this could kill two birds or three with one blog. One, I alone could not provide sufficient assistance, two, those of you who are sympathetic could provide assistance and three, there will be a wider network of people thus chances for this friend to receive assistance.

I could have brought this to IKMAL, the fraternity's professional body but I am hesitant to expose the plight of this friend, don't even mention TV3. Anyway, those of you who would like to grab this opportunity, get in touch with me through email or sms. Take note that I am not coordinating anything here. I will merely provide you with the account number and that's it. If you would like to verify the story yourself, you can go up north, if you do, I would like to come with you. Haven't seen him for a long time.

BTW, that's the picture of my princess. Nothing to do with this story, merely illustrating the mood of the blog.