I started buying computer magazine but i had to go to Surabaya to get the magazine. Computer was still the strange thing at the city. One day, my father and i were out in the street while my mom was in the house ironing some clothes as she always did. And my father told me that i must focused to my formal study not the computer”. And i came back to learn mathematics more and more. Day by day i felt falling in love with mathematics. When i was on the second years, my school delegated some of students to join mathematics olympic, unfortunately i wasn’t on that team as i hoped. I was thinking hard to join the olympic and i met Saed to discuss about this. Finally we made decission to go to Pamekasan city to apply and join the olympic. It was a very long trip an we didn’t have much money, but we felt happy when they accept our application. And Saed won the game but i didn’t. We came back to our city together with the school delegation team, we were having fun and enjoyed the trip.
Things started changing fast shortly after that. I guess the first major tragedy in my life was seeing my grand daddy dying when I was about seventeen years old. We should called a doctor when it was happen, but we didn’t have enough money. And my grand mather started to tear up when he left us forever. The big problem was I couldn’t cry; I couldn’t get the sorrow out of my system, and that made things worse. He was about 80 years old and a good moslem when he died. He was a leader of Slafiyah Moslem School at the city. He always remained me when praying time is came and ordered me to get a holy water and pray together.
Now, my grand mother saw the trauma I was going through. So she took me aside one day and said, “Son, you know that I knew your grand pa is my husband. And I know how he tried to raise you. And I know he always taught you to carry on. I also know he told you he wanted you to know how to get around and be independent. Because he knew he wasn’t always gonna be with you. Didn’t he tell you that?”. I said, “Yes grand ma’am'” and started to tear up. And grand ma kept after me. “Well, then, you also know that your grand pa didn’t want you going around just doing nothing and feeling sorry for yourself, ’cause that’s not the way he brought you up. Isn’t that right?” I said, “Yes, grand ma’am,” and more tears came out. Now this elderly lady, she knew everything about me, including my sorrow over my grand father’s death She made me realize that it wasn’t my fault, and told me that I couldn’t go through life blaming myself. That episode with grand mather shook me out of my depression. It really started me on my way. After that I told myself that I must do what my grand father would have expected me to do. And so the greatest tragedies in my life — losing my grand father — were, strangely enough, extraordinarily positive for me
