Kuala Lampur, May 17 -- In 1986, I was just a boy, crouched beside my siblings under the shade of a stairwell, trying not to fidget while our Abah attended his convocation at Dewan Tunku Canselor. He was receiving his Islamic Studies degree from UM that day. The whole family came along from Johor. We couldn't go inside the great hall, so we waited - across the road, across the field - in front of a building I barely noticed.

Years later, as an engineering undergraduate, I realised that very building - with its scent of oil, sun-warmed cement, and metal - was part of my own faculty. The place where I had once waited for my father to graduate would become the place where I learned, taught, and stayed. First as a student. Then as a lecturer...