[ What's your Hobbies ? ]

“So Mr Anntonii, can you tell me what’s your hobby?”
The interviewer smiled when he saw my shocked look.

I was certainly taken aback when he asked me this question.

Here I was, being interviewed for a potential post in a well known company but I have never prepared the question he had just posted.

“ I erm…. I read… some books you know, and I club a little when I wanna destress…”

Personally, I don’t know how much truth came out of that sentence but I guess I never looked good when I supposed to.

“So what’s my hobby?”

I asked myself after the interview on my way home.

“Is hobby something you do to pass time?” “If so, that would be easy, my hobby would be to sleep through the day without having to worry about the world”

I remembered I wasn’t taught this way.

A Hobby, as much as I recalled when I first understand this word, means doing an activity which you really like and feel happy about it.

“Hobby is an activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.”

I tried to think hard, trying to recall what was the last activity which I did out of my regular occupation and engaged for pleasure..

I used to play arcade a lot.. that was a long time ago when the fundamentals of entertainment was revolving coins and characters beating up each other in the screen.

I used to party a lot and I guess I really enjoyed it. The quick rhythm at the dance floor, the friends that surround you, the spirit of togetherness.

I used to play mahjong a lot. The four of us would entertain each other even though we played through the wee hours and sometimes losing a lot of money.

I used to drink coffee with my friends a lot. We would just sit there and talk about everything under the sun, the scandals, the conspiracies, the hidden truth and the facts of life.

Of all the pleasures I had, I realized that I wasn’t doing it anymore. I didn’t play arcade for a long time, mahjong was only a Chinese New year thingy. I don’t club as much as I want to and the coffee sessions are countable.

Maybe the things that gives me the slightest pleasure is to be able to enjoy the moments with friends, family or love ones.

We can be doing nothing, yet time is well spent and pleasures find its place in you.

I finally understand what my hobby is.

“My Hobby is to spend time with my friends, my family members and my wife. We can be doing absolutely nothing but it is the time that is we spent together that reap in the moments of pleasures in life”

That’s my hobby… so what’s yours?

Anntonii Zenix Lim

September 7, 2006