Everything in its time

2012-01-20T22:02:00.000+08:00

I am looking at the pictures from Azizah's wedding album at FB. *sigh* I am still feeling sad that I could not attend her wedding.

I would like to hug her. I wonder when she will be Singapore.

And seeing teacher Fatimah in the pictures...... Allah..! I would like to kiss her hand and hug her too. I am forever grateful that she was my English teacher.

Ya Allah, please let me see them again~

2012-01-06T21:29:00.001+08:00

Saw this at Hidayah Ismile's FB status..

Malay translation

Al-Hasan pernah ditanya: “Apakah itu Tawakkal?”
Lalu beliau menjawab: “Tidak ada sesuatupun dalam hati seorang hamba itu yang lebih dia percayai (berserah) melainkan kepada Tuhannya.”

2012-01-03T21:33:00.001+08:00

Ibn Ataillah As-sakandari berkata:

ﺍﻟﻤﻨﻊ ﻫﻮ ﺍﻟﻌﻂﺎﺀ

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Kallang (part 2)

2011-12-25T19:26:00.001+08:00

On a happier note,

I went ice-skating yesterday! Better still, I fell! Woohoo~ *genuinely happy*

After my first-time experience ice-skating on the last day of camp, which was a few weeks back, I told myself that I will do it again once I got my pay. And I would love love love to bring abang and Aqila (kak Maya tak boleh uh.. cuba teka kenapa? *wink*). I was excited that day, coz in 2 hours, I went from holding the parapet for support to holding my partner's arm and skating slowwly+hesitantly to skating by myself (!). That's a speedy progress to me. And the bonus - I didn't fall!

I think my being able to pick up ice-skating rather quickly can be attributed to the first rollerblading 'lesson' with abang and mak. I mean, I fell a lot that time and couldn't balance at all. So since I've sort of passed that stage, the struggle was shorter in the ice-skating rink. Alhamdulillah~ Alhamdulillah~

When I reached home, I even surfed Youtube to watch ice-skating videos, despite the post-camp fatigue that was creeping in! Haha! Semangat nah!

So yesterday was my second-time, and Aqila's first. She was more scared than me. hehehe.. I reminded myself throughout the session that I needed to be patient, that now was the time for me to teach, like how my partner was there to teach me. And, alhamdulillah, at the end of it, she gained a little confidence to skate without holding anything (but with me beside her holding out my hand, just in case). =)

Sidetrack a bit - I forgot my partner's name.. =( She was a faci for another group. I actually thought she was older. But! She just graduated from pre-U2 at Aljunied. haha.. And we didn't really talk with one another before.. so I am grateful that she let me hold her hand during those crucial first moments. Skating together gave us an opportunity to chat.

You know, I wished I could stop and take pictures during both times I was there. Coz I saw things - small things - that touched my heart, or made me laugh. A big sister helping her younger sibling, two secondary-school-looking guys holding each other's shoulder so that the more experienced one could help balance the first-timer, a mother skating with her little boy and girl, a little boy skating in a cute silly manner with the skating aid.. made me smile.. ahh.. wanted to keep those instances in my head.

Anyway, I kind of thought that my 'initiation' would not be complete til I had my first fall. Even though I secretly wished I would not. And I finally did fall on my back, at 2.27pm - when I tried to skate faster.. as a result, I could not maintain my balance. I was smiling like an idiot, alright! Heh. I fell again at 2.57pm, on my front this time. Yes, I checked my watch, coz I wanted to record these down. ^_______^

This activity is expensive, so I know I won't be able to do it often. Yet I imagine myself going there on a weekday night after work, just to relieve myself. Hmmm.. that would be nice, innit?

A warning to my fellow Sg bloggers - don't go there on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They charge $20 for 2-hour session, not including gloves and socks. On normal days the fee is $14. I must admit that I was upset.. my $12 gone just like that, but I immediately reminded myself to just enjoy the day.. enjoy the session with my sister. Tak selalu Allah kasi ni'mat keluar jalan2 dengan adik =) InshaAllah.. that $12 is not a waste.

Ice-skating for the first time, on 5 Dec 2011

Kallang

2011-12-25T17:56:00.000+08:00

Seeing this building and its surrounding reminds me of RR'07. I remember that we went here for recce. Kak Nisa' Samat was driving. I remember losing the camera and returning home very late at night. I remember the point at which I realised SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT about my parents and their support. I wrote an email to my team members a few days after that.. And I think, that recce day was when I started to feel uncomfortable about something. Hmm..

Anyway, I also remember that somewhere around here, the pax gathered on the first morning for registration and briefing, and at a carpark somewhere, the bicycles were carried off the lorry and arranged nicely by the logistics team.

You know what? Suddenly, I miss RR'07. *sigh*

2011-12-24T16:17:00.001+08:00

The newest thing in my Favourite Biscuits list =) nyummm!

Early morning walk at Marina Barrage

2011-12-11T22:14:00.001+08:00

This morning...

It's windy here. Quiet and calm.
Aaaahh... such pleasure~

(There's a solar park, too. I didn't know that.)

The day before, I took a short clip following my teammates to find a spot for eating our dinner.

It was past 6.30pm, and the sky was dotted with many kites. Many people, of course. So I really cherished the opportunity of a morning stroll. It was just me and my own idling.

2011-12-06T18:35:00.001+08:00

It feels good to be able to reach home before sunset. Alhamdulillah~

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Weather

2011-11-28T23:48:00.001+08:00

When I read novels, or newspaper clips (from Life section, most prolly), or some random articles on social interaction or motivation, I would sometimes come across excerpts stating that weather is always a topic for small talk. Y'know, to 'break the silence'. I would pause and think, really? People do that?

And so, lately, I start to notice that people do like to comment about the weather. Like, when my colleague was driving and I was sitting beside him.. and he mentioned something like.. "it's raining" "hot, isn't it?" or another colleague who said something about humidity and the weather being inconsistent. (or was it the same colleague? Heh.) Honestly, I am not interested in that conversation. But I would reply politely, go with the flow, as one would say. I prefer to just keep quiet or answer questions that are meaningful.

I wonder why can't people talk about things like..

1- So, what did you do yesterday?

2- What music do you like to listen to?

3- I was reading an article about ______

4- Do you know that _______

5- I heard you have a cat, what's its name?

6- Hey.. if you don't mind, I want to ask you about your religion.

7- Do you play sports?

8- Tell me about ________

9- What do you think of _________

10- Any interesting stuff you read from the net?

11- Oh! I bought (I watched, I went to..) ________ and it's awesome! [description, review here]

I am not saying that people are not chatting about these at all, what I am saying is when trying to bridge a conversation gap, let's pick a topic from which you and the other party can share further, rather than the weather. C'mon! Even if you don't know that person very well, surely you can find other common themes. And even if you both won't elaborate more, at least one would learn a little something new from the other and vice versa. Why talk about something damn obvious?!

Writing this, I really hope I won't be someone who brings up the weather topic in any conversation.

I usually keep my mouth shut and look out the window during car rides. It is either because I simply do not have anything to say, or that I feel slightly awkward being in the same vehicle (the latter usually applies to people I am not close with). So I would like it if that person asks or share with me any of the above, except no. 5. Coz I don't have a cat. No pets.

Speaking of weather, I recorded a short clip while waiting for the rain to recede at Biopolis. We were stuck there for about 20-30 minutes. Last Monday. I want to show how heavy the rain was. Could hardly see the Fusionopolis building!

p.s. the gals in the vid are my colleagues and attachment students. Hee~~

The Room where I sat for a writing competition

2011-11-28T22:32:00.001+08:00

Who would've thought I will be coming back here, after.. hmm.. let's see, 7 years?
I think, the first and last time I stepped into Madrasah al-Arabiah's old campus (now the building is Muhammadiyah's HQ) was on the day of the English essay competition. I think I was in secondary 2 or 3. On Sir Kamar's recommendation, if I am not mistaken (Eh? Mana Aszafirah, eh? For all I know, she's better at writing stories in English than me. Or, maybe she participated also? Hmm.. tak ingat) I cannot remember what were the topics available, and definitely cannot recall what I wrote - narrative or descriptive or argumentative - and I am pretty sure I got saguhati. Hee.. What I remember clearly though, is that I did not do well, because of nerves and/or I couldn't think/create plots in my head fast enough.

Lemme try to find if I blogged about this event..

Nope, can't find any post even mentioning about it.

So yesterday I went to a camp briefing at no. 14 Jalan Selamat. We performed maghrib at level 1 (the prize giving ceremony for the English writing competition was in that hall too!). Was looking for kain, so kak Munirah directed me to the room in the video. I immediately recognised it! hee.. So yeah, was reminiscing about that day. In my memory, I somehow see Zafeerah Zakaria and Huda Ibrahim's female (younger) cousin.. Maybe Zafeerah was the rep for Madrasah al-Arabiah?

Anyhoo, speaking of Muhammadiyah.. I've bought a Muslimah swimwear. Like, finally!! *suker* Bought at Ova, Thaya brand. Expensive, in my opinion. But, 1) I guess that's the market price (even if I buy in Malaysia) and 2) I have saved up for this, so I did not mind. Aqila got hers from Andalus. Too bad that the smallest size Andalus has is 4-XL. We decided to purchase it, though, coz it is unknown when the new stock will come, and we do not want to wait. We've postponed our plan to enroll in a swimming class back in September, due to Aqila's chicken pox, her school exam, her O Level exam and my own busi-ness. So.. this December.. semoga Allah izinkan kami belajar berenang. nak fulfill sunnah ni~ =D

15 minutes after this post was published --------

Found it. I mentioned about the writing competition in a somewhat, errr.. pessimistic rant. Gosh! When I read those words.. I just thought.. wow.. I really sounded inferior, negative.. didn't I? Yet, I know that what I was feeling in that particular moment was frustration.. tired and pressured coz it was one thing after another. I wonder if my blood pressure was ever on the rise during my sec 3 year. Or maybe it was not inferiority - It was merely comparing oneself with something or someone bigger and better. So.. was I being realistic, but also a bit too hard on myself? I don't know. Am trying to analyse this note written by a 15-year old me, trying to look from the outside.

I think I've changed. A bit.

2011-11-18T21:02:00.001+08:00

Alhamdulillah, Aqila lulus!

Kite pun tumpang gembira~

Pakai kasut hitam lah tahun depan =D

Abang's post-nikah

2011-11-07T23:37:00.000+08:00

I was flipping thru Abang & kak Maya's wedding album at around noon today, while frying the spring rolls (heh). I realised that I like these two pictures.. May Allah bless our family with sakeenah, mawaddah and rahmah.. =')

I have always liked Abang's smile ^__^ I think it's because of his incisors. He also has a dimple.
And kak Maya looks cute when she smiles.
I love it all the more whenever I see them laugh.
Subhanallah..!

Now there are 6 of us, since 8th May 2010
(Mak and Ayah got married in May too!)

"Yeah, but.."

2011-11-07T00:38:00.001+08:00

Am having a FB conversation with Shikin.. Been a loNg time since I last saw or even talked to her. Topics range from uni degree, working life, interest, travel, migration, money... aahh.. We have the same problems, the same sentiments!

She just tagged me in a post about a blog article on "3 reasons to travel while you're young" by Jeff Coins. Sungguh terkena my batang hidung! Ohhhh, I reeeeaaallly cannot wait!

Patience, Liyana, patience..

Lovely

2011-10-23T00:27:00.004+08:00

I like this picture, and I like the two people here. I jussst noticed that my nose looks a bit red. I remember that I had cried quite a bit before we ate ice cream and posed for picture. Why I cried? Because I was very happy to see kak Huda, coz suddenly I realised I had missed her. I remember something else - I felt sadness too, when I was hugging her tightly. Sad about something. Quite overwhelming. Hmm..

And right now, I miss her. Saw recently on Facebook that she has given birth to a baby girl. Gosh! I think I have not seen her for more than a year!

Kak Afifah, too. The last time I saw her was... in early March. She gave birth recently as well. Alhamdulillah.. =)

Baarakallahu feehinna~ Baarakallahu feehinna~

In Time

2011-10-16T19:07:00.002+08:00

I watched In Time movie trailer a couple of hours ago. I must say.. I like the plot! A future where people don't age past 25. Yet, those who are poor will die young. And rich people can buy time to live longer.

I am intrigued by the idea. I wonder who came up with it (director? producer?). People's imagination, ey?

Reminds me of The Island, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. At first, I thought "whaatt seh.. is the storyline?" Then, I got it! Rich people make clones of themselves to harvest new organs. The thing is, they did not know that the company that does the work actually grow real, fully-formed humans. When promoting the program to potential clients, the director says that they only grow organs, or something like that.. But when someone came (I can't remember who.. a person from ethics committee, or a top-secret police), he had to explain that when they tried to grow and maintain a human (or rather, preformed human) in a 'vegetative state', it dies, and so the organs cannot be used. The solution is to grow adult humans, educate them at pre-school level so that their intellect is child-like and they will not likely to question things, and lock them in a facility so they won't know a real world exists. Read the movie plot here.

One of the scenes from The Island that made me go, "what?!" and then, "ohhh!! Now I know what's going on!" is when a pregnant woman felt she was going to give birth. So everyone was happy.. and she was wheeled into the operating theatre, where she did give birth (or was it caesarean.. I can't remember). But! The doctor immediately took the baby away, despite protests by the mother who wanted to hold him/her, and injected something into the woman's bloodstream. Then, she died. The doctor carried the baby to a waiting room, and guess what??? The exact same woman and her spouse was there! They were delighted at the arrival of their baby. Get it?

Sick, sick, sick. If this ever occurs in real life.. But I believe it will never happen. We humans will never have the ability to clone humans successfully. It is just soo complex, so awesome, that only The Creator knows how to do it. Maybe we can engineer organs and tissues, but a human being? Na-ah. But then again, I wouldn't know, would I? If Allah says "Kun", if He allows this to happen, it will. Bewildered as I will be, I must know that His Wisdom surpasses everything, and there surely is a reason. Istidraaj for the Kaafiruun, maybe?

Back to In Time.. I think I will watch the movie (online of course) when it is released. Wanna know how it turns out.

2011-09-18T21:26:00.001+08:00

"I may be valuable. But I am not indispensable."

Lately I have been saying this to myself when at work. I still can't make up my mind whether to stick around, or move on.

childhood songs (part 2)

2011-09-10T23:58:00.001+08:00

Mula-mula, dengar lagu Hanzalah nyanyian Rabbani kat Youtube. Kemudian, klik lagu nyanyian Nadamurni. Live performance. Allah..! Dengan jubahnya, serbannya, mata yang bercelak.. itulah trademark rijal Arqam dulu, kan? Walaupun kite masih kecil mase tu.. memori ni tetap ada. Bila tengok video tersebut tadi.. terdetik kat hati, "alangkah sopan dan cermat penampilan mereka!" Sejuk mata memandang, kan?

Selepas tu, klik pautan2 lain pula. Terjumpa lagu ini -

Kegelapan Malam - Nadamurni

Sangat-sangat nostalgic! Rasanya, tak pernah dengar lagu ni selain dari kaset. Kite ingat lagi, kite ada kaset lagu2 dari Arqam, termasuk Nadamurni. Tapi dah lamaaa hilang entah ke mana. Kalau jumpa pun, bukannya boleh dengar, sebab kat rumah takde cassette player. Jadi, boleh dikatakan, tak dengar lagu ni sejak 13-14 tahun yang lalu. Reaksi bila dengar lagu ni kat Youtube, setelah sekian lama? Something immediately clicked! "Oh..Ohhh..Ohh!! Ni dia..! Pernah dengar!"

Terharu kite tau! Dapat jumpa balik lagu2 ni semua.. sebab masa kecil dulu kite sukerrr dengar.. sedap! Dan bila dah besar ni, baru lah dapat dengar betul2 dan hayati liriknya ^_______^

Rindu - Nadamurni

Pemimpin Tiga Darjat - Nadamurni

Tak lupa juga lagu2 daripada Soutus Sofwa~ Senarai lagu2 mereka dengan kemudahan 'download' ada kat laman ni http://elfaizi.blogspot.com/2010/04/soutus-sofwa.html (kepada saudara Zulhafizi yang mengumpulkan info ini, jazaakallah!)

Required document.

2011-09-08T14:33:00.000+08:00

I have found a course which I reeeeeaaaalllyy think is suitable for me! But!

Hmmmmm.... I do not have a mahram who is a student or applicant from that university. Takde chance ah ni ='(
And if you see point #5.. My time is running out lah, can?
Allah.. ujian.. ujian..

2011-09-04T22:16:00.002+08:00

Saya rindu nak ke sini...

InshaAllah, soon!

Never heard of 'Hair Brushing Syndrome'

2011-08-25T13:00:00.005+08:00

Tak sangka penyakit macam gini pun wujud!

--------------------------------------------------------

No Rapunzel, schoolgirl may die if she combs her hair

By Indo Asian News Service | IANS – Thu, Aug 18, 2011

London, Aug 18 (IANS) A schoolgirl in Scotland has a rare condition following which she has been asked not to comb her hair too vigorously as it could lead to her brain shutting down.

Megan Stewart, 13, has a rare condition - Hair Brushing Syndrome - which means she must avoid wearing polyester or touching balloons. Any contact with electrical charges could confuse her brain into switching itself off or sending signals to her heart and lungs to make them do so, Daily Express reported.

Stewart has to dampen her hair to reduce static and lie down before combing it and is banned from participating in school science experiments.

The teenager, from Wishaw, Lanarkshire, Scotland was diagnosed three years ago, after she collapsed as her mother -Sharon brushed her hair.

Her mother Stewart, 41, said: 'I was brushing her hair when she flopped over and her lips turned blue. I thought she was having a fit, so we called the paramedics. It was really scary.'

The girl was taken to a hospital where medics revived her. It was two months later that neurologists made the diagnosis.

Doctors at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill in Glasgow, believe birth complications may be responsible for the condition.

She also suffers from asthma and dorsal stream dysfunction, a problem with the connection between her eye and brain which means she can't see fast-moving objects.

But the determined girl says: 'I know not to brush my hair too fast and if I feel unwell to stop doing it. I think I know what my limits are. I don't let it affect me and I can still live a normal life.'

My first time..

2011-08-19T12:37:00.003+08:00

To LDMM's Art Studio at Bukit Timah Shopping Centre

It was national day and Abang, kak Maya, Aqila and I were on our way to our cousin's place for Iftar. Kak Maya had to drop by her workplace to take something. Since I had not yet seen it (the rest of the family have, except Ayah), I followed her. It was my first time stepping to Bukit Timah Shopping Centre as well. Bila dah masuk, I thought "ohhhh... begini rupanya!" Not a place for retail outlets. I saw maid agencies, a pedicure/manicure shop, a shop selling shoes. I think ni memang tempat untuk service providers (like, renovation companies, music school..) and stockists.

I like the ambience of the studio very much! Even though it is small, it is bright with colourful artworks. Kinda cozy too. I just hope it doesn't get crowded, you know, when students are there.

To a car inspection center at Sin Ming Road

This was 2 days ago. Followed my colleague to inspect her car (but turned out she didn't have to. Just had to pay road tax) en route to Toyogo. Her car is not the blue one by the way. The vid ended abruptly coz a pak cik suddenly appeared from behind and said that I may be caught for taking a video. Yikes! I freaked out and quickly pressed the stop button.

A Sunday in The Lab

2011-08-19T11:46:00.002+08:00

This was back in February. Morning of 27th. I think there were 2 things I had to do. But I remember just one - adding antibiotic to the LC3 cells.

By the way, in the video the setting looks very dark and dim, but actually it is not. And there is this one moment where I did not pick the forceps right the first time. Mind you, I was looking into the cameraphone, so I thought I was reaching for the forceps but ter-overshot plak. heh.

After everything's done, I went to masjid Muhajirin for the camp run-through.

There are people who don't have fingerprints? I didn't know that.

2011-08-14T00:26:00.001+08:00

Mutated DNA Causes No-Fingerprint Disease

Genetic difference found in people with immigration-delay disease.

The rare condition adermatoglyphia causes people to be born without fingerprints (file picture).

Photograph courtesy Eli Sprecher, American Journal of Human Genetics

Rachel Kaufman

for National Geographic News

Published August 9, 2011

A genetic mutation causes people to be born without fingerprints, a new study says.

Almost every person is born with fingerprints, and everyone's are unique. But people with a rare disease known as adermatoglyphia do not have fingerprints from birth. Affecting only four known extended families worldwide, the condition is also called immigration-delay disease, since a lack of fingerprints makes it difficult for people to cross international borders.

In an effort to find the cause of the disease, dermatologist Eli Sprechersequenced the DNA of 16 members of one family with adermatoglyphia inSwitzerland. Seven had normal fingerprints, and the other nine did not. After investigating a number of genes to find evidence of mutation, the researchers came up empty-handed—until a grad student finally found the culprit, a smaller version of a gene called SMARCAD1. (Get a genetics overview.)

The larger SMARCAD1 is expressed throughout the body, but the smaller form acts only on the skin. Sure enough, the nine family members with no fingerprints had mutations in that gene.

Being born without fingerprints doesn't occur simply because one gene has been turned on or off, Sprecher said. Rather, the mutation causes copies of the SMARCAD1 gene to be unstable.

That mutation is also the first link in a long chain of events that ultimately affects fingerprint development in the womb. The rest of the links in the chain are still a mystery, said Sprecher, of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

(See skin pictures.)

No-Fingerprint Disease Not Harmful

Other inherited diseases that result in a lack of fingerprints—such as Naegeli syndrome and dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis—are caused by problems with the protein keratin-14.

These conditions "manifest not only with lack of fingerprints, but also with a number of other critical features—a thickening of the skin, problems with nail formation," Sprecher said.

By contrast, immigration-delay disease doesn't come with any side effects besides a minor reduction in the ability to sweat. In general, people with the disease "are otherwise completely healthy, like you and me."

By further studying the Swiss family, Sprecher said, it might be possible to solve the mystery of fingerprints overall.

"You go from a rare disease to a biological insight of general importance," he said. "We would never have been able to get to this gene if not for the study of this family."

The fingerprint research was published August 12 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

From the outermost to the deepest

2011-08-14T00:01:00.003+08:00

Oh wow! Simply amazing, what this infographic shows. I love the way all this information is presented. Ilmu baru nih! Among other things - Didn't know one kind of bird can fly above the death zone, and that it takes 18 minutes to boil an egg at Everest's altitude, and that temperature rises as atmospheric pressure increases. Didn't know about Mariana Trench as well.

Read on ok? ^___^

p.s. and, it is my first time coming across ouramazingplanet.com. Some of their contents are interesting!

Source OurAmazingPlanet.com, Exploring the wonder and beauty of planet Earth through exclusive news, features and images.

2011-07-24T01:01:00.002+08:00

from http://srikandiislamiyyah.blogspot.com/2010/12/ketika-akhwat-jatuh-cinta.html via Marliyana's blog ---

Yang mereka rasakan adalah penyesalan yang amat sangat, atas sebuah hijab yang tersingkap...
Ketika lelaki yang tak halal baginya, bergelayut dalam alam fikirannya, yang mereka rasakan adalah ketakutan yang begitu besar akan cinta yang tak suci lagi...

Ketika rasa rindu mulai merekah di hatinya, yang mereka rasakan adalah kesedihan yang tak terperih akan sbuah asa yang tak semestinya…

Tak ada senyum bahagia, tak ada rona malu…
Yang ada adalah malam-malam yang dipenuhi air mata penyesalan atas cinta-Nya yang ternodai…
Yang ada adalah kegelisahan, karena rasa yang salah arah…
Yang ada adalah penderitaan akan hati yang mulai sakit…

Ketika Akhwat Jatuh Cinta…

Bukan harapan untuk bertemu yang mereka nantikan, tapi yang ada adalah rasa ingin menghindar dan menjauh dari orang tersebut…

Tak ada kata-kata cinta dan rayuan…

Yang ada adalah kekhawatiran yang amat sangat, akan hati yang mulai merindukan lelaki yang belum halal atau bahkan tak akan pernah halal baginya…

Ketika mereka jatuh cinta, maka perhatikanlah, kegelisahan di hatinya yang tak mampu lagi memberikan ketenangan di wajahnya yang dulu teduh…

Mereka akan terus berusaha mematikan rasa itu bagaimanapun caranya…
Bahkan kendati dia harus menghilang, maka itu pun akan mereka lakukan...

Alangka kasihannya jika akhwat jatuh cinta…
Karena yang ada adalah penderitaan…

Tapi ukhti…
Bersabarlah…
Jadikan ini ujian dari Rabbmu…

Matikan rasa itu secepatnya…
Pasang tembok pembatas antara kau dan dia…
Pasang duri dalam hatimu, agar rasa itu tak tumbuh bersemai…
Cuci dengan air mata penyesalan akan hijab yang sempat tersingkap...

Putar balik kemudi hatimu, agar rasa itu tetap terarah hanya padaNya…
Pupuskan rasa rindu padanya dan kembalikan dalam hatimu rasa rindu akan cinta Rabbmu…

Ukhti… Jangan khawatir kau akan kehilangan cintanya…

Karena bila memang kalian ditakdirkan bersama, maka tak akan ada yang dapat mencegah kalian bersatu…

Tapi ketahuilah, bagaimana pun usaha kalian untuk bersatu, jika Allah tak menghendakinya, maka tak akan pernah kalian bersatu…

Ukhti… Bersabarlah… Biarkan Allah yang mengaturnya...
Maka yakinlah... Semuanya akan baik-baik saja…

Semua Akan Indah Pada Waktunya…

very well-expressed. the description is spot-on. Allah.. please strengthen our hearts.

2011-07-24T00:36:00.004+08:00

oh. my. god.

i cant believe it.

i just got to know that my TP senior is the cousin of my alsagoff junior who is now in TP.

i dont know why this ticks me off.

i guess it's because my world is getting too small.

singapore is getting too small.

dont tell me, 'it's just a coincidence'. save it.

way too small.

i want to fly away and start afresh somewhere. seriously.

maybe im being overly dramatic.

gotta chill, yo!

(and for the record, this has nothing to do with the senior or junior)

Yeay!!

2011-07-23T22:31:00.002+08:00

I have succeeded in rotating the 'Twister in a Bottle' video!

All thanks to an anonymous person who commented on that post. Sorry, Mr Wiredless, I only noticed your comment today (which turned out not to be an spam ad). And I did watch your video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWZSR11r20Q. I think I get it - spin the top bottle as the water is 'going down' halfway, so the vortex inside increases. Right? Nice!

And thank you, for recommending Corel VideoStudio. I just downloaded it. Will use it to rotate my other videos =)

p.s. I have replaced the original 'Twister in a Bottle' video with the edited one.

Sunset on 18 July 2011

2011-07-23T20:22:00.006+08:00

It was 7.38pm. I had returned to the lab after performing maghrib prayer at level 8. After taking my labcoat, I went out to the lift lobby, to go to level 6 cell culture lab. And I saw this.

I stood there in awe. It was just soo.. magnificent! Especially the rays.. Clear cut rays. And the sunset hues - shades of orange, yellow, blue, reddish.. - were... beautiful! I don't know what to say. Several seconds later, I decided to capture it. I want to remember this. And I want to share this with other people. ^________^

I know that recording it with my cameraphone wouldn't show the reeeaall thing, the real burst of colours, but it was the best I got. Nevertheless, I am satisfied.

I am fortunate to have nice sky views from where I am working. If I am in the lab, I can enjoy the view outside the window (like the last two pictures below).. say, when I am washing the labware, or making PBS, or washing my hands, or while wearing my labcoat. If I stand at the small balcony near the lift lobby, I can see Anderson JC, the MRT track.. and yes, a clear view of the sky. I will look up and ponder. and wonder at the beauty of it all. If it's raining hard, whooaa.. what I see is enough to make me shudder. Like this one -

Subhanallah.. Subhanallah..

2011-07-17T20:33:00.007+08:00

Just saw kak Ezsra's 'Amazing Borneo' album. wow, wow, and WoW.

Please remind me to propose a climbing expedition to my husband for a couple getaway trip. When the time comes.

Or backpacking to Europe (Eastern Europe, please. Followed by the Scandinavian countries). And perhaps, go down to Turkey and Middle Asia.

I wonder if anyone is up for a two-year break, to be my travel companion (and then live for the rest of his life with me).

That'll be lovely, innit? The ta'aruf curve would be steep. Really get to know this person inside-out through a long rough, tough, challenging-but-worth-it, care-free journey. No, I am not talking about romance plus adventure. I am talking about adventure with a mahram around, to be my leader (sometimes, I need someone to point things to. Help make decisions when I can't. I think I will make a good map reader and a decent navigator, though), laughing buddy (keeping one another sane), motivator (if I am scared to jump off the bridge or cross the freezing cold river), protector (I will be in strange places with strange men!) and a patient friend (when I run out of patience with myself, or accidentally unleash the ogre inside). And my imam, of course (him leading the prayer, reciting the qur'an together, tasmi' one another's memorised verses, fasting together.. now that's ~~romantic~~ sweet!).

Maybe each of us should learn a foreign language or two.

Maybe I should resume TKD as well. You know, self-defence. You can't always depend on your husband, right? I mean, what if he's in the loo and you're out alone? Also, 2 people with fighting skills are better than one, don't you think? Increase the chances of survival. Heh. Just thinking out loud.

Saya mahu sematkan kata-kata ini

2011-05-29T17:22:00.003+08:00

Aras tertinggi dalam persahabatan adalah Itsar - melebihkan sahabat daripada diri sendiri. Aras paling rendah pula adalah bersangka baik dan berlapang dada. Andai tiada sangka baik, maka akan musnahlah hubungan persahabatan itu.

mukasurat 231, "Sinergi", oleh Hilal Asyraf, terbitan Galeri Ilmu.

2011-05-16T23:43:00.003+08:00

Terasa dekat, kematian itu.

Baru dapat berita daripada mak - sepupu mak, yang lebih muda darinya, meninggal dunia; pukul 10 lebih malam tadi. terjatuh semasa berada di dalam tandas.

Rasa bersalah kalau diri ni rasa gembira, rasa mahu ketawa. sekarang bukan masanya!

Teringat Januari.. nenek Hasnah meninggal dunia. Teringat Januari tahun lalu.. nenek Fatimah meninggal dunia.

Mak terkesima. Liyana pun.

Memang Allah ambil balik nyawa bila2 sahaja.

3 more books to my personal collection

2011-03-20T14:06:00.007+08:00

So yesterday I was at the Halal 2011 at Expo hall 5A, and I couldn't resist going to the sale next door, at hall 5B.. which is.. none other than The Popular Book Saleee..!

It was obviously of a smaller scale than the one back in December at Suntec City, but it was fine with me. Here, books were on sale for $10, $15 or 30% off. Most were old titles and non-fiction books. (Oh, there was a section called '10 books for $10', which made me go CraZyy, but only briefly, coz I immediately found out the range of books was not my taste. heh.)

I scoured the tables at the non-fiction books area, hoping to see Greg Mortenson's books or Atlas of the World (like the one offered by The Folio Society, in March's NG mag, which I decided not to buy coz I don't think I will be buying the extra 4 books). But then again, I was not looking for anything specific, really. In the end, I bought 3 books. I must say, I immediately grabbed each one of 'em upon laying my eyes on the title.

2 reference books and 1 is a fiction by Ken Follett. I first heard his name on the Oprah show, when she was recommending The Pillars of The Earth. So at that moment I thought, "wow.. this book must be something." And thus, the author's works must be something too. So I am glad I got my hands on the sequel, despite not having read Pillars. If the story is reeeeaally good, I will let y'all know =)

The other books are about the history of mountaineering and women in history. I have never heard of The Alpine Club before, so I am looking forward to know how it was conceived, who are the people in it, plus the milestones in the field of mountaineering. General knowledge laahh..

The synopsis on the book jacket says that The Alpine Club was the world's first mountaineering club, and is Britain's only national club for Alpinists. Its history in the history of British mountaineering, and its story is the story of those with a passion for adventure who accomplished extraordinary feats againts the odds. Since the Alpine Club was founded in 1857 its members have been at the leading edge of worldwide mountaineering development and exploration.

Historica's Women, I just flipped thru.. I noticed that the 1000 years of history revolved mostly around European/American women. I can understand why this is so - I suppose their records were well-documented, as compared to their Asian counterparts in the same time or era.

Thick, aren't they? I think I will still not finish 'em next March (except for World Without End. hee)

Twister in a bottle

2011-03-07T11:59:00.004+08:00

Was looking absently at the PBS with 0.05% Tween being mixed, when I realised that the magnetic stirrer was spinning faster than usual. And, oh! the stirring liquid looks like a twister. But contained in a bottle. *imagine if a real twister hits Singapore! shiverss*

2011-03-06T23:12:00.002+08:00

I guess I miss writing in here. I used to write about what I did, what I saw and read, whom I was with, what piques my interest, didn't I? When I was younger.

Now, I don't write. I don't talk. Sometimes, I think I've reduced myself to a silent person. Only sometimes. Coz most of the time, I still enjoy talking with others. Yet most of the time, I prefer to listen.

Days.. months.. have whizzed past me. And I recorded little. 2010 has very few records, but there were quite a few memories. I am sad, because I may lose these memories. I don't know why, but for quite a while now, I feel I should be saving as many memories as I could, as though something would happen to me and I would forget. Or maybe it's because, it has dawned to me that as I age, I will forget certain events that happened in the past - big and small episodes that meant a lot to me once. Or maybe, it's because I don't want my heart to feel empty when I reach 40, 50, 60..

I do not want to forget.

I miss sharing stories and opinions with someone. But I have none. Nothing worthy.

I guess this is what happens when you spend too much time with yourself.

2011-03-06T23:03:00.003+08:00

I need to surround myself with soleh people. In soleh environment.

Ugly

2011-03-06T22:19:00.002+08:00

I closed my eyes and muttered, "astaghfirullah.."

Immediately I heard a senior say, "Liyana ngantuk, eh." (or somewhere along that line)

I opened my eyes and smiled.

The truth is, I was not sleepy. Or maybe I was, a bit, but I did not close my eyes because they were tired and sleepy.

I was trying to block something from my mind.

An image. A horrible one, in my opinion.

One of many, that have been appearing so suddenly in my head. On and off. Sometimes, I may be thinking about something, or subconsciously thinking about a particular thing, or my thoughts drift from its original point, and then, a nasty image, or an inappropriate thought would surface.

It would catch me off-guard. And I would close my eyes and whisper istighfar to myself. Or, shout at myself (no, Liyana!!), or moan (noo... please stop..). Feeling guilty that these bad things are in my head. Feeling shameful of myself because I did not try hard enough to block them off or because sometimes, I actually enjoyed that thought or image for two seconds or three. Feeling frustrated because it keeps popping up.

I would feel helpless when this happens.

Of course, this morning I had no time to feel helpless because I was busy listening to the programme flow (which I thought, "whyyy do they take soO long on one item?". Hmm.. I have forgotten what it is like to organise something, scrutinize every little detail, and be in a indecisive, round-a-bout state), fishing for ideas for tadzkirah (which I ended up not doing because I could not bring myself to say things I do not mean), and worrying for the logs team (well, it was more like I was floating between worried and not worried).

These images have taken a particular theme, for the past few months. And I am beginning to feel very disturbed at how frequent they appear. They make me feel dirty on the inside.

Nobody can help me in this. Only I can. Certain things just cannot be fixed, assured, relieved by others. Certain things are just my own battle. Mine only. I am feeling lonely. I am feeling sad, I am scared to my wits, because I am alone to fight this.

I have to accept that certain things, are just between me and Allah. I seek His help, to cure me inside. I must never ever stop seeking His help. Because if I do, I will destroy myself.

Remember this, Liyana, ok? Remember what you have just written.

An awesommmmee surprise in the mail

2011-03-04T13:10:00.008+08:00

I just. have. to blog about this!

So, 20 minutes ago, I went downstairs to check the mailbox. Fuhh.. It was full. Among the mails was a package. Addressed to me. The first thing I thought was, "eh? I didnt buy anything from China. Could it be wrong addressee..??" (at the same time, I thought, "takkan orang yang buat online purchase boleh terkasi salah info ?)

Maybe, my brother or mum bought something. Maybe kak Maya did?

After comtemplating for a few minutes (including knocking on Bro's bedroom door to ask if he bought anything online), I decided to open the package. While tearing open the white plastic, mum was saying, "maybe it is from someone. a gift", to which I replied, "nah.. couldn't be. if it is a gift, there should be a note or something." (and, who on earth would send me something from CHINA...??)

OK, pause a bit. I kept saying China because the mail stamp has chinese characters on it. Oh, and the green label says "Jacket".

So, the jacket is black. I fingered it carefully, coz suspicious of the material. I looked at the tag at the neck line. "100% polyester". *HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF* Then, I held it up.

OH. MY. GOD.

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD..!!!!!! (yes, I actually jumped in joy. in front of mum and dad)

It's National Geographic...!!!!!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....!! I can't believe it!

It immediately struck me that I got this gift because I signed up for the magazine's monthly subscription. Heee.. that was in December last year, on the last day of Popular Book Sale.

Oh my.. I am feeling elatedddd.. though calmer now. haha.. it was like hitting a million dollars or something! (but if that happens, I would've continued jumping and not blog til waaayyyy later. heh.)

Alhamdulillaaaaaahh.. ^______________^ *BIG SMILE to myself*

Article - Past Medical Testing on Humans Revealed

2011-03-01T00:15:00.003+08:00

I just hafta archive this article. And share it with y'all. It is from Yahoo! News, dated 28 Feb 2011.
---------------------------

AP IMPACT: Past medical testing on humans revealed
By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe, Ap Medical Writer – Sun Feb 27, 6:46 pm ET

ATLANTA – Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.

Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.

U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States — studies that often involved making healthy people sick.

An exhaustive review by The Associated Press of medical journal reports and decades-old press clippings found more than 40 such studies. At best, these were a search for lifesaving treatments; at worst, some amounted to curiosity-satisfying experiments that hurt people but provided no useful results.

Inevitably, they will be compared to the well-known Tuskegee syphilis study. In that episode, U.S. health officials tracked 600 black men in Alabama who already had syphilis but didn't give them adequate treatment even after penicillin became available.

These studies were worse in at least one respect — they violated the concept of "first do no harm," a fundamental medical principle that stretches back centuries.

"When you give somebody a disease — even by the standards of their time — you really cross the key ethical norm of the profession," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.

Some of these studies, mostly from the 1940s to the '60s, apparently were never covered by news media. Others were reported at the time, but the focus was on the promise of enduring new cures, while glossing over how test subjects were treated.

Attitudes about medical research were different then. Infectious diseases killed many more people years ago, and doctors worked urgently to invent and test cures. Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society — people like prisoners, mental patients, poor blacks. It was an attitude in some ways similar to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews.

"There was definitely a sense — that we don't have today — that sacrifice for the nation was important," said Laura Stark, a Wesleyan University assistant professor of science in society, who is writing a book about past federal medical experiments.

The AP review of past research found:

_A federally funded study begun in 1942 injected experimental flu vaccine in male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Mich., then exposed them to flu several months later. It was co-authored by Dr. Jonas Salk, who a decade later would become famous as inventor of the polio vaccine.

Some of the men weren't able to describe their symptoms, raising serious questions about how well they understood what was being done to them. One newspaper account mentioned the test subjects were "senile and debilitated." Then it quickly moved on to the promising results.

_In federally funded studies in the 1940s, noted researcher Dr. W. Paul Havens Jr. exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including one using patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Conn. Havens, a World Health Organization expert on viral diseases, was one of the first scientists to differentiate types of hepatitis and their causes.

A search of various news archives found no mention of the mental patients study, which made eight healthy men ill but broke no new ground in understanding the disease.

_Researchers in the mid-1940s studied the transmission of a deadly stomach bug by having young men swallow unfiltered stool suspension. The study was conducted at the New York State Vocational Institution, a reformatory prison in West Coxsackie. The point was to see how well the disease spread that way as compared to spraying the germs and having test subjects breathe it. Swallowing it was a more effective way to spread the disease, the researchers concluded. The study doesn't explain if the men were rewarded for this awful task.

_A University of Minnesota study in the late 1940s injected 11 public service employee volunteers with malaria, then starved them for five days. Some were also subjected to hard labor, and those men lost an average of 14 pounds. They were treated for malarial fevers with quinine sulfate. One of the authors was Ancel Keys, a noted dietary scientist who developed K-rations for the military and the Mediterranean diet for the public. But a search of various news archives found no mention of the study.

_For a study in 1957, when the Asian flu pandemic was spreading, federal researchers sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Md., to compare their reactions to those of 32 virus-exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine.

_Government researchers in the 1950s tried to infect about two dozen volunteering prison inmates with gonorrhea using two different methods in an experiment at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. The bacteria was pumped directly into the urinary tract through the penis, according to their paper.

The men quickly developed the disease, but the researchers noted this method wasn't comparable to how men normally got infected — by having sex with an infected partner. The men were later treated with antibiotics. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, but there was no mention of it in various news archives.

Though people in the studies were usually described as volunteers, historians and ethicists have questioned how well these people understood what was to be done to them and why, or whether they were coerced.

Prisoners have long been victimized for the sake of science. In 1915, the U.S. government's Dr. Joseph Goldberger — today remembered as a public health hero — recruited Mississippi inmates to go on special rations to prove his theory that the painful illness pellagra was caused by a dietary deficiency. (The men were offered pardons for their participation.)

But studies using prisoners were uncommon in the first few decades of the 20th century, and usually performed by researchers considered eccentric even by the standards of the day. One was Dr. L.L. Stanley, resident physician at San Quentin prison in California, who around 1920 attempted to treat older, "devitalized men" by implanting in them testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts.

Newspapers wrote about Stanley's experiments, but the lack of outrage is striking.

"Enter San Quentin penitentiary in the role of the Fountain of Youth — an institution where the years are made to roll back for men of failing mentality and vitality and where the spring is restored to the step, wit to the brain, vigor to the muscles and ambition to the spirit. All this has been done, is being done ... by a surgeon with a scalpel," began one rosy report published in November 1919 in The Washington Post.

Around the time of World War II, prisoners were enlisted to help the war effort by taking part in studies that could help the troops. For example, a series of malaria studies at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois and two other prisons was designed to test antimalarial drugs that could help soldiers fighting in the Pacific.

It was at about this time that prosecution of Nazi doctors in 1947 led to the "Nuremberg Code," a set of international rules to protect human test subjects. Many U.S. doctors essentially ignored them, arguing that they applied to Nazi atrocities — not to American medicine.

The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries, accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical guinea pigs.

But two studies in the 1960s proved to be turning points in the public's attitude toward the way test subjects were treated.

The first came to light in 1963. Researchers injected cancer cells into 19 old and debilitated patients at a Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in the New York borough of Brooklyn to see if their bodies would reject them.

The hospital director said the patients were not told they were being injected with cancer cells because there was no need — the cells were deemed harmless. But the experiment upset a lawyer named William Hyman who sat on the hospital's board of directors. The state investigated, and the hospital ultimately said any such experiments would require the patient's written consent.

At nearby Staten Island, from 1963 to 1966, a controversial medical study was conducted at the Willowbrook State School for children with mental retardation. The children were intentionally given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured with gamma globulin.

Those two studies — along with the Tuskegee experiment revealed in 1972 — proved to be a "holy trinity" that sparked extensive and critical media coverage and public disgust, said Susan Reverby, the Wellesley College historian who first discovered records of the syphilis study in Guatemala.

By the early 1970s, even experiments involving prisoners were considered scandalous. In widely covered congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.

Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia made extensive use of inmates for medical experiments. Some of the victims are still around to talk about it. Edward "Yusef" Anthony, featured in a book about the studies, says he agreed to have a layer of skin peeled off his back, which was coated with searing chemicals to test a drug. He did that for money to buy cigarettes in prison.

"I said 'Oh my God, my back is on fire! Take this ... off me!'" Anthony said in an interview with The Associated Press, as he recalled the beginning of weeks of intense itching and agonizing pain.

The government responded with reforms. Among them: The U.S. Bureau of Prisons in the mid-1970s effectively excluded all research by drug companies and other outside agencies within federal prisons.

As the supply of prisoners and mental patients dried up, researchers looked to other countries.

It made sense. Clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules. And it was easy to find patients who were taking no medication, a factor that can complicate tests of other drugs.

Additional sets of ethical guidelines have been enacted, and few believe that another Guatemala study could happen today. "It's not that we're out infecting anybody with things," Caplan said.

Still, in the last 15 years, two international studies sparked outrage.

One was likened to Tuskegee. U.S.-funded doctors failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study in Uganda even though it would have protected their newborns. U.S. health officials argued the study would answer questions about AZT's use in the developing world.

The other study, by Pfizer Inc., gave an antibiotic named Trovan to children with meningitis in Nigeria, although there were doubts about its effectiveness for that disease. Critics blamed the experiment for the deaths of 11 children and the disabling of scores of others. Pfizer settled a lawsuit with Nigerian officials for $75 million but admitted no wrongdoing.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general reported that between 40 and 65 percent of clinical studies of federally regulated medical products were done in other countries in 2008, and that proportion probably has grown. The report also noted that U.S. regulators inspected fewer than 1 percent of foreign clinical trial sites.

Monitoring research is complicated, and rules that are too rigid could slow new drug development. But it's often hard to get information on international trials, sometimes because of missing records and a paucity of audits, said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a Duke University professor of medicine who has written on the ethics of international studies.

These issues were still being debated when, last October, the Guatemala study came to light.

In the 1946-48 study, American scientists infected prisoners and patients in a mental hospital in Guatemala with syphilis, apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease. The study came up with no useful information and was hidden for decades.

The Guatemala study nauseated ethicists on multiple levels. Beyond infecting patients with a terrible illness, it was clear that people in the study did not understand what was being done to them or were not able to give their consent. Indeed, though it happened at a time when scientists were quick to publish research that showed frank disinterest in the rights of study participants, this study was buried in file drawers.

"It was unusually unethical, even at the time," said Stark, the Wesleyan researcher.

"When the president was briefed on the details of the Guatemalan episode, one of his first questions was whether this sort of thing could still happen today," said Rick Weiss, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

That it occurred overseas was an opening for the Obama administration to have the bioethics panel seek a new evaluation of international medical studies. The president also asked the Institute of Medicine to further probe the Guatemala study, but the IOM relinquished the assignment in November, after reporting its own conflict of interest: In the 1940s, five members of one of the IOM's sister organizations played prominent roles in federal syphilis research and had links to the Guatemala study.

So the bioethics commission gets both tasks. To focus on federally funded international studies, the commission has formed an international panel of about a dozen experts in ethics, science and clinical research. Regarding the look at the Guatemala study, the commission has hired 15 staff investigators and is working with additional historians and other consulting experts.

The panel is to send a report to Obama by September. Any further steps would be up to the administration.

Some experts say that given such a tight deadline, it would be a surprise if the commission produced substantive new information about past studies. "They face a really tough challenge," Caplan said.

___

AP news researchers Susan James and Julie Reed Bell contributed to this report.

Annoucement about my Chatbox

2011-02-13T22:45:00.003+08:00

Dear visitors,

Since irrelevant, spam comments are starting to appear in my chatbox, I am going to remove it from the side panel. Any comments, remarks and feedback, kindly use the 'Comments' section found in each post.

Thank you.

Liyana
13 Feb 2011

2011-01-18T10:10:00.002+08:00

rasa macam ada yang tak kena je.. kenapa eh?
harap2 tak timbul ape2 salah faham. sebab kite takde niat serong. mengada-ngada? oh, tidak tidak!
tapi.. kite rasa tak sedap.. takut2 the other party fikir lain pulak. takut2 kite memang ada buat salah.

Allah..!

ithmid (and white musk)

2011-01-09T23:35:00.004+08:00

Terima kasih, kak Mardhiyah~~

حَدَّثَنَا أَحْمَدُ بْنُ يُونُسَ حَدَّثَنَا زُهَيْرٌ حَدَّثَنَا عَبْدُ اللَّهِ بْنُ عُثْمَانَ بْنِ خُثَيْمٍ عَنْ سَعِيدِ بْنِ جُبَيْرٍ عَنْ ابْنِ عَبَّاسٍ قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ الْبَسُوا مِنْ ثِيَابِكُمْ الْبَيَاضَ فَإِنَّهَا مِنْ خَيْرِ ثِيَابِكُمْ وَكَفِّنُوا فِيهَا مَوْتَاكُمْ وَإِنَّ خَيْرَ أَكْحَالِكُمُ الْإِثْمِدُ يَجْلُو الْبَصَرَ وَيُنْبِتُ الشَّعْرَ

سنن أبي داود » كتاب الطب » باب في الأمر بالكحل

Narrated by Ibn Abbas (radhiallahu anhu) -
The Prophet (sollallahu 'alaihi wa sallam) said: Wear your white garments, for they are among your best garments, and shroud your dead in them. Among the best types of collyrium you use is antimony (ithmid): it clears the vision and makes the hair sprout.

Sunan Abu Daud >> Kitab at-Tibb >> Bab fil amri bil kuhl

The arabic matan is from here.
The english translation is from here.

2011-01-09T22:37:00.002+08:00

sedih sangat-sangat nak lepaskan hotmail. ='(

tapi dah berbulan-bulan tak dapat masuk. sebab password kena reject.

dah lama jugak fikirkan samada nak announce kat kawan-kawan ataupun tidak. it's not so much about what is in my inbox, sebab rase2nya forwarded emails lah yang banyak. klw one-to-one email, rasenya tak ada kot. (maklumlah.. sekarang kan, semua orang gunakan facebook) but it's more about my contacts on MSN.. i don't remember their email addresses.. *looonngg sigh* lebih2 lagi, kawan non-muslims. lepas ni, camne nak reach mereka? (okay, tak usah cakap facebook. -__-" i know)

akhirnya, malam ni, kite ambil keputusan untuk beritahu kawan-kawan..

*tersenyum sendiri* teringat masa kecil-kecil dulu, abang buatkan my first hotmail account. impurities_12. hahahaha..! masa tu, tak tahu apa maknanya. abang yang letak. tapi abang sendiri ada cakap maknanya tak best. account tu tak lama.. then, around primary 6 gitu, kite bukak cahaya_k.

sekarang, dah tinggal satu email account, rase vulnerable pulak! should i open a gmail account? as a back-up. *hmmmmm..* sebenarnya, ada jugak fikir-fikir nama yang sesuai.. but so far, nama yang kite nak dah diambil. hmmm... tengoklah camne.

just for the record (part 1)

2010-12-12T19:57:00.005+08:00

I was clearing whatever papers and receipts in my small black pouch. I've had this pouch since.. early 2000s? And I keep ATM transaction receipts and purchase receipts in it.

Guess what?

The ATM transaction receipts were as far back as March 2007! OMG OMG. nampak sangat liyana ni suka simpan2. Among other things, I found these 4 items which I would like to remember, before I throw 'em away -

1. May 05, 2006 I bought my second pair of glasses. $180 (My first pair was when I was in secondary 1) Blue rim, rectangular-ish lenses. I still keep both pair.

2. March 27, 2007 Bought a sleeping bag, for the first time. I remember searching the whole of Tampines Mall for one. Nada. So I went to Century Square. I don't remember if I just bought it 'for future use' or there was an upcoming camp.. I still have it, stashed in my wardrobe.

3. November 11, 2006 A birthday present for my brother - a Billabong wallet. The most expensive present I've given to anyone to date. Nevertheless, I am glad I bought it =)

4. sister Norashikin. Ahh... *feeling nostalgic* I met her at an NTUMS talk in.. lemme see.. 2005, I think. I remember that ust Sakinah recommended us to go. By 'us', I mean, banaat thfz. Maybe it was through email, or she told us about it in one of our classes, or during an usrah. I think I was supposed to go with.. 'Adilah and kak Mardhiyah, but last minute, both of them couldn't make it. So I went alone. It was my first time stepping into NTU campus.

The talk was.. after maghrib? or Isya'? Unfortunately, I can't remember what it was about =( But somehow, I have a feeling it was a session to 'rejuvenate our faith' in the midst of busy school schedules and CCAs. I think back then, I didn't really empathise with what these older brothers and sisters were going thru. I was still in madrasah.. hari2 dalam bi'ah islamiah. Anyway, the sister who befriended me was this sis Norashikin. I met her first (kira.. she was the contactperson ah..).. afterwards she introduced me to a few sisters. I remember eating dinner after the talk outside the LT. I remember feeling shy and awkward coz there were brothers.

And, that was where I met sis Khairiah for the first time. She was wearing a pink tudung labuh. Surprised, I asked her if it was okay to wear tudung labuh in uni, and she said, 'yes!'. =D

I remember following the sisters to somewhere.. maybe a room to pray? hmm.. this part I'm totally blank. Sad sad.. The next part is me in the bus going home with a few sisters. A sis Ira sat beside me. And we talked. I knew I asked her about her course, and at that time, she lives in Admiralty too. I exchanged numbers with sis Norashikin and sis Ira.

Hmm... yeah. I don't think I had seen or heard from them since. Sometime I wonder where they are now, and how they are doing. I hope to see them again.. Of course, I don't expect them to remember me. I was a small kid. hehe.. Just that, y'know, it'll be nice to re-connect. Someday, inshaAllah~

Oh, by the way, just to share, at the back of her card is this -

The next day..

2010-12-12T13:59:00.004+08:00

I feel a little bit better now. Alhamdulillah.. And the short article in today's Berita Minggu featuring kak Maryam and kak Nisha motivates me a bit. That's something, to get me back on track. Focus.

--

Anyway, the travelogue I am currently reading is titled Secangkir Teh Pengubat Letih by ustaz Hasrizal Abdul Jamil. I try to imagine the sceneries and places that he described, and I can't help but feel a lil' jealous of the ukhwah he forged with his Turkish companions.. hee.. not negative jealous.. a positive one.. I would also like to travel and live somewhere.. blend myself in a different culture and people. I definitely want to find and get to know those who are of the same faith.

--

I went to the library. Browsed the Adult Fiction section quite cluelessly. Coz I didn't know what titles to pick except Cecelia Ahern's and John Grisham's. I've been wanting to get my hands on the former's The Book of Tomorrow and the latter's The Confession. I am not a fan of John Grisham, coz I've never read his books. Just that I stumbled upon The Confession at Times Bookshop last week, read the synopsis, and decided that I want to give it a try.

Other than that.. I don't really know which books to choose. I think I am going to rely on recommendations I can find in newspapers, internets and magazines. Occasionally I would browse the fiction section in bookstores, pick up random titles (based on the cover illustration and the title.. if they attract me) and read the plot summary. If a book sounds appealing, I would then jot the title and author's name in my HP, noting to self to check it out the next time I visit a library. And occasionally, I would find a gem, where I would go.. "aaaaahhh... this is one of the best books I have ever read" or "just what I need!" or "what a wonderful story!".

So, today while at the New Arrivals table, I saw a book that tells the story of 'the princes of the tower'. Now this, is something I have never heard about. On to another shelf of books, I saw A Secret Alchemy, which revolves around the same topic. Hmm.. piqued my curiosity. Who are they? Found the info here.

--

After that, off to FairPrice which is located underground. I think I spent 40 minutes (probably more) browsing the aisles and reading the ingredients labels. I stopped long enough at my favourite sections - dried fruits (read - not PRESERVED fruits), biscuits, cereals, snack bars, chocolates. *wide grinnnn*

There's a brand I've never heard of - Carman's. They sell granola bars and muesli. Those bars look realllly delicious! But.. hmm.. oh well..

Although, I think I am getting mellower. I mean, now when I read food packagings, I don't immediately put back those that don't have Halal logo. I will examine them.. see if they have Kosher symbol, Halal symbol, vegetarian symbol, organic symbol or not.. and scan the ingredients. Some do look 'harmless'. I am not sure if I will buy these products one day.. just curious, I guess, of the possibility. Hmm...

2010-12-12T00:59:00.003+08:00

I want to read about

Robin Hood
the man in the iron mask
Richard The Lion Heart
Dzulqarnain
the Armenians
the history of the Balkans
the last of the Uthmaniyya caliph, his descendants
Mark Twain, who he is
Stephen Hawking's The ~~Great~~ Grand Design

I wonder why I am not that interested in anything south-east asian.

2010-12-11T23:25:00.002+08:00

I am feeling miserable.
I feel this way after meetings that I did not expect.
On the way home I could not continue reading the travelogue that I had brought with me.
Felt like crying, alright!
Tried to calm myself by istighfar, but somehow my mind wandered elsewhere.
In, out, in, out.. then, i pulled my thoughts back to earth and istighfar again..
But no.. I felt miserable, and I still am.
I want to get out of this misery.. but, how, ya Allah?
I thought of a way, but am I really ready to do it?
Ya Allah.. please.. put me out of this misery.
I thought I had it tied, bound, shushed away somewhere.
But it came back, and now I am filled with emotions that I don't feel comfortable to even acknowledge.

I should sleep it over.
Maybe I will be feel better in the morning.
But now.. now I feel like erasing my memory.
Can I have a wand and obliviate myself?
I am not joking.
There are some incidences that I wish to forget, because they make me feel this way..
I need to pray harder.
Ask Allah to make these stop.
These thoughts, fantasies, memories.
They are making me ill.

I just need to pray reeeeeeaaallyy hard.

2010-11-09T23:05:00.000+08:00

Ya Allah.. Please protect him from me.

2010-10-10T00:31:00.001+08:00

Bila seorang anak dan ayah bergaduh, lalu si ayah melepaskan kata-kata kesat, adakah si ayah berdosa? atau tidak? dari perspektif mana harus kita tgk - seorang muslim memaki hamun muslim yang lain, atau seorang ayah marah besar dgn anaknya? *agak keliru dalam hal ni* adakah seorang ayah berhak mengeluarkan kata-kata kesat terhadap anaknya, meskipun si anak lah yang meninggikan suaranya dahulu lantas mencetuskan perang mulut tersebut?

Does the father mean what he said? Does the father really mean what he said? People are often blinded by their anger and they would blurt out things they did not mean, things they would later regret. But is it not during these fiery episodes that their deep thoughts and feelings are brought to the surface? Things they have been keeping for some time, for example, resentment, certain negative impressions they hold on the other person (such as the thought that the son has not been responsible or filial), negative ideas or wishful thinking that, in normal peaceful situation, they strive to push aside because these wishes are morally incorrect and obviously, instigations by the devil.

So.. Both father and son, especially the father, were aware of what they were saying, right?

Suddenly I am curious about the psychology of anger.

2010-09-19T15:33:00.002+08:00

About 1 hour ago, Cik Isa's family left our house. And somehow, I am feelin' a bit stressed coz I was not able to strike any conversation with my cousins and cousins-in-law.

No. 1, kak Izan was sitting in between her husband (bro Azmi, who is my cousin) and Rayyan (nephew). No. 2, kak Rusydah and kak Shima were busy looking at wedding pictures and entertaining Azrul (kak Rusydah's son). No. 3, I was sitting at a quite unstrategic place. hmm.. (so, you see, I wanted to talk to my female cousin/cousins-in-law.. not the brothers. huhu)

K takpe.

It's just that, I really need to find ways, make an effort, to get to know 'em. Seriously, bila mak dan ayah dah takda, bila pak cik2, mak cik2 dah takda, camne nak sambung silaturrahim kalau dari sekarang tak cuba?

2010-09-11T23:26:00.002+08:00

I saw someone last night. On screen.
I had asked Allah not to let me see this person for 6 months.

I wonder, is it 6 months already?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes, I am very very curious about someone that I start thinking, "macam nak hantar wakil pergi merisik".

But, I'd stop myself and say, "then, what?"

when i see her

2010-07-16T14:01:00.004+08:00

there are a few sisters whom when i see them, i just feel 'oooOoOooo'.. y'know, rase hormat, rasa sayang, kagum, gembira.. kinda meshed up all together.

these sisters are ones that i treasure. sometimes i feel like i want to protect them.. and du'a for them, that good things will happen to them, and that they will meet someone soleh, and that Allah keep them safe, and that they be steadfast, and iman strengthened..

some of these sisters, i dont even know them that well. tapi dari jauh je, hati ni dah rasa suka kat mereka. just went to Facebook, and just got to know that a mutual friend is married. the only memory i have of her is a bus ride, from wak tanjong to tampines, the three of us, me, 'alimah and her. it was after the syarahan competition, peringkat saringan.. yes. i remember that.. i remember that we had a pleasant conversation. i dont hear a lot about her, but whatever i know so far, is good. and guess what, turns out that she is married to an ustaz of whom i've heard to be direct, passionate when it comes to 'pracitising your religion according to the quran and sunnah', and impress his students by his explanations and arguments. ohh... ini dia orangnya! anyway, back to this particular sister, i must say, she has an aura of maturity, tawadhu'.. segan plak rasanya bila ada dia. hee..

another sister of mine got married last week. hah! i dont remember how long it has been since i last met her. 2 years? or maybe, 3? jumpa je, kat masjid habib noh, on her nikah day! hehe.. can't help but feel suprised, macam-tak-percaya yang dia dah kahwin.. hee.. afwan kak, memori ana masih kat zaman kita kat MKS dulu. hehe.. kena fast-forward lah.. i dont know why i keep having this 'senyum simpul' when i think about her (being married). sweeeeeet~ and yes, i seriously would like to hear a first-hand account from her!

orang yang solehah ni, memang Allah jaga, kan? ^_____^

have you heard of a du'a, in which if someone thinks bad of you (for example, he/she thinks you are hot-tempered), may Allah protect you from actually having that character, and if someone thinks good of you (for example, he/she thinks you are very passionate about helping fellow youths), may Allah help you develop that character, but if you already possess that, may Allah keep it inside you and make you an even better person than what you are now? i am sure i've heard of it somewhere, but i dont know what sort of key words to use for me to google it. may be it is from a hadith or something.. hmm.. would very much like to know it, memorise and practise it.

2010-03-21T23:53:00.002+08:00

1. few weeks ago, my sister bugged me to check out Maher Zain's songs. after several days of 'nantilah... nanti kakak dengar..', i finally sat down, let Aqila play one song from Youtube, and listened.

I focused on the lyrics, and enjoyed the melody. my reflective mode was almost turned on. but, i restrained myself. hmm... i must say, it was a song to be remembered!

I find Maher Zain's music appealing.. the genre that he adopts suits the ears of many, especially youths and young adults. well, it suits mine. heh.

2. stepped into Darul Andalus at Golden Landmark today. tgh browsing, sekali terjumpa majalah Solusi. Immediately grabbed a copy. haha. excited. first heard about it from kak Khadijah last year. she was sharing with me how hooked she was to that magazine, the different contents, relevant, fresh approach. then, recently i went to kak Huda Khamsani's blog, turns out she likes the magazine very much. hmm.. enough to make me want one. curious!

now it's beside me - isu nombor 17. the theme is 'Membina Keyakinan Diri'. Allah! kena betul dgn situasi kite skrg. ~Allah Maha Mengetahui apa dalam hati ni, apa yang diri ni perlukan~ cant help but feel that i was at the right place, at the right time, and got the right first copy.

inshaAllah, i'll share with you more about this after i finish reading the magazine.

2010-02-27T23:30:00.002+08:00

1. i just hopped to a bro's blog, and suddenly it occured to me to click on his first month of blogging. back in 2005.

macam kelakar gitu~ i mean, we, readers, are able to read thru say, 5 years of a person's life just by clicking the archives. March 2005, October 2005, January 2006, June 2006...... September 2009, January 2010. it's like, in two days we can finish reading their past stories. macam buku cerita. padahal, that person took 5 years, updating his or her blog every other day. sometimes funny entries, insightful, sometimes with pictures, sometimes just plain boring. don't you think it's amazing, reading about someone's life in a matter of days? hmm.. macam unfair pon ade jugak.

like i said, macam story book. but, blogs seldom have reviews, kan? so, we dont know where to have a good read. i think the main publicity is word of mouth. e.g. oh, i know this kakak, blog nya best. cara dia tulis creative. so i tell my friends and friends of friends about it. if im lucky, i'd stumble on some 'foreign' blogs that turn out to be awesome! then, i would tell my friends and friends of friends about it. personally, i find it hard to search for The Interesting Blog, y'know? i want to find bloggers yang kat luar negeri.. say, Europe ke, Africa ke.. it'll be nice to know that people out there are living a life just like me. nak tahu jugak kehidupan mereka camne. a local's perspective ah.

having said that, i dont know of any 'overseas' blog. maybe im not searching enough. kawan-kawan, klw korang tahu blog2 yang best, beritahu kite eh? =D

back to reading a person's blog history - as you turn to newer posts, you can see the gradual changes as the person grows up - cara dia tulis, the content or theme of his/her posts, the thinking process that the person goes thru. for example, the bro's blog that i just visited, the early entries banyak nah '... ... ...'. nampak sangat tulis malas2, meleret2, typical of teenagers gitu ah. tapi as he matures, postsnya lebih to-the-point. succinct. more to nasihat untuk diri.
another example, a sister's journey from when she's in secondary school.. undegraduate kat luar negeri.. sampailah dah kerja sekarang, dan dah berumahtangga.

blog ni boleh jadi macam drama series. klw our favourite blogger tak update, gelisah kita dibuatnya. haha.. mungkin perumpamaan ni agak exaggerated lah, but im sure it rings true for some people.

2. i watched The Soloist about a week ago. quite disappointed lah.. ceritanya mendatar. it doesnt really show what's exactly wrong with the character. i mean, what's the main plot, really? is there a major conflict? i did not feel the emotion and inspiration at the end of the movie.

tapi, yang strike a chord in my heart is the state of the poor people. macamane mereka hidup hari2, penampilan mereka, macamane mereka tidur on the streets tanpa segan silu. it's their home. it's the only place they know. ape2 plastik, tilam lusuh yang mereka ada, they make it as a makeshift bed. then, zZZZzz... tak kisah sgt lah klw ada tikus, lipas lalu kat depan.

Anyway, have you seen Patch Adams? Best sangat2 cerita ni. a doctor-in-training who treats patients the unconventional way - lots of humour, laughs and love. with his stubborness, never-give-up attitude. sounds like a typical inspirational movie, kan? but, nah. the plot is good. plus, with Robin Williams in it, pasti mencuit hati. yup yup. inspiring!

pictures from my handphone (part 1)

2010-02-20T23:34:00.006+08:00

Ahh, yes, after nearly 5 years, I finally bought a new handphone set.

And apparently, it was not easy. choosing the Right model. haha.. mind you, I have never bought a handphone before. My first handphone was given to me by my brother. a Siemens. small, simple. couldnt save a lot of messages. but it was the one that got me attracted to Silent Night. i cant remember if the ringtone was polyphonic or not, but i like the tune very much. it sounded familiar, and eventually, i managed to recall that it's from the popular Christmas carol.

My second model was Nokia 3100. mum upgraded her handphone. but instead of using the new one, she gave it to me. she herself continued to use her old handphone. *sigh* i always think it was very sweet of her. terharu gitu. mengalah untuk anak. i'm forever grateful.. and this phone has, over the years, become such a precious thing to me. banyak berjasa! i didnt even change the handphone set colour, although there were a few times in that almost-5 years that i thought of buying a purple one at pasar malam. ni kes sayang duit, dan sayang nak tukar ape2 pon ttg handphone nih.

Then, since 2 or 3 years ago, my address book became full. and i needed more storage space for messages. and sometimes, i envy those cameraphones. and THEN, my lovely lovely 3100 started to have bad reception.. asyik kena switch on and off je. the battery life became shorter *sedih sedih.. signs of old age ke?* anyway~ at the beginning of last year, i started to become aware of the current models in the market. maklum je lah, selama ni cukup puas hati dgn apa yang ada. tak heran dgn yang lain. when i got my first pay, lagi lah semangat mencari.

Like i said, it wasn't easy. i was picky about the design (i dont want touchscreen!), and size (i want something small, like my 3100), and brand (i prefer Nokia and Sony Ericsson). i even listed down the functions i want (i was especially adamant about getting a 5-megapixel phone. no, sir, not less than that!) oh, good thing webbies like Nokia have the product filter for you to narrow down your search for the ideal phone. very very helpful!

Dalam banyak2 handphone models kat dunia ni, turns out that i only like 4 -

Sony Ericsson C901 Greenheart
Nokia 6700 Classic
Nokia N79
Nokia E75

C901 and N79 are not sold in singapore (yet?). i like the design of E75.. but since it's 3.2 megapixel, and the physical phone looks a biiiit wide, so, no..

To find the perfect time to buy was another problem. im sure im not the only one with the habit of waiting for The Promotion, The Best Price, and of course, having enough money at the right time. 6700 without a mobile plan is quite Ex. which means, i had to buy one.. oh tidaaakkk! part ni sungguh tak best. why cant i convert pre-paid to post-paid, yet retain the same number??????

The Promotion came in November 2009. Starhub. $0. k, im for it! kena beli mobile plan pun, beli je lah~ BUT, i wanted the student plan (who doesn't want the UNLIMITED SMSes?) haha.. so, i asked my sister's help.

wheee~~ akhirnya..

Nampak sleek and slim gitu kan? ^_^ unfortunately, the first thing that came to mind when i first held it was.. 'alamak, berat uh'. the casing is steel, not plastic like my 3100. haha.. just gotta live with it!

So far, so good. albeit this particular handphone set does not have Calculator. *suprise suprise!* i was bewildered when i couldnt find that function. penting lah.. i need it to count the cells. kadang2 lupa nak bawak calculator from the lab to the cell culture room, so i usually use my handphone. pfftt.

I was mostly excited about being able to bluetooth music files and e-books into my phone! more excited about the latter, really! i've read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol, and J. R. R. Tolkien's LOTR The Return of The King. Of course i dont get the same pleasure as when i hold and read physical books. but okay lah, comfortable enough to keep me occupied during train or bus rides.

Whoopsie! look at the time! i'll continue next time, inshaAllah. with the content that i had initially intended to post. kira, ni macam prologue ah.. or, 'background information'. heh.

Til the next post..! see ya!

music to the ears~

2010-02-13T23:00:00.002+08:00

Just got to know that We Are The World has been remade, in aid for the Haiti Earthquake.

The song's been given a very fresh makeover, i must say. *love it!* although i think there's just tad too many artists involved, oh well, it's the music that matters.

There's also a sort of remake of The Earth Song at this year's Grammys. When I heard Michael Jackson's singing.. whooaa.. I cant help but feel strange.. almost chilling.. to think that he's underground right now, yet there was his voice, so strong, so into the music. i wonder if he stirred in his grave..

The Earth Song has been a favourite of mine ever since I heard it when I was a kid.

(i notice two of MJ's nephews look like him! Dont you think so?)

Of course, not forgetting this one --

Say the words, I'll lay 'em down for you
Just call my name, I am your friend
See then why do they keep teaching us
Such hate and cruelty
We should give over and over again

What have I got that I can give
(We should give over and over again)
What have I got that I can give
(Oh my God, oh my God)
See, to love and to teach you
To hold and to need you
What more can I give

am happy for them =)

2010-01-14T23:49:00.002+08:00

RAIH DIPLOMA: Cik Faridah (kanan) dan Cik Salbiah antara kohort pertama 24 guru dari enam madrasah sepenuh masa yang menerima diploma dari NIE semalam. -- Foto TAUFIK A. KADER

Mudah cetak
E-mel

14 Jan 2010

SINGAPURA

24 guru madrasah terima diploma pendidikan

Usaha guru Bahasa Arab kembali ke bilik darjah selepas 25 tahun tinggalkan bangku sekolah berbaloi

Oleh
Azahar Mohd
TUNTUTLAH ilmu daripada buaian hingga ke liang lahad.

Dengan semangat kental, keazaman yang tinggi dan hasrat yang kuat untuk menjadi guru yang lebih berkesan, Cik Faridah Ali, guru Bahasa Arab di Madrasah Wak Tanjong, kembali ke bilik darjah walaupun telah meninggalkan bangku sekolah lebih 25 tahun.

Jerih payah dan kerja kerasnya berbaloi.

Cik Faridah, 50 tahun, adalah antara kohort pertama 24 guru daripada enam madrasah sepenuh masa yang menerima Diploma Program Pembelajaran dan Pengajaran daripada Institut Pendidikan Nasional (NIE) dalam satu majlis ringkas di Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (Muis), Braddell Road, semalam.

Beliau menerima diploma itu daripada Menteri Bertanggungjawab bagi Ehwal Masyarakat Islam, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim.

Turut hadir ialah Presiden Muis, Haji Mohd Alami Musa.

'Diploma ini sememangnya membawa kelegaan yang tidak terhingga selepas saya menempuh pelbagai cubaan dan dugaan, lebih-lebih lagi setelah begitu lama menamatkan pengajian di Universiti Al-Azhar dalam 1982,' ujar ibu seorang anak itu.

Beliau diberi penghormatan memberi ucapan perpisahan dalam majlis tersebut.

Sementara itu dalam ucapannya, Haji Mohd Alami berkata lebih 90 peratus daripada sekitar 270 guru madrasah akan mempunyai kelayakan profesional menjelang akhir tahun ini.

Kesemua guru madrasah dijangka mempunyai kelayakan profesional menjelang tahun depan - memaparkan betapa serius usaha menyuntik profesionalisme dalam sistem pendidikan madrasah di sini.

Sejak 2003, Muis membelanjakan $2.5 juta bagi pelbagai latihan untuk guru madrasah.

Antaranya ialah menghantar empat guru madrasah mengikuti program diploma dalam bidang Kaunseling di Politeknik Nanyang.

Guru madrasah yang muncul sebagai pelajar terbaik dalam program diploma kelolaan NIE itu ialah Cik Salbiah Zainal, 42 tahun, guru Madrasah Alsagoff.

Cik Salbiah, ibu empat anak yang berusia antara lima dengan 12 tahun, berkata antara masalah yang paling mencabar ialah mengimbangi tuntutan keluarga dengan mengetepikan masa untuk mengulang kaji pelajaran.

'Saya berharap kemahiran yang saya timba ini dapat membantu saya mendidik pelajar madrasah supaya mereka setanding atau lebih baik berbanding pelajar di sekolah akademik,' tambah beliau yang juga lulusan Universiti Malaya

2009-11-18T00:28:00.002+08:00

I am inspired.

Y'know, these days i wish i have a credit card. Do you guys know about World Food Programme's 1 Billion project? let me say this again - i wish i have a credit card. Visa. Mastercard. whatever.

Even if i have PayPal, i still have to have a credit card, right? pfft. (and i dont think organisations accept PayPal)

Back to the video - inshaAllah! Heads up, liyana! Stay focused, stay determined!

nak share je..

2009-10-05T23:59:00.003+08:00

yesterday (i.e. sunday) i went to Joo Chiat to find a book for my cousin. she just got married on saturday. so i thought this particular book would be nice for her. masuk ke Toko Warisan.. setiap shelf tu, aku tengok dari atas ke bawah. mane eh buku tu? nak tanya juru jual, alamak, mcm segan plak kat brother tu. jadi aku pun tanyalah pak cik yang pakai baju merah. 'Oh, awak tanya dia', referring to the brother ah.. (walaupon brother tu nampak agak berumur daripada aku, still segan ahh..) k, takpe. tanya je lah, buat muka selamba.

aku pun bersuara, 'hmm.. ada buku Aku Terima Nikahnya tak? karangan ustaz Hasrizal...'

terus lelaki kat depan aku toleh (masa tu dia tengah belek2 buku). fuh! tetiba aku rase malu! Ya Allah! kenapa orang ni pusing kat aku? pelik nah ke aku tanya tentang buku tu. aku rasa kan, orang tu pernah baca, paling tidak, pernah dengar tentang buku ni.. by the way, aku bukannya cakap kuat2 kat juru jual tu, ok? memang tempat tu dah kecil. aku cakap dengan nada biasa je (tak nak bisik2 kot? nanti orang suspek ape plak..). ish. malunya.

anyway, juru jual tu tanya aku balik, 'buku dari malaysia eh?...' 'ya saya' 'buku baru ke..?' 'eh, dah lama jugak' '...kejap eh..' aku rasa dia gi call kawan kerja ke, boss ke.. kemudian, dia beritahu aku buku tu takda. awww.... terus aku fikir, buku apa aku nak belikan untuk kak siti? (at the same time, conscious lah yang lelaki yang toleh tu masih ada kat spot yang sama. nak gi browse buku2 yang kat shelf dekat dia pun, tak jadi dibuatnya)

akhirnya, aku tak belikan cousinku apa2.. tapi beli buku untuk diri sendiri adalah! hehe.. nak katakan, tempting betul masuk kedai buku ni. kitab2 turath yang sudah diterjemahkan dalam bahasa melayu dah kat depan mata. berbolak-balik hati ni samada nak beli atau tak. kalau nak beli, nak beli yang mana satu. klw tak kitab2 turath pun, kitab2 yang judul dan topiknya menarik perhatian aku, ada a few jugak. hmm.. bukan apa, aku pun terfikir kalau aku boleh tanya kawan2 dan pinjam je dari mereka. hmm.. rupa2nya, aku belum bersedia nak invest dalam kitab2 'ilmiah ni. teringat perbualan 'adilah, ust sakinah dan kak mariam tentang ma'radh kat mesir. seronok betul mereka bila masuk bab book fair nih. hee..

sejurus mesyuarat selesai, bro tu tanya, 'anti belajar kat darul q---- eh?' i immediately went, 'huh? darul q----?' hairan sangat2 kenapa pertanyaan tu boleh muncul tiba2. sebelum tu, dia tanya aku buat apa kat airport tempoh hari. hantar kawan eh?.. 'adilah eh?.. anti dulu alsagoff? (dalam hati, 'duhhhhh -___-"') i dont mean to mock you bro.. ni sekadar expressi je. betul! harap tak tersinggung ye.

berbalik pada pertanyaan tadi -- kemudiannya dia tujukan pertanyaan cepumas. tak payah lah aku sebutkan apa pertanyaan tu. aku pun, 'huh? -------?' .. ' pernah kata dia belajar kat darul quran'.. aku membenarkan 'oh, ye, memang belajar kat sana'. k, meh kita pause kat sini.

bagi aku kan, kalau seseorang tu tiba2 tanya sesuatu, kemungkinan dia sudah tahu jawapannya, tapi bukan 100%. mungkin dia tahu dari orang lain, atau baca kat mana2. jadi, pertanyaan tu kira, nak confirmkan samada betul atau tidak apa yang dia dengar/baca. kadang2, dari cara orang tu tanya, kita boleh tahu yang dia ni betul2 tak tahu atau sebaliknya. i mean, dalam senario kat atas ni, dalam banyak2 benda yang boleh ditanya, kenapa soalan ni pulak yang timbul?

i dont think you read my blog, bro, but if you happen to stumble upon this post: afwan ye, saya tulis entry ni bukan bermaksud nak marah kat awak. bukan, bukan! saya cuma nak kongsi kisah pendek ni je, coz i find it somewhat amusing. (and a bit disturbing lah.. camne boleh agak nih?!).

dipendekkan cerita (yang dah sememangnya pendek), perbualan kami terputus. jadi aku 'terselamat' daripada menjawab pertanyaannya. i didnt, and dont, mean to be rude.. tapi aku tak tahu nak jawab apa. berat sungguh mulut ni. tapi pada masa yang sama, aku tidak mahu berbohong. hmmm...

2009-10-05T23:27:00.002+08:00

kalau kau rasa kau penat, ada orang lagi penat dari kau, liyana!
kau tengok kak F tu, pengajian uni, apex, masjid, madrasah, tutoring.. dia lagi sibuk, lagi penat dari kau! kau buat apa? setakat seharian kerja kan? tak terlari sana, terlari sini.
kau tgk kawan kau, M, uni nya jauh, aktiviti belianya, madrasahnya, dan kem-kem yang dia rancang dan anjur. meeting sana, meeting sini.. dia lebih sibuk dari kau. meski memenatkan, masanya dihabiskan dengan benda-benda yang bermanfaat! liyana.. sebenarnya, kau punya lebih masa. siang hari, kau kerja, bukannya ada assignment mcm kat sekolah dulu. jadi gunakan masa yang kau ada ni untuk benda-benda yang bermakna. do something good, liyana! sebelum kau memasuki fasa seterusnya. bila kau masuk fasa tu nanti, masa akan jadi lebih sempit. kau tak tahu apa yang akan berlaku. jadi kau ada 'sekarang'. sekarang ni, kau nak buat apa?
aku kagum dengan kawan-kawan, lebih-lebih lagi yang masih belajar, yang luangkan masa dan tenaga untuk aktiviti-aktiviti luar. tapi, aku juga takut untuk mereka. aku risau tentang mereka. aku seperti mahu mengingatkan.. 'kawan, walau apa pun, belajar tu awla kan?'.. satu peringatan yang khasnya buat diri aku sendiri!
aku risau bila aku dengar, aku lihat, kawan-kawanku kepenatan, bercerita denganku tentang pelajarannya.. 'assignment banyak'.. 'argh, belom habis lagik'.. 'test!'.. 'itu.. ini..'.. aku risau tengok mereka risau. sebab aku takut pelajaran mereka terjejas. disebabkan penglibatan mereka dalam banyak aktiviti.
aku tahu, aku tak berhak nak larang mereka. aku tak berniat nak larang mereka. dan rasanya, nasihat 'manage your time well', 'balance k?' dah kerap didengar. tapi tu lah hakikatnya, kita MESTI TAHU bahagikan masa. sekali lagi, satu peringatan buat diriku terlebih dahulu.
aku tak nak sebab aktiviti kita, pelajaran kita sikit demi sikit terabai. aku tak nak ibadah kita terabai. aku tak nak tanggungjawab kita sebagai anak terabai. aku tak nak tanggungjawab kita sebagai ahli kumpulan terabai.
aku risau pisang akan berbuah dua kali bila aku masuk fasa seterusnya nanti. cukuplah aku mengalaminya masa tahun terakhir di politeknik.
i am worried for myself. i am worried for them.

dalam mrt tadi, bila ku dengar keluhannya, aku hanya mampu berdoa dalam hati..
rabbi yassir wa laa tu'assir alaiha..
rabbi yassir wa laa tu'assir alaiha..
daripada perbualanku dengannya (haa.. aku sengaja tanya itu, tanya ini..), aku dapat rasakan yang dia seseorang yang mahu dan suka membuat kebaikan. jadualnya sudah padat. dia nak buat, tapi takut tak mampu. amanah-amanah yang digalasnya sekarang pun, sudah cukup berat.
Mudahkanlah urusannya, ya Rabb, kerana ku yakin, dia punya kelebihan dan juga kesungguhan untuk memberi.

belajar tu awla, kan?

Winning is finishing...

2009-08-05T23:54:00.003+08:00

Kite suker dgn lagu Miley Cyrus, The Climb. kite bukanlah peminat lagu2nya dan orangnya. tapi lagu ni lain sikit. lebih bermakna.

videoclip ni dari The Hannah Montana Movie. hehe.. you guessed it, I watched the movie. hah, ni kes tgh boring2 then takde movie best2 yang lain, so picked this one. i dont fancy the movie. pokok ceritanya taklah serious/substantial mana kot. but when it reached the scene above, i found myself concentrating on the song lyrics. relating it and reflecting upon it. yup, it was meaningful! touching too.

afterwards, kite teringat satu quote yang kite pernah cari dulu. bits and pieces. ape lagi, kite pon carilah kat notebook2 lama.. Yes! jumpa jugak akhirnya. di sini, kite nak kongsi dengan korang kata2 Joe Henderson. (tak ingat dari mana kite dapat ayat2 ni.)

Winning is finishing the distance you set for yourself, however humble it might be. Speed is a gift your parents either gave you or couldn't give you. You had little to say about it, so the time you take to run your distance doesn't say much about your spirit. But endurance and persistence are qualities that are largely trained and learned. Finishing is a victory of strong spirit over weak flesh.

dalam lagu The Climb, it's about going up. vertical. quote ni plak, gives me the impression of running. horizontal. (Joe Henderson ni seorang pelari kot?) haha.. ni tak penting lah sgt. apa yang penting, mesejnya sama :) serasi jugak lagu dengan kata2 nasihat ni. iya.. dua2 sebagai satu ucapan perangsang untuk kite. dan awak juga! ^__^

2009-08-05T23:21:00.002+08:00

gembira bila dapat baca blog kawan2 dan kenalan2.. rase dah lama terperuk dlm kehidupan sendiri. siang hari, tak ade leisure time nak jenguk banyak2 blog. malam hari, malas benar nak mengadap komputer meskipun sebentar.

hmm.. tapi macam ade perasaan lain gitu bila baca blog mereka.. sedih? terharu? .. atau, rindu untuk bertanya khabar dan bertemu empat mata dgn mereka? atau, terkilan sebab kesibukan (tapi tak lah sibuk sgt pon) menjauhkan diri ni dari kawan2, membataskan kebebasan dan tenaga untuk ke sana ke mari..? atau, cemburu melihat hidup mereka seakan2 lebih seronok dan lebih bermakna?..

hmm.. macam2 benda kite nak cerita, nak luahkan.. tapi.. mm.. cari alasan ke? .. bukan sahaja di blog, emel pon dah liat nak dikarang mahupun dibaca, difahami dan diikuti.

ape nak jadi ye?

kadang2, rase kehidupan ni lamaaaa sgt. belom pon masuk dekad ke-2. tapi terasa yang diri ni dah tua. penat dgn kehidupan. tapi, perasaan sebegini tak lah selalu dlm kepala dan hati kite. alhamdulillah atas ape yang telah diberi. pikir2 balik, aturan Allah ni.. cantik! (sebagai contoh, bila kite teringatkan mase kite pergi interview untuk attachment tahun lepas.) hmm.. kite selalu teringat karakter Fahri membuat life plannya. kita perlu ada matlamat, ye tak? ape yang ingin dilakukan, ape yang ingin dicapai.. yup yup, kite pon ade buat. tak lah complete mana. buat masa ni, cukup untuk memberi motivasi kat diri kite ni untuk lihat ke hadapan. sebab sebenarnya, kita kadang2 tak nak lihat. takut dgn sesuatu yang tak pasti kot.

cakap tentang plan ni, moga dipermudahkan. sebab boleh jadi pendirian kita goyah bila ada sesuatu yang timbul yang berpotensi mengubah hala tuju kita. boleh jadi kita panik sebab tak sure nak stick to the course, atau nak mempertimbangkan sesuatu yang baru tu. boleh jadi ade sesuatu timbul.. dan sesuatu tu adelah benda yang kite naaaakkk sgt, atau rase 'bestnyerrrr'.. tapi, kita tak tahu ianya baik untuk kita atau tak. Rabbi yassir. sebab kita tak tahu cabaran2 ape menanti kita.

tapikan, kite takutlah. kite takut kite tak kotakan ape yang kite dah tulis. mungkir janji kat bukan orang lain, tapi empunya diri! kan zalim namanya tu?

semenjak dua menjak ni, hati tak tenang sangat. fikirkan keadaan sekarang. keadaan masa depan. cube untuk muhasabah.. lebih2 lagi ttg tahap spiritual diri.

kata2 sahabat dlm blognya terngiang2 kat kepala.. lebih kurang begini: 'memilih jalan ini bermakna memilih untuk ditarbiyah'.. kadang2 kite ulang kata2 ni kat diri kite sendiri.. seolah2 nak mencari pengertian. seolah2 nak memujuk hati ni. nak memberi sedikit kekuatan. pertanyaan kat benak ni sama dgn sahabat.. 'bersediakah aku? mampukah?'

ntahlah..

kite masih lagi mencari.

2009-07-28T23:13:00.003+08:00

while in the train home just now, i was looking at my bag and realised that...

that...

my RR'07 pin badge was missing!!!

sedih?

sedih uh.. kenangan whoooaa...

mase kat meeting tadi, ade. so must have dropped some time between the end of the meeting and the train station platform.

hmmm... takpe lah.

(rasenyer, nak replace dgn badge ape eh? haiz~)

yang penting, pengalaman dan pengajaran dari RR'07 tu tersemat dalam ingatan.

--------------

mase kak aisyah sebut ttg seseorang yang dia lihat 'good.. saw him in action'.. tetiba teringat ttg facilitation. tak pasti lah kalau kak aisyah tgh refer to facilitation or something else.. tapi,

tu ah..

i suddenly miss facilitating. facilitating a group.

skill yang memang tak seberape nih, dah semakin berkarat. hmmm... tak nak skill ni jadi rapuh langsung hilang, sebab facilitation skill memang berguna dlm macam2 situasi. tapi camne ye? jadual padat. mane nak cari peluang2 untuk asah my facilitation skill?

hmmm.. k, takpe.

Wahai Diri,

2009-07-09T14:01:00.005+08:00

dah dipanggil tu.. tunggu ape lagi??

another angelic voice

2009-06-14T23:14:00.002+08:00

meet Andrew Johnston -

saw this clip on Oprah. mesmerizing, indeed! make the hairs on your back stand gitu. his voice reminds me of Jean Baptiste-Maunier, from Les Choriste. *aaaaahhh~~*

and then, meet Charice, who i first heard of two weeks back from my student-colleague, Marielle. Charice's voice is just :O whoa~~

when i first heard this song, from Marielle's hp music collection, i didnt quite pay attention to it. after a few times, barulah perasan that the tune is *nice* and the way she sings it.. kinda uplifting. whoa~ again. the lyrics is not bad too.

2009-05-30T23:53:00.003+08:00

exams 12 june [T_T] LaZy 2 study says:
salam
analiy - Uwais al-Qarni says:
w'salam!!!!!!!!
analiy - Uwais al-Qarni says:
azizahhhhhhhh
analiy - Uwais al-Qarni says:
how are you?
exams 12 june [T_T] LaZy 2 study says:
l.i.y.a.n.a
exams 12 june [T_T] LaZy 2 study says:
im good
exams 12 june [T_T] LaZy 2 study says:
yourself?
analiy - Uwais al-Qarni says:
haha
analiy - Uwais al-Qarni says:
im in the pink of health

got to know that she's coming to singapore in august. mudah2an sampai! hmmm... yes, it's been a long time~

bila nak jejakkan kaki ke Perth? *eyes 'adilah* inshaAllah, eh, ti!

2009-05-17T00:29:00.000+08:00

Nothing beats supportive parents.

Discuss.

bismika nahya

2009-05-12T02:18:00.002+08:00

Veuillez installer Flash Player pour lire la vidéo

bismika nahya sélectionné dans Musique et Clips

heard this song one or two years ago.

then, minutes ago, i saw the name 'Amr Khaled' again. was reminded of this song. searched youtube. i think he is a.. talk show/documentary host? looks like he's got influence. hmm.. im curious about this guy.

anyhow, i was attracted to the song because of its title, Bismika Nahya. By Your Name, We Live. Dengan NamaMu Kami Hidup.

i'd like to find the arabic lyrics. some other time yea.

2009-05-11T23:47:00.002+08:00

i am now at 2, 758 words and im only halfway done.

actually, i think i've typed way more that i should. they wouldnt want a 6-paged-and-counting article. but at the moment, i dunno how to cut down. so i'll just have to continue typing my original content. after which, perhaps, i can try to slough off some big chunks.

and...

i've passed the deadline, which was 4 days ago. Help!

book club

2009-05-08T00:46:00.003+08:00

Had a funN, kelakar usrah tonight. tak boleh angkat sey! anyway, each of us shared one or more books which has significant/universal values. books that shook our minds, or affected us deeply, or appealed to us. so, the featured books:

Faisal Tehrani's Tunggu Teduh Dulu
Taufiqurrahman Al Azizy's Musafir Cinta
Mitch Albom's For One More Day, 5 People You Meet in Heaven, and Tuesdays with Morrie
(Dr) Katherine Hamlin's The Hospital by The River
Tania Aebi's Maiden Voyage

I wanna recommend that you guys read 1511H Kombat by Faisal Tehrani. CooL sey jalan ceritanya! a simple description i could think of is that this book is an Islamic action-thriller.. perjuangan in the future, with the sophisticated technology.. and of course, a pinch of 'cinta Islami'. back then, kak Nadiah praised this book and recommended me to read it. together with Advencer Si Peniup Ney. one or two years ago, i read Advencer, tapi baca agak sloww.. somehow i found it hard to digest the story. i think got a bit of tasawwuf/sufi stuff. and then, i borrowed 1515, a story of a Malaccan Malay/Muslimah srikandi by the name of Nyemah Mulya. macam best kan? but i didnt even get to half of the book. terlalu banyak sejarah, dan agak mendak sikit perjalanan ceritanya. i like history, but i think, bab sejarah melayu ni, kite tak minat. or maybe, it was merely because i ran out of time to read it. kak Ummu said Detektif Indigo "best!", but i've yet to get my hands on a copy. oh, lastly, Bila Tuhan Berbicara was an interesting read.

Musafir Cinta.. wah, mcm adik-beradik Ayat-Ayat Cinta and Gang, eh? tapi tak lah.. instead, this book is part of Makrifat Cinta trilogy by Taufiqurrahman Al-Azizy. the first book is titled Syahadat Cinta, second is Musafir Cinta, and finally, Makrifat Cinta. i dont know if the main protagonist is the same person throughout, or stories of different people weaved together.. about this book being a sequel pon kite baru je tahu dari internet. so ya, perhaps you all want to read 'em yourselves.

Mitch Albom's books are undeniably touching. the contents (and characters) are full of wisdom. and like what kak Hafizah said, they revolve around Death. i've read and watched For One More Day, and watched Tuesdays with Morrie. Ins.Pi.Ring. menginsafkan jugak; meskipun diorang bukan Muslim, but all of us can relate with the values, feel and appreciate the feelings and message that the author wants to bring across.

Dr Hamlin's story moved me. the sad state of affair in Ethiopia. the women with unfortunate lives. the suffering. the selfless effort by Dr Hamlin and her husband. their dedication. their expertise. their devotion to their religion. wooowww... this book has got me into thinking about what i wanna be, and can be, in the future. hmm.. somehow, it awakened something in me, but i dont know exactly what. amazing to see how far the two doctors have come, from the moment they stepped off the plane in Ethiopia to the establishment of The Fistula Foundation. one more thing that caught my attention: they were a strong team. as husband and wife, and as colleagues working together to build a system, an infrastructure, a safe haven for the many women in Africa.

I just finished Maiden Voyage very recently. im such a slow reader these days. whenever i take out the book to read, i prepared myself to be taken on a journey with her.. what she saw, what she experienced, in the different countries and on the oceans. i must admit, that i still dont understand all those nautical, nagivation, sailing, weather, and boat-related technical jargons. huhu.. there were times when i just couldnt digest, so i skipped the chunks of sentences. that aside, the mere idea of being in her shoes fascinates me. to go on a circumnagivation, on a sailboat, alone! and she was eighteen (i kept saying to myself, "what were you doing when you were eighteen, liyana???!"). seems like a dream adventure, ey? but no, it was tough and rough. more importantly, that was when she grew up and matured. Experiential Learning. On-The-Job Training. hmmm... wishful thinking, liyana?

Yupz, books are indeed a gateway to many things: fantasy, self-discovery, empowerment, wild imaginations....... and personally, i found it enjoyable to talk about books with each other. so that we can know who likes to read what sort of genres, or books/authors that we never knew exist but are awesome and loved by their readers..

May tonight's usrah be another session that brings us closer to each other and to being better individuals, inshaAllah..

Oh, oh! just before we ended, someone popped me an entirely unexpected question (sangat random sey!), to which my immediate answer was, "I'M STILL A KID!" *lol* nasib baik tak tersedak kite tadi. hehehehehehehe

Cant help but wonder though, was that a burning question, Marl? :P

anticipation

2009-05-03T23:20:00.003+08:00

the top 3 movies i am lookin' forward to:

1. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
2. Angels and Demons
3. Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

cantwaitcantwaitcantwait!!

by the way, how come the bad transformers are bigger, scarier and more powerful (i.e. they got more sophisticated and menacing abilities) eh?? TAK FAIR sey! Optimus Prime nmpk macam kecik je. and i have a feeling one or two autobots will die. *sobsob*

and i've just watched HP's theatrical trailer.. OHH MANNN!! i hope it's gonna be awesome. i know the ending is depressing, but seeing the superb effects lifted my mood. and this time, i wanna forget whatever i had read in the book. coz i can expect that the movie plot wont be the same as the book, like the previous installments (which caused me to end up getting disappointed!).

got to know that Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper has been made into a movie. i think im gonna put it in my 'Gonna Watch' basket, together with The Soloist.

2009-05-01T23:49:00.002+08:00

I am the newest fan of Kris Allen!

His voice is just.... well, it melts me. *blush*

No, this time I am not following American Idol. Just so happen I was curious about the Top 5, so I watched the performance videos at the official website. And, my oh my.. Kris does show consistency and some professional singing. Quite an all-rounder. Adam Lambert and Danny Gokey are good too, though. I prefer them to be in the top 3. YEAH!

2009-04-30T01:28:00.002+08:00

“ Ish..banyak tu. Macam-macam warna ada, “ tiba-tiba suara ayah menyapa dari belakang. Saya yang sedang asyik mengemas beg sebelum bertolak pulang ke kampus, menoleh dan melemparkan senyum malu-malu. Faham dengan sapaan ayah..apa yang dimaksudkannya banyak dan berwarna.

“ Mana ada banyak ayah. Tiga helai tudung lama, dua je yang masih baru“ saya menjawab ramah. Saya mengesot sedikit ke tepi dinding untuk memberi ruang ayah duduk bersila.

“ Baru atau lama tak penting. Yang utama tahu apa tujuan dan niat pemakainya. Bimbang tak terjawab nanti di akhirat sana, “ nasihat ayah. Masih sempat ayah menitip sepatah dua peringatan diri, walau nampak remeh tapi besar jika difikir jernih.

continue to read this blog post here.

"Yang utama tahu apa tujuan dan niat pemakainya. Bimbang tak terjawab nanti di akhirat sana."
cukup terasa. ya, satu peringatan buat diri.

Syamaa'il...?

2009-04-24T22:25:00.005+08:00

visited kak khadijah's blog yesterday -

- few weeks back, there was an ijazah Syamail Muhammadiyah (it's a kitab describing Rasulullah 'alaihis salatu wassalam characteristics) at Jami' Salam somewhere near Jaubar, a city around 20 mins journey from Ruknuddin (the city my friends and me are currently staying in). Led by Syeikh Abul Huda Al-Ya'qubi -hafizahullah- , the event started at round 8:40pm and ended at almost 2 a.m.! no room to feel sleepy (although we all came after school) because Syeikh was reading the hadiths with endless enthusiasm, and from time to time, called out to the syabab below (the ladies were at the 2nd storey): "أين الصلاة على النبيّ؟؟" ("where's the salawat for our Prophet?"). so everytime the Prophet's name was mentioned, the jami' practically roared with salawat. Sukaaaaaaaaaaaaaa nah sgt!!! Terasa sampai ke lubuk hati…
!صلّوا على النبيّ

ghibtoh sangat2! Srikandi pula siap kata, "ya ALLAH... im jeles BIG TIME!!" *chuckles*

Kitab Asy-Syamaa'ilul Muhammadiyyah karangan Abu ‘Isa Muhammad Bin ‘Isa Bin Saurah At-Tirmidzi, ditahqiq oleh Sayyid 'Imran, diterbitkan (atau dicetak?) oleh Darul Hadith, Kahirah.

Last November, i met up with Suhailah, coz nak ambil kembali buku Salju Sakinah. bila dah jumpa, eh, rupe2nya ada bungkusan dari Mesir. Hadiah dari 'Adilah.... terkejut! dan terus terharu..

rasa lebih terharu bila kite buka bungkusan tu.. Ya Allah! 'Adilah ni macam tahu2 je ape yang kite nak. ;) belek punye belek.. maklumlah, first time dapat hadiah buku dari Mesir~ hati ni berbunga2.. berkobar2 nak belajar ilmu yang ade kat dalam.

tapi...

nak belajar kitab ni, takkan nak sorang2, tak berguru? dah lah bahasa arab kite lapuk sangat. boleh faham sikit2 je, kalau dibantu kamus Marbawi kesayangan, faham lebih sikit je. lebih2 lagi part footnotes nya. coz ade explanation ttg darjat/source hadith dan lain2 yang kite tak tahu.

kite ade jugak hantar emel kat kawan2, kalau mereka ade translation buku Syamaa'il ni. sayangnye, takde jawapan dari sesiapa. sedih jugak, sebab kite nak belajar, tapi kite takut nak baca dan fahamkan sendiri. satu silap kite: kite tak cuba cari ustaz atau ustazah, ataupon kakak2 senior yang boleh ajarkan.

semangat untuk menelaah kitab ni masih belom pudar. beberapa minggu lalu, mase tgh cari hadith2 ttg budi pekerti Rasulullah sollahu alaihi wa sallam untuk Tawassi Hadith, kite terjumpa website ni: http://www.inter-islam.org/hadeeth/stmenu.htm. Wah, tersenyum lebar kite time tu. tak sangka ade kat internet. hah, ni lagi satu kesilapan: tak cuba cari online. aiyo~~

dan beberapa minit yang lalu, kite terjumpa website ini pula: http://www.sacredlearning.org/classrooms/hadith/shamail_tirmidhi/index.htm.

Hadith Sessions - Shamail of Imam Tirmidhi
This compilation of hadith provides detailed descriptions of all aspects of the Holy Prophet [Peace and blessings be upon him] including his physical being, his manner of sleeping, his manner of eating, his speech, his character, his death, etc. Each lesson references the Arabic hadith and then provides a detailed explanation. All lectures are in MP3 format.

Ya Allah...... Alhamdulillah..! *beaming*

k, liyana, Allah dah beri kemudahan, jangan sia-siakan! tak dapat belajar, talaqqi kitab dgn guru face-to-face, belajar online pon boleh lah =) sikit-sikit, lama-lama jadi bukit. yang penting, istiqamah!

to all my readers, jom! let's get to know our prophet Muhammad sollallahu alaihi wa sallam. other than reading seerah an-nabawiy, Syamaa'il is another channel for us to learn about him sollallahu alaihi wa sallam, inshaAllah :)

2009-04-15T15:20:00.005+08:00

Hizamy's brother passed away very recently. Adiknya bernama Muhammad Hariz bin Md Tarmizy.

Hizamy is the current NPMSS president. a chubby funny guy with a quran-reciting voice that is masyaAllah..~

Innaa lillaahi wa innaa ilaihi raaji'uun.

i remember saying few weeks ago, during a relite meeting at ghufran, that i might not even live to see the D-day. and now, 3 days after the camp, i am still alive.

Allah is still letting me live.

Alhamdulillah...

i am reminded of a song, played during D-Talk 2. Farshi Turab.. Dust is My Bed.

فرشي التراب يضمني
وهو غطائي
حولي الرمال تلفني
بل من ورائي
واللحد يحكي ظلمة
فيها ابتلائي
والنور خط كتابه
أنسي لقائي

والأهل أين حنانهم
باعوا وفائي
والصحب أين جموعهم
تركوا إخائي
والمال أين هناءه
صار ورائي
والإسم أين بريقه
بين الثناء
هذي نهاية حالي
فرشي التراب

والحب ودع شوقه
وبكى رثائي
والدمع جف مسيره
بعد البكاء
والكون ضاق بوسعه
ضاقت فضائي
فاللحد صار بجثتي
أرضي سمائي
هذي نهاية حالي
فرشي التراب

والخوف يملأ غربتي
والحزن دائي
أرجو الثبات وإنه
قسما دوائي
والرب أدعو مخلصا
أنت رجائي
أبغي إلهي جنة
فيها هنائي

with arabic lyrics and english translation --

dan seterusnya..

2009-04-10T02:25:00.006+08:00

while waiting for the cab..

sis no. 1: so, you buat ape sekarang?
me: kite tgh tak kerja. focus on Re----.
sis no. 1: ohhhhhhh.....!! I got something for youu..!
me: Oh God..!!! *dramatic* I dont like the sound of it...!

sis no. 1: you know ape tu GGS?
me: aaaa... Girl Guide Singapore?
sis no. 1: bukanlah..! haha *laughing*
me: *thinking out loud* GGS eh? aaaa... Great Singapore Sale.. eh, tu GSS~ heh -.-"

in the cab..

me: so, GGS tu ape?
sis no. 1: it's G---- Go S-----. bukan Great Singapore Sale eh!
me: ohhhhh! korang nak revive G---- Go S-----? masyaAllah..!
(dlm hati: bestnyerrrr!!! ^__^)
sis no. 1: so we need someone who can...............................

senyum di bibir hilang sikit demi sikit.
terus terbayang ayah, dan pesanannya tadi. terus teringat tanggungjawab yang terbengkalai. terus teringat hal2 yang perlu diuruskan dalam NI.

me: hmmmm... oh, kite..................................
me: or, kite nak jadi anak buah. macam sekarang. it's a good experience for me.
(nak masuk dept ape eh? fnb dah pernah.. admin? dah.. ohh, logistics pon best jugak)
sis no. 2: ohh.. or we put u as mentor.
(dlm hati: HUH? mentor ape ke benda sey!)
me: taklah...! no, you see eh, mentor ni kena..
sis no. 1 cut off the conversation with something else..

sis no. 2 (or 1, tak ingat): ..be one of the 'think tanks'..
me: haaaa...? *put hand to face, terfikir yang sekarang ni dlm program dah byk kena fikir* tak nakkk

me: panggil lah kakak2 yang... macam...
sis no. 1: dah.. nama diorang ada..
sis no. 2: we are calling all u---- sisters
sis no. 1: ... so kita nak kacau2 (mix).. bila lagi you nak work dgn *insertname*...
(hmmm... got a point there)

sis no. 2: ..you are senior..
me: no! tak lah
sis no. 2: ...you have more experience..
me: hmmmppphhhhh...!
(okay, i gotta say something on this one --

personally, i dont get it. i dont believe i have more experience. to me, head atau vice head takde beza. pengalamannya lebih kurang sama. she had to work together with her head and vice-head.. mesti diorang delegate jobs kan. begitu juga kite. i wasnt 'at the top'.. instead, there were three heads.. me and two bros whom i believe had done much more than me. so what she and i had to go thru should be similar, if not the same. AND, it was just ONE experience. since then, i dont have any other experiences in S---. just that ONE. so, why did she say i have more experience?? astaghfirullah..!

senior? Ya Allah.. selepas RR'07, kite jarang terlibat dgn S---. i am not a senior. to me, a senior is one who's been there for many years AND have contributed so much.

afwan kak.. kite bukan nak marah kat kakak.. kita cuma tak leh terima bila orang kata kite 'have more experience'. kite yakin, kakak lebih banyak pengalaman dari kite. pengalaman yang diraih dalam S--- (sebab kakak aktif) dan juga di luar.

cakap ttg pengalaman, kita berbalik pada 'mentor'. kite nak jadi mentor?? tak boleh kak. sebab pengalaman kite sikit sangat. kite masih tgh belajar. kite rase, kite lebih suka buat kerja. on-the-job training. faktor umur pon kena diambil kira. takkan kite nak mentor mereka2 yang sebaya atau lebih tua dari kite? yes, umur mungkin kurang penting, sebab orang boleh kata dengan pengalaman lah kite boleh bimbing yang lain. tapi, kena match dgn 'profil' mentee jugak. sebab kalau mentor tu sebaya atau lebih tua dari mentee, lebih mudah dan cepat untuk mentee develop rasa respect dan 'mahudengardanmenerima'. lebih mudah juga bagi mentor untuk influence mentee. logik kan?

okay, klw kite nak jadi mentor untuk adik2.. mcm adik2 di beatty sec baru2 ni, mgkn boleh. tapi kalau nak jadi mentor untuk project S---, padahal kite baru setahun jagung, maaf, kite terpaksa tolak.

jika kakak tanye kite, 'tak layak atau tak nak?', kite kata, 'dua2nya sekali'. hmmm.. afwan, kite belom bersedia.)

and along the way in the cab, my thoughts were swimming.. couldnt quite concentrate on the conversation the sisters were having..

"...and i thought one is done and over with...."

"...have'nt u realised it yet?....why is it that....."

"...all these opportunities.... i tot i could run away. but, no. there must be something Allah has prepared for me to do.."

hmmm... meskipun kite minat sangat untuk menyumbang dalam G---- Go S-----, ada hal2 lebih utama yang menuntut tenaga dan konsentrasi kite selepas kem Re---- ni. tgklah camne.. taking one step at a time.

Mohon dipermudahkan..

2009-04-07T22:58:00.004+08:00

Kawan-kawan,

kite nak kongsi dengan korang semua perbualan antara kite dgn seorang ukhti kite pada Isnin lalu, 6 April 2009. sebab kite rasa info yang ada dalam perbualan ni sangat berguna buat kita semua, inshaAllah. best, kan, bila dapat ilmu baru? ^___^

me: assalamu'alaikum, ustazah
my senior: wa'alaikumuusalam
my senior: ye
me: hadith yang 'hasanun gharib' bahasa melayunya ape?
my senior: hasan gharib
me: klw bahasa inggeris?
my senior: hsan gharib juga
my senior: heheh
me: gharib tu maknanya ape?
my senior: istilah itu tidak diterjemahkan
me: ooohh
my senior: mana dapat istilah ni
me: http://www.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?bk_no=2&ID=1327&idfrom=1865&idto=1867&bookid=2&startno=2
me: coz ana tgh cari2 hadith yang suitable untuk tema 'ambassadorship' ... then, klw boleh nak gunekan hadith ni
me: untuk diberi pada facilitator kem
my senior: ana bimbnag hadithnya ada sedikit masalah
me: oh?
me: jadi klw ade hadith2 yang 'hasan gharib', lebih baik jgn gunekan is it?
my senior: no\
my senior: tidak juga
my senior: liyan kena tahu
my senior: istilah hasan gharib adalah istilah yang digunakan oleh imam al- Tirmidi dalam kitab sunannnya
my senior: ianya merupakan salah satu metod beliau dalam menyatakan hadith2 dalam kitabnya
my senior: hasan gharib di sisi
my senior: aimam al- tirmidhi bermaksud
my senior: hadith yang melengkapi syarat2 hadith sahih
my senior: tetapi KURANG SEDIKIT darjat KEDABITAN PERAWINYA
me: okaaaay
me: hmmmm
my senior: tapi..klau nak guna
my senior: tidak ada masalah
my senior: cuma kena pastikan ada tak dalam kitab2 lain hadith tersebut
my senior: kalau ada dalam bukhari muslim
my senior: tak de masalah
my senior: *smiley*
me: ana ade check kat islamweb.net... hadith tu ada dalam 'mustadrik alassohihain', 'sunan tirmidhi', 'sunan darimi' dan 'musnad imam ahmad'
my senior: ok
my senior: http://www.dorar.net/enc/hadith/%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%B1+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B5%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%A8+%D8%B9%D9%86%D8%AF+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87/+p

my senior: ana dah takhrij
my senior: ok lah tu
my senior: boleh guna
my senior: kat web tu..ada beri martabt hadith nya di sisi ulamk2 yang lain
me: waaaaaaaaaaahhhh
my senior: ?
me: tak sangka ade kemudahan camni
me: *big smiley*
my senior: ehhehe
me: *jakun jap*
my senior: kalau nak tahu martabat hadith le check kat web site tu k?
my senior: *smiley*
me: okay!
me: nak kata ni first time ana cari2 hadith
me: pusing2 kat sohihmuslim.com, sohihbukhari.com , islamweb.net~
me: haiz~
me: susah jugak eh
my senior: hmmm..hadith mmg susah
my senior: heheh
me: i mean, klw nak gunakan hadith ni untuk penulisan ke ape ke.. tak leh main2
my senior: *smiley*
my senior: tahniah
my senior: kerana peka ttg hal ini
my senior: barakallahu fik
me: syukran ustazah = )
me: dan maaf sebab ganggu ust time sibuk2 ni
my senior: cuma kaedah basic nya
my senior: bila jumpa satu hadith selain bukhari muslim
my senior: perlu disahkan
my senior: statusnya
my senior: dan jika sekiranya ianya dhaif
my senior: tidak bermakna ianya dhaif secara mutlak
my senior: sesebuah hadith dhaif
my senior: boleh naik tarafnya kepad hasan dan sahih
my senior: jika sekiranya ada sokongan dari pelbagai jalur periwayatan hadith yang lain
my senior: itu je...mgkn sebagai pendahuluan
my senior: *smiley*
me: syukran sgt2!
my senior: dan tak ganggu pun
my senior: ini kan amanah
my senior: *wink*
me: ohh... lastly,
me: klw ade 'rijaaluhu thiqah'
me: boleh digunakan jugak kan?
my senior: boleh
me: ana dah gunakan website yang ust bagi tu
me: heeeee
me: k best!
my senior: maknanya
my senior: periwayat hadithyan thiqah
my senior: kalau periwayat hadithnya thiqah...maknanya
my senior: tiada masalah
my senior: *smiley*
me: hmmm
me: lagi satu soalan
me: imam tirmidhi ade gelaran tak?
my senior: gealaran?
my senior: maksudnya?
me: http://www.islamweb.net/newlibrary/display_book.php?bk_no=2&ID=1327&idfrom=1865&idto=1867&bookid=2&startno=2

me: ada ayat 'qala abu isa hadza...'
me: so, im just wondering if abu isa tu imam tirmidhi
me: or if its someone else
my senior: ooo
my senior: mmg imam al- Tirmidhi lah tu
my senior: hehe
me: ohhhhhhhhh
me: k best!
me: = )

ta'ajub dengan kata-kata ini..

2009-04-07T15:00:00.003+08:00

gambar: The Horsehead Nebula

2009-04-07T14:24:00.003+08:00

dipetik dari: Ketika Cinta Bertasbih oleh Habiburrahman El Shirazy

gambar: butterflyrubrics.wordpress.com

The Aftermath

2009-03-19T15:38:00.004+08:00

yesterday, as a lovely sister of mine and i stood at the side of the road, our backs on the glaring evening sun, she told me, "..we were chatting, happily talking to each other.. we didnt know what could hit us..." and i said to her, "yeah," i snapped my fingers, "like this."

and as i sat on the grass waiting for the cab to arrive, with her beside me, i stared at the greeneries, the branches and leaves with the sky as the backdrop, i thought about the people in the World Trade Centre, on that fateful day.. yeah, they had no idea what would happen to them.. never crossed their minds.. i imagined people busy clicking away their pc mouse, or talking over cups of coffee..

another of her words to me, that "life is fragile."

hmm.. and finally, after 30-40 minutes of waiting, the taxi came. and we left the scene.

****

worried that she wouldnt reach home for asar on time, she, for the first time in her life, prayed at the side of the road. never mind that vehicles were passing along~

and as she was praying, a simple thought came to my mind, "how nice it is to sujud anywhere.. it is His grass, His earth.." and i captured the picture of her praying into my memory ;)

****

she admitted that she was quite traumatized. "but you, you look cool and calm."

i guess i was.

funny, how there are people who, after a tragedy happened to them, have the time to think, have enough composure to ask themselves, "how should i feel about this?" like what my senior said in the sharing session during the meeting later that night. almost like a delayed reaction.

i guess i am one of those people.

and then i wondered, if i am actually in self-denial. trying to block out the images, to avoid from replaying that moment and reflecting on it. or maybe i am just physically and mentally tired, so i cant quite register the reality of what had just happened.

and today, as i was switching on my pc, already thinking of what i was going to share here, i suddenly felt that what happened yesterday evening was a distant memory. almost an illusion. and i still do not know how i should feel and react.

****

she asked me if i was alright. and i answered, "yes". only that my glasses were slightly bent. and because one of the nosepads was already missing, the metal grazed my skin, leaving a small scratch under my left eye.

but actually, i felt as though i was a bit giddy. i didnt know if it was my eyes or the lens of my glasses that suddenly show the world with extra clarity. wait, 'clarity' isnt exactly the right word.. hmm.. it's like.. 'bulging'.. but.. errrr... that's not accurate either. heh.

i was kind of afraid that i might be having a slight concussion. but hamdan lillah.. i was fine throughout.

she said i should go home. but i insisted on going to the meet. although i was a bit skeptical if i could concentrate, given the long day at the bukit gombak adventure centre (i dont know the actual name of the place) and insufficient rest from post-malay camp. and i was a bit worried my thoughts would wander around causing me to fall into silence and break down inside. but alhamdulillah... seeing the sisters at ghufran and discussing about the programme helped maintain my energy, my enthusiasm, my normal self.

****

i have yet to deal with what happened. hmmm... i pray that she and i will be alright.

****

Al-Agharr al-Muzani who was from amongst the Companions of Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) reported that Ibn 'Umar stated to him that Allah's Messenger (may peace 'be upon him) said: O people, seek repentance from Allah. Verily, I seek repentance from Him a hundred times a day.

Hadith no. 6523 in The Book Pertaining to the Remembrance of Allah, Supplication, Repentance and Seeking Forgiveness (Kitab Al-Dhikr) of Sahih Muslim

2009-03-12T23:38:00.002+08:00

you know, just now as i was teman-ing fatimah solat asar, as i was leaning on the table, looking out the window, i said softly to myself, "why am i doing this?" as i gazed at the leaves of the trees, i asked myself again, "why am i doing this?" after she finished praying and we walked down the stairs to the canteen, that question disappeared again into the mist. then, as i was waiting for the bus, fidgety and anxious to get home, i repeated to myself, "why am i doing this?"

i couldnt convince myself of the right answer. i couldnt invoke the deep thinker in me.

i've realised this for quite some time now: that i'm always engulfed in the rush, in the technicalities, in the frustrations.. i keep forgetting to see beyond the sphere of work that eats up my energy, my time. i keep forgetting to reflect, to renew my niyyah, to always have faith and to work with a clear objective in mind. i keep forgetting the purpose of it all.. it seems that i'm always short-sighted.

i notice that i don't give enough time to sit down, to ponder and wonder about this. i need to do some soul-searching.

i need to get out. May Allah grant me the time, the money, the opportunity. may Allah ease my plan.

i can choose to stop and not be bothered, but my better half says that i must go out and give.

still trying to figure out..

2009-03-06T14:17:00.004+08:00

can anyone lend me $800?????

i wanna buy a laptop.

haha.

but seriously ah, geram je tgk the deals offered at gumtree singapore.

got this HP Pavilion laptop dv4-1104TU at $800~

there's also Fujitsu E8410 at $850~

Lenovo S10 at $600~ wait, is this a mini? errr.. kite kurang minat mini notebooks~

and yang paling tempting: Sony Vaio VGN-CR353 at $1,100.

i know nuts about specifications, but, can always ask my brother or other brothers.

hmmm... dalam mimpi je lah eh, liyana.

earn your own money first, then can buy a laptop, alright?

*sighs and nods head slowly*

Ada Apa Dengan Facebook?

2009-02-27T23:44:00.002+08:00

siang tadi, pukul 3 lebih, i checked my mail. okay, semua emel dah clear.

sepuluh minit yang lalu, checked again. haa..? 34 new messages..???

ku pikir emel-emel baru tu mungkin yang penting2.. atau yang bernas2.. ada isi. ku picit tab 'Inbox'.

oh laaaaa.... rupe2nye notification that si fulan "tagged/commented on a photo of you". aiseyman.. banyak sgt! macam menyemak lah pulak.

hmmm... sejak beberapa hari nih, ade je emel yang bertajuk "-- added you as a friend on facebook". ye, saye ade facebook account. tapi klw awak tak add saye pon tak rugi (heh), sebab saya tak gunekan (or rather, belom gunekan) ape2 kemudahan/applikasi yang ade kat situ.

conclusion: i dont understand why people semangat nah dgn facebook. -_-"

found :)

2009-02-23T20:56:00.005+08:00

Last Friday, hati ni tergerak nak gi KPR. selama ni, pernah dengar dari marl, mus, kak maryam.. so, memandangkan hari tu last day exam, jadi konon2 nak 'celebrate' habis2an (mcm betOl je eh), i tot to myself, jom ah gi!

sampai ghufran around 7pm gitu.. after solat maghrib then we made our way to the classroom. someone was already there. immediately after i salam-ed her, a sense of familiarity struck me. a name was forming in my head..

"what's your name?"

"sekolah mana..?"

"were you from alsagoff..?"

indeed! she is the Yasmin, my classmate wayyyy back in primary level. Yasmin Hamzah.. she transferred to another madrasah when she was in primary 3 gitu..

masyaAllah...! what a coincidence.. what a coincidence. k, i need not explain further how i felt. im sure you've read my previous posts about meeting people whom i've not seen for a loOng time.

primary 2 or 3 kot

from the left --

1. Shahriza, is it? i forgot her name.. she also left the school some time during the primary school days.. but i know she has an elder sister who has bulu mata yang lentik and suka cubit hidayah johari.. sebab hidayah johari ade bulu mata lentik jugak. hehe.. i've no idea how to find her.. :(

2. Yasmin! yeah, i remember her as a short, quiet girl.. suara serak2 basah. sekarang.. lebih tinggi dari kite kot.

3. Hafizah Sariupua. alhamdulillah... both of us stayed on til sec 4. altho we didnt graduate the same year. oh yes, she is tallll.. macam syarafina jugak. and sweet, too :)

4. Mariam Said. another lost friend. we were play mates back then.. together with Kamaliah and Suraya. would like to meet her again..

so yeah, after 11 years, with His Will, i was in the same room as Yasmin again~ were busy chit-chatting til right before the class started.. aahh.. so much to ask, so much to know ^_^

you know, moments like this, kan, or particular points in life where i found or met someone with whom i've lost contact or not seen for ages, remind me of how long i have lived. it's like, wow.. it's been 11 years.. Allah has let me live to see today, now, this moment. mcm 'benchmark' gitu.. ermm.. not sure how to describe it exactly.. another example is RR. when RR'08 and ramadhan 1429H arrived, i realised.. "Ya Allah.. i'm still alive. You've given me another year (that is, measuring from RR'07).. one long year..*reflective mood*.."

hmmm... recently, on 15 feb, i bumped into kak Hafizah.. kat luar tpt solat perempuan kat mks. terus peluk dia erat2. one of the best feelings ever! alhamdulillah~ alhamdulillah~~~ sayangnya, kita sempat bertanya khabar je, coz she was leaving for a meeting. takpe, takpe. another time. oh, i also saw kak Izzah.. earlier ah.. mase CPR last.. umm.. december?.. meskipun tak rapat/kurang kenal, kite tetap rasa gembira dpt jumpa a senior :) haaa... sekarang ni, tgl kak Raihana je kite belom dipertemukan lagi.. in time, InshaAllah~

here's another picture, taken on the same day as the above pic. back row from left --

1. Syarafina. met her recently mase raihana's nikah ceremony. haiz~ sungguh dah dewasa dia ni! hehe.. seriously ah.. i feel like a child sey next to her. she is currently in KUIS, taking usuluddin klw tak silap. final year.

2. Hafizah Sariupua. dah lama tak jumpa dia. 2 years gitu kot? i think she's working now.

3. Farhana. she is in ma'arif, taking pre-u. (or dah grad?)

4. Sharifah. she's another long lost friend~ her sister, Khadijah, was also in the same class. two of my good friends that time. they left during primary 4 or 5 gitu. after that, terus tak dengar khabar. i really really hope to see them both again..!

5. Shari'ah. aaahh.. i wonder if i can recognise her if we were to pass each other in the streets?

middle row --

6. Khairunnisa Said. adik kepada Huda Said. i wonder how both of them are doing.. and how many kids Huda has now..

7. Mariam Said.

8. Shahriza.

im looking forward to more suprises that Allah has for me. i'm sure, bila Allah temukan kembali diri ni dan seseorang tu, it is at the right time. so, i shall wait =)

contoh anak mithali

2009-02-15T01:21:00.004+08:00

Wasalam!on saturday eh..im really not sure bole tk coz tktau dad keje tak..but i'll try my very best to come n once i get e permission,i msg u ASAP..sori n thank you!

22:56:47
29.12.2008

this message was about the retreat which was going to be held on that weekend.

cuba teka, yang hantar sms ni lelaki ke perempuan?

...

..

.

lelaki? perempuan?

.

.

.

if you guess 'lelaki', yup, you're right! heee... klw perempuan yang hantar message sebegini.. tak lah hairan sgt smpi post kat blog, ye tak? haha..

bila baca kiriman di atas.. dlm hati ni terdetik, "alahai~ sweeetnyer dia" tersenyum sendiri kite dibuatnya. mcm terharu ah lihat anak lelaki *remaja* yang baik (insha Allah!). ingat untuk meminta izin dari mak, ayah. (tapikan, klw umur dah masuk 20-an, masih ade ke yang teruskan amalan ni? atau dah 'upgrade' kepada sekadar beritahu "mak, ali balik lewat malam ni. ada hal dgn kawan"? atau langsung tak beritahu apa2?) ye lah, bukan dia seorang je, bahkan, alhamdulillah.. banin yang lain pon baik-baik belaka :)

Ya Allah.. Jadikanlah kami anak-anak yang soleh dan solehah buat ibubapa kami.
Semoga apa yang kami lakukan disenangi dan direstui mereka.

2009-02-09T00:36:00.001+08:00

Assalaamua'laikum wr wb

Beloved brothers and sisters,

Would like to say a big syukran jazeelan to one and all for your dedicated resolve and sacrificing spirit today!

May you be duly rewarded indeed. Barakallahu fikum!

As of 2200 hours today, the operation ended with 218 donations all accounted for and safely transferred over to Certis Cisco for processing. Insya Allah we will have full knowledge on the amount of proceeds on Friday.

Meanwhile, the donation drive also saw the activation of 400 activists, youth and volunteers who came from all walks of life to help in this cause, muslim and non-muslim alike.

This is an interesting number, and I think affirms that with a collective effort and driven activists, the road to igniting others into activism and perhaps, just perhaps fabrics or early steps towards social (re)construction is indeed possible.

Also, I sincerely hope that this network of activist will be binded further together thus being able to create bigger change into the society in the future. Doesn't matter what platform(s) we ride on but simply with a common fikrah or ideals and principles hence functioning in a collectivism that manifest into some impact and, yes, change.

Let's be a part of this wave of activism!

Thank you again and Hayakumullah ...

the street donation

2009-02-08T23:27:00.010+08:00

alhamdulillah.. alhamdulillah.. alhamdulillah..

im glad i was there, at mjd sultan today.

[oh, before i go further, i just wanna request something: please dont go and cut-n-paste this post or send the link to your friends/organisation(s) with that note - heyy, we got good feedback from a volunteer! *insertsmileyface*. this is for your own read~]

most of the time i just manned the booth. to kill time, i tried to continue reading a book about the life of a neurosurgeon [informative, insightful, and kelakar gak! hee]. or, i would listen to the brothers' chatters. best jugak dgr diorang berbual nih. tanye diorang ttg course yang diorang ambil. tanye pasal army. bla bla bla.. well, kite ni suker tanye. dapat gak ilmu sikit2, info2 baru dari diorang.

dapat berkenalan dgn 2 particular sisters.. kak ida and one more.. uh-oh.. i dont know her name.. from NUS.

bila tgh jaga booth tu, byk kali gak someone just came and inserted $$ into the donation tins. pakcik, makcik, kakak, abang.. foreigners.. non-muslims. masyaAllah.. masyaAllah.. terharu! kita ade letak signage kat 2 of the front gates. they must've seen. yes, cukup gembira bila lihat tangan2 yang menghulur.

before zohor gitu, the crowd outside masjid got bigger. coz there was a function kat audi, so mereka ni nak pulang ah. ape lagi, me and another bro angkut the collection tins and approach them. tahmid.. tahmid.. my spirits lifted. i went around the masjid. eager to approach anyone in my way. just do it!

then, i kinda felt im not doing what im supposed to do. why on earth am i sitting in this chair? i was getting too comfortable and lazy ah.. hmm.. so,

after asar, 5.15pm; ohh.. 45 more minutes to 6pm. supposedly end at 6pm. so me ajak the sisters, "jom! lagi 45 minit je. let's do what we can!"... so me and the NUS kakak walked along sungei road *first time whoaaooo* turn to ophir road, then to bugis village. wah, kat sini baru kite nampak: people's behaviour and their response towards those who are collecting donations. their indifference. wooww [saying this slowly].. and myself, how i had this 'reluctance' to approach people.. kira pilih bulu ah.. you should just go, liyana! go! just do it!

we left bugis village and walked outside BHG, crossed the small field to raffles hospital and made our way back to mjd sultan. along the way, yeah, we held out the donation tins. i realise i like to smile. i mean, i feel happy.. no wait, it's more like, i feel good greeting people with a smile.. even though they may respond by looking away.. looking straight ahead.. yada yada. ntah lah eh.. i say to myself, go liyana.. just go.. show your enthusiasm. your spirits. treat people with courtesy. "thank you very much!" smile "thank you..!" heh, ade some moments gak nak cakap jazaakallahu khair out loud. managed to suppress it though. klw tak, mesti orang tgk kite lain macam.

haha.. i kinda braced myself when approaching a group of mat saleh teenagers.. my gut said they wouldnt donate. but what the heck? just go ah. yeah, and so, they didnt donate. it's okay. at least, i overcame the apprehension feeling, or whatever you call it lah.

i think, basically, what i got from here is.. to just forget about being shy. just do your thing, ya know? smile and ask politely. forget about being hesitant. yeah, i was trying to shed that.

but at the same time, perceptions were forming in my mind.. e.g. who are the ones who show most indifference and/or ignorance.

and it's touching to see people putting $$, especially notes.. some big notes too, into the donation tin.. especially, non-muslims.. Ya Allah, mudahkanlah urusan mereka.. Ya Allah, kurniakanlah HidayahMu pada mereka..

felt the warmth of joy when listening to sisters sharing their stories, some are cute, some are funny, some are 'grrrrr', some are 'awwwww'.. all in all, i enjoyed myself. since most of the time, i was glued to the booth.

it's humbling. knowing that He puts me in this, to learn, to experience. tahmid.. tahmid..

adding to that, i became more informed about 2 particular initiatives by our muslim youths: IM4U and MGN. im thankful for the conversations i had with bro ashraf and kak nadiah. it's humbling. knowing that there are fellow malay muslim youths, students, whom despite their school workload, have this passion. to islah. to improve. to change. now that, is inspiring!

[start lament]
hmmm... should've done more. should've taken one tin and gone all the way to cityhall or esplanade. raffles would be nice too. i admit, i sat more than i walked. guilty. somehow, i didnt go all out like i thought i would.
[/end lament]

btw kan, klw kita tgk, aktiviti ni macam biasa je. tak gah pon mcm RR. tapi, pengajarannya.. hmmm.. packaged in subtle ways. *breaksintoasmile*

alhamdulillah.. alhamdulillah..

when you read this post again, remember that you were thankful for today, liyana..

and then, i thought to myself.. about where i wanna go after this. should i stay, and contribute through these initatives and/or organisations.. or should i venture out, taking what i've learnt and sharing 'em with those out there.. and get a better worldview. coz i know i will learn something from new people, new places, new situations.

go out, and be the strength that people need.

be the strength.
be. the strength.

-inhale deeply and let go-

should i really go out?

there are already many people working towards the betterment of the community here. im glad for that. a lot of initiatives, movements, groups, programmes..
but what about outside singapore? do they have as much effort done there as here? how are the muslim youths there creating change to their muslim communities? how? who? how much? can i play a part too?

i gain strength from the wonderful people, brothers and sisters, i've crossed paths with, and from the experiences that Allah has allowed me to keep, remember, reflect upon and share. i know very well that it's not enough. maybe not yet enough for me to step foot on a new, foreign ground and start giving.

but the people here need your strength too. need not go far. look around and you'll see there's a lot of work to be done.

Ya Allah... help me..

[about 2 more weeks til NUS/NTU admission exercises end]

i shall end this post with a sort of conclusion, or rather motivational reminder, that could sum up today's lesson:

Give all that you've got.
But if you can't -
More importantly,
Never stop giving.. never.

Are You pleased with what we have done today, Ya Allah..?
*head bows down*

2009-01-31T21:19:00.000+08:00

I'm having positive vibes about NTU.

(",)

2009-01-21T23:59:00.004+08:00

on a lighter note.........

Alf Mubarak to Kak Hidayati and Bro Rizal...!

^_^

'Umar 'Abdillah.. sedap nama tu. moga dia menjadi seperti kedua2 'Umar - berwibawa, telus, berani, berhikmah... humble and just ;)

i've been thinking about the name 'Umar for quite some time too. korang cube sebut. 'U-mar. *sighs and looks dreamily at nowhere* 'Umar al-Khattab. 'Umar 'Abdul 'Aziz. really ah.. bila teringatkan kisah mereka - perwatakan dan perbuatan, the characters of these two persons are strongly reflected in that one word: 'Umar.

'Umar + Mujahid = 'Umar Mujahid hehe.. *melts*

k k.. i know, kat Tautan Hati dah ade nama tu..

2009-01-21T23:02:00.002+08:00

im at the 'asthma' stage now.

it's been quite some time since i last caught the common cold+flu.

so, it started last saturday. with coughs. as i was unstoppably (is there such a word?) reading Twilight til the wee hours of sunday.

on sunday, the cough continued and then my throat became 'uncomfortable'. hmm.. i dunno how to describe it. y'all should know, right? and i slept with my TP windbreaker on.

monday morning, still the same. but i suspected that the worse had yet to come. so i took a Panadol tablet in the morning. must have fallen asleep in the bus. i felt better in the afternoon. continued to read Twilight. then, it was time for me to get another pill, but i didnt have any. hmmm... on the way to muhajirin, felt like the fever and headache might be coming soon. I NEED MY PANADOL. on the way home - that was it. i was officially sick with fever. bought a box of Panadol Cold Relief at 7-Eleven. popped one into my mouth. did my prayers.

i was a zombie. slouched on the sofa, trying to watch the tv. uh-oh. there were 2 quizzes the next day. noOoOOoo.. i couldn't study. i didn't want to study. could i be absent? i would just get the MC from the polyclinic. fell asleep there. mum brought out the pillows and blanket. aaahh.. heaven. didnt sleep well though. cold? took another dose of Panadol on midnite. zZzZzz..

tuesday - oh! i felt much better, alhamdulillah~~ but but! i still hadnt touched any of my notes. what should i do? still go to the doctor and feign fever? i cant do that! mmmmmmmm.... last minute revision; not quite, more like first-time learning, coz the notes were fresh from the printer (on monday). read thru.. tawakkal.. selawat.. tawakkal.. thought and searched harder.. tried to remember bits and pieces.. please.. selawat.. tawakkal.. thank you Allah, for letting me see.. it couldve been much much worse.

anyway, my condition had moved on to runny nose and more sneezing. great! -.-" reached home, fell asleep on the bare floor of my bedroom, with my backpack as the pillow. woke up half past six. took a nice cold shower. felt better even though the mucous was still flowing occasionally.

and today, runny nose/sneezing subsided. but guess what? by now, im sure that the virus are dead. which means they are accumulated in the phlegm (and thick mucous) to be 'sent out' of the respiratory system. hell yeah, i can feel my airways are filled with 'em. hard stuff, ey? so.. am having difficulty breathing; since morning. used my inhaler to open up the bronchi and bronchioles every now and then. took a spoonful of dad's diphenhydramine, the last one, in the morning. only 40 minutes ago i consumed my second cough syrup of the day. errmmm.. no wonder my phlegm is still stuck in my trachea and air tubes. so, the whole day i coughed, and coughed (not too frequent though; it's irritating and can worry the people around you; and can be dangerous for your muscles and nerves).. you know, sometimes you feel that the phlegm is just right there, loosening, and you just have to cough a bit more to get that stubborn lump out? yeah.. it's hardwork.

plus, inhaling deeply, trying to get enough air, is tiring. more precisely: exhausting. your lung muscles work harder. you're desperate for air. your airways are constricting.. oh, you wish someone can give you a nebulizer straightaway! and, and, when you exhale, you wheeze.. so the person next to you may just hear how terrible your condition is.

just so you know, having asthma is not cool. if you have an asthma attack, it would be like having first-hand experience of how 'suffocating to death' may be.

i feel that im straining my lungs. chest feels kinda heavy :/

2009-01-04T13:11:00.006+08:00

Kali ke-dua ke sini.

"Tulisan ini merupakan satu wadah untuk aku sentiasa mengingati diri ini yang dhaif untuk terus mengkaji dan mengkaji. Bukan sekadar mengambil bulat-bulat apa yang didengar khususnya perkara berkaitan aqidah kerana aqidah yang diterima oleh Allah adalah aqidah yang benar mengikuti fahaman salafus-salih berdasarkan dalil-dalil yang sabit daripada Kitabullah dan Sunnah Rasulihi."

diambil dari penulisan bertajuk Di Mana? [bertarikh 1 December 2008]

cukup tepat.

2009-01-01T03:45:00.004+08:00

Welcome to a new Dawn

~~~

Further Yet Closer

A weekend of...

2009-01-01T03:01:00.003+08:00

.. Fort Canning Park with Sis (saturday, 20 dec '08, 2.30pm)

it was actually a recce, for NI retreat. invited a few sisters (too few, actually).. none of 'em could make it. then, i thought of postponing to one of the coming weekdays. but nah~ i needed to get fresh air anyway. so, i brought my sister along :)

we alighted at City Hall mrt station. sebab dah lama tak jejak kaki kat situ, i was feeling extra happy, and perhaps, jakOn, to see many people, from different walks of life, going this way and that way.

and for the first time of my life (im sure of it!), i stepped into Raffles City Shopping Centre. uWoW~ looking at the boutiques and window displays.. teringat Suntec City Shopping Mall. mewah betOl~ jalan2 kat tingkat satu je, then made our way to fort canning park based on the sole memory of NI Election back in 2006.

looks like a large area, ey? it is lah.. from the starting point ("you are here" sign) we covered one big round. yupz! oh, i should've brought insect repellent, though. or maybe, coz of the heat of the day, so we got sweaty and itchy.

scenic! scenic! right in front of this fountain are the steps down to the main entrance of the park. behind, is the Raffles Terrace. unfortunately, it's small. had the chance to read a plaque at the side of the so-called house; could be that the original house had been shrunk to the mere hall that we can see today, or it could've been situated somewhere else and this hall is just a 'symbol', memorial, or whatever you wanna call it.

The surrounding area is.. cantik! green, clean grass.. the trees are not so tall. or wide. which means, it's exposed to sunlight. so too bad, we cant have the retreat there.

from top left:

the sheltered area where we had our NI Election 2006. i was really new sey. tau2 je, was invited to go. and i remember the colour code: kuning! feeling2 royal ah.. coz this hill was where the sultan's palace once stood.

the Raffles Terrace. right in front, in the middle, is a flagstaff. tak ingat what's the significance.

a bench facing a lampost. i was amused; why on earth is the bench is there? a person sits there and he can only watch the fence, the lampost and the few trees. agak terperuk pon ade. haha. mcm tak strategic dan tak scenic. O.o

that's my sister, konon tgh tgk ape2 ntah.. klw takde the marquee, i think the shot would be a bit nicer. this is the open space in front of ~~The Legends~~ aka Fort Canning Centre, called Fort Canning Green. i am sure this is where arts events and concerts are usually held. mesti mahal, kan, sewanya? when we got to The Legends, rupe2nya ade orang kahwin. saw the bride and groom, tgh nak pose for wedding shoot. oh, we saw another couple earlier dekat2 Raffles Terrace. memang elok ah klw nak ambil gambar kat fort canning park.. as well as the many gardens kat Singapore ni.. cuma get ready with small towel ke.. sebab klw cuaca panas, alahai~ heh. good thing now ade 'sweat-proof' make-up. haha

this tree kinda fascinated me. dahannya panjang menjalar. you can see in the picture two of 'em are supported by poles. the red-orange flowers add beauty to this tree. it must be old, like many other trees that we saw. tapi kan, dekat2 roots of the tree, byk kerangga, those big fire red ants.

from top left:

kat tingkat paling bawah of ~~The Legends~~ Fort Canning Centre rupe2nya ade sekolah memasak. At-Sunrise GlobalChef Academy. must be a highly reputable school. sempat jugak me and aqila jenguk2 what's behind the glass-paned doors. anyway, there's this water feature (i dunno the correct vocab for this) beside the main entrance door. suker!

sitting on the steps leading right into ~~The Legends~~Fort Canning Centre. actually nak ambil gambar berdua on the steps, tapi couldnt get the camera position right. padahal ade orang2 kat situ to help ambilkan, eh? heheh.. ape2 je karenah kita kat situ. oh, the 'orang2' there were actually para jemputan yang gi majlis kahwin tu. haha

that's me leaning on a coconut tree. it's actually on a small slope, so that tree kinda bends outwards.. hmm.. if you know what i mean.

trees and clouds. blend in beautifully.
Subhanallah!

memorial plaques, lined on the two walls outside ~~The Legends~~Fort Canning Centre. A lof of the inscriptions begin with SACRED. Angelina was 3 years old. Charles Henry was 21, a most dutiful and affectionate son and brother. Hier Ruhet means here rests in German - Carl Wilhelm Andreas Albert (i think it's one person's name, not two) who was born 135 years before i was. These plaques, they are actually tombstones. the Fort Canning Green was once a christian cemetery. wooOooOOOoo..~

The Battle Box! i saw the door to the underground far east command centre first. apparently we had missed the 5pm, the last, visiting slot. i dunno if this building is part of the Battle Box, but the ticket counter's there.

at The Spice Garden. didnt pay much attention to the plants. instead, we took multiple shots sitting on this bench. i think it was past 5pm. legs were getting to get tired. but we made our way to the archeological excavation site and Keramat Iskandar Shah. i think the former is creepier. especially if you're by yourself walking inside the not-that-long gallery to see the pieces of ceramics, jewelleries and whatnots.

as aqila was signing the guestbook at the archeological site, i took these pictures.

Prehistoric Singapore - Although no evidence of prehistoric man has yet been discovered on Singapore, sites with stone tools have been found on Pulau Tekong and on the south shore of Johor. Probably prehistoric people occasionally occupied Singapore, and gathered food here.

The Founding of Temasik - By the early 14th century, Singapore had its own government: the kingdom of Temasik. Chinese traders had already come to settle here by 1330. The palace was built on Fort Canning Hill.

peering thru the window.. nothing inside actually. just a white-walled room. as the sign said, "White Studio".

after ~3 hours of sight-seeing, we returned to our starting point. we didnt descend there, tho. we walked towards the Raffles Terrace fountain and exited via the Hill Street Entrance. we strolled along the Parliament House (fuyo~ first time jejak sana!) and reached the bridge. i dunno its name, but it was surely my first time crossing it on foot. then, we passed all the restaurants and pubs, towards OUB Plaza. again, it was my first. my sis' too. dapat tgk crabs lobsters and whatnots.. the different on-the-table arrangements, deco.. nampak sah kita dua macam tourist kat situ. local. tourist.

bila tgh jalan2.. i was taking it all in. the sights. cantiknya~ it's the river lah.. makes the difference. Rabbij'al hadza baladan aaminaa.. Ya Tuhanku, jadikanlah negeri ini negeri yang aman..

we didnt end there. after taking rest on one of the many seats overlooking Empress' Place, we took a walk in the middle of the CBD.. tak tahu ape nama area tu. it's where people mostly exit from the mrt station below. time ni, dah masuk maghrib. we took train to Bugis. coz i felt like going to the National Library pulak. and Chewy Junior. :p at last, tak gi library. went to Banquet at Raffles Hospital. ate fruit salad while waiting for abang to pick us up.

that's how our day went. i felt happy the whole time. alhamdulillah..!

.. Changi Village and East Coast Park with Family (Sunday, 21 dec '08, 10am)

had our nasi lemak breakfast at Changi Village. no, no, bukan dari kedai yang asyik long queue tu. but from another stall that my bro recommended. after that, pikir nak picnic kat Changi Beach je. tapi, sebab nak main basikal, we made our way to East Coast Park.

guess who's the one who doesnt know how to ride a bicycle?? XD

and since abang got his rollerblades inside the bonnet, i took them out to give rollerblading a try. another first time. oh God! forget about being shy or embarrassed - i fell down, stood in funny positions.. enjoyed myself alright! had abang and mak or aqila to hold my arm. yupz, susah nak balance. lagipon, the rollerblades' size is big. i look forward to try it again!

the sea is blue! i just noticed it. selama ni i have a bad impression of ECP ah. the water is brownish.. coz lots of sand, dirt or what lah.. i would prefer the two ends, especially the stretch leading to the airport. tapi, when i was on the jetty, Subhanallah! a beautiful sight every singaporean can be proud of. indah belaka :)

it was also a rare opportunity for me to dip my feet in the water. you see, ayah tak izinkan berenam/mandi kat laut. so, whenever im at a beach with my friends, kite rase bersalah nak jejakkan kaki sikit pon kat air. nak kata jealous kat kawan2, tak jugak. tapi, bila dapat chance ni, ayah pon bagi green light, waahh.. it felt really good. i guess, the restriction made me more grateful of this moment. simple and normal as it seems, it's wonderful for me~

the three of us on the signature jetty. it was hOt, mind you. i tried bro's shades. oh tidak, sungguh tak kena dgn mukaku. hehe.. eh, do you notice, that we wore the same colour? dark blue.

we left the beach at 2pm. next destination was rumah nenek kat Ang Mo Kio. wah~ lepak habis kat situ. after asar, kita bertolak. the rest of the family went home, tapi kite plak ke .....

.. Marina Barrage (Sunday, 21 dec'08, 6pm)

reached Marina Bay mrt stn aroud 6pm. waited for the other sisters. i was dismayed when i got to know that 2 brothers were joining us. tapi kite tak cakap ape2 ah. yang bagusnya, diorang lambat. so, me, kak fiza and kak ruqayyah took the shuttle bus. sampai, keluar dari bus, walked towards the entrance.. and we were greeted by a... oohhhh! what a sight! woww.. wowww.. waaahh.. ooohh.. serene. spacious. the sea. the sky. subhanallah, subhanallah..

as we made our way inside the complex, we couldnt stop ooh- and ahh-ing. yeah, it was awesome! below are some of the pictures taken:

me and kak ruqayyah main air jugak. wheee~~ couldnt get enough of it! best sangat2! you know, i think i found another side of kak ruqayyah. gila-gila jugak mcm yours truly nih. hahaha.. we talked crap and had quite a big share of smiles and laughter.

aroung maghrib gitu, kak fadz, kak saqinah and kak sarah with another sister (siapa namanya eh?) sampai. the two brothers too. i just acted as though they were not there. i didnt mean to be cold or anything, i simply dont have anything to say to them. them aside, i really enjoyed the company of my gal seniors!

we had a little picnic at the top floor of the complex. open-air. sejuk je rase.. boleh tertidur kat seats, floor or even the grass. this actually reminded me of Marina South Pier. bro brought aqila and me there one night, many many months back. peaceful. far from the sounds and lights from the towns. angin sepoi2 bahasa. mmmmmmm~~~

sempat jugak me and kak ruqayyah baring kat one of the cemented seats. staring into the dark sky. blissful, indeed!

the last shuttle bus was supposed to leave at 8pm. mase tu, kita semua belom puas dgn Marina Barrage, so we decided to give it a miss and suffer the long walk to the mrt stn later. we didnt even remember the exact route out. but i guess we couldnt care less at that time.

we left the place shortly before 9pm. and suprise suprise! there was a shuttle bus. if i remember correctly, the sign on the bus said "LAST BUS". *huge relief* and so, me, kak fiza, kak ruqayyah and kak saqinah took bus, while kak fadz and the bros with their motorbikes.

thank you for inviting me, kak fiza :) im glad i came.

on the whole.. i feel that this is the best weekend i've ever had. i cant remember the last time i felt happy, care-free. i think it's coz of the mixture of experience.. one with my sister, i took this as a time to be with myself and get away from everything. another with family (we seldom go out like this together, so i cherish 'em) and the weekend ended with a bunch of great sisters.

thank You.. thank You.

2008-12-31T22:47:00.004+08:00

i've so much to say, so much to say, so much to say.

but i dont want to write. i want to talk. say it out loud --

i am distracted again. i hate it when it happens. my focus slips.

it causes me to stop writing. coz i feel that i am writing for someone else.

thus i want to see someone. i want to see them.

to tell them, to tell them, to tell them

these feelings of mine

the happiness that's seeping through
the joy
the worry that's gripping me
the sadness
the anxiety that's paralysing
the fear
the excitement that's making me dizzy with ecstacy
ohh.. all these feelings - and more!
they are just, extraordinary;

make me human.

i want to see you. i want to see all of you.

---

i am afraid of the moments when i get distracted

let me be brave. let me forget. let me go.

i dont want to be distracted.

i want to be free.

not you.

not you.

not yet.

God, help me.

2008-12-25T14:47:00.002+08:00

ummah.. ummah.. ummah..

ummah.. ummah.. ummah..

ummatii..

ummatii..

ummatii..

ummatii..

ummatii..

*********************

A new year's approaching. 1430 hijriyyah muwafiqah 2009 masihi.

- take a deep breath ... release slowly -

2008-12-23T18:50:00.004+08:00

kak rufi sent a message via multiply about doing a survey regarding hijab. it's created by her friend, for research, so she's helping to spread the word.

then, in reply to her message, a sister sent a poem titled Object of Despair by Fahim Firfiray (Abu Omar). i like this bit very much:

Strength lies in anonymity
Be a shadow in the crowd
Until you speak and interact
When your voice will carry loud

Here's the full version:

Emma is a lawyer
And so is Aisha too
Colleagues going into court
At circa half past two

Its 1 O'clock right now
They grab a bite before the trial
They chat about this and that
Conversing with a smile

Aisha is in full hijab
With a loose all over suit
Emma's in her business wear
With accessories taboot

Emma's really quite bemused
At Aisha's godly ways
She looks Aisha in the eyes
And very firmly says

You're a smart girl Aisha
Why do you wear that across your hair?
Subjugated by "man"-kind
An object of despair

Take it off my sister
Let your banner be unfurled
Don't blindly follow all around
DECLARE YOUR FREEDOM TO THE WORLD

Aisha is amazed
But not the least bit shy
She bravely puts her milk shake down
And gives Emma the reply

My dear sister Emma,
Why do you dress the way you do?
The skirt you're wearing round your waist,
Is it really you?

Now that we've sat down,
I see you tug it across your thighs,
Do you feel ashamed?
Aware of prying eyes?

I see the way you're sitting,
Both legs joined at the knees,
Who forces you to sit like that?
Do you feel at ease?

I'll tell you who obliges you,
To dress the way you do,
Gucci, Klein and St. Laurent,
All have designs on you!

In the main, its men my friend,
Who dictate the whims of fashion,
Generating all the garb,
To incite the basest passion

"Sex Sells" there is no doubt,
But who buys with such great haste,
The answer is the likes of you,
Because they want to be embraced......

They want to be accepted,
On a level playing field
Sure, with brain and intellect
But with body parts revealed

Intelligence and reason
Are useful by and by
But if you want to make a mark
Stay appealing to the eye

You claim your skirt is office like
A business dress of sorts
Would we not laugh at Tony Blair
If he turned up in shorts?

His could be the poshest pants
Pinstripe from Saville Rowe
But walking round like that my friend
He'd really have to go

Why do you douse yourself with creams
To make your skin so milky?
Why do rip off all your hair
To keep your body silky?

A simple shower's all you need
To stay respectable and clean
The time and money that you spend
Is really quite obscene

Why do you wake up at dawn,
To apply a firm foundation,
Topped with make up and the like,
In one chaotic combination?

And if you should have to leave the house
Devoid of this routine
Why do you feel so insecure
That you should not be seen?

Be free my sister Emma
Escape from your deep mire
Don hijab today my friend
And all Islam's attire

Avoid all those sickly stares
Or whistles from afar
Walk down the street with dignity
Take pride in who you are

Strength lies in anonymity
Be a shadow in the crowd
Until you speak and interact
When your voice will carry loud

You're a smart girl Emma
Wear this across your hair
Don't be subjugated by "man"-kind
An object of despair

To use your very words my friend
Let your banner be unfurled
Don't blindly follow all around
DECLARE YOUR FREEDOM TO THE WORLD

just for the record

2008-12-10T23:11:00.002+08:00

My First Time solat hari raya.. in my entire life. took place at masjid assyafaah, 8am on 9 dec 2008, bersamaan 10 dzulhijjah 1429H.

gembira sangat2!!

klw tahun2 sebelum ni, it's like 'errr.. tak heran'. rasenya, 2 tahun lepas or setahun yang lalu, baru tergerak hati nak gi solat raya. tapi tak gi.. tak ingat kenapa. bangun lambat or tak boleh solat.

masa eidilfitri tahun ni.. i was really looking forward to go to the masjid. i couldnt join the solat, but i didnt care. i wanted to go, coz i wanted to 'feel' the eid. when i woke up, mak, ayah, abang dah nak keluar rumah.. kelam-kabut jugak siap2, coz i wanted to witness the takbir and solat. naik mrt, turun kat sembawang, jalan kaki..

bila nampak ade pakcik2, orang2 on the way to mjd.. dgn baju kurung.. mcm touched gitu. then, i saw the masjid.. wah.. the wonderful feeling increased multifold gitu!.. bila nampak saf solat sampai ke gate masjid.. i was like *big-O* waaahhh... mcm gini rupenya.. touched lagi.

and so, the masjid grounds were all occupied.. so i could only watch from outside. lihat mcm2 orang.. anak-beranak lah.. dgn kawan2 lah.. tersenyum sendiri bila nampak the indians or bangladeshis with their costumes.. ade yang tak sempat gosok agaknya, or fresh from the plastic cover. hehe.. tapi, terhibur ah. you know, everybody was in the eid spirit, no matter what skin color you are. all under the banner of Islam. meraikan kemenangan.

okay, back to solat eidil adha -

solat kat dlm classroom. tgkt 3. tak kisah. yang penting, dapat experience takbir raya dgn jemaah lain, dan solat. for the first time lah sey. bayangkan!

oh, my fault though, i didnt read up on solat raya.. so i kinda 'rukuk halfway' mase imam takbir the second time. pfft.

after the solat ended, a sudden realisation.. that it was quick. i mean, i was still savouring the moment. tiba2, that's it, you know?

but still, the wonderful feeling like the one i felt time eidilfitri tu ada jugak. alhamdulillah..~

did i mention that the smell of the kambings was strong? ok, so, bro and i wanted to watch kambing kena sembelih. kita tunggu kat luar ah.. bukan kat compound masjid. tunggu punya tunggu.. mungkin dlm 45-55minit gitu kot. tgh tunggu tu, hujan gerimis.. then hujan betol2. wah! endure sey.. sempat jugak abang ambil kereta dari carpark kat kawasan perumahan, then park kat luar masjid.

nampak sgt pakcik2 kat area penyembelihan tu perasan ade dua audiences in the rain, under a big umbrella. gasak lah.. kita nak tgk jugak.

jeng jeng jeng!

bila the action dah nak mula, abang panggil mak yang sedang duduk dlm kereta. heee~ mak pon nak tgk. so.. ade pakcik yang dukung kambing.. bawak keluar dari kandang, letak tag. baringkan kat tempat penyembelihan.. urut2.. -

kita tak dapat tgk the actual moment/scene kambing disembelih with an unobstructed view :( sebab ade orang2 yang berdiri around the kambing.. hold the kepala and whatnot.. hmmm.. takpelah. tgk dari jauh pon jadi.

bila dah puas tgk, then kita berangkat pulang. and this was about 9.40am.

sukerrr! ^_^

2008-12-03T10:34:00.003+08:00

ohkayy... i found out that i did save three more smses from the 'ice kacang' guy.. saved them in my notebook, that is. actually, i had been wanting to write about the incident a long time ago.. but asyik delay.. and since my inbox tak boleh nak contain so much smses.. i jotted them down. go to the original post to see the edits.

****************

im in the last phase of my third year. Major Project is done and over with. honestly, it was the biggest obstacle ever. i just couldnt look into the future before 28 nov. 28 nov was the poster presentation, the last assessment for MP. finally, at about 3.10pm, i could breathe easily.

Wa 'ufawwidhu amrii ilallah...

even though i want so much to explore my options for the future, deep inside, i am really afraid. i know what im afraid of, but i just couldnt say it here. I can only pray and pray that the evaluators will mark leniently, yet, fairly. coz my conscience says i dont deserve to pass. Allah, help me.

now it's just problem-based learning (PBL). tak sibuk sangat. BUT! the unsettling matter above will always be in my mind. and i will only know of the result in 3 or 4 months. indeed, penantian adalah suatu penyeksaan!

generasi pelapis

2008-12-03T08:52:00.004+08:00

seperti mana anti katakan dalam entry ini, kesian lah tengok remaja sekarang tapi kita kena ingat, dia mungkin tak seuntung kita yang dapat petunjuk Allah pada permulaan kita dilahirkan. terjaga sampai besar panjang ni. Itu juga bermakna amanah yang kita pukul lagi berat dari apa bro itu memikul.

the ummah needs more people like you. Jgn tawadhu' tak kena tempat ye. Jadi kena lah usaha siapkan diri jadi org tercontoh dan juga sediakan generasi pelapis yang bakal memikul amanah itu.

"Itu juga bermakna amanah yang kita pukul lagi berat dari apa bro itu memikul."
Hmmm... betul. *rase mcm kena slapped in the face* sigh.. the word "amanah" has this big weight in it. korang rase tak? cuba sebut perkataan itu sekali lagi: A-maa-nah!

Terima kasih, Tuhan.. di atas ni'mat Iman dan Islam..

"Jadi kena lah usaha siapkan diri jadi org tercontoh dan juga sediakan generasi pelapis yang bakal memikul amanah itu."
heheh, nak jadi orang tercontoh ni.. *tgk cermin*.. inshaAllah..
sediakan generasi pelapis?

YES!

tiba2 me terpikir tentang NI, dan terutama sekali, my juniors in alsagoff. in PRISMA.

-fikir panjang-

Thanks, Bro, for your comment. i appreciate it!

*********

two weeks ago, mase usrah kat mks.. anisah, sakinah n aiman were sharing about keadaan kat alsagoff.. hmm.. nampaknyer, mcm ade 'masalah' dgn adik2 kat sana. risau lah!

dari segi akhlak, mostly.

personally, im just soo afraid and worried pikirkan keadaan anak2 madrasah.. as the years go by. especially, in my alma mater. takut pengajian di madrasah tu, setakat belajar untuk exam. takut madrasah dah jadi mcm sekolah lain. takut madrasah tak dapat nak lentur adik2 ni menjadi muslim dan muslimah yang baik akhlaknya..

ade jugak ah, tgk2 blog a few juniors. hmmm.. sedih!

i dont want my juniors to think that madrasah tak boleh offer them the best environment, the holistic environment, for them to excel bila keluar nanti. ermm.. k, let me rephrase - i dont want them to think "ergghh.. bila lah aku nak graduate? aku nak masuk mainstream.."..

okay, that aside.

i want to talk about something else.

for more than a year now, i have this big urge to come back to school. to do something. to tell the teachers there, that madrasah plays a big, super duper role to didik pelajar2nye.

it's like, madrasah is the safe haven, you know? klw tak madrasah, mane lagi kite nak didik anak2 Islam tentang Islam? secara menyeluruh! and yes, and paling utama ialah mentarbiyah mereka dgn peribadi Islam. Subhanallah! bayangkan, my sisters and brothers from madrasah, graduate into the real world with personalities yang mengkagumkan dan berpegang pada prinsip2 agama. hmmm... 'Celupan Madrasah'

is it too much to ask for?

hmm.. korang rase, ade beza tak perwatakan seseorang yang dulu dari madrasah dan yang dari sekolah secular? for me, kite tak boleh nak rase.. coz, i was from a madrasah.. jadi, biased ah..

dari segi ilmu agama pon, i realise that madrasah has a lot to do to equip the students. for example, fiqh. cuba tunjukkan, bincangkan, isu2 kontemporari. tiba2 me teringat usul fiqh. ustazah selalu beri contoh 'dadah' dibandingkan dgn 'arak'. balik2 itu. afwan ust, ana tak berniat untuk memperkecilkan ust. cuma.. ana fikir, ada byk hukum2 yang nampak remeh, tapi sebenarnya, ialah sesuatu yang basic, yang sepatutnya, pelajar madrasah tahu.

klw kita gi website2 soal jawab tentang Islam.. kita akan baca macam2 kemusykilan agama. why not, organise an assignment for the students to solve a few questions.. dah tu, present kat kelas. dgn ini, pelajar boleh make use of the library kat tingkat 3 tu (byk buku2 'intellectual' kat situ) and learn research skills.. dapat improve presentation skills. ni dah mcm problem-based learning ah. dan. mereka dapat belajar selok-belok mencari dalil2 yang sohih, tulisan2 ulama', to support their answers.

another subject yang boleh diperdalamkan lagi skopnya ialah hadith. secara terus terang, kite rase tak salah, malah menguntungkan, klw pelajar2 didedahkan dgn contoh2 perbahasan tentang hadith2 dho'if.. bid'ah or ape2 ah.. this exposure kan, will at least give the students a sort of 'advanced standing' bila keluar nanti. lebih2 lagi for those yang tak continue into religious field.

anak2 madrasah kita perlu dibekalkan dgn ilmu yang substantial. not just theory, but practical.

klw quran dan tajwid pulak.. wah, ni penting! alhamdulillah.. one can see that those from madrasah dapat membaca dgn baik. tapi tajwid perlu dipertingkatkan lagi.

hmmmm... tapi, yang paling necessary ialah.. tarbiyyah rohani.. coz i think that kita masih lack kat situ.. pelajaran, ilmu is one thing ah.. tapi, kesedaran dlm diri masing2 tentang tanggungjawab kita sebagai seorang muslimah.. kesedaran.. kesedaran.. is another thing. need to instill the right values, to make them understand why we learn this, why we do that, guide them so that they can appreciate and experience for themselves, the beauty of Islam. okay, if this is too much, at least, get them to be aware that they need Islam, and Islam needs them.. so that in the future, ape pon steps they take, they will have Islam in their hearts and Allah as their common goal.

lagi2 klw dah masuk alam menengah.. this is where the spiritual development is crucial.. haiz~ teringat usrah.

k, i realise that im blabbering. ---

just to share, mase hari raya dgn kawan alsagoff.. kat rumah ust kamsinah.. i voiced out my concern.. that our students need more exposure.. to develop themselves in terms of communication skills, leadership skills and whatever else. pokoknyer, masa kat madrasah nih shouldnt be just about studying. this is where PRISMA can be utilised fully. and that, tarbiyah tu perlu. usaha dan peranan para ustazah dan ustaz sangat2 penting.. i want to tell them not to give up on these students.. merekalah murabbi.. and we need you, teachers!

some of my friends pon support jugak.. that madrasah needs to do more for the students.. tapi ape reaksi ustazah? ermmm... she nodded and all.. but she was not as enthusiastic as i thought she would be. perhaps i should go to ust zauwiah. maybe she would understand better.

so, mase usrah tu, me and kak mariam dah semangat.. i see the need for us, alsagoff alumni, to come together and help our juniors. i mean, we've seen the world, right? and im sure, a lot of us have different experience and expertise that we can share. (lebih2 lagi, kakak2 who are much2 older than me) it shouldnt be about us. it's about them. we want our juniors to be ready for the world. and not just like everyone else.. we hope to see our juniors become a full-fledged Muslimah. Mu'minah, Solehah, inshaAllah!

i said to kak mariam, "eh, klw adekan sistem usrah, bagus eh?" tak boleh disangkal, usrah merupakan satu platform yang sangat baik untuk membentuk adik2 kita. lebih efektif to focus on small groups.. hmm..

i also asked the trio, "kan PRISMA ada?" like i said, PRISMA is where our students can hone their organisational skills, etc. help bring colour to the school ah. since we dont have CCAs and we're mostly shut away from extra-alsagoff activities. but, they told me that the 'office' has lots of restrictions, although ust zauwiah supports the activities that PRISMA wants to do. hmmm.. i thought the school is more flexible now. k, this is just one side of the story. so, i guess, i may have to ask the 'office people' myself about this. or ask ust zauwiah. chett, liyana ni mcm berani nak tanya sekolah macam2 eh?

tapi kan, betol lah! the urge tu kadang2 kuat. rasa nak sangat berkhidmat kat sekolah balik. not as a teacher. but i want to do it through PRISMA. see, i told you, i still cant get over PRISMA even though it's been three years! haha tak lah.. it's just that, i see it has a potential.. takkan nama je alsagoff ade student body, tapi tak dapat gerak secara aktif mcm itmawat. i dunno how itmaj, asc and al-arabiah student council are doing. and i dunno if irsyad got their own student body. but what i do know, is that the other madrasahs got quite a number of activities/CCAs that the students can organise and participate in.

in summary, i hope to help my juniors, one way or another.

-the end-

p.s. haaahh.. ust sakinah nak proposal eh? ana takde proposal ah.. ni angan2. tgklah camne. do'akan eh? mudah2an, suatu hari nanti, kita (alumni) ramai2 dan guru2 dapat saling bantu-membantu to bring a positive change to the school, and the students. better still, let's spark a revolution!

menghairankan

2008-11-30T00:29:00.006+08:00

at 12.44pm, last wednesday, I got an sms -

Assalam n Gd afternn!

:-)

im gg 2 sch(TP lah)
meet up 4-e ice kacang?
If segan,
Dun worry,i will tell u if there wont b anyone joining us k

What Time Sch ends?

pikir nak reply. but no, i didnt.

from that hour onwards, i was quite anxious, takut tgh jalan, tetiba ade orang approach ke.. "you're liyana, right?" ~~mak kau~~~ if that happens, nak lari seh. anyway, i was still cool ah. i mean, chances are low lah kan. TP ni besar. ice kacang tu kat mensa canteen. and i wasnt anywhere near mensa.

okay okay.. meh, kite backtrack jap.

months ago.. while i was on SIP -

one day, i got an sms from someone.. asking me for my username and password coz this someone wanted to use the school PC.

kite mati-mati pikir that someone was my first-year junior. paham2 jelah, i cannot save anymore phone numbers in my handphone.

so, i gave the info and added something like, "waahh~ dah lama sey tak jumpa.. hope you are doing well in your studies.. and health.." basically, kitenye reply punye lah mesra. and betul lah, dah lama tak dgr khabar.

then, i got a reply -

Ur really swt u knw..
Thx 4 e well wishes n also sry 4 e late re.=batt flat
Hmm.. U too.. May u be at best of health always n also in studies, InshaAllah:-)

okay, and so i tot, "alahai~ baiknya adik ni" smiling to myself.

the next day -

Smiles..
Im gg to sch.. but will be gone at ard 330, so U 1-2 hav ice kacang @ mensa on me
Text me
I aint rich so only ice kacang.
:-) take care.
Assalam.

i replied something like, "..aint rich? =p.. im having my SIP.. in the west of singapore.. i can only have ice kacang with you when im back in november.."

oh man.. when i think back about how my sms sounded.. kasi shivers sey.. not that it was wrong. it was what happened next that stopped me in my tracks BIG TIME..

this 'junior' replied -

Nov?!
Wow, ur teachg me to Sabar..
Hmmm.. Wait, hold up!
I aint a sis ok!
Hehe.
U got e wrong person..
Im a bro.:-)
Did I go 4 a sex change?
NOPE!

OH. MY. GOD. i was ---------------- speechless!
and immediately, i was embarrassed. to think that i might have given an impression to this 'bro'; impression of ape? ntahlah... korang paham tak? tak paham takpe~
tapi pokoknyer.. i was super paiseh.. tak boleh angkat sey..

malu kat dia
malu kat diri sendiri
malu kat Dia..

Ya Allah!

terus rasa berdosa..
teringat balik kata2 mesra yang me tulis kat sms.
it was meant for a sister lah......!
*tutup muka dgn tudung*

anyway, i didnt reply the sms. -in state of shock-

two days later, on 7.8.2008 17.55hrs -

Hmmm..
Ur awfully quiet after e last msg I sent.
:-)
Take care.
Assalam.

i took a loOng time to compose a proper reply. and so, i sent him a looooonnnggg explanation. about who i had thought he was. how shocked, embarrassed and angry i was. how i shouldnt have replied in a 'very casual' way.. how improper i thought my use of language was, in my communication with a rajul. shocked coz i got the wrong person. embarrassed myself in front of myself, and Him (i cant remember if i added 'him' too). angry coz i had potrayed myself as a muslimah who tak jaga cara perbualannya dgn lelaki..

k k.. i know by now korang mesti kata, "relaks ah, liyana, kau tak tahu pe.."

tapikan.. ni mcm reflex ah.. seriously. rasa mcm hati ni kotor gitu.

then, the next day or few days later, the bro sent a long sms using sms.ac. heh. i didnt save it. cant remember exactly what he said.. some of it: "....relax.. no need to be embarrassed lah.. coz you dont know.. casual.. salah?.. i also communicate like that with my girl friends.. i dont know.. please teach me.."

some bits and pieces:

w a guy but i dun c whens the point u crossed ur line. Pls explain tt part.. hmmm if u say casual sekali is wrong, then i need to apologise 2..

cos im so casual 2. pls teach me my limits! cos i comm w all girls like so too! No need to malu to Him cos u dun knw=tak tahu maka tak dosa kan

i think i tried to explain about communication between guy/girl in Islam.. but i think he didnt quite get it:

on 22.8.2008 -

:-)
Mabuk kalau nak pikir camtu everytime.
But i think also depend on e other party.
If i dun mind, u dun hav to trouble urslf worryg.
Releks lah k.
pntg aper?

oh! the above incident happened in August.

then........ on the same day -

20.53 hrs

Assalam,
Hmm suggestion. Maybe on fri nites kan u can stay in sch n can watch movie at lib!
But let me apply alumni member 1st.
Can watch together?
Free lagi:-)

fuh! menyirap sey darah bila baca. nak kata meluat, tak sampai tahap tu ah.. truthfully, tibe2 kite naik seram. berani nye mamat ni..

pikir2 balik.. bersyukur sgt2 di atas kekuatan Iman.. i dont think i replied that sms. tapi dlm hati, nak sgt beritahu dia yang apa yang dia cadangkan tu salah dan nasihatkan dia. but at the same time, malas nak layan. dan takut nak layan. takut jadi perbualan panjang plak.. maklumlah, kena explain itu ini, klw dia tak faham2.

-------

begitulah kisahnyer..

yes, i do know the name of this person. apparently he is one of NI's new recruits. well, supposedly ah. but he has not come to any NI activities yet.

but! please note - i do not intend to shed a bad light on him. i do not want to judge him based on his smses, although im clearly not comfortable with it. He may be a good person. The common thing about him and me is that we both have weaknesses. so do the rest of humankind.

okay, ni sekadar untuk catatan.. 3 bulan, 3 tahun, 13 tahun akan dtg, bila tgk post nih, boleh ketawa sendiri kenangkan this incident. hehehe..

in the meantime, i'll just go on with my life as usual. =)

mmm.. just my last thoughts: mungkin mindsetnye lain; tak salah makan sama2, hang out, dgn kawan perempuan.. mcm kesian plak kat dia. bukan kesian, nak iyekan permintaannya. tapi, kesian klw dia tak tahu/sedar. klw pikir jauh sikit, kesian lihatkan keadaan mcm ni happening to fellow remaja Islam..

Meriahlah taman ini~

2008-11-29T23:17:00.002+08:00

Meriahkanlah taman ini..
Dengan lagu yang merdu..

Few days ago, I hummed these words.. out of the blue gitu. it was like, something out of the back of my head - reeeeeealll back, i tell you.

again, it was something from my distant past.

so, just now, i typed the lyrics in yahoo. didnt get much info. tried google -

BINGO!

it was Nadamurni's Meriahkan Taman Ini.

aaahhh..

I searched at Imeem. there was only 'Meriahkan Taman Ini by Mawaddah'. pfft.

couldnt find anywhere else. even downloadnasyid.blogspot doesnt have the original version.

never mind. at least, one more childhood memory uncovered.

^_^