The Reader

Petrosains

A few years ago,I brought my children to visit Petrosains at KLCC. It was very interesting and informative,not only to my kids but also to me. During this school holidays, I observe a lot of school children came in droves to visit Petrosains. If you have not been there, it is good to bring your kids there.

If anyone of you have been there recently,may I have your views of Petrosains.

Photo Notes: This photo was taken using a mobile phone Nokia 6600.

Broken cars

This morning, four of my neighbours along the street where I live got the shocks of their lives. Their cars that they parked outside were broken into. The same technique was used-the thief broke the small glass window at the back seats,unwind the main glass window and stole whatever inside the car.No doors were opened,hence no alarms went off.

My son's car(old Wira) was safe even though parked besides one of those broken into cars. It appears that thieves prefer to ransack the Kancil and Kelisa-whatever the reasons best known to them.

Gone were the days when we can leave our home gates and doors unlocked. Whatever measures we took to ensure safety of our personal beings as well as our properties are no gurranttee that we can be safe. Some time ago, one of my neighbour was pushed by the snatch thief and she fell and hurt her head. To-day, I read the report that a snatch thief victim in Johor passed away.

IMHO, all these are sysmptoms of something sick in our society.Are we addressing the symptoms or the root causes of the issue?

Cool speakers

At last,the speakers from Astec Lansing has arrived for my iPod. Now, I must look for the money to buy those cool speakers to indulge in mobile music.

At-Taghabun

This is a belated tazkirah that I wish to post on Friday.

Last Sunday, our Ustaz Prof Dr Hashim Minhat, a retired lecturer of Islamic Jurisprudence from UKM read and explained this Surah to remind all of us about the messages in this short surah in the light of present day moral decadence among muslims and non-muslims.

Below is the extract I took from a commentary of the surah by al-Maududi:

Man by his intellect and reason has been explaining this phenomenon in a thousand ways, but Allah tells the real truth and declares that the fundamental causes of the destruction of the nations were only two:

First, that they refused to believe in the Messengers whom He sent for their guidance, with the result that Allah too left them to themselves, and they invented their own philosophies of life and went on groping their way from one error to another.

Second, that they also, rejected the doctrine of Hereafter, and thought this worldly life to be an end in itself, and that there was no life hereafter when they would have to render an account of their deeds before God. This corrupted their whole attitude towards life, and their impure morals and character so polluted the world that eventually the scourge of God itself had to descend and eliminate them from the scene.

For thw whole text,please click here.

Low morality is one thing ,but what is worse is when the society and those in power have ignored it and not doing anything about. This is a state of moral decadence and according to Einstein, this happens when the world is coming towards the end.

As ordinary man on the street, I must ensure that all members of my family are safe from this evil disease.Only a few great souls can change the worlds, but all of us can do something within our family, the best we can.

Showers of memory

Two days ago I was invited by JKR Kelantan to attend the official opening of JKR Pasir Mas new office building by HRH The Sultan of Kelantan. I was posted there as a building engineer in late 1976 and left in December 1980. I won't miss it for anything-just to be there to see old friends and my ex-staff. JKR Pasir Mas was established in 1951 ans I was its 18th District Engineer from 1978 to 1980.

After the official ceremony, most of the guests went to the District Officer house for the luncheon with the Sultan and his entourage. But I prefer to stay with my friends and ex-staff and ate my lunch at the office with them. As at any re-union, I have great time talking about the old days in JKR, but I was also sad that a few of my colleagues had passed away.Some of them I have not met forn more than 20 years and I even forget their names.

Life is such that when we left a school or an office, we went on our own separate ways. All of us have own lives to live and build our own careers and then we forgot our old friends. Re-unions parties are good for us to re-connect back with our past. However, some past experience or memory we prefer to forget.

I was there for three hours and showers of memory of my life there rained on my head.Personally, I had my good as well as bad time there. As a young engineer at that time, I have to climb a steep learning curve especially when I was the head of department at the age of 26 and most of the heads of sections were in their 40's and 50's. In late 70's, the country was short of engineers. Just imagine there were only 10 engineers for the whole of JKR Kelantan and one Executive Engineer( in my case) was responsible for three districts(Pasir Mas,Tumpat and Tanah Merah). Now , we have three engineers for one district!

One thing that I wish to share with young professional is that we may have the knowledge, but we must be humble enough to learn from the experience of our junior officers in getting the jobs done. As a fresh engineer at that time, I may have the knowledge but I lacked the skills to apply my knowledge.Experience is really a great teacher.And I can confirm that after I have walked through it for more than a quarter of a century.

However, I would like to remind that experience alone is not enough.We may be doing the wrong things for the last 20 years without even knowing we were wrong! We have to do our CPD i.e Continous Professional Development. Knowledge and technology change so fast that we have to be current in order to remain relevant.

Tempat jatuh lagi dikenang....

Note:
My thanks to JKR Kelantan for the invitation.

Hooked On Blogging

To-day is the International Webloggers' Day. May I wish fellow bloggers all the best in your blogging.To the readers of blogs,keep reading and giving comments.All of us ,the writers and the readers can learn from one another.

The above title is taken from inTech newspapers magazine(The Star). Lately, there are a few articles on blogging in our local newspapers. By the way, are you HOOKED ON BLOGGING? I think,therefore I am.[my answer is borrowed from the famous saying of Descartes-the renown French mathematician]. Since I started using typepad.com 10 months ago, I have written 264 postings and recieved 1616 comments .Considering the number of postings about 26/month, I consider myself a regular blogger. May I take this opportunity to thank all those who have given their comments and also all the readers who keep reading my blogs. Your generousity will keep me writing...

Why I write?

It is because I have something to say about it and at the same time,may be many a time, I just want to say something on something.

What is blog writing?

Writing a blog involved my mind and my fingers. It is a good exercise for both;-)

What is it for?

It is for me to share with the readers on my views/feelings/experience and at the same time for my own record. What I discovered is that writing is also my personal theraphy for the mind and the soul.

Thank you for reading my blog.

On weddings...

I was very busy last weekend-attending to the three wedding ceremonies and missed the other two invitations. According to my older friends( the pensioners),most of the time , they are very busy at weekends as compared to those who are still employed.

All the three wedding ceremonies I attended involved my friends giving their daughters away in marriage. In the fathers' eyes, I saw happiness but in the mothers' eyes I saw tears. Personally, I will not have the experience to tell others because I have only sons. My best guess is that the father was happy because he had raised a daughter and now there is another man who is going to take care for him. For the mother, I think it is the tears of joy, mixed with sadness. It is a joy of successfully raising a daughter and the sadness of letting her go to live with her husband.

Wedding functions can cost a few thousands ringgit (at home or at the mosques) to a few hundreds of thousand at mansions or hotels.It all depends on the parents affordability and the willingness to spend. Moderation is the best course of action.

During one ceremony of 'akad nikah', I felt the choked in my throat listening to the promise and the undertaking of men to take care of their wives(and also Kutbah nikah). The reason is that I have seen men leaving their wives for younger women in later years of marriages. Also,I have seen divorces that caused havocs not only to couples but also affected the children. Many a time, it is the man who is the problem; but there are also women who caused the marriages to break up. The statistics at JAWI about marriages broken up within 10 years of marriage is a cause for concerns.

To those newly-weds, may I wish you SELAMAT PENGATIN BARU,SIHAT SEJAHTERA,AMAN DAN BAHAGIA for the rest of your life....

To those who are getting bored with married lives,please take time to reflect and do some renewal and refurbishing works as soon as possible before it is too late...

Many people are involved to make wedding ceremonies as great and successful as possible; but the man and the woman MUST MAKE the marriage as rewarding and blissful as possible. It takes TWO to Tango! And three is a crowd.

Beautiful red roses

Thank you Atok for the beautiful red roses from your garden. How I wish I would be in London now to see the beautiful bunch of roses and lavender in your garden. My congratulations to you and your wife. and thank you for allowing me to use your picture to blog about it.

People use to say,"A rose is a rose,whatever name you call it".The lesson learned is that what really matters is what we really are and NOT who we are. WHO are you are temporary and what remains and lasts is WHAT are you.

Senyum Gok Sikik!

The above catchy phrase written at the back of a teenager's t-shirt made me smile. The Malay phrase is written in Terengganu dialect. Literally translated: Please smile a bit...

May be there are not enough smiling faces these days due to the burden of earning a living or living a life full of worries. All of us have our own worries, but that should not prevent us to smile when we meet frriends and family members. As I blogged earlier, there are people who are so poor that they could not even return our smiles to them. Sad to note that the only smiles we get these days are from people who want us to buy from them or to enter their shops....

Local dialects are unique to their own localities;sometimes only locals really understand their true meaning.The outsiders may totally misunderstood the words. The word 'gedebe' from Kelantan may be one of them.

Some Malay words that begin with G has certain special effects.Here are a few:

1.Gilang gemilang
2.Gegak gempita
3.Gelap gelita
4.Gemuk gedempul
5.Gundah gulana

Please add more...

May I wish you a smiling weekend:-))
Here is the link to what I have written on the word that began with G about 6 years ago.

Al-Kahf

Say! Shall we tell you of those who lost most with respect to their actions? Those whose efforts have been wasted in this life, whilst they thought that they were acquiring good by their actions. [al-Kahf 18:103-104] [2]

Last night, a regular member of the jemaah of my surau(mosque)[ who has been reading al-Quran for more than 100 times since he retired] told me to read surah al-Kahf on every Friday. The surah is about 12 pages and if you are proficient in reading Qur'an, it will take only about 35 minutes. In my case, it will take almost an hour. If we can't do at one session,we must try to do in a few sessions,especially after every prayer.

Many of us( including me) only read Surah Yassin during our 'tahlil' every Thursday night(malam Jumaat).It is shorter and a bit easier. We tend to defer reading other longer surahs.

This morning I did some Internet search and found an interesting webpage that relates to a few ayats in Surah al-Kahf. Please click on the link.

May I invite you and me ( fellow muslims/muslimahs) to read Surah al-Kahf every Friday.May Allah swt show us the right path like those He has guided.