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She is waiting...

The photo shows a candid shot of my grandma when I visited her some time ago.She was not aware that I was there taking her photo because she could not see anymore.Her age is in the late 90's.

Yesterday, at her house,she was waiting for the body of her  son (my uncle whom I mentioned in yesterday posting) to arrive.Eight months ago,she lost her eldest son and yesterday was her second eldest son.Two deaths in a year for her and may Allah swt be pleased with her patience.Despite her age and losing her two sons within eight months,she is quite strong emotionally.

This incident reminds me of the what happened on 5th Dec,1980.It was the day that shocked my family,especially my beloved and dearest mom.During that night, her father passed away and the next morning her husband passed away-in the same house!.I just hugged her- no words came out from my mouth,only tears flowing...

If you still have a mother, never keep her waiting for you.If you can't go home as often as you wish, a phone call is good enough to brighten her day.

From Allah we come..

This morning,I received a call that my uncle Mohd Shukri Abdullah has passed away at about 9am. He was admitted to HUSM,Kubang Kerian Kelantan since 6/10/2007.During the Hari Raya Puasa ,I have visited him a few times.He suffered a major stroke and failure of kidneys.

To my fellow muslims/muslimahs who are reading this posting,may I ask you a favour to 'sedakah' Al-Fatihah to my late uncle. He will be buried today.May Allah bless his soul and accept his ubudiyyah and place him among the solihin and grant him al-Jannah.

From Allah we all come, and to him all shall return.

Al-Fatihah.

NB: I will be at my kampong for the next few days.

Al-Fatihah for Hanafiah Abdullah

On receiving the sad news of the demise of my late friend,Allahyarham Hanafi Abdullah today,my heart sank. The news was received via sms from my cousin Ramzan,ex-MIMOS executive.I still remember this young man when I met him many years through a Linux community connection.By the way,I know nothing worth mentioning about Linux except the name of the founder.

Allahyarham Napi as he is known to his friend was an expert in low level language programming.I think he was in his early 40's.He left MIMOS to start his own company and I congratulated him for his entrpreneurial spirit.Most people are contented being just employees.He went to work this morning and later got a heart attack but passed away at Serdang Hospital.Now, his body is on the way back to his kampung.

May Allah accept him as an abid al-solihin and reward him with al-Jannah.

After solat 'asar with my wife today,both of us offered our Syukur to Allah swt for giving us the chance to live longer than the younger persons who were called to their Rabb much earlier than us.Life is very fragile and death can comes to anyone any time.

Let quote a Hadith:

Orang yang bijak ialah orang yang mengingati mati dan bersedia menghadapi mati.

May I invite you to read what I wrote about death more than three years ago.Please click here.

Book: Growing Up in Trengganu.

I have been waiting to buy this book written by my dear friend Awang Goneng .He hailed from Trengganu but has chosen to live in London.And today, I am so pleased when I saw three copies waiting for me at The Times,KLCC.Immediately I bought a copy.Congratulations my friend,Wan Hulaimi(that is his real name). To my pleasant suprise, when I got home to read the book just now, I saw my name being specially mentioned by him in the introduction for getting him to blog. In fact, if you must know,over many cups of earl grey tea at KLCC a few years ago, I have been asking him to write a book because I know for sure that he is a good writer!Just go and buy his book and I am very sure you will agree with me.

How do I know him? Well, it is a long story and may be you will find out from his blog or his book. Every time when I go to London,he is always ready to help me who sometimes do get lost in London or fell sick in Paris. A few years ago, both of us made a few days visit to Paris and he was my travelling companion.When I do my walk along the streets of London, he is always ever willing to assist me and becomes my guide. Not only that, both Kak Teh and Awang Goneng invited me to dinner at a nice restarurant.Thank you again to Kak Teh and Awang Goneng.InsyaAllah,I will be visiting you again when I have some extra money.Below is a photo of Awang Goneng at the famous cafe in Paris about four years ago ...

 

Penmanship

 

Not many people nowadays use fountain pens to write.Owing to its convenience,I too prefer to use ball point pens.Just replace the rills,off I go.Not to mention the hassles of maintaining the pens.With increasing usage of personal computers, a lot of people find difficulty to write even using their ball point pens.Personally,I do use both-ball pens and fountain pens.When it comes to official documents, I use my fountain pens and lately,I am struggling to use fountain pens when I write my personal thought and notes in my notebooks.By the way, I have four types of notebooks-the one with the calendar I also use it for my weekly appointments as well as my TODO list;the second notebook is a ruled moleskine for my personal and private notes and the third one is a squared moleskine for my business notes and last but not least is a blank notebook for my sketches/drawings/painting.Click here for more photos.
Personally,I love to see good hand writing but nowadays,it is a rare commodity.In my own small way,I am striving to write well but neither I have the talent nor the skills.Below are two photos of my small collection of cheap pens that I could afford.                        

Contemplate the Verses of the Qur'an

During the last Eidul Fitri family gathering,I was very happy to note that one of my cousin reads Qur'an everyday and to date he had khatam Qur'an more than 100 times!I was ashamed of myself because he is much younger than me.But when I asked him how much he had read the meaning and contemplate, he admitted he had not done as much as he reads the Qur'an-in fact he admitted very little.Anyway,on both scores,he is much better than me.His achievement really inspires me to read more but at the same time I must remind myself and my fellow muslims/muslimahs of our  other four obligations towards the Qur'an,viz: To believe, to understand, to obey and to spread the words of Allah swt. In short, reading is better than not reading at all but it is not enough.

The usual reason( or rather an excuse) for not reading the Qur'an and not contemplating the verses of the Qur'an is that we don't have time. But we do have time for other things.Time to read and contemplate the Qur'an will not be available to us until we allocate time for it.Just create an appointment with the Qur'an if not every day, make it at least once a week.Surely if  we can go to Pasar Malam once a week, or watch TV one hour everyday, we must have time for the Qur'an.Agreed?

Let me quote a paragraph from a book entitled The Magnificence of the Qur'an(ISBN 9960-9801-1-1):

One is defeating the true purpose of reciting the Qur'an when one recites it many times over without paying any attention to its meaning.As such,it is better to reflect,ponder,and slowly recite a small number of verses than to recite it quickly-as if one is skimming over what he is reading-a great many verses.This is because our main aims of reading the Qur'an are to understand,contemplate and act.

Below,I list down a few ayats from the Qur'an relating to this topic:

"Do they not then think deeply in-the Qur'an,or are their hearts lock up(from understanding it)?"(47:24)

"Thus Allah makes clear His Ayats(Laws) to you,in order that you may understand".(2:242)

"Thus do  We explain the Ayats( proofs,evidences,Verses,lessons,signs,revelations,laws etc) in details for the people who reflect".(10:24)

"Verily,We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an in order that you may understand".(12.2)

QUR'AN IS NOT A BOOK OF SCIENCE BUT A BOOK OF SIGNS.WE HAVE TO CONTEMPLATE TO GET TO ITS MEANINGS.INSYAaLLAH.

Here is the link to a few photos on reading the Qur'an from my Flickr.

Long shots

Canon : testing 123
Originally uploaded by Adibi

Yesterday, I joined the crowd at KLCC to walk around the Canon Exhibition to mark its 20 Anniversary.IMHO, it is more of a corporate showcase and not much new products that I could see and test except some big size telescopic lenses which are way out of my range of affordability to buy.

By the way, I have yet to fully utilise all the features in the standard package I bought for my Canon 400D.For the time being,I will keep my shots short.

Authors and their books

Below is a photo of the plastic bag from The Times Bookshop at Pavilion.Can you name a book for each author printed on the bag.Let see who can come out first with all the authors.Thank you.

225 died during Ops Sikap XIII

By yesterday, almost everybody who 'balik kampung' for the Eidul Fitri festival has returned to work. The statistics indicated that nothing really has changed.More than 200 persons died on the roads and about 54% were motor cyclists!And the amount of traffic summons was a staggering more than 140,000!

As the years go by, no body will ever take notice of this waste of human lives on our roads.It will become an annual 'killing field' during every festive seasons. Looking at the way many Malaysian drivers drive their cars and motor-cycles on the roads,I began to believe that they really were looking to 'mati katak' on the roads.

Will the attitude of these dare-devils drivers change over the next 5 years? Honestly, I am very pessimistic.I hate to conclude that the numbers of death will only decrease as more of these 'bad attitude' people die on the road.

Welcome back to Planet Earth,Dr SMS

First,let me welcome back to mother earth all the passengers of Soyuz,especially my fellow Malaysian Dr Syed Muzaphar.Alhamdulilah to Allah Azzawajalal.

I seldom watch TV but yesterday late afternoon was an exception for me to sit in front of TV from 6:30pm until almost 7pm.Honestly, I was very anxious to know whether the capsule has landed or not.In my little mind, it is much easier to have a lift off but the return journey is the most worrying.What a great relief to hear later that the capsule has landed even though it is a few hundred kilometres away.To me, as long as it returns to our mother earth,I am happy and would be grateful.During the live broadcast, I was made to understand that the capsule failure to land at the designated location was due to computer glitch.

While watching the live show,my 18 year-old son asked me how do they make sure that Soyuz will return to Russia because both objects are moving at the same time.I had to use my little knowledge about trajectory and relative velocities that I learnt when I was doing Applied Maths and Physics during my pre-U days.I hope he understood,at least the concept.It is not easy to be a father nowadays especially when one day my son came home and asked me to explain the meaning of complex conjugate!(some complex numbers thingy)

May I ask the more knowledgeable readers of my blog to shed some light on the 8.5g that the astronauts had to undergo during the earth entry.Do we feel 8.5 times heavier?Can someone tell me what the traveling speed of the capsule on the return journey and what is the speed prior just to landing.

PS: Latest news from The Star.