today, i’m one step closer to becoming an ordinary, average person again…

not that it’s a totally good thing… but yeah, the simplicity of normal life that i miss oh so much…

hmm… having said that, it’s through my involvement in AUIS that made my stay here in Auckland so memorable, rather more enjoyable, and definitely more meaningful.. the ups and downs, the people you meet, those you work with…

[sigh]

can’t live with, can’t live without, ey? haha.. sentimental bugger..

[AUIS logo]

hmm…  wonder if it is possible to temporarily ‘run out’ of hapiness inducing endorphins, if that’s what you call it…

I didn’t plan on posting this stuff until after Ramadhan.. you know.. keep focused.. but since my lil bro is leaving for Egypt before then (say congrats to him here or here), here’s what i got done so far.. mind you, I haven’t worked on it since May, as a commitment to stop waisting time on “bende x berfaedah… useless stuff”.. for the time being at least >:)

My plan is to finish it, have some cosplay fun, and then auction it off on TradeMe.. hopefully it was worth the effort!

Then I’m gonna use the revenue to start-up an online based trade.. amass a mass of wealth then bring it back to Malaysia to kick start my working life!

Woohoo!

note to self: Plan like you’ll live a thousand years, but live like you won’t see tomorrow…

ok.. ok… I will try…

what the what?!?!? yeah…

interesting news happened just recently (Mahkamah Perlembagaan Thai dapati Samak bersalah)

hmmm… he’s in deep.. err, hot water for hosting a cooking show… kinda harsh, you think? but he did breach the constitution, a most grievous act indeed…

now imagine applying the same principles back home…

aha! i missed tha last post per week mark.. guessed half as much..

oh, and they did upgrade the blog interface here… i thought it was just another one of those spam emails from ‘friendster’

hmmm… so far the month is going good.

we’re having coomunal iftar here everyday in the uni masjid.. organized by the AUT muslim chaplain, funded by donations, attended by… absolutely everybody! met with a whole sea of faces never seen before…

i guess that is the power of free food togetherness huh?

on the bright side; it is exilerating to see everybody working together well to make the event a success… granted, sometimes the organization of labour and logistics haven’t been mastered very well, but the intentions are good

also, the sheikh decided on giving a short tazkirah after the 4th rakaat of taraweeh, covering the topics of our journey into the herafter.. it’s very interesting to hear… and yeah, lots of manfaat..

kinda curious, coincidentally just the night before we played a game of MAFIA, and were reminded of the fact that death could take us at any time, so now (ramadhan) is as good a time as any to be making up for the past and preparing for the future..

“.. the signs are all pointing in the same direction, boy…” (voice inside head)

right, lets get back on focus, three short weeks left..

p.s.: i’m having a hell of a hard time keeping focused, ey.. won’t right about them right now, otherwise i’ll lose focus.. huhu..

ok, in summary: celtx, cinematography, matte painting, camera tracking, adobe suite.. hmm…

…depends how you intonate (does such a word exist?) it i guess, but i meant it in a neutral way. of course.

So pejam celik pejam celik [blink blink] and it’s already nearing the holy month of  ramadhan again. hooray! a veriable goldmine of hasanat is fast approaching us, don’t you feel excited? anxious? x sabar2? good.

just today  i heard a really good khutbah by sh.rafat about “why the heck do we fast??” but he worded it much nicer than i did. and the answer is of course:

“_____ ______ …” (Al-Baqarah 2:183)

thinking back on it, how often do we stop to reflect on what we do all of this ibadah for? remember when you were young? when your parents would teach you how to pray, how to fast, how to read the qur’an… i’m pretty sure that they told you “if you do this, Allah will love you..” and you did your best to gain that love.

right?

but how many of us still strive to attain that goal today? hmm.. tepuk dada tanya iman… as for me, i have a lot to work on during this ramadhan. but before then, while waiting, counting on the days, there’s a lot of preparation to be done.

in these last days of sha’ban, let’s get ready by:

- increasing solat nawafil
- increasing reading the qur’an
- readjust your biological clock - sleep early, wake up early! for tahajjud (and sahur later on)
- voluntary fasting (if you haven’t already done so)

and if like me you have a whole load of jobs and errands to be done, settle all those pesky little problems that you could actually finish now but keep procrastinating, from distracting you later, now.

hmm.. like
- manufacturing task 2 (75% done)
- manufacturing field trip report (1% baru nak start)
- statistics assignment (25% done)
- dynamics project (read the handout at least!)
- auis newsletter (err…)
- personal letter(s) (oh no…)

k, gtg!

Well, keeping in line with (just barely!) the target of (at least) a post a week (hopefully something meaningful)… after all, good habits don’t come overnight; you have to beat them in day real hard time after time. and with somebody like me (an aquarius, tho i don’t fully put the blame on that), it can either just go straight through (when i’m liquid or vapour form), or i just dont get it, experience brittle failure (ice!).. heheh..

anyhoo, so we had a small get together of brothers in MT EDEN islamic centre.. (WAH!! doesn’t name carry an eerie foreshadowing? mt EDEN - ‘adn..) for a mini spiritual retreat.. time to get away from hiruk-piruk urusan dunia and focus on muroqobatillah, getting closer to Allah swt, and work on our iman and yakin.. hehe [internal joke]

of the activities done, we listened to a presentation of Seerah Nabi Musa a.s by br Azmir… think you know the story already? do you really? really really? ok, so tell me… what was his complexion? ha!

but that isn’t the point of learning the seerah of our anbiyaa is it? what’s important is that we learn from their actions and it’s consquences… we should also examine WHY things were the way they were; situations/circumstances don’t happen ‘just because’.. and of course, as the malays say,

"…yang baik jadikan teladan, yang buruk jadikan sempadan…"

i wonder though, how many an average malay do as do the malay say, ay?

and in many many places in the qur’an, after telling tales of the ancients,

… dan pada itu adalah ayat-ayat kami…
… tidakkah kamu melihat?
… tidakkah kamu berfikir?
…

ayat-ayat? sentences? mere words? or… clues… hints… pointers…

sorry, just writing on the fly here, and excuse the inadequate citations and references… i have to work on that…

so, who’d have thought that kisah musa has so much to do with us in the modern context?

"what?? what?? what does it have to do with us??"

err… more on that later, but i gotta read up on that.

and so should you.

Salam ‘alaikum wa rahmat Allah wa barakatuh…

Last Friday saw the end of the annual Islam Awareness Week on the Uni Level at UoA, and Saturday for the national level. We had a couple of activities on campus… and I’m in no way trying to be modest; there really was just a couple.. we had the mandatory information booth (thanks to sisters for their effort), the opening BBQ (thanks to brothers for their effort, a live forum about the importance of the family unit in society (thanks to me for my effort! hehe… no, we did it all as a team.. ;), and lastly the appreciation dinner for lecturers and key uni staff.. the Minister of Ethnic Affairs was there too, which was a nice surprise, kind of..

I’m sure, all the muslim groups in NZ were also doing their bit in conveying the beautifully immaculate teachings of islam to the community. May Allah reward them for their efforts.

{urg.. my fingers are freezing through, there’s a freaking cold front here and i’m not even safe in my room!}

{plus we found ourselves locked out of the apartment, coming back from subuh, the security system’s jammed up for some reason…}

Anyways… not much I can ’story’ about IAW this year; I only manned the stalls once, but the dinner! oh that was good… chatting with the lecturers (outside of uni) was really enjoyable.. who’d have thought? haha..

we had this lecturer Nawawi Chouw, who was real hard out, as locals say it.. very Fadhilah Kamsah-like in character.. he was telling us all about how we can learn things, and the psycho stuff about breaking our own barriers.. it was cool, trust me.. shame he doesn’t teach mechanical.. then there was my favourite lecturer: VOJO, or Vojislav Kecman in full.. funny guy.. he talked a lot of comedy. We did get to talk about religion a bit suppose (sorry boss! lari objective sikit.. sikit je..)

so yup, that’s the background setting for what i wanna discuss a bit here, before realising that i’m running late for lectures.

while the muslims in NZ and OZ and many other parts of the world are busy propogating the ONE MESSAGE to those who haven’t had the privilege of knowing about it in detail, something happened back in Tanah  Air Tercinta (’Ter’cinta tak sengaja ke past tense?)

to be honest i have no idea what the real, whole story is, and i dont claim to. ’semua pihak yang terlibat’ may have their reasons for doing what they do, but let’s face it people: you have to open up to the people around you if you want to be better understood. that’s a lesson the muslims everywhere else BUT Tanah Air are learning and applying in their lives (most probably, again i claim ignorance with facts and figures)..

is it a sensitive issue? Yes! …is it??

should we just not talk about it? Yes! …should we???

should we be a closed society where nobody else is allowed to ask questions and learn of our way of life except for that which we decide to tell them of, only in the manner that we deem suitable for them to learn about it???

i won’t even answer that one.

in the same way that the teachers and academicians and pakar-pakar motivasi tell us each day on TV and on radio and in camps: To be an effective learner you gotta ask questions. ask SMART questions. questions that force the person with knowledge to THINK. Think CRITICALLY.

and also, by being asked these kinda questions, the person with KNOWLEDGE will better understand what it is he KNOWS, and gain WISDOM.

so that is my one dollar and seventeen cents of thought for you on this freezing cold morning.

now I shall act poikolothermic by soaking up some lovely heat energy from a steaming hot shower…

reminds me of thermal engineering…

"…so we take energy from a high-temperature heat source and supply it to a heat engine, thereby producing some work and dumping waste heat into a low-temprature heat sink. this will generate entropy (disoder), (ds >= 0) thourgh an irreversible process.."

yeah, keep generating disorder until the whole universe dies out from a terrible heat death.. don’t believe me? look it up.

sekian wasalam..

i knew there was something amiss with the ISP here… gotta complain… and i will…

check it out at InternetFrog.com..

Not sleeping again tonight. The 2nd sleepless saturday in 2 consecutive weeks.. wait, it  was a Friday last week.. Oh well, I liked the assonance of the preceding sentence anyway..

a lot of things happened today, and yesterday, i mean, yesterday and the before, that really makes my head spin, and my guts reel, and my psycho-emoto-socio-whatever it is really very unstable.

–>
my latest project (actually off the ground this time!) PePaKuRa Spartan MJOLNIR helmet (mouthpiece)

<– a view from the inside

though it won’t actually protect me from any violent attacks, coz it’s made of nothing more than paper (for the time being… i’m gonna reinforce with fibreglass later on.. for now: save money!)

Then there was the PETUNIA AGM, the most happening one i can remember, tho a lot of absentees noted.. everyone so semangat to get the posts.. i watched with mixed feelings; "No way, add more work to my life???" vs "wow, position, power and popularity IS tempting…" (not that i have much now)

Oh, eizas is here, if u know him… came here all the way from canberra to… hmm.. saja jalan2 he says.. hehe.. he’s going off to welly in the morning. then back to home on monday, in time for lectures! has to catch the 4:30am airbus tho. i think i’ll just stay up… do more pepakura. maybe read. do some assignments? yawn…

Sound familiar? Well you’re reading this, it probably will.

Funny, at first I thought they really did want to invite ME to share and application with THEM. But hey this is Friendster, where you try to network with others. Inviting everybody on your 341-people-long friends list is quite some networking.

Unfortunately, a lot of the apps are rubbish. Sorry to say.

Addicted to TV shows and dramas and soap operas, you say!? Go see a rehab doctor, see a shrink, see what lies in the outside world! Get a life.. and don’t bother inviting me.

I’ve been long separated from your good friend the TV serials. Dah lama x bertegur sape. Haven’t kept up with their [what is 'perkembangan semasa' in english?].

But their relative the TV Doco’s, on the other hand, that’s different story. Mega Moves? Hmm.. yeah… but too common now, not even exciting. The history channel? Hmm… yeah, but sometimes you gotta ask, "Who’s history, actually?" Animal Planet? Once in a while.. Mythbusters? Hell yeah! haha

Some of the other things I can tolerate. Once in a while there is something worth checking out.

Ryte, I wonder if this qualifies as a meaningful post…

Tentative activity for this morning: rollerblading!

Can somebody teach me how? o_0