salam aidil adha

Selamat Hari Raya Haji to all Muslims out there! =)

Allahuakbar Allahuakbar Allahuakbar.
Laailahailallahu Allahuakbar.
Allahuakbar walillahilhamd.

ramadhan mubarak!

Bagi menyempurnakan titah perintah Her Majesty The Queen, saya dengan ini mengisytiharkan bahawa tarikh permulaan puasa di United Kingdom jatuh pada:

Hari Sabtu 22 Ogos 2009, bersamaan 1 Ramadhan 1430 Hijrah.

Selamat berpuasa muslimin dan muslimat sekalian!

http://www.iccuk.org/downloads/LMF2009%20Ramadan.pdf

my projects

Nope, I’m not gonna write about projects at work, or the ones at uni for that matter. It’s a little bit different. Since I have some spare time and I’ve also bought stuff but haven’t used them yet or rarely used them, I decided that I’m going to commit to certain projects in my life.

nope, not this type of project

What is a project? From the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a project is a specific plan or design, similar to a scheme. And what is a scheme? It’s a plan of program of action. Both of them have plan in them. So what is a plan? It’s just a method for achieving an end, or a detailed program. Okay, I think I should stop giving endless meanings of words now.

Basically, by having a project or a few projects, I’ll keep myself occupied and not get bored. So, if I suddenly don’t know what to do, I can just continue with one of my projects. You can also think of it as a to-do list, but that’s a bit boring isn’t it? I’ll have this and that to do, then after doing them, I’ll just tick some boxes indicating that they’re done. However, for a project, I’ll ideally put more effort into doing something, no matter what it is.

Okay, enough gibberish. So my first project will be… wait for it… wait for it… playing the Prince of Persia. You may disagree with me and laugh this project off, or belittle my enthusiasm for these projects of mine. If so…

Pedulik hapa aku.

prince of persia, with its wonderful water-colour-ish animation

Anyway, one of the reasons I thought about this project thing is that I’ve actually bought the game in November or December last year but had only started really playing it a couple of weeks ago. That’s a long time isn’t it. I guess I was preoccupied with other stuff.

Also, it’s something that I enjoy doing, so I think it’s rather a cool project to commit myself to. And I do a little bit of research as well on how to get certain achievements in the game so that I’ll certainly maximise the time spent on playing the game. If you’re thinking ‘Ak ela, semangat gila mamat nih,’ then please refer to the quotation above the Prince of Persia picture.

Another project that I’m currently doing is to sort out the photos from my Easter roadtrip. I went to Bath, Bristol, Tintagel Castle, Lands End, Eden Project and Stonehenge with some friends a month ago and I still haven’t sorted out all the photos from other people’s cameras. We went to a lot of places so you can imagine how many photos there are, hence many unnecessary photos will have to be deleted.

us at tintagel castle, cornwall

Other projects in the backlog, in no particular order, are as follows:

1. Read The Kite Runner (which I bought last summer)
2. Read The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad (which was also bought last summer)
3. Play Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (which was bought last year)
4. Play Kungfu Panda (hmm.. I seem to have bought a lot of stuff last year)
5. Study some engineering stuff related to work
6. Study history (interesting ones of course)
7. Read and understand the tafsir
8. Watch every f1 race this season if possible
   
9. Cook stuff from the recipe books that I also bought last year
10. Go back home for Raya!
11. Go travelling somewhere
12. Movie or series marathon?
    
13. More exercises and workout maybe?
14. Learn a new skill and/or polish up existing ones
15. Volunteering

See, it’s not just fun and games. You need to develop your skills not only at work but also for yourself, your life. I won’t need to draw up Gantt charts for my projects or do proper and detailed planning, but I’ll have things to do that I hopefully will enjoy. Oh there’s a Batman: Arkham Asylum game coming out and I am so gonna play it, so that should be on my project list I guess. If you’re thinking ‘Geek gila mamat nih,’ again, please refer to the quotation somewhere in the middle of this post..!

happy maulidurrasul!

The great prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was born today, the 12th of Rabiul Awal in the Year of the Elephant (direct translation of Tahun Gajah?). In Malaysia, there'll be marches and talks to celebrate, but not (much) here in the UK.

The good news is there's gonna be a Maulid Nabi ceremony/celebration at MSD on Thursday. Details below:

             Date: 12 March 2009
             Time: 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm
             Place: Malaysia Hall

Please do come, and bring your friends along. And of course there'll be food insyaAllah. Yeh that's what I'm talkin' about. =)

Allahumma salli 'ala saiyidina Muhammad.
Wa 'ala ali saiyidina Muhammad.

salam aidiladha!

Assalamualaikum. Eid mubarak everyone! May the day be full of barakah for all of us.

I thought Raya Haji will be on Sunday so I didn't take any leave. Turns out that it's on Monday. Oh well, what to do. Woke up a bit earlier than usual to perform the Eid prayers (all alone huhu). Okay, I admit, I didn't wake up that early. I should go to Ustaz Erfino's blog later today to read his khutbah raya.

Oh and don't forget to invite me if there's any makan2. Haha.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Adha!

Allahuakbar Allahuakbar Allahuakbar.
Laailahailallahu wallahuakbar.
Allahuakbar walillahilhamd.

information overload

It's been 3 weeks of training now and 2 more weeks to go before I start doing 'real work', whatever that means. These 5 weeks of training are called the 'bootcamp', and there are 12 of us in the programme. Most of them are like me, fresh from university. Some have finished post-graduate studies and there's one who had just submitted his PhD thesis.

The first day was okay and relaxing. We were given talks about safety, security and the overall structure of the company. The next 4 days were quite full. Seven and a half hours of technical stuff each day. That's a bit too much for me. Even in uni my schedule wasn't as packed as that. Yes, I know, some of you guys have classes all day, so I shouldn't be complaining right? Well I don't care, and I'm not actually complaining, I'm just saying, you know. Heh.

The thing is, I'm a bit slow in understanding stuff (some people would call it blur). I usually need to read it as well to really understand what I'm being taught. So when I'm bombarded with too much information, I can get a bit lost. Sometimes, to my surprise, I really did understand all that technical stuff, but then the next day, I'd forget what I understood. (Please forgive my overuse of the word understand. I've checked the thesaurus, and although apprehend and fathom sound much cooler and intelligent, I can't seem to make good proper sentences to describe the same meaning with those words. That's because I'm not cool and intelligent enough.)

And like Nina, I also have trouble remembering words, especially uncommon ones. Well, I forget normal words as well. So when I'm sitting there listening to the guy teaching us, and he's using words that he just talked about the previous day, which I've forgotten what they mean, it does get a bit confusing. It's a good thing we have a computer on our table, so I can just google the word or use answers.com. Not only do I have trouble remembering words, I also have trouble saying them. However, I can pronounce Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious with no trouble whatsoever. Hmm.. I wonder why.

During the second and third weeks, there were more talks, but less technical stuff. Plus we had to do a lot of practical exercises, which I struggled to do. It was really frustrating seeing other people complete some exercises with ease while I was trying my utmost best to apply what I've learned to the codes in front of me. The instructions were sometimes confusing as well. But alhamdulillah, I got through the first 5 exercises, and there are 5 more to go.

So it has been a full 3 weeks for me, and unlike Hyree, I don't have the liberty to be bored at work, because there's a lot to be done. But there is this game that's quite interesting if you're feeling bored during lunchtime. Try the Antbuster game. I've reached level 70. Go and beat that!

What I do like about the company is its respect towards other religions and races. I wanted to know where the nearest mosque is so that I can pray solat Jumaat, and the Human Resources kindly found a fellow Muslim working there to bring me to the mosque. So if any of you are in the SE1 area, the mosque is at marker A in the map below. Here's its address:

Bait-ul-Aziz Mosque
1 Dickens Square
London SE1 4JL

The mosque is not as big as the Regent's Park Mosque, but it is a standalone building. It has 2 storeys and fits quite a lot of people during the Jumaah prayers. However, the khutbah is given in Arabic, so I don't understand it. I'm not pretending to be religious, but there's this 'emptiness' in me if there's no spiritual/religious reminders every week. Yes, I do feel sleepy sometimes during khutbahs but it's no fun listening when I don't understand a clue of any of the khutbah content. They should at least say some sentences in English so that everyone can understand. I mean, not all Muslims are Arabs you know.

What I don't usually enjoy is the daily commute to work. I use the Jubilee line, which is repaired nearly every weekend. However, despite all the 'repairs' done, it still breaks down at least twice during the weekdays, which had made me arrive late a couple of times. And some people are seriously smelly, even in the morning. X sempat mandi la tu. I just pray that I don't become one of those smelly people some day. The thing with smelly people is sometimes they don't realise that they smell because everyone's kutuk-ing them behind their back and not telling them face to face. So if suddenly I do smell, please let me know!

Anyway, on Thursday, we had a team building day. There was a treasure hunt in the afternoon where we needed to solve some clues and take photos of certain landmarks around London. It was fun because we had the opportunity to go sightseeing while 'socialising/bonding' with our teammates. And in the evening, we went to Chinatown and had dinner there, which was paid by the company of course.

There are 2 more weeks to go and I hope I understand and complete all the exercises on time. There'll be more technical stuff next week (oh no, more jargon!), and at the end of the final week, we need to take the Accredited Symbiosis Developer exam. Maka dengan itu, saya perlu belajar. Wish me luck!

eid in london (again!)

Salam Aidil Fitri everyone. So it was the fifth time that I celebrated Eid in the UK, away from my family at home. How fast time flies. The sad thing is I thought I won't get duit raya for 4 years only because of my 4-year course, but by the time I get to beraya at home (whenever that is), I wont be eligible to get duit raya any more. In fact, I have to give the angpow by then. Oh man. (Please bear with my immature thoughts for now since I'm not in the golongan bekerja just yet.)

At open houses here in London, I realised that I knew less and less people each year. And now, most of my friends are already back home. But raya was still fun though. Sometimes you'll meet your old friends and most of the time you'll make new ones. So it was nice to celebrate Eid with old and new friends while current friends aren't around. But now these old and new friends have become my current friends and hence the current friends which I mentioned before aren't so current anymore, but have become old friends but can still be current friends in the future. Haha pening x baca?

Eid mubarak!

maulidurrasul

On the 12th day of Rabiul Awal, the great prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was born.

O Allah, shower Your blessings on Muhammad and the family of Muhammad.

Allahumma salli 'ala saiyidina Muhammad.
Wa 'ala ali saiyidina Muhammad.