The Earthquake...

099.001 إِذَا زُلْزِلَتِ الأرْضُ زِلْزَالَهَا
099.001 When the earth is shaken to her (utmost) convulsion,

099.002 وَأَخْرَجَتِ الأرْضُ أَثْقَالَهَا
099.002 And the earth throws up her burdens (from within),

099.003 وَقَالَ الإنْسَانُ مَا لَهَا
099.003 And man cries (distressed): 'What is the matter with her?'-

099.004 يَوْمَئِذٍ تُحَدِّثُ أَخْبَارَهَا
099.004 On that Day will she declare her tidings:

099.005 بِأَنَّ رَبَّكَ أَوْحَى لَهَا
099.005 For that thy Lord will have given her inspiration.

099.006 يَوْمَئِذٍ يَصْدُرُ النَّاسُ أَشْتَاتًا لِيُرَوْا أَعْمَالَهُمْ
099.006 On that Day will men proceed in companies sorted out, to be shown the deeds that they (had done).

099.007 فَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْرًا يَرَهُ
099.007 Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight of good, see it!

099.008 وَمَنْ يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ شَرًّا يَرَهُ
099.008 And anyone who has done an atom's weight of evil, shall see it.

Al-Qur'an, 099.001-008 (Az-Zalzala [The Earthquake])

"In Your Face!" statements....

Assalamu'alaikum...

Here are some of the statements that may hit us straight in the face...


1. You won't realise you're doing something wrong when you're doing it.

2. Sometimes you realise what you're doing is wrong but you pretend that it isn't.

3. After you did something wrong, you tend to regret your action...only to repeat it afterwards.

4. We insist women to cover their aurah while we're not covering our aurah properly.

5. We tell women to cover up and at the same time we do not lower our gaze.

6. Some women who wear hijab backbites women who doesn't.

7. "Don't judge a book by it's cover". But the thing is books with hard cover are more expensive than those with paperback.

8. We tend to tell people to do something that we don't do ourselves.

9. We are selfish.

10. We don't mention physical attractiveness in our Ideal Man/Woman criteria, but deep down inside, it's one of the first ten criteria.

* All these statements may or may not be true to everyone. It depends. Don't be too emotional with this post.

Be Thankful...

Assalamu'alaikum...

A guy went to one of the highest waterfall in Kuantan...
While swimming in the bottomless pool, his tired legs suddenly can't cope anymore...
He's sinking in the bottomless pool...
Drowning helplessly...
Until his friend noticed it and pushed him back up as he gasped for air...

He's alive...
After all the sins he's done, he's still alive...
Alive to reflect upon all those wasted years...

Be thankful for everything that you have now...
While you still have it...

Growing Up and Being a Grown Up...

Assalamu'alaikum...Peace be upon y'all...

Being grown up, isn't half as fun as growing up
These are the best days of our lives
The only thing that matters is just following your heart
and eventually you'll finally get it right...

That's what The Ataris sang in their song In This Diary, taken of the album So long Astoria (2003)

Growing up could be fun...
I mean, for kids who live in peace, harmony...
Not for kids who are haunted by terror etc...

For me, and most of us, probably, growing up is a wonderful time of my life...
I got to do what i love to do...
Play, play, play, play, play, play, and play...
Well, though I did have to study, I was carefree...
In fact I still am...
Maybe I'm not much of a grown up yet...
22 on the outside, teenager on the inside...

When I went for my Industrial Training in Sungai Buloh Hospital,
I came to realize that working is extremely exhausting...
I didn't have to do much back then...
Just sit and watch most of the time...
But still, I'm exhausted...Tired of repeating the same thing over and over again...

We're living in repetition.
Content in the same old shtick again.
Now the routine's turning to contention,
Like a production line going a over and a over and a over, roller coaster

Choreographed and lack of passion
Prototypes of what we were
Went full circle 'til I'm nauseous
Taken for granted now
I waste it, faked it, ate it, now i hate it

These are the lines from Redundant by Green Day

After the industrial training, I came to realize how tough it is for my mom and dad to go to work...
I mean, it's not for 1 day or 1 week, or 1 year, but it's for 10, 20, or 30 years of your life!
There's not much time for holidays...
Just pure work, and work, and work...

I hope that if I ever going to stuck forever at a job, please let it be the thing that I enjoy doing...

Apart from job, there are other responsibilities of an adult...
It's your turn to take care of parents after all of their BIG sacrifices for you...
Sometimes I wonder, mom and dad can raise 10 children,
but out of those 10 children, it's not guaranteed that 1 of them can take care of their parents...

Na'uzubillah...

Then, when you get married, your responsibilities become BIGGER...
Financially, time-wise, and many others...
You can't just continue behaving like you're still single...
You know, wake up at 3.45 am to watch Man United beat Chelsea in the Champions' League Final etc...
You have to think of your other half....and soon, your juniors!
Haha...Responsibilities....

You know, I think marriage isn't that easy...
Apart from the financial aspect, you're stuck with your partner for the rest of your life!
It's not like a year or two...
If you live long, maybe it's gonna be up to 30-40 years...
Who knows?
Good luck with that!
I'm not trying to scare you...
Marriage is a good thing...if you marry for all the right reasons...
such as to get the Ridha of Allah...
If you get married for all those right reasons, insyaAllah everything will turn out fine...

What you can do right now is...
Live your life to the fullest!
I'm not saying you should do drugs, drink alcohol, be a playboy etc...
Just make use of your youth time wisely...

Life is only as good as the memories we make...
(So Long Astoria by The Ataris.)

We live in this temporary life only to prepare ourselves for the next life which is endless,
so make the most of it...
Don't let you regret your fate in the next life...
Your life, your choice!

Dreams...

Assalamu'alaikum...

Dreams...

There are loads of dream "genre":
Happy, Sad, Scary (Nightmare), Suspense, Thriller, RPG? FPS?

You can have a beautiful dream...
So beautiful that you end up waking up smiling...
You know...THAT smile...

You can also have the most scariest nightmare and end up waking up at 3 a.m. early in the morning terrified...Sweaty...Heart pounding...heavily...

Some may continue sleeping just to continue that wonderful dream...

Some can control their dreams while some cannot...

When I say "control their dreams", it means that the person can initiate the dream he/she wanted...But once the dream started, he/she cannot control it anymore...

I used to be 1 of those...
But not anymore...
I lost my ability...

But dreams...Only possible in our sleep...
Or in our own fantasy world...

Reality is not that beautiful...
It's not that scary as our nightmares either...

There's nothing wrong with dreaming...
As long as you stay in touch with reality...
You can get the most out of your dream by working hard to accomplish it...

Impossible is nothing
Just do it
Shift the future
like.no.other
Unlike any other


Dreams can get your feet off the ground
Until you won't notice what's around
Even the world's turned upside down
It's your dreams that really count

Dream on...

Humans...

Assalamu'alaikum...

I woke up this morning only to realize that it's already 2010...

Just before I sleep, I remember it's still 2009...
Man, time really flies by!

Humans...
We love to condemn others...
and at the same time, approving our not-so-good actions...

We love to give green light to the things that we do, and red light to the things that we never engage in...or not engage in anymore...

Simple example, if we have a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, we tend to say
"it's okay...as long as you don't cross the borderline..."

Even though we know the fact is, it isn't allowed in Islam, we tend to close 1 eye simply because we're doing it...

We tend to give some "reasoning"

On the other hand, if we do not engage in boyfriend-girlfriend relationship or we already stop doing it, it's much easier to give the red light to others...

It's simply because of the nature of human;

we are selfish in a way

Boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is just an example...
There are a lot of other issues being treated the same way...
Just because we're humans...

P/S: I'm a human too

Life's Like That...

Assalamu'alaikum...

Son:
I can't believe I'm already in my final year...I'm too young to grad...

Dad:
Your life is just about to begin
For me, I'm already nearing the end, but you still have a long way to go...

Just a conversation I had with my dad in the car during the recent end semester break.

I wonder how's he doing when he was at my age...
He married Ummi at my current age by the way...

The fact that he's married at that time, we're in totally different worldview.
Of course...
A married man, who was an Islamic students leader back in his University (in Tasmania)
VS
a carefree, single student who is still finding his way in this world...

Like I said, 2 completely different worldviews...

No wonder both of them (Ummi and Bab) desperately want me to study or work abroad....
It's the exposure that's important...
They want me to look at this world from a different perspective...
and Alhamdulillah, despite not being able to live abroad yet, I still got a bit of exposure by being in UIA and making friends with local and international students from all around the world...

I learnt to accept differences...
To respect others' worldviews...
and many more...

Like my classmate, the cute Miss Shahnaz always said, we're all wanderers, learners in this life...
I agree with that as life is a continuous learning process...
Even our biological system is continuously learning...
Take our immune system for example...
Exposure of foreign organism initiates sequence of pathways that eventually help and educate our body to overcome the disease.

In life, we'll make mistakes, blunders.
Sometimes, the things that we did affect others' lives also...
in a terrible way, I mean...
we just wish that we could turn back time...
but we couldn't...
unless someone invent a time-travelling machine...

but we shouldn't give up hope...
there's always light at the end of the tunnel...
Make sure we learn something valuable and try to not repeat the same mistakes...

Life's like that.