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| So long, Xanga, and Thanks for all the Fish!
I now blog here.
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| Salaams all...
Here is an excerpt from an email I sent to friends a few minutes ago with a few changes. I thought it pretty much covers what I want to say and despite my jet lag am beginning to get sleepy now... sorry for 'recycling'! I had mixed feelings coming home. But khair inshaAllah, I am determined to enjoy myself the best I can and use this time to recharge my batteries and come back to work with blazing engines! I think my time away from family affected me more than I thought it would...
Assalamualaikum warahmatullah,
First of all thank you very much to the sisters who came (in body or in spirit!) to the Caribbean Mr. Jerk get-together. The food was great, and I liked the service there. I enjoyed myself thoroughly the last night I was in London, plus I didn't have to cook (the firdge is almost bare anyway!) Hehehe.
I barely had any sleep after I came back to the flat, I went to see some neighbours to say goodbye before I left, and then I settled down to the serious business of (re)packing. I kept rearranging stuff and repacking my bags, and ended up with 2 (!) instead of the intended singular bag.
Got to the airport nice and early, but by the time I boarded the plane I was knackered. I forgot to ask for an aisle seat so ended up sitting by the window. Fortunately the seat next to mine was empty so it felt less claustrophobic, but the Malaysian Punjabi aunty (non-muslim) in the aisle seat next to it seemed to be on a personal mission to deplete the plane of its supply of Guinness!!! Ergh. And I think she got very tipsy (I didn't exactly realise she was inebriated, and was quite determined to be polite to elderly people). She kept apologising for drinking in my presence, and insisting that she is not a bad person just because she drinks. Heheh. Guilty conscience perhaps?
We touched down at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 7.03am on Friday morning. The sun was just rising, which provided a fantastic welcome to the homeland! Immigration was over in half an hour, which left me another 2 hours to kill before my connecting flight to my hometown. I didn't do much, just swanned around (it felt strange arriving at the airport with no one waiting for you at Arrivals) but soon enough I made my way to the local terminal. I also caught a glimpse of the largest commercial passenger airplane, the Airbus A380 which can carry 555 passengers instead of the usual 300+, plus more room for us plebeians in Economy. Travellers' bliss.
Homecoming was wonderful. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. Our cat Sox is as snotty as ever, and traumatised by the presence of a kid (goat) which lost its mum and had to be bottle-fed. The kid is lovely though, very affectionate, milky white with light brown patches and has the softest blue eyes. It wags its tail like a happy puppy when it is being fed. But it does tend to bleat incessantly whenever it sees one of us!
Today my sister in law and her husband came by to visit us. After a gorgeous lunch of seawater prawns and fish soup, I scooted off to visit ikelah and drroza at their house by the sea (gorgeous!) for high tea. Unfortunately I felt I didn't do justice to the lovely Mee Soup as was intent on polishing off the last of the prawns a mere hour ago, hehehehe. We couldn't linger as we had the feed the kid its supper of milk (my parents were away) so we met up again for supper at a night stall serving fantastic Mee Curry. Unfortunately they ran out of it, so we settled for Char Kuey Tiow (flat Cantonese style stir fry noodles with cockles). Yum. Then it was time to go home.
Tomorrow? I'm not too sure yet. We still have to feed the kid and the cat, but maybe we will do a spot of shopping tomorrow. All in all I am hoping it will be a relaxed day inshaAllah.
Please keep me in your duas if you can, and me being a traveller, will try to keep all of you in mine, inshaAllah! Take care and see you ..
xxx
p/s: the halal marshmallows are fantastic! Managed to get hold of them at the Celebrate Eid concert the other day.I am having a hard time giving them away! | | |
| http://www.justgiving.com/sponsoratent
A brother is personally going out to Pakistan soon (13th November) to
distribute lightweight, 4-season tents he procured at discounted prices
from a supplier. He will be using his own funds to pay for his ticket
and transportation of the cargo. All proceeds will go directly towards
buying tents. As time is running out, he has forked out his own
money and hopes that people will continue donating.
Please give as much as you can, and forward the link to your friends, especially those who have PayPal!
A report on the dangers faced by the quake survivors is at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4359822.stm
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| ... was full of mixed feelings due to the different starting days for
Ramadhan. I was quite despondent at the beginning of Ramadhan as
on the day of moonsighting, I called the London Central Mosque during
Asr because a neighbour asked me to. I was taken aback when the
person who answered the phone just said salam, and proclaimed
"Tomorrow, InshaAllah" and promptly hung up. Now one knows that
moonsighting takes place at Maghrib so to announce it at Asr means they
follow another method of ascertaining the new moon, perhaps by falak?
But upon checking several moonsighting websites it is impossible to see
the moon at dusk, besides earlier that day we had an annular solar
eclipse. So if not by moonsighting, and not by falak, what then?
Suspicions crept into my mind... and my worst fears were verified when
it became clear that no matter what the local moonsighting
committees say, this Mosque follows the Saudi sighting, instead
of local sighting reports.
I felt very much disturbed. Is it really Ramadhan or not? It seems that
UK is divided over this, some will begin fasting Tuesday (mostly
London, and some other areas such as some parts of Sheffield and
Coventry) while others begin on Wednesday. I was in quite a dilemma, my
conscience kept yelling at me that beginning on Tuesday was wrong, so
wrong in so many ways. But after talking to some friends, and
coming across an excellent fatwa,
and for the sake of unity, I am resigned to following the majority.
Since I am in London, do as the Londoners do. In the meanwhile,
the Mosque will receive a strongly-worded letter from me. I guess it is
imperative that in the UK there should be an authority that decides on
the 1st date of every month, and everyone would be legally bound to
follow the aforesaid authority. In the absence of such an authority, as
is the case, I really hope Allah will forgive all of us.
But Eid was a happier event, as we completed 30 days of fasting and had
Eid on Thursday instead of Wednesday, alhamdulillah, which I know to be
possible as the new moon would only be born on Wednesday. I really was hoping that others who began fasting later would
be celebrating Eid the same day as well, but alas! it was not meant to
be. So I planned my work counting (hoping/praying) that they will
announce Thursday, and happily skipped off after the last iftar at work
with the sisters (we had Chicken Cottage halal fried chicken, yum!)
with a rucksack on my back on a journey to Arnos Grove that took 2
hours instead of the normal 1 and a bit, on a very wet and cold
evening.
We immediately set about preparing food for the next day. F is a PhD
student from India, and hence, the menu was chicken curry, lamb
biriyani, shaami kebab and cucumber raita with toasted pitta bread. Oh
yum. We
marinaded the chicken and lamb overnight, and started preparing the
raita. Multitasking, I called family in Malaysia... seeing that it was
already Eid
over there. Woke hubby up for Eid, which alhamdulillah he spent with
his sister. My parents sounded in high spirits, and took great interest
in the lamb biriyani. Did I cry? Um, no, I guess I was just thankful
that everyone seemed all right and gung-ho because it was Eid!
First thing in the morning
we busied ourselves making the biriyani and chicken curry, and had
breakfast, and I managed to squeeze in another phone call to hubby.
Being female means that one takes extra long to
prepare oneself for a special occasion (my mom sent me a gorgeous soft
yellow/creamy baju kurung for Raya, F's mom sent me festive bangles
from
India, and F lent me a 'Princess hijab' that went perfectly with my
baju kurung, yes and with soft brown mid-calf leather boots and
matching handbag I guess I would've shamed no one, not even Pycno  ), to the result that at 10.40am we had to run out of the house
helter-skelter, jump on the tube, softly said the takbir along the way,
and ran, ran out of Finsbury Park station into the Muslim Welfare House
Mosque next door. They had the takbir on (not melodious like the ones
in Malaysia, wink wink, but anyway) which was audible the minute
you step out of the carriage onto the tube platform. MasyaAllah.
Along the way we kept bumping into people and being engulfed in hugs.
My housemate and I went for qiyam one fine Ramadhan night at the mosque
with F, so there were several familiar faces. The atmosphere was
chaotic but happy. Everywhere there were smiling faces, and people I
didn't know greeting me with "Eid Mubarak!' People who had prayed the
shift before us (there were 4 shifts of Eid prayers to accommodate all the worshippers) were leaving, and
latecomers like us were trying to find a spot. We ended up in the
Mosque hijab/abaya shop, me squeezed between a baby basket and a rail of abayas, and performed our prayers there. And when the
imam read Surah an Nasr (The Help):
'When comes the help of God, and Victory;
And thou dost see the people enter God's Religion in crowds;
Celebrate the Praises of thy Lord, and pray for His Forgiveness;
For He is Oft-returning (in Grace and Mercy).'
I broke down and cried. The sura summed up my feelings perfectly. It
gave reassurance that His help is indeed always near, and hope that our
sins will be forgiven, and a reminder that even in our darkest hours we should never despair of
His Mercy. And it felt as though we had indeed been victorious: in
fasting and trying to behave our best in Ramadhan, in trying to make
remembrance of Him as much as we can, and in Eid we are celebrating our
thankfulness that He has allowed us to pass through Ramadhan one more
time. And the atmosphere in the mosque... was like God's promised
Victory in diverse people entering His religion made manifest.
And afterwards, there was a party! There is an unofficial pressure
among us Muslims to make Eid as joyful as possible for children, lest
they feel that Christmas is much more interesting. So they held
games, children with balloons and party ribbons running around
everywhere, in one corner there was a hafz competition going on, with
the promise of food at the end of the festivities. I chatted with the
ladies there, who were so warm and friendly, sharing Eid cookies, and
the Arab ladies
displayed none of the superiority that some Arabs unfortunately do
towards us non-Arabs. The diversity and warmth in that mosque was
amazing: there were Arab ladies in beautiful abayas, Pakistanis in
lovely salwar kameez, Somalis in their trademark tudung labuh,
Nigerians in brightly coloured, fancy headgear (one lady let me try
hers! And gave me a cupcake afterwards!), Caucasian revert sisters, and
South-East Asian ladies in telekung-hang on! I spotted a Melayu looking face, and made my way over to say hi. I made friends with this Indonesian girl called
Nani, who was spending her 1st Eid away from family. She missed Indonesian
food so much, so the three of us decided to hop over to Mawar Restaurant, a
well-known Malaysian food joint to assuage her pangs of homesickness.
And surprise surprise! When we entered, we found no tables but white
sheets neatly spread on the floors. It turns out that we fortuitiously
stumbled upon an Open House!!! Yay! May Allah reward the owners, amiin.
The atmosphere was again relaxed, like an indoor picnic, and we happily tucked into our
rendang, acar and rice, as many helpings as we wished. Some people
apparently ate too much, for they fell asleep in a corner. F remarked
that they had their hands folded in the prayer position as they napped.
Some of their friends took photos of them sleeping. Various
Malaysians smiled, or prayed in a corner, or chatted with
their Muslim and non-Muslim friends. F and Nani were very pleased, and
we said our thanks to the owner on our way out.
It was rush rush back to F's place to prepare for the dinner party for
her friends. We had a lovely
time. The guests were mainly other PhD students from F's department, muslim and non-muslim,
unfortunately Nani couldn't make it as she had other arrangements that day. We
had Sami Yusuf's latest album on (very Egyptian sounding one-lah) and
did a spot of dancing of the Arabian persuasion, hehe. We were quite exhausted by the time our
guests left, and had to go to bed a bit early for the next day (Friday)
was another working day!
(Dang they don't have Sami Yusuf on amazon).
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| As many of you know, ikelah is currently with the Global Peace Mission team in Pakistan although he will
be coming home soon. The people there urgently need our help, for
winter is coming and the weak especially will be extra vulnerable. Only
Allah knows what their Eid will be like!
Here's a simple way you can help:
Text/SMS gpm 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 to 39111, and RM 1/2/3/4 accordingly will be paid via your airtime credit.
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Get your thumbs/styluses busy! Give generously during these last hours of Ramadhan...
For other ways to contribute, please see www.keamanan.net .
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