#11 Emak, Bekas Guru

Emak telefon. Assalamualaikum. Waalaikumsalam. Da, Mak nak beritahu tiga perkara ni. Ok. Pertama, sekian,sekian. Kedua, sekian,sekian. Dan paling terakhir, sekian, sekian. Wah, ringkas dan padat! Emak ketawa. Mak nak beritahu tu je. Ok. Emak menamatkan panggilan.

#10 Nerd Kind of Things

Bold the ones you've read COMPLETELY, italicize the ones you've read part of. Watching the movie or the cartoon doesn't count. Abridged versions don't count either.

BTW, according to the BBC if you've read 7 of these, you are above the average.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Ubervilles-Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams – the whole series
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnights Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madam Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

total read : 22/100.

#9 Perahu Kertas

menoleh pada masa
belum pandai membaca dan berkira-kira
belum pandai memacu pena
Tapi kupunya sekeping kertas
kulipat dengan hati putihku
menjadi perahu
bila rintik hujan datang
kulayarkan pusing rumah

pada masa
belum pandai membaca dan berkira-kira
belum pandai memacu pena
sebuah hati putihku
tertulis kisah perahu kertas

membanding pada masa
kupunya lebih dari sekadar pena dan kertas
dan hatiku tidak tentu putih kelabu
kutulis banyak kisah
kulayarkan pusing dunia

pada masa
aku pandai membaca dan berkira kira
ku kira kira kisahku yang banyak
aku rindu hatiku yang putih
melayarkan perahu kertas

#7 Third day of Running

A squirrel darted pass me and the morning sky was gloomy. I was running at this hill park where I could get an eagle view of the city I live from afar. As I ran, the cool breeze speed along with me - a friendly companion - soothing my face and soul with its fresh moist. The birds pecking the grass at the trackside scampered away as I trodded on the jogging track. I felt fast like i was in an ironman suit ( when in real time I was as fast as Spongebob's pet snail, but lets not dwell further on that matter).

This is why I like running eventhough nobody runs in the family. This is the reason why I would still returned to the track after many attempts and injuries. Running is all about overcoming your own limitation. Running outdoor, I also have this opportunity to dwell in my individual self, the beautiful world, and the Creator of us. After every running session, I always returns to civilization with refreshed soul.

Running is all about individual. However, as a female runner, I need to consider about my safety. Luckily enough there are many people jogging at the park. Saw this man around 50-ish jogging in the pace as fast as mine. He looked like a kind retired grandfather who has received bad results on his health report book last week and decided to start the exercise regiment this week. Marking him as my 'guard', I kept a stone throw distance and jogged behind him all the time.

Overall, for today I improved my pace time and did this :

4 minutes run, 1 minute walk
7 rounds

#6 Second Training

Was drifted away and away from the training schedule due to Eid celebrations (alasan!) I only started the second training today.

Today's running plan :
3 minutes run
1 minute walk
10 rounds

Except for a gorgeous morning, I didnt met any other running soul - however, I passed on many cyclists. Okay, not. Correction. Many cyclists cycle past me.

While passing a row of bungalows, saw this persian cat that was about to answer the nature's call. When I autobeeline to him, he meowed and was very friendly when I patted his head. This is probably a very mundane thing to report to you, but is a very important thing to me. My alarm hitting me to start running, i cant stay longer to pet that gorgeous being. Bye bye cat. I hope I ll see you again in next two days. If you happen to have a single, handsome owner, drag him along next time.

Moving forward, about 4 weeks left before the event....

#5 -When Muslims Work Together

Selepas mendengar kuliah Nouman Ali Khan tajuk "When Muslims Work Together" di bayyinah.com.

Kesimpulan :
- akan ada banyak pecahan pecahan persatuan untuk menggerakkan satu ideologi masing-masing. Tidak semestinya bersatu bawah satu persatuan sahaja.

- setiap persatuan mestilah tidak memperlekehkan usaha persatuan yang lain.

- setiap persatuan mesti bantu membantu dan acknowledge usaha persatuan lain.

Sebenarnya terfikir kita masih perlu banyak komunikasi dialog dengan cara yang teratur ( coursera.com ada menawarkan kursus percuma : how to think ad argue ).

Disebabkan kegagalan kita berkomunikasi, banyak perkara hal rakyat yang tidak dapat diuruskan dengan baik. Contoh semasa : harga minyak.

Bila harga minyak naik, perkara pertama yang kita buat ialah pilih kem dulu. Awal-awal lagi kita dah set kem sebab nak standby gaduh dengan kem lawan.

Perkara pertama yang kita cari ialah apa reaksi pihak lawan seolah-olah pertandingan.

Susah nak cari penyokong kerajaan yang tidak setuju kenaikan harga minyak atau pembangkang yang tak kisah haega minyak naik.

Sebab kita dah pilih kem awal awal, kita main setuju sajalah dengan apa yang kerajaan buat dan anggap orang lain tak betul. Sebab kita dah pilih kem awal-awal kita main bangkang sajalah apa yang kerajaan buat.

Akhirnya tiada penyelesaian pun.

Dulu saya pun macam ini juga. Sekarang saya sedang belajar untuk tidak memilih sebarang kem, tidak memandang buruk dan cepat bersangka buruk, tidak menyerang peribadi, menjauhi sarcasm. Menjauhi perbualan-perbualan yang ada disebut 'macai' di dalamnya. Ini adalah perjalanan yang paling payah. Semoga Allah bantu kita semua.

#4 Qur'an Memorization

Often when we heard a nice, old song it would immediately brought us to the memory of the past - that era when the song been constantly played in the air. Never mind if it is a song you totally hate. For an instance, I never like Daniel Bedingfield's If You're not the One. To me, It is a weak song with pathetic lyrics. But this song was popular during my matriculation days circa 2002-2004. My room mate at that time would sang the song at the top of her lung everyday, all my taunts and efforts to shut her up failed miserably. Now, sometimes when this song comes out, i will instantly reminded of her, of the room, of the happy matriculation's life.

Now, is it possible to do the same with the Qur'an? When we memorize certain surah, could we bind it to certain visual or memory? I have none (the visuals)  in my head. The one that I only have is not even a Qur'anic aayah - it is the Iftitah. According to my mother, I memorized it by accident after days of listening to my mother teaching it to my elder brother. I was 4 or 5 years old. One day, I told my mother I could recite it too. The visuals in my head is of my father asking me to recite it while I was in sitting in his lap. After I was done, he would praised me proudly. Now everytime I recited Du'a Iftitah, the effect is, i feel loved, because I was loved, during the time I learnt it. Going through the meaning, I feel loved by the God who gave me blessings I could not count. But then, it will stopped until the Iftitah only. I dont have any memory recollection on how i memorized Fatihah. And the following short surahs we usually recited aftermath. I guess i have to unlearned myself and started from the very basic. Learn the Faatihah again and the Qur'an again.

Problem with us born Muslims - since we were taught everything , and been told everything, we thought we have already know everything about Islam. We stopped learning...

#3 Strategi DIY memansuhkan PTPTN

1. Bayar PTPTN sedia ada. Strategi membayar hutang rujuk sini.

2. Bina simpanan kewangan yang kukuh. Ilmu pengurusan kewangan peribadi sangat penting disini.

3. Kempen adik kakak, kawan kawan, saudara mara JANGAN AMBIL PTPTN kalau boleh. Alang-alang berusaha sedaya upaya dapatkan biasiswa. Tak dapat bisiswa ada banyak pinjaman lain tanpa riba ( JPA, pinjaman negeri, zakat ). Buat part time kerja sambilan. InsyaAllah tak ganggu pelajaran pun kalau rajin. Yang penting elakkan PTPTN sebab riba.

4. Buat simpanan tabung pendidikan anak-anak. Jangan kedekut. Membiayai pendidikan anak-anak besar pahalanya. Malah patut didahulukan. Ada banyak kes mak bapak yang mampu tanggung tapi masih suruh anak-anak cari pinjaman pendidikan dengan alasan simpanan sedia ada mahu digunakan untuk hari tua.

5. Lama-kelamaan makin kurang orang bergantung kepada PTPTN dan seterusnya terpaksa di mansuhkan.

#2 Tok Ayah Kar

"Pesan dekat anak cucu, jangan tinggal sembahyang, jangan tinggal sembahyang..jangan tinggal sembahyang.."

Antara kata-kata terakhir moyang saya; Tok Ayoh Kar. Ayah kepada nenek sebelah ibu saya. Saya tidak pernah bertemu dengannya, namun dia tetap hidup dalam cerita-cerita nenek saya dan ibu saya. Menurut cerita, orangnya lemah lembut dan tidak pernah berkasar. Tapi cukup tegas dalam menjaga setiap solat anak buah. Dengar cerita, boleh runtuh rumah kalau mengejutkan orang sembahyang subuh. Ibu saya yang yatim sejak kecil amat sayang kepadanya kerana dia suka melebihkan ibu saya berbanding kanak-kanak lain. Kalau makan, ajak duduk makan sebelah. Besarlah nikmat orang yang rajin mengusap kepala anak-anak yatim kerana anak itu ingat dan mengulang-ulang cerita sampai tua. 

#1 Learning to Run

Congratulations to myself I decided to start learning on running again. The running shoes seems happy to see the light again after months of hibernating in the car's boot ( which woman dont have all kind of shoes in her car, you tell me ).

I started running, on and off since last year where i braved myself to enter a 10k running event. I started training for one month then stopped and ended ditching up the event. The reason is not due to lost motivation, or laziness, but the knees. I have a history of right knee injury. Probably I didnt do the training right causing a big stress to the knees, under my heavy weight. Because I care a lot about my knees, I stopped running altogether to focus on recovery.

During that months of idle period, I tried losing weight to reduce impact on the knees by moving lot. Like using the stairs. There is also this ongoing effort on developing good eating habits. Post Ramadan- I managed to control my eating habits and loss 4 kg since the first day I started running. Not much but at least it is still a relief to the knee. Imagine buying 4 kgs of sugar. And walking while carrying the sugar. That much of weight, now I dont have to run with it.

To start running again, I found another training plan which focus on "learning on running" "speed dont matter" "finish a 10K run injury-free". It is a walk/run program with the idea, at the end of the program, the run portions mesh with the walk portions so that my knee, my body and my mind hardly know the differences.

I did my first session this evening. It started easy with

Warm up : walk slow & easy 5 minutes.
Run 1 minute. Walk 2 minutes. 8 times.

This was done via route of circling the new housing environment nearby. The scenery is pretty and peaceful, less cars, less people and about only half of the new houses are occupied with tenants. As I jogged by the sidelines, there are few families with visitors celebrating their raya in their brand new 1.6 million ringgits house ( I googled ). Some of them looked at me from afar. As a naturally shy person, I tried to ignore them and maintaining what is in my opinion - a slow and easy jogging pace ( from their view its probably a slow and easy crawling snail ).

After I m done, i feel a slight kink of soreness in my right knee. I dont sweat much  and feel i could do more which is the point of the training, so we could always look forward to the next session. Nothing serious, but I think I have to find that cool thing sportsmen always wear on their knee ( knee-something the name ).

The next session is on Tuesday. The training plan is on every other day so to allow time for recovery to the body. Since I am blogging from my mobile device, I have plan on continuous writing my running journey.