A Dream Come True

I've been working here for about 3 and a half weeks now, and for about the last 2 and a half weeks I'd set a goal for myself. It's one of those goals that realistically you know you can't achieve, but you still try for it anyway. And alhamdulillah, I did it :). But before I jump straight in there, let me give you a little background..

One of my jobs here as a 'Vacation Engineering Student' (which they didn't tell me actually meant 'Glorified Admin Assistant') is to update their old system. I get big folders filled with about 500 sheets of paper, I take out the papers, I re-write the dates on some of them where the stamps have faded, I then scan the pages, then come back to my desk, put them back in the folder, re-name them on the computer, and then upload them on to a server that's all the way in New Jersey (I'm in London) whilst punching in the details of each individual sheet as I upload them. I do the whole thing in groups of 50 pages (2 successive sets of 25 for the scanner). Sometimes I have to do other little annoying things with the pages, like make sure their the right size, etc. So anyway, when I come back to my desk, I'm there with about 50 pieces of paper (that all date to around 1995) that I need to put back into that big fat folder. And here's that goal I set myself. I've tried it about (quick calculation...) 30ish times, and I managed it yesterday. Here it is...

I managed to put all the pages back in one go!!! Wohoooooo!

I mean, do you know how tediously long it is having to put the pages back in little groups. The holes on the side never line up properly, 'cos of the different paper sizes and other peoples' dodgy hole punching. So I end up putting them back in about 10 at a time, sometimes even individually! But subhanAllah, min fadli Rabbi, I got all 50 in in one go yesterday :). Not only that, but I managed it again today. Allahu akbar. What a feeling that was... You see, your job doesn't always have to be boring. You just have to make the most of these little things. And some people said I'd go crazy doing that for 9 weeks... ha!

On a side note, I'd like to add that I now have (un)official sponsorship for my blog. Yep, that's right :). My company now pays me to update my blog. How awesome is that? I haven't got round to informing them about that yet, though...

A Revelation (not THE...)

I don't exactly remember how this moment of genius came to me, but I know it happened at some point within the last academic year. This post will mainly appeal to those readers with origins from the subcontinent and other close by areas (ie. all you pakis, darkies, and banglas - in geographical order (BTW don't think I'm racist, it's OK, I'm one of them:))), so I apologise if you can't relate to it, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless. So over here in England, well in London anyway (I gotta stop assuming that London is representative of the whole of England, it really isn't... the rest of the country pretty much sucks), when we just start school as little cute Muslims and Muslimahs, we normally start learning the Qur'an too. We normally go after school, or during the weekends, to the local masjid, a madrassa, or (as in my case) one of the kids' house where an imam (we'd call him molvi sahib) would come and teach us. Maybe I'll write about that in detail in another post, but that isn't really what this one is about (I actually learnt from a woman, but that's besides). So anyway, now that I'm older and wiser (and went from adorable to ahem dashingly handsome), I've come across a lot more books and other copies of the Qur'an besides those that we (Asians) have at home. It didn't hit me at first, but over time I think it just came to me. And I'm sorry to say it. I'm sorry to have to be the one to break it to you. But we've (Asians) been duped. We've been duped hard. OK so it's bad enough that when people ask us if we know Arabic we have to settle with saying that we can only read it (and I sheepishly say I can write it, too) and don't know what we're actually saying. But here's the newsflash: WE CAN'T EVEN READ IT. WE CAN'T READ ARABIC. All those copies of the Qur'an you have at home... they're not in Arabic! They're in URDU!! That's right, Urdu. Urdu Urdu Urdu. Think about it.. Remember those concurrent Urdu classes you took (which I never payed attention in, so I can't even do anything with that language), you ever wondered why the writing looked exactly the same? That's because it's the same script! OK, so they are very similar. Urdu contains all the same letters, with about 6 more I think (like I said, I'm no expert). But still, when we learnt how to read it, we were told all the Urdu names for the vowels. We weren't told that this is a fatha or that's a dumma. It was this is a pesh and that's a zabar. Even in terms of pronounciation, unless we learnt at the masjid or with a real imam (I didn't), we most of the time were given Urdu pronounciations. So 'ayn was just a norm alif sound, and dhaal was a za sound. I mean, talk about lazy! Like in Arabic, normally the vowels are ommitted in Urdu sentences. And it's normally written a lot more curly and flowery (which I think makes it a lot more confusing... BTW I've realised I use brackets wayy too much). I think things are changing these days, although I don't have any kids I can check that with, but it seems in general a lot of things like that are changing for the better now... AFTER my generation. Typical. Seriously though, go and pick up a Qur'an now. A Qur'an printed from an Arab country, and I guarantee you that at some points you'll just stop and errr for a few seconds. And I've got another one for you. Pick up a copy that has a transliteration in it. Go to surah 93, ad-Duha. How is it spelt? How is it spelt?? It says az-Zuha right!!! I KNOWWW! How messed up is that? I mean, ok, if you pronounce dhaal with a za it's forgivable, it's accpeted. But the emphatic daad (or duaad as we were taught) being pronounce as a za. Come onnn, that just ain't happening. That's not cool. You can't have us pronouncing it so obviously incorrect, that just defeats the whole purpose.

The point of this agonisingly long and brackets-filled post: Oi! Asians! Go learn your whole Arabic alphabet again, 'cos we don't know it! We don't even know the Urdu one.. we're missing about 6 letters :P.

(InshaAllah at some point I'll include a post on commonly mispronounced letters, although don't expect me to provide all the tajweed rules, I ain't that good...yet............................. inshaAllah :)).

Raisins and Grapes

I don't know why, but I just felt this urge to write a post about raisins. They've been good to me these past few weeks, maybe it's just time that I returned the favour. Did you know that raisins are a natural source of fibre? (source: my little green box of ASDA raisins). Also, they should be stored in a cool dry place. They can be hazardous to young children too as they can choke from them! They're also quite bouncy. I dropped one earlier and it took me ages to find it, missed out on the 5 second rule. Then I dropped another (not on purpose) and caught it just in time. Alhamdulillah :). Also, the word 'raisin' in French means grape. Odd, ay? (Well, I think it does... maybe a member of my French fanbase can clarify that for me). I like grapes, too. It's a shame that they're so expensive. I think the Arabic word for grapes is hur. I'm basing that on that whole thing about how some feminists and orientalists re-interpret the verses in the Qur'an about wide-eyed maidens in Jannah (I don't wanna debate about that, it's written in the book of Allah 'azza wa jal, end of) actually talking about white grapes (fools). I might be wrong there though, maybe by Arab readers can verify that one for me. How are my German readers doing? I don't want you guys to feel left out. Here's a little homework for you, how do you say grapes and raisins in Deustch? 3 years of studying the language and I never learnt two of the most important words. Shameful, I know. In fact, my Chinese readers have that same piece of homework. You have 'til Friday.

It's a great feeling being so widely followed (and self-deluded)...

UPDATE:

Oh my God. Oh. My. God. I just had one of those life-changing moments. This is up there with when I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and my whole life changed. When I first started school. When I took my first step. This is just... out of this world.

So here I am, sitting in my office, and I get a call from one of my avid followers (no idea HOW she got my personal number. She said she works for a security consultancy, that's probably how..) and she told me about how she just read this post. And oh my God. Are you read for it? Are you ready? 'Cos I wasn't..

OK

Here goes..

Raisins ARE grapes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH MY GOD!

I know right!! Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

Alhamdulillah. I mean, raisins are dried grapes??? Who would have thought it? SubhanAllah, even when that scrumptious grape dries up, it still tastes so good! SubhanAllaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Mann, I still can't register it. Wow....

Although, I guess it does kinda explain the picture on the box. I thought those those raisins looked more like grapes... (it explains why they were green too!).

A Beautiful Du'a

I remember listening to a lecture quite a while back, I think it was by Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki (before all the unwarranted controversies- I hope my blog doesn't get blacklisted for mentioning his name...), where he mentioned a du'a that Sayyiduna 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (radiAllahu ta'aala 'anhu) used to make. After some research, I managed to dig it up. From what I gather, the du'a actually comes from a hadith of Rasoolullah (sall-Allahu `alayhi wa sallaam) recorded in Muslim. My thanks to all those on the particular thread on an AlMaghrib forum where I lifted it from...

روى مسلم في صحيحه عن زيد بن أرقم أن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم كان يقول
(اللهم إني أعوذ بك من علم لا ينفع ومن قلب لا يخشع ومن نفس لا تشبع ومن دعوة لا يستجاب لها

Allahumma innee 'audhoobika min 'ilmi-llaa yanfa', wa min qalbi-llaa yakhsha', wa min nafsi-llaa tashba', wa min da'wati-llaa yustajaabu lahaa. (Muslim)

O Allah! I seek refuge in you from a knowledge which does not benefit, and from a heart which does not tremble, and from a nafs (ego) which is not content (sated), and from a supplication which is not accepted.

SubhanAllah, I really love this du'a. InshaAllah the next time you make du'a, and if you remember to include this one, don't forget to give me a shoutout right after :). It's only fair...

An Apology

I have a feeling I'm gonna end up writing quite a few posts like this. Maybe I should make a label for it, so you can find them all on the side. OK well, once again, I apologise. It's been a week since my last blog post, and I myself hate it when bloggers don't post at least every couple of days, so I know exactly what you're feeling! Really, I do. My excuses won't be good enough, but what it comes down to is basically a combination of me being really busy AND being reeeeally lazy. I've had a busy week, I actually do work at work now (who would have thought...), and my evenings these days are pretty occupied. Until 'ishaa time over here in London gets a bit earlier (not including Ramadan and those 10.30 taraweehs...), I imagine my evening will be quite busy for a while yet. Also, last weekend we had a whole bunch of people come to our house, so Saturday was full of cleaning (while my sister was off gallivanting in an aquarium, my life is so hard...) and Sunday was full of entertaining... and then more cleaning. Also, my mum seems to have caught some sort of Cleaning Bug and is saying how next weekend I have to stay home and clean the attic... (let's just make du'a that she doesn't make me mow the back garden). So you see, I do have a couple of valid excuses, but I know it's not good enough. I had time here and there where I could have fit in a post, and I chose to be lazy instead. I'm getting there though, I mean, my last absence lasted about a month.. so if you do the calculations (I can't be bothered but here's a guess) it looks like I'll be writing hourly before the end of the year!

Yeah, right...