Nisfu Shaaban | Anticipating Ramadhan

Bismillah.


Subhanallah.
The whitest of the White Nights in any given year has got to be the night of mid-Shaaban.

The lovely moon as captured by yours truly in Penang:

A full moon should remind one of no one else except Prophet Muhammad salallah alaihi wasalam. When the full moon of Shaaban appears, the anticipation for Ramadan heightens, naturally.

May Allah grant us the gift of Ramadhan
in all its purity. Ameen. 

p/s
Hoping my mother is impressed with those hydrangea 😍

Not invisible

Bismillah.

Alhamdulillah wa shukrulillah, the joy of working on my assignments in my backyard in Penang - on Monday : D 

Ahhh...the joy of being coached on statistics by someone half my age, who is the daughter of my schoolmate, a friend I have known since I was 7 years old! That's quite a bit of history eh? I could sense the pride and joy engulfing my friend, as she listened and watched her daughter teach me Statistics. It's kinda funny too LOL. But grateful I am to have found the help I needed cos I have become terribly rusty in Stats, Maths and the like. LOL.

Another much-treasured friend sent me an inspiring video about us not being invisible to God. It's obvious you say but how often we feel slighted when people act as if we're invisible. Allah knows and sees every little thing we do and it does not matter that we are invisible to mortals cos what matters is that the Creator, the Master, the Orchestrator the Keeper of All-Bounties does not treat us like we're invisible.

It's a joy to be able to help my mother clean and prep the house for Ramadhan. May Allah let us live to see Ramadhan and let us live in the way that is pleasing to Him now and forever and especially in Ramadhan bi-iznillah.

May Allah grant us the tawfiq to turn over a new leaf this Ramadhan. Ameen.  

Love all my genuine readers/supporters/visitors - for the sake of Allah.
- E.I

= Emotional Intelligence : D
Let's pray He grants us more E.I.

When He favors us again and again

Bismillah.

"God knows every person that's done you wrong, every injustice, every bad break. He's going to pay you back. You're going to come out fully compensated, blessed, vindicated, honored. People will know that God has ruled in your favor."

- From @TheSecretTeachings

And we all have seen His miracles, His generosities, His protection, His fairness, over and over again.

Subhanallah.

Journeying from Allah, with Allah, to Allah, for Allah.

Only take what you need

Bismillah.

Alhamdulillah wa shukrulillah for having had a wonderful experience exploring Lake Chini, the second biggest lake in Peninsula Malaysia.

One important takeaway for me - a lesson from the Orang Asli (aboriginal inhabitants of the area) - that we should only take what we need. I think nature has taught them this, as they hunt/seek food they would only take just enough supplies and leave the rest for the others. Likewise, when clothes were presented to them, they only chose what was needed. 

In the last photo that appeared in the clippings below, I was reminded of my childhood, how my worldview was limited, how lacking in exposure. However, we, many of us, when we were at their age, we were somewhat richer in terms of opportunities and possibilities. Thus, we should be grateful, be more grateful that Allah has destined for us all that He has destined for us. And let's do our bit in spreading cheer and more importantly, hope for a brighter future. 

[E.I's Travelogue for future reference]

Numbered | Scrumming

Bismillah.

Assalamualaikum folks,

Hi...hi...hi! Great to be back here after a week+ of hiatus. When you are not Instagramming or publicizing your actions, that does not necessarily mean you are not up and hustling. Alhamdulillah this is to express to the world of my gratitude of being alive and kicking. 

Life is like a cycle. When we were young, we spent the week being a student and the weekends to work part-time to survive college - not me but many of us. I partied on weekends or went shopping, to be frank, LOL. But now, it's the opposite, I work for three days during the week and spend the weekend as a student. After signing out I gotta watch Lynda.com for some lessons on Statistics to prep my mind for the real class InShaAllah. Mondays and Tuesdays are for recuperating and prepping some more. Perhaps meet an old buddy who is a maestro of Statistics to teach me some more. Alhamdulillah that's what friends are for. Praise be to Allah for all the wonderful people in our lives. Our days are numbered, so be friendly we must. But let's go for quality instead of quantity because we don't want to be negatively affected by blacksmith-friends, you know what I mean. Whenever you meet blacksmiths, be quick to convert them into the "Statistics of One's Ex". LOL.

Alhamdulillah, I am enjoying my job. I love that our culture is one which is super agile. I love being a scrum master for one of the squads at my workplace. Praise be to Allah for giving us the tawfiq to keep busy doing good things like acquiring new useful knowledge. We gotta be specific in thanking Allah because there are people who are busy acquiring immoral/useless stuff.

There are some married men in their 50s who keep themselves busy scrumming among women. Some of them have got four, five doctors in the family yet they cannot be cured still, the womanizing symptoms are still showing.

Oh somehow, some exes are thinking I'm as low as them. For God's sake, I'm marching on with my Quran recitation to Chapter 19. And they said Eza is just pretending to be good. Oh well, I say thank you, whatever good you see in me, is from Allah : )

Please...never mind me. Go take care of your unmarried daughters who are scrumming around boys and smooching them and what not. 

Excuse me, I am busy getting myself an education cos I'm not clever and education as we all know is a life-long journey after all, right until we reach the grave.

Peace out!

***

"I am the leader of this team. They have faith in me. I have to let go of the worry. Let go of the fear. I could curl up and cry at home. Not here."

- J. Sutherland (The Power of Scrum)

Monday boost

Bismillah.

Alhamdulillah wa shukrulillah to be writing from my home-office on a Monday. I feel like this space has been neglected somewhat and thus am feeling a lil bad for three reasons:

1. Writing is a good habit and a good cognitive exercise, anything good should be continued and maintained. At the beginning of 2017, I made an intention to write a lil something every day and I did. At the outset of 2018, I did not make the same niyat and naturally, psychologically, my entire being does not commit to daily writing. So I learn yet again that making an intention is key. Niyat is a fundamental pre-requisite for any actions. Did you know, writing, expressing oneself and keeping a journal are three out of 100 fun activities you could do to boost your mood, so they say. How many of the 100 items do you normally do? Refer poster below. I found it on Twitter earlier this morning. Twitter is my go-to place for inspirations and motivations on social media, not Instagram. It might be something else for you. To each her/his own. [But I have set up an Instagram account for lisanaldin! LOL.]

2. Blogging is considered as a hobby, obviously. Well, it wasn't that obvious to me until I was at an interview and was asked what my hobby was. I paused for longer than I should and said: "blogging". Gosh how boring a person I must be to not have any hobbies. So this blog has saved me in the interview LOL. I must keep it going InShaAllah.

3. I was made to understand the young ones in my family come here every now and then to chill whenever they need to take a break from their studies and college-pressures. Cos they found their aunt's postings kinda "humorous" [sometimes]. So, there's a demand for this insignificant blog. Oh no, wait, it is significant because we are all unique and only I can tell my own stories the way I do. No one else can do a better job being me/you other than me/you. Therefore, we have to celebrate being ourselves and being chosen by the Lord to be here on this Earth to serve a purpose and occasionally pick a fight with those who annoy us. LOL. Oh, yes, I am speaking [writing] my mind truthfully for this moment. Some people humiliated me and so I wrote about it and then they got mad that I got mad and wrote what I wrote about it. Whatever happens to freedom of speech or "freedom of feelings", for that matter? [If you don't want me to write a bad review for you, then stop doing bad things to me and/or replace your ugly actions with plenty of good deeds until all the murky water got replaced with crystal clear water. As simple as that.] 

Alhamdulillah wa shukrulillah, I keep thanking the Lord for having a 24-hour work week as I have more time to do Sunat Duha unlike before. It's actually not too difficult but of course, as a Muslim-novice like me, it's a big deal. I used to think that anyone who does duha prayer is super duper religious and I don't belong with them, but that's a wrong viewpoint, I now realize. It can be done. It's possible. I urge the young ones to give it a try. At the end of the day, Allah will look at the effort we put in, cos we all know hidayah and tawfik is His sole discretion anyway.

By the way, I am not apologizing that this space no longer serves the purpose that some of the old readers might be expecting - me sharing notes from majlis taalim cos I don't do that anymore. You all are smart people who frequent majlis taalim regularly and consistently so I imagine most of you have become a junior-shaykh/shaykha or something by now. Alhamdulillah, again, to each her/his own.

Gotta sign-off and do some office work. Yes I still do office work on Mondays voluntarily cos I love my job. And gotta do some revision for my MBA class. Oh, by the way, the first subject that will be covered is called the Learning Manager and the essence of that is "self-awareness" can you believe that? That we are supposed to reflect on ourselves and how we interact with others in the process of learning. That we are encouraged to have a "reflective learning journal". That Emotional Intelligence (EI) is emphasized a lot more than IQ. Wow!

OK folks, I gotta go now.

Best,

EI

(Eza Ismail)

: )

p/s

HE & AA - good luck in your studies and exams.

KA - best wishes for your new endeavor in the college of your choice. Bi-iznillah.

NS - wish you a speedy recovery. [I was going to type S for your short name but some "perasan" people might think I'm referring to them or their husband like they own certain alphabets. LOL]

Note to self:

Choose better feeling thoughts!

p/p/s
Speaking of boost, I have stopped buying smoothies from Boost cos I make my own nowadays. Alhamdulillah. Boost is also a brand name for an app which you may want to download. It's got nothing to do with smoothies, but you can buy Boost smoothies and everything else under the sun using the Boost app by Axiata.
: )

Home-made smoothies
[Banana, frozen blueberries, almond milk, frozen yogurt, honey, organic chia seeds, flax seeds, toasted muesli, ice]
 Yumms!

p/p/s

If you are a typical Malaysian like me who watched the AME award show on Astro last night, you would be singing and dancing (at home) to the famous song by Ruffedge - Khayalan.
Diriku sudah pun berpunya kekasih hati
Tak mungkin ku tukar ganti 
padamu yang datang dalam khayalan...
Carilah pengganti agar kau gembira lagi...

[Some of the Ruffedge guys attend majlis taalim regularly mind you!]

Pattani | Arts that awakened the heart and mind

Bismillah.

Pattani [or Patani] is a province in South Thailand. Together with its neighboring provinces namely Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla, this region is well known among Muslims in Malaysia on account of its proximity, its renowned scholars who were/are active in Malaysia and the occasional violence/murders that had taken place in recent years.

I never imagined seeing Patani in a different light until I visited an art exhibition at the Ilham Gallery in KL. So there I saw for the first time some beautiful and heart moving artworks by Muslim artists from Patani region, and many of them were women!

It was really touching to 'hear' their expressions: the anxiety, the frustration, the sorrow and (a tiny speck of ) hope underlying those intricate artworks, visuals, and meaningful installations. 

By Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh
Image of two women encountering 'death' as symbolized by a tombstone between them

The installation in front is by Jehabdulloh Jehsoroh
89 tombstones representing the number of death toll during the Tak Bai incident.
The artist brought the soil from Patani  

The only 'happy' artwork I remembered from the exhibition.
By Jehabdulloh Jehsoroh
Pretty is an understatement.

By Ina Phuyuthanon
That's Ina praying in the middle of a rubber plantation
at a high-risk zone in Yala.
Her 10-minutes film was loaded with impactful visuals and sounds:
Quranic recitals and sounds of gunfires evoked the graveness and soberness of the situation in Patani region  

Let's pray for better circumstances in the Patani region and wish all the very best for our Muslim friends there. And that the talented Muslim artists from the unstable Patani region will have the freedom to express themselves safely and to a wider audience hopefully.

The art exhibition named "Patani Semasa" is on now until 15th July 2018.

http://www.ilhamgallery.com/

For the rest of us who are more fortunate to be living in a peaceful and happy environment, let's be more thankful and grateful.