Stop Uglifying the Month!

Each time Ramadan comes, I will not do two things. One, I will not wish people 'selamat berpuasa' and two, I will not spell Ramadan with a 'h' in it. Sometimes I send my Ramadan greetings in English, which is not wrong. At least its original, something like 'Selamat Ramadan' or 'Happy Ramadan'. Sending long, skema messages can make you look fake. Sometimes I wonder if the sender are sending the correct message -- sometimes it sounds really not him/her.

'Selamat berpuasa' messages are kind of out of context. I guess fasting is not the only thing for Ramadan. And unsurprisingly, some of us don't fast too so the wish will not apply to them. Alas, many people will not feel they are in the month of Ramadan. So, 'selamat berpuasa'? Nah, not really.

So I'm a freaking typo so I just spell Ramadan the way it is. Ramadhan, is both wrong in English and BM. So fardhu, redha, and anything else with a 'dh' can be quite wrongly-spelt. Yeah but whatever, really. You can add all the 'h's in the world in whatever words you want. Like, Ramadhhhhan. You know, to emphasise the letter dhad. So that you'll sound more Arabic and stuffs lah. At least I'm not the one who is degrading the standard of our national language.

I don't know, but I guess long messages like "selamat beribadah..blabla...semoga kita..bla bla..harap-harapnya.. bla bla" if sent to people who, you know, a little bit religiously-challenged, will they even pay attention? Yes, your cherished long, copy-pasted messages are maybe good, holier-than-thou and crafted in the finest of words. Thank God! Bless you. But do you know what you're actually sending?

I accept 'happy Ramadan' messages as a prayer, more sincere than any long messages with pantuns and avant-garde gurindams. 'Salam Ramadan' wishes are more than enough to make me feel safe and secured to endure the challenges during the upcoming month. But enough fancy messages. Unless if you make them up yourselves. I guess people are a lot smarter nowadays so they can really judge lah whether it's fake or not.

Save your credits and be more creative. Dakwah, if you may want to argue, works in many ways.

There are a lot of people out there who are missing out the light of this already beginning holy month, and I believe they're already deleting your boring messages, that is, if they've received them.

Buckle up people, be out of the box. Ramadan is dying. Don't repeat the same mistake for Raya.

Luas?

The feast is officially on! To all architectural students from all over the world, especially from UiTM Perak and Shah Alam, come and participate in our Archiday 2008 - themed LUAS.

Literally the term 'luas' gives the meaning 'spacious' in Malay. But the term itself bears a lot of meaning - luas IS luas. Luas is more than a descriptive adjective of space, it also translates the never-ending journey of knowledge searching and the unmeasurable area of thinking. But in the end, the interpretation is always up to you.

This is an open invitation to our event. Take a journey up to Perak during your weekend Merdeka+Awal Ramadan holidays and join us in a celebration of architecture.

Because everybody has a room in our Archiday.

ARCHIDAY 2008 - LUAS
AUGUST 29 & 30,
FOYER FSPU LAMA UiTM PERAK

Aug 29: 8am onwards
Aug 30: 8.30am to 6.30pm, 8pm onwards

HOW TO GET THERE
By car: (From KL) Take the PLUS Highway up north,
take the Gopeng or Simpang Pulai exit,
head towards Batu Gajah via Simpang Pulai-Batu Gajah-Seputeh Expressway,
enter Ipoh-Lumut Expressway, exit at UiTM Seri Iskandar.
The journey will take two to three hours.

By rail: Disembark at Batu Gajah (20 minutes drive from Seri Iskandar)
or Ipoh (40 minutes drive from Seri Iskandar), taxi rate ranges from RM30 above. Check your train timetable for the day.

By bus: Take buses bound to Lumut from KL-Pudu
(ask the driver whether the bus will pass Seri Iskandar or Teluk Intan),
or buses bound to Ipoh-Medan Gopeng.
There are frequent buses to Ipoh and Lumut from KL-Pudu,
and there are buses bound to Ipoh
operating from Shah Alam-Seksyen 17 daily.

Contact us at archiday2008@gmail.com

Join us and spread the news! Go to our Facebook Event page!

and drop by our blog for the latest news.

Do contact any of your UiTM Perak's budak archi Studio 03 for more details. And budak archi Shah Alam, we'll be glad if you come up here and visit us. We're brothers and sisters after all, aren't we?

Attacks on Vacations

...er..?

It's day three of the so-called mid semester break and I'm not even feeling on hiatus. As Archiday is approaching less than two weeks' time (with ugly expected submissions along the way) we're busy spending our left time to sort out things right for the upcoming (read: important) event. In fact, we're expecting ourselves to be back in Seri Iskandar by Tuesday, five days earlier before the break ends.

Well, maybe we're not that early, as our studio will be holding a trip to Malacca from Friday til Sunday. That'll sure eat up our preparation time.

And the montages for Archiday... oh the montages.

I guess it is becoming a cliche for me to say 'a lot of things has happened recently' in my posts, particularly the ones involving updates and stuffs like that. Yeah I guess it's a lame phrase, no less. But... you know... just a lot of things has happened recently.

Lots of things equal to lots of pictures, but sadly, ample time was not around. Works are literally stacked here and there, with my bloody external hard disk infected by viruses and what is more stressful, my BlueCube won't work on my own laptop (yes, it works on others swiftly).

And the car.... damn it, the car!

(takes deep breath)

Anyway the photos are a sneak peak of a supposedly Flickr update, 1) is Mak Nyah Nik with my Opah. They were chit-chatting on a very hot evening at Mak Nyah Nik's place in Bota, a smooth 10-minute drive from Seri Iskandar. Mak Nyah Nik is Opah's cousin. Our excursion to Bota that day also included Abang Alil, my cousin who studies at the UTP, and... lots of durian.

2) Crawling in the crummy passages of Gua Tempurung. I risked my camera (together with flash) and went inside carrying (while crawling.. lurking.. sliding..) the 2kg-monster, and survived. I never regretted my decision, hell yeah!

3) Pre't jumping around at the Ipoh Train Station. Nothing much.

4) Ah, the mighty protest! We shall save this one for later... (I had the option of going back to sleep than 'demonstrating' under the blazing sun anyway)

5) So..uh, everybody loves the UTP Mosque, right?

6) Quite an outdated picture, John Mayer caught performing in Hyde Park, London during Hard Rock Calling end of June. Still the best concert of 2008 -- surpassing last March's Sunburst -- until the next best concert arrives. Will there be any?

7) The Tower Bridge, with the Gherkin designed by Sir Norman Foster (incidentally, the same guy who designed UTP) at the left side.

There's no update at Flickr yet, sorry.

So the Archiday's blog is still undergoing refurbishments, with the Archiday email already being set up together with its Facebook Events page. Of course, any other updates will be notified, if there are any.

If I succeeded in figuring out how to convert the HD videos, maybe the videos of the protests will be up as well (and maybe.. montage-making process will go on smoothly). But yeah, I always blow hot air. Puff. Puff.

Anyway, meet the new baby!

a Sony HDR-SR12E!

That's it for now. Anyway, do choose your news wisely and try to make little use of the brain, if not a lot when analysing your news because things might be a little bit tricky nowadays, no? Practice your rights as a rakyat lah, because we have more rights that are left out none other by ourselves. People will bully you when you're not aware of your rights. You'll be cheated.

So, yeah. Think!

"Don't hate the media, be the media." -- Anonymous.

Photos are all from Nikon D50. June - August 2008. Plagiarism and stealing sucks. People who meddle around when you're snapping pictures or recording videos also sucks. Know your rights, go here (though most advices are applicable most in the UK)

The Time Is Not Out -- Yet.

Alamak, somebody is really missing the picture lah.

I won't swear on the Qur'an even if I'm proven innocent. You see, this religion of ours called Islam enables us to have a direct axis with God. We need no other medium. The Qur'an is a compilation of His words in a form of book. But it's not just a mere book.

We should remember that our Prophet Muhammad never actually flipped any of the Qur'an's pages. Whoever said that the Qur'an was in a form of a book? So, could people hold a copy of it, swear and take any oaths onto it back then?

It was Usman, the third Righteous Caliph who compiled the Qur'an into a form of book. Interestingly, before him, the Qur'an was meant especially to be recited, not read.

The Prophet also had reminded us to not to read the Qur'an blindly. You see, God doesn't ask us to become more Arab than the Arabs. God didn't require us to do so. God only wants us to be good Muslims. Even if you read the Qur'an with the best way of recital anybody in this world could, it'd be absolutely meaningless if you don't know the meaning of each of the ayat in it.

By that, the meaning of over six thousand ayats.

The Qur'an can bring both good and bad things unto us. So be careful when you read it. It may bless you on the way, and it may curse you at the same time. This is a saying of the Prophet. If reading it would bring that kind of effect, what more swearing on it?

Islam does it differently. The Qur'an is not another Bible, Talmud, the Puranas or any other books deemed holy in this world. Take any dictionary, encyclopaedia or comic book and swear on it, but not the Qur'an.

So maybe after this there'll be another trend of developing a fetish towards swearing on the Qur'an. Do the sickest thing in the world but as soon as you swear on the Qur'an, you're holier than everything. Maybe it's a cool thing to do? That's why it's on every front pages of the mainstream papers? Maybe, yeah. But not every cool thing's good.

Mr Saiful, not everybody's embracing your fabricated, narrowed version of Islam. Find another thousand clerics and another million copies of the Qur'an and swear all you want. But the truth, sir, lies with God Himself.

Maybe it's best to retreat. Quit playing your game.

Salam Nisfu Syaaban.

(UPDATE: August 18, 2008 12.45am)
It is best to take note that my post was published earlier (at 3.59am Sunday) than Malaysia Today's article posted by RPK (later at 1.58pm the same day) whose article also, interestingly, pointed out the same arguments as mine -- only in much detail . See here.