Just Today

1. Ice cream gives you short-term pleasure, but it is still effective to make you happy, even for a short while - at least it works for me. Today the DQ guy turned the brownie batter blizzard upside down before handing it to me :)

2. Going to the bookstore aimlessly is very therapeutic. Just looking at the books, I don't know, they calm me down. Ok gila, tetapi betul lah :D But the same cannot be said about going to the library even though it is also full of books. Well, at least not my school's library, too many 'haunted memories'.

3. Even after 1 and 2, the heart will still be in a fluctuating state in the long run. There must be something that is always there, especially when things don't go so well. What's that? Rhetorical.

4. So if I buy a house, the ideal place for it would be near: Masjid, horse stable, bookstore, ice cream/cake shop

5. There are a lot of suffering in this world, and what am I doing?

6. Be contend, be happy, be helpful, be just, be concious of God :)

P.S.
arcane_mailslot: so stop being an ass, shut up and go read a book... hahahhaha
FatalErr012: I know I know

Confabulation

I have come to the conclusion that living your life and not get worried/emo about stupid things a.k.a. things you can't control is like one of the hardest challenges ever. I am pretty sure every human being out there shares this struggle. No? If you don't then pray do tell me your secret.

Before I begin, everybody must know this vocab: Confabulate. Meaning? To fill in gaps in memory by fabrication; that's what we do the best, fooling ourselves up. Actually we are so good at it, we don't even realize it. Look, if you don't know, then you don't know. But our mind is so good at making up these plausible fantasy explanations, in our psyche we are convinced about the reality of it; whereas it is only the construct of our mind. This is where most of the worries come from and it is not even real. Although sometimes the mind confabulates for a good reason: A mom is constantly worried about the safety of her child; she can think of 1001 situations where things can go wrong but they rarely even happen. I don't need to tell you situations where the mind confabulates and screws you up, do I?

Well, you say, I'm just rambling this thing up, it's not even scientific. So let's get scientific. The brain has two hemispheres and they are linked by corpus callosum. The left hemisphere is mainly responsible for language processing and analytical thinking, whereas the right hemisphere is good at recognizing pattern in space. The brain is pretty weird, the left hemisphere takes in information from the right side of the body and vice versa - nobody knows why, ask some neuroscientists or neurosurgeons if you don't believe me. I don't want to go into details about how the retina works and how the brain process image, but suffice to say if the retinas pick up something on the left side of its hemisphere it will be processed by the left brain and vice versa.

There is this weird case where a surgeon cut a patient's corpus callosum to save him from extreme seizure. So this person's right brain cannot 'talk' to the left brain and vice versa. A psychologist conducted some experiment to evaluate the 'damage done' by this operation. Here is what happened, when the psychologist flashed a card with a picture of chicken to the right of the patient, the left side of the retina hemispheres picked it up and sent the information to the brain's left hemisphere - remember this is the language processing hemisphere. Then he asked, "What did you see?" The patient answered "A chicken." But when he flashed the chicken card to the left of the patient (remember the right hemisphere will pick up the signal) and he asked "What did you see?" The patient answered, "Nothing." That is because the chicken card image information wasn't passed to the left hemisphere of the brain which 'does the talking', as the interlink between them is severed.

Weird aight? But wait... Now he flashes two cards, at the right a picture of chicken claw and at the left a picture of a house covered in snow. Then he asked the patient to pick from an array of cards what "goes with" with what he had seen. The patient pointed to the picture of chicken with his right hand (which goes with the chicken claw) and a shovel with his left hand (which goes with the house covered with snow). But remember the information from the right brain can't be passed to the left to do the talking. So the patient literally won't be able to explain why he is pointing to the shovel even though his hand knows it's just right. You would expect him to say "I don't know why I'm pointing to the shovel" right? But no, he said "Oh, that's easy, The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed."

The mind confabulates! So remember, that's what you do, you confabulate. You don't know about a lot of things but you make up your own explanation for them, thus you get worried about a plethora of imaginary things. How wonderful...

The best solution that I have found so far is to plant a cognitive filter in your mind. Cognitive filter is like a thought police. You have to catch your thread of thought in action, determine whether you are confabulating or not, and put them away if you think most likely you are. But that is just very hard to do right? Actually writing your thoughts down and assess their rationality is what psychologists call cognitive therapy. I thought it will be interesting to learn cognitive therapy, I bought this book but I don't have the time to read it yet.

There is one more big question that we have to tackle: So what is real then if everything is just confabulation? There must be something tangible and real... I guess, but you just don't have to think about it. Wait.. wait.. quantum physics says, it's real only when you observe it, the Schrodinger's cat. Well other people observe it so it's real, it's just that you don't observe it. And you don't have to...

Just when you think you own your mind, no you don't - me (haha..)

The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it - Marcus Aurelius

Note1: The experiment was conducted by Michael Gazzaniga and explained by Haidt. I'm just repeating them.

Note2: I don't want to go in circles all over again about this. So mind, stop thinking... I just want to not-do-anything. Ntah pape merepek.

Celebrity Status

Shock Dead, Everybody's Gone Mad: Reflections on the Death of Michael Jackson By Hamza Yusuf

On the news Everybody's dog food Bang bang Shock dead Everybody's gone mad... From "They Don't Care About Us" by Michael Jackson As a little boy, Michael Jackson had an extraordinary charisma -- as well as an absolute innocence -- that was disarmingly charming. It captivated millions of Americans and eventually people around the world. As the years went by, his career took strange turns and his face transformed eerily into a ghastly masque, perhaps to conceal the pain of alienation from his own self and family. He was also rumored to have unsavory predilections that would never have been suggested if one used the rigorous criteria of Islam before hurling an accusation. Despite the rumors, he appeared to have had a genuine concern for children, wanting to provide them with a world that was denied to him as a child due to the abuses he claimed to have suffered. I was very happy for him last year when he reportedly became a Muslim. He had apparently followed the footsteps of his dignified and intelligent brother, Jermaine, who converted to Islam 20 years ago and found peace. It seemed befitting that Michael sought refuge from a society that thrives on putting people on pedestals and then knocking them down. He was accused of many terrible things, but was guilty of perhaps being far too sensitive for an extremely cruel world. Such is the fate of many artistic people in our culture of nihilistic art, where the dominant outlet for their talents is in singing hollow pop songs or dancing half-naked in front of ogling onlookers who often leave them as quickly as they clung to them for the next latest sensation. In the manner of Elvis or the Beatles, Michael is unwittingly both a cause and a symptom of America’s national obsession with celebrity, currently on display in the American Idol mania. Celebrity trumps catastrophe every time. Far too few of us make any attempt to understand why jobs are drying up, why mortgages are collapsing, why we spend half-a-trillion dollars to service the interest on the national debt, why our government’s administration, despite being elected on an anti-war platform, is still committed to two unnecessary and unjust wars waged by the earlier administration, wars that continue to involve civilians casualties on an almost daily basis. Instead, we drown in trivia, especially trivia related to celebrity. And the response to Michael’s death is part of the trivial pursuits of American popular culture. The real news about death in America is that twenty Iraq and Afghan war veterans are committing suicide every day. But that does not make the front page nor is it discussed as seriously as the King of Pop’s cardiac arrest. Nevertheless, Michael’s very public death notice is a powerful reminder that no matter how famous or talented or wealthy one is, death comes knocking, sometimes sooner than later. Michael has now entered a world of extraordinary perception, a world that makes his “Thriller” video seem mundane. It is a world of angels and demons, and questions in the grave, a world where fame is based upon piety and charity. Given Michael’s reported conversion to Islam last year, Muslims count him as one of our own, and we pray that he can finally find the peace he never found in this world and that he is in a place, God willing, of mercy, forgiveness, and solace. Taken from here.

Are You in Love?

This is my note of Shaykh Abdus Salam lecture at YTC 09 titled: Are You in Love? The discourse is a bit sufisticated, but you know what? If there is a benefit that we can gain, why do we distinct so much between this and that. As usual, the hadiths don't have their chain of naration, and the authenticity of the akhbar are not known.


If a muslim does not love he does not have anything at all. Unfortunately today love is decreasing among the ulama’, among muslim, amongs locality, etc. Love is a very, very great quality, without it we are going to nowhere. “You will never enter jannah until you have iman, and you will never have iman, until you have love for one another.” (hadith). Iman should be followed by good character. You young people today, get this message of love so that you can take it because as we go closer to day of qiyamah, people are becoming more selfish, self-centered, and arrogant. “One of the first things to be removed from this world is khusyu’ (hadith) When you pray, take you time in your sajdah, in your rukuk, in your qiyam, don’t rush it.

“There is no iman for one who has no love” (hadith). “There is no solah for one who has no wudhu’” (hadith). The same principle is at work here. You can perform all your solah, your hajj, but if you don’t have love, you’re like a stone. Some of us may have hearts that are like stones. Unfortunately, when muslims meet muslims we look for confrontation, we look for debate, we look for ambivalent. We don’t come with love, we don’t meet each other with love, with humilty, with respect.

Indeed listen well, “The body of man is a lump of flesh, when that lump of flesh is good, the whole body becomes good, when that lump of flesh becomes corrupted, every part of the body becomes corrupted.” (hadith) You know where thoughts come from? When these thoughts are inside of us, these thoughts invite you towards virtue; these thoughts are called inspiration (ilham). When these thoughts are evil, they come from syaitan and from the nafs. The place fo knowledge, haqa’iq (reality) is inside the chest. The brain sometimes advises the heart; the heart will say yeah, but he still wants it. The heart desires something, instead of love, it wants to hate. Instead of sincerity, it wants to show off. The king of the body is the heart. When heart wants something, the brain will say “No, it’s bad, don’t do it”, but the heart will ignore it and carry out its desire.

So if you want to love you have to awaken this inside here (pointing to the heart). When I used to study way back, when I was younger in college, I was in Mexico, I write GCE Cambridge, and I wasn’t a muslim yet. There is this girl who told me love isn’t like a radio, you can’t turn it on and off. The people they love, they become jilted; love sickness and love worries. Men with the wrong guidance drink because they can’t turn it off. Only Allah can control the heart. “O Allah, turn on our hearts, turn our hearts towards obedience, keep our heart firms upon your path” (Prophet’s s.a.w. prayer).

We all fall in love, sometimes we loose the quality of love, we don’t love anymore. When we talk about love, where does it comes from? Imam Bukhari reported under the topic: Love is from Allah. Isn’t Allah’s name al-Wadud? There is a hadith that goes along this line: When Allah loves somebody, Allah calls Jibril: Allah loves so and so person, so Jibril you love him too. Then Jibril calls out to the inmates of the heaven and the sky, “O dwellers of the sky, Allah loves that person. So you also love him.” Then the inmates, the angels, the dwellers of the sky begin to love that person. So much so that everything loves him, even creatures and animals in the sea love him and pray for him. Until acceptance is placed on him on the land, wherever he goes, he is loved.

Unfortunately, what we know of love today is the love of Laila and Majnun. We talk about girlfriend and boyfriend, wife and husband. Majnun was so in love with Laila; he can’t see and he can’t sleep. When you love somebody you love the city of that person, the dog of the beloved, when you get something from your beloved you treasure it. So does Majnun. The ariffin says this is the type of love we should have for Allah. For a lot of people the kiblah becomes the kiblah of a woman. Everything is about woman. I know you have good women here in Canada, I’m not talking about those women.

We fall in love, and why not? Imam Bukhari studies from the student of Abdullah ibn Mubarak. He was known as ustadhuz asatidhah. Abdulah ibn Mubarrak was the student of Imam Abu Hanifah. But Abdullah ibn Mubarrak was in love too, very much in love with a girl. He would spend sleepless night thinking about this girl because he was in love with her. He would wake the night to see the girl to move from one place to another place. Then there is this voice that says, Abdallah, how many nights have you spend to love creatures? Why don’t you spend just a night in the love of the Khaliq (the Creator).

Hatim ibn Asam, his sheikh aked him, “You have spent 30 years with me. Tell me what did you learn?” Hatim said, I have learnt eight things. These eight things, it would take perhaps a lifetime for a person to know the reality of only one of them. Today I share one of them. I see people fall in love, a man loves his wife, a woman loves a man as a woman loves a man very strongly - the lover and the beloved. Sometimes people love things and they become attached to things. Some people love their car so much that they polish them and wax their cars. Sometimes a man loves his children. This is great love, real attachment, it is noble. (referring to filial love). Somebody loves somebody, somebody loves something.

It was in one janazah when the reality came in. The lover was going to the grave alone. His whole life he loves his wife, children, objects but I noticed that a lover is going to grave alone and the beloved can’t control. I decided to travel the world, I want to fall in love with such an entity that would not leave me. I want to look for some entity that would go in the grave with me. I search that and I can’t find it except for one thing: good righteous deed (‘amal soleh), that is the only thing. From that day I have decided to fall in love with righteous action (good dead). If we have to fall in love, let’s be sensible people, fall in love with things that can accompany us to the grave.

P.S. If you are thinking about the 'earthly' answer to the question, are you in love? Maybe National Geographic might have a close enough answer for you here. Note: You can always choose not to see the pictures and just listen to the audio of the video (although only minority of them are 'unsuitable'). Just don't well, say I'm bla3...

Operation Flouxetine I

Hmm, I officially fail and kind of give up today, just so that the whole world know. It is empirically measured that I can prolong my Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) if I try to starve myself with some sort of a discipline regime. Although, yes, I hate to admit this: It is also scientifically proven that I can't keep it up for a prolong period, because I just simply don't have the will power. So what is there left for humanity? The simplest answer is "I don't know". I figured that Flouxetine would probably the easiest way out, but I don't even know its effectiveness. So maybe let's do something simple, after all this is kind of like a marathon with seemingly no end in sight.

Operation Flouxetine:-
1) Thou shall sleep before 12
2) Thou shall go to work at 9
3) Thou shall kemas the katil
4) Isnin & Khamis
5) Max internet time = 1 hour / day
(this seems more viable than no this and that, after all it's pointless if I keep staring at the monitor for hours. ops...)
6) Two days/week, thou shalt do what thou art supposed to do.
7) The three bows before sleep.

So let's wait before I fail again, again, and again, yet again. God, I can't feel You...

P.S. After busying myself with physiology-just-for-fun, I am a bit more chemistrified than I usually am. But still, it's more about math equations, thus the phys prefix.

35th ISNA Canada

Guest Speaker... DSAI

P.S. Maybe, finally I get to meet Dr. Umar Faruq Abdallah. But what shall I do with my rogers cup semi-final ticket? More importantly, my friend, takkan nak tinggal je. Huhu.. Maybe Saturday Montreal & Sunday Toronto.

A Splash Into the Water

Ahh, finally I'm going to write something about local politics here and maybe for the last time too because - echoing Bangku - it's not worth it. I'm just not the type who likes to open hours of sembang kopi politik unless I find you un-extremist (if such word exists at all). Since most people are extremists, I find political talk as useless - people just enjoy the ego match.

Now there is this big issue about PAS bastardizing itself. Well, if you talk to any pro-PKR person, that's what they will tell you. If you talk to those people in PAS who are pro-unity government talk, they will say Mosses a.s. was commanded to go to Pharaoh and speak to him a gentle word (20:44). It is as if they have never heard of that verse before... I guess PAS is feeling the heat of the diversity within itself. From my observation,the main premises of arguments are the racial issue and of course everybody's personal interest. The pro-PKR people will say some people in PAS want to join the 'Malay chauvinist' bandwagon. Yada... yada... The "Islamdom" talk becomes just a background noise because if both parties are honest with themselves: That is not the issue.

From the look of it, we still have a long way to go before we resolve these patty ethno-religious issue. Till then, no politicking on this blog for me. Wait until the newspaper is full of issues regarding education, development, economic policy, and not these... 'things'. I tell you what, these 'things' go round and round forever, every post will sound just like the last one.

Note1: So... Do I work to achieve that new world? Which side? You don't need to know my partisanship because I am even confused myself.

Note2: As for Iran, I am still gathering my intelligence. Thanks nasri for the wake up call.

Note3: As for SIS, listen to him, he engages them firsthand. As for my view, here. I understand the uneasiness, but let's be a bit gentle.