I've been meaning to write this post for awhile now.
I'm sorry it took so long.
Several months ago, I was driving to an orphanage with one of the kitchen helpers from the school at which I work. We just had a year end party in school and we had such kind and giving parents that at the end of the day, we ended up with boxes and boxes of cakes uneaten, so we decided to give them to kids who aren't as lucky as our students. During the drive, I made conversation with the kitchen helper, Janet, asking her about her family. After awhile, I ran out of things to ask and we fell silent. Janet then started asking me about the home we were going to. At some point she said "I didn't know there was one here," which led me to ask her if she's been to the ones elsewhere.
From there, I found out that, yes, she has. In fact, she does it on a weekly basis. More than that, she told me that she goes to give food or diapers and when she can't afford it, she just helps out. I swear to God, I wanted to cry.
You see, at the risk of sounding conceited and obnoxious, I've always considered myself as a "nice" person--nice enough to be considered charitable, at least. That day, Janet gave me a huge figurative slap on my face. Here she is, a woman who makes just enough to support herself, her medical fees (she's ill with something that requires a visit to the doctor every couple of weeks) and her little brothers who are still in school, and she still makes it a point to give back. And me, with all my privileges, luxury, and time, and what do I do with it?
I waste it.
That day I was humbled. And it made me promise myself, if not to be as charitable as possible, to at least give when I can, to not take what I have that others don't for granted, and to be grateful, always.
I hope I will keep improving on this, InsyAllah.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
humbled
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Weight
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Friday, December 3, 2010
bookworm? no, not really.
My friend Alia posted this on her blog the other day and I was so devastated by my results:
Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.
• Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
• Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (in the process of reading)
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’Urbervilles - 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 - FAV BOOK OKAY!
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
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carol (yes, believe it or not. Never got down to reading it)
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 - A.A. 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-time - 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 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 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 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. 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 FAV BOOK OF ALL TIME
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
13 books...out of a hundred. embarrassing!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
I have a lot to say.
I just couldn't find the time or words to say it right now.
But thank you for waiting.
I appreciate your patience.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Abah, let's go to Funkytown!
*Funkytown by Lipps Inc. playing on the radio*
Me: Apa point lagu ni?!
Abah: What do you mean apa point lagu ni?
Me: I mean, what's it even about?
*silence: Abah tengah fikir jawapan bernas*
and finally
Abah: Lagu ni pasal orang ni suruh bawak dia pegi tempat nama Funkytown
Me: Dah tu yang "talk about it, talk about it, gotta move on" ni apa? Dia ulang benda sama ja.
*more thinking silence*
no answer
Btw, Abah, "the song expresses the singer's pining for a metaphorical place that will "keep me movin', keeps me groovin' with some energy"." (Source: Wikipedia), so technically you're right. hehe :)
my mistake
In the name of Allah, the Loving and the Merciful
Dear God,
I've been asking for the wrong thing every time I pray. I've been asking for you to bring me happiness. I've been asking you to make things easier for me. I've been asking you to light up my path.
Today, I ask you for something new.
Dear God,
Grant me time so I may learn to be grateful for all that you have given me and more; grant me strength so in times of hardship and adversities, I may smile and push forward; grant me patience so that in my search for the path that you have set for me, I do not falter.
God, grant me a wealth of kind words, comforting arms, and a heart that is open to accept differences so that I may bring others happiness and hopefully, through that, find my own.
Verily, you are the one who hears and grants all prayers.
Ameen.
