Lost

by Coldplay

Just because I’m losing
Doesn’t mean I’m lost
Doesn’t mean I’ll stop
Doesn’t mean I’m across

Just because I’m hurting
Doesn’t mean I’m hurt
Doesn’t mean I didn’t get what I deserved
No better and no worse

I just got lost!
Every river that I tried to cross
Every door I ever tried was locked
Oh and I’m just waiting til the shine wears off

You might be a big fish
In a little pond
Doesn’t mean you’ve won
‘Cause along may come
A bigger one

And you’ll be lost!
Every river that you tried to cross
Every gun you ever held went off
Oh and I’m just waiting til the firing’s stopped
Oh and I’m just waiting til the shine wears off

Oh and I’m just waiting til the shine wears off
Oh and I’m just waiting til the shine wears off

hanya aku saja yang tahu mana aku akan pergi dan hanya Allah saja yang tahu mana aku akan sampai.

Perjalanan Hidup (Click here to view the video clip)

 

Perjalanan Hidup

Ramli Sarip

Aku yang masih di perjalanan hidup ini
Begitu lama berlegar di persimpangan dunia
Menempuh jarak dan titian
Rimba dan lautan
Mencari sesuatu yang abadi

 

Aku yang masih di perhentian hidup ini
Begitu jauh mengembara ke serata dunia
Mengejar siang dan malam
Surut dan pasang
Mencari sesuatu kebebasan
Mencari sesuatu kedamaian

 

Di mana berakhirnya
Perjalananku ini
Esok dan lusa bukan miliku
Oh Tuhanku
Lindungilah hambamu yang hina ini
Aku setia hanya padamu
Oh Tuhanku

 

Dr Wan Zawawi Ibrahim
Dunia Muzik WEA Sdn Bhd
1987 WEA Records Sdn Bhd

Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Dreams

Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

I wasted no time and get my butts off the cubic as soon as the time hit 12.30 p.m. to the Adidas shop nearby my office. My goal is to get a new trainer as it is time for me to get a new pair.

 

For some reason, I prefer Adidas and New Balance over other brands. I was actually looking for Adidas Supernova to replace my old one but it was rather too expensive for me today. Well, when I bought my first Supernova few years back, I bought it without a discounted price and mind you Supernova is quite pricey. Nevertheless for heavy people like me whose weight is more than 80kg, Supernova really helps in supporting my weight and uppermost my ailing  joints.

 

Perhaps after several brainwashing session with Bandit who constantly instill the ringgit sense in me, I caved in and went and look for a trainer with a good bargaining price.

 

I ended up buying Adizero Tempo as that was a good performing trainer that I can get at a very reasonable price. Comparatively, this Adizero Tempo is lighter than my Supernova but in terms of performance I can’t give a good review as I have not worn it for running. Certainly not a good reviewer I am. I am looking forward to run this evening and hoping that it is not going to rain.

 

  

 

 

Last weekend too, I bought a Speedo swimming trunk to join Bandit, Shazly, Shukran and few other friends to swim.

 

So I am gearing up for more sporting activities ahead. I just can’t wait to get back into my sporting life and strike a balance in this life.

Bogged with three major commitments that comes concurrently about 2 ½ years ago, I left the life that I used to have and embraced a new life with mixed feeling, euphoric and also jittery. Those two years also left me with writer’s block phenomenon of which I don’t feel happy for there are so many things happened that I wanted to write about.

 

Full of ideas lingers in my head but my mind was and perhaps still is occupied with unwelcomed challenges which certainly locked the writing creativity. The agony increased and it is raging from inside tearing every possible nerves, crippled my ability to move in an abstract manner.

 

I am now trying to regain the control over my life.

 

Thinking about change and how I could transform myself from a violence inclined person to a calmer one is a troubling journey. Self transformation toward a better person is indeed torturous.

 

It begins with a noble thought, and with that consciousness, you start to translate it to the way you act and react to the circumstances that has been put upon you. Sometime you stumble but sometime you may be able to overcome it with ease.

 

It is tough. You may leave your bad habit, but your bad habit never leaves you. But it is worth it when you realise that you have made progress. Only we, who knows how much progress that we have made.

While I am currently busy with loads of assignments and preparing for my final exam, I found myself indulging into another interesting domain of knowledge. And I can’t resist but to put down this experience into writing.

 

In my usual meetings with TAH, well, there are no fixed dates for our meetings but we’ll try to meet once in a while whenever we need to meet. For the past four months, we don’t really casually meet for the sake of  hanging out as both of us are quite occupied with our own commitment, but whenever we meet to pass some books or something, we’ll always found ourselves indulging into conversations that matter.

 

I know one of our common friends has been dying to meet us and getting involved with discussions, but our meetings for the past four months has been set in a rather impromptu basis.

 

Last Friday’s meeting was another impromptu meeting. It started out when TAH called me to get his borrowed copy from his’ “Institute” of the unpublished copy of the Religion of Islam which we made copies for our personal collections.

 

So we met up at our new usual place at one mamak restaurant along Jalan Ampang. It started out from 9.00 p.m. and to my surprise, we ended up talking for 6 hours non stop!. I have even lost my voice for talking. That was our longest conversation that we have ever had.

 

I guess we were really passionate in our discussion till we forget the time flies for a whopping 6 hours.

 

Our main topic of discussion was the book itself and obviously it leads to other topics that are related. Obviously politics, philosophy, our studies and a few other things which I can’t remember came in.

 

TAH is very resourceful and extremely knowledgeable and each and every time we had conversations, I will always passionately listening to him talking as there are more new things that I can learn.

 

On the way back to my home after sending him, I was wondering, if I have classmates of this type, it would have contributed to my studies immensely. Unfortunately, my current classmates’ ore not belong to this stock and it is just a plain going to class, sitting for exam and gets a degree kind of thing.

 

The thing is, such conversation is really intellectually stimulating and perhaps it could be really productive. Imagine if I were to have such stock of people in my class, I would be extremely satisfied graduating with my degree. It would build a stronger foundation than the one that I have now.

 

So now, let’s see if I can make it to post grad studies and see whether I’ll be able to secure good classmates who are passionate and eager to get involved in serious conversations constantly.

It is very rare for us, the younger people who admire Professor SMNA to get a chance to listen to his lectures these days. Last week my friend SMSed me telling that he found Prof’s transcript on lectures on the religion of Islam when he was at this Institute where he founded. I can’t wait to meet my friend and receive the transcript.

 

Yesterday, I browsed through many messages in my Facebook which was left un-read pathetically, and realised that there is a message sent by SMNA Appreciation Society coordinator telling that there is a voice recorded file of SMNA’s lecture uploaded in the website. I managed to download it and last night I spent listening to the talk. I am so excited to listen to the lecture and it is about 5 hours of talk! I love it when I receive a long lecture by any intellectuals, mind you I can be intellectually exhausted as well.

 

Prof SMNA explains many things about the thought that he has penned down, of which it was intellectually challenging for ordinary person like me to digest it, but it was made simple when I listen to his verbal explanations. One of my favourite on the talk – of which I only managed to listen to half of the lecture thus far – is on the coming of Islam to our part of the world. I wanted to read and own his work on this subject which is very difficult to find, but his thought on the subject was mentioned in his lecture.

 

His published written ideas on the above topic are as follow:

 

Books

 

1.                    Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago, DBP, Kuala Lumpur, 1969.

 

2.                    Islam Dalam Sejarah Kebudayaan Melayu (Islam in Malay History and Culture), Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1972.

 

3.                    Islam and Secularism, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, 1978.

 

Articles

 

4.                    A General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay Archipelago, in Profiles of Malay Culture, Histotiography, Religion and Politics, ed. Sartono Kartodirdjo, Ministry of Education and Culture, Directorate General of Culture, Jakarta, 1976.

 

5.                    Islam dan Alam Melayu (Islam and the Malay World), Budiman, Special Issue Commemorating the 15^th. Century of Hijrah, Universiti Malaya, December 1979.

 

 

I realised now that I have to revisit my paper submitted to my Lecturer on the above mentioned topic – which I am very well aware that that research was very shallow – my paper written lacks detailed research as there are few other important literature was not referred to and one of them is SMNA’s research on the said topic.

 

Recently, I discovered few other literatures on the subject, such as Babad Tanah Jawi and The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago. The latter could lead me to another information and literature on this topic.

 

Back to the original idea of this entry, my friend in his SMSed, mentioned that “So now we are officially Prof’s student!” Yes!