Still under heavy development -the old city of  Diriyah the original city of  Saudi Royal families will become the main historical attraction here in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We went there with few families recently for breakfast (but due to the cold and windy weather we left early)  but as usual I managed to do the favourite past time hobby – photo shooting

Here are some of mine taken using my new Olympus PEN E-PL1

Though its been the fourth year I lived in the sandy Arabia – its only the 3rd time that I have traveled to the Prophet’s City of Madinah. The first one was a bus trip perhaps 2 years ago and the 2nd one was when Pah was here early this year  . This time the missions were to meet ¹ Abang Shamsul and Kak Mas + ²Kak Imah and family whom happened to be there after completed their Hajj this year. Also I just need ³to escape from the life in the office – Hajj season works were completed “successfully” <- that what I heard from emails (got this every year so it became less meaningful!) – I just need a break — and there’s no such perfect place other than  Madinah to bow and  prostrate to the Creator in the Holy Prophet’s Masjid  :)

He drove the car to Hamra Street and we were lost for 30 minutes before finding our way to the Marble Tower around 12 midnight on that Sunday. The Hamra St.  a one way street like most of the road here, is a popular road in Beirut and the area around it is full with restaurants , bars , apartment and hotel.  At certain area there were road blocks with military people – I told Pancho that Lebanese army are friendly and more human than .. hmm you know

[OK the day had finally come and I can't give any valid reasons for not accepting this trip to Beirut, not that I am avoiding this place as I said before -- being abroad alone without the family is not a fun thing to do--I missed my kids I left Riyadh on 15th June after got the visa (though I could get it on arrival at the Beirut-- but I hate the hassle explaining to the immigration if there were problems) ]

First day, was a tough day to me — I was given a list of tasks to do completed a few but went into some problems that caused me to stayed up until 3am at customer’s place! Thank Allah problem was resolved a day later (man I told my colleague I will always remember my first day there!)

Beirut is only the 3rd Arab city that I had visited after Dubai – French is widely spoken here, indeed they greeted with “Bonjour” and said “Merci” instead of Shukran as a way of say “Thank You”. The Lebanese  had French as their 2nd language and taught widely at school — I always amazed with people who can speak multi-languages. My friend Pancho, spoke fluent Arabic, English,French,Spanish and German too He asked me do I speak Arabic ? — considering that I have been living in Saudi for almost 2 years . Not much I said — though I can read Quran , conversational Arabic is not something that being practised –and the fact that we were taught classic Arabic — I bet that he would laugh if I  said “Kaifa Haluka!” to him  and he burst into laughter and agreed that he last heard of that  phrase perhaps from his Arabic class ages ago !  People greet with Keefak here in Lebanon [ Keef Halak in Saudi!]

The International Day for Ammar and Imran is here again. Imran was the main feature for his class this time round – I was surprised!

. It does not matter to me if we get zero economic growth if Pas ruled Malaysia. Allah holds the key to all rezeki, He gives to whomever He pleases and He denies whomever He pleases. The richest country in this world is not one governed by the most worldly capable group of humans. The richest country in this world is one who obediently implements the law and the life as commanded by Allah

We just need to have some faith!

]]> http://rizalafif.net/2008/03/does-it-really-matter/feed/ 0 http://rizalafif.net/2008/02/second-umrah-trip-for-the-family/ http://rizalafif.net/2008/02/second-umrah-trip-for-the-family/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2008 08:02:57 +0000 rizal http://aminur.info/2008/02/15/second-umrah-trip-for-the-family

Alhamdulillah – we completed our 2nd umrah trip to Makkah last weekend. Unlike the first one, we were “quite” well prepared this time knowing what to expect from the children.
We left Riyadh at around 8pm, Wednesday night on a Saptco bus with 7 families (almost 50 of us from the “Sri Wangi” aparment!) and reached Makkah 12 hours later.
Ammar was in ihram for the first time but only later when we reached Haram (we were at Miqat area at fajar , crowd was huge at the changing room + subuh almost ended so I only managed to get Imran to wear ihram ) Around 8am the bus reached the New Safa hotel and 30 minutes later we were ready to do the tawaf –Masjidil Haram was just around the corner + we can see the Door 56 from the hotel.
Thanks to Bro. Zamhari , an ustaz accompanied us during this umrah, he lead us during tawaf and saie + giving us a short tazkirah too before dinner.

As for the family — our tawaf was OK, I carried the 10kg “baby” Alysha all the way + holding Imran while ummi taking care of Ammar and Sabrina.
The new saie area was crowded that day as they’re still renovating the original one (also Saudi school holidays!) + it was quite dusty , so Sabrina started crying after the 4th round –Ammar was cool, Imran was busy chatting with his new best friend Amir and Alysha was asleep on my shoulder.
We completed the umrah 1 hour before Zuhur at 11.30am and all of us went straight back to hotel.
As usual I bought few books from the bookshop here, my Imran also asked me to buy him a Quran to be given to his favourite ustaz “mengaji” — I was surprised at first but glad that he appreciated his Quran teacher.
Our bus left Makkah around 3.30pm to head back to Riyadh — we reached home on Saturday, 9th February at 2am . Alhamdulillah!

]]> http://rizalafif.net/2008/02/second-umrah-trip-for-the-family/feed/ 0 http://rizalafif.net/2008/02/been-lazy/ http://rizalafif.net/2008/02/been-lazy/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:37:21 +0000 rizal http://aminur.info/2008/02/15/been-lazy I have not updated my blog for quite some time now — yes I have been lazy, I would say– I got a fever for a week added to that a bad cough . Workload on the new project was quite overwhelming but I think it was still okay as I was enjoying every minute of it. We had this OSI LAN issue on the BSC integration so for few days I could not sleep well thinking about the problem — even dreamt of some BSC commands in my sleep!!
For the bad cough, it lasted for 3 weeks – went to the hospital and the doctor x-rayed my lungs suspecting pneumonia , always knew it was just a bad cough (result was negative!) but in Saudi the hospital would make you run a dozen of tests so that they can claimed as max as possible from the insurance company.

Other than that, I bought a treadmill so that ummi and me can lose some of our “extra” weight — put my Ipod and my EEE PC in front of it for our personal entertainment while burning calories.

Also I am officially now a big fan of Dr. Gregory House , kept telling my wife that I should have done medicine before only if I not scored badly in my SPM biology exam!

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]]> http://rizalafif.net/2008/02/been-lazy/feed/ 2 http://rizalafif.net/2007/12/the-prayer/ http://rizalafif.net/2007/12/the-prayer/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:48:02 +0000 rizal http://aminur.info/2007/12/07/the-prayer/ A few times , I got this weird look from people asking me this question when I told them I came from Malaysia– “What the &&^$&&? are you doing here??. You have such a nice country to live!” Hmm.. Very true , I was wondering about it too — at times I just couldn’t believe that I am working here in Saudi — it was not even in my list of destination. But Allah knows better

My usual answer would be to earn some extra $$ or for Hajj ,for Makkah or recently because petrol was expensive in Malaysia?
Believe me, initially it was not that “easy” to decide to move here in Saudi leaving the family , my favourite cendol — the language was new (though I learnt to read Quran since 6 years old– how sad that I can’t understand much Arabic!) also with my “look and dressing ” I would get hmm maybe a 3rd class treatment at most places – sometimes I was mistaken as people from India, Indonesia or Sri Lanka? (I got someone asking me whether my children belongs to my employer at a nearby petrol pump!!)

That was the initial impression, after a year living here I learnt and experienced few priceless lessons among others — about the importance of solah on time + jama’ah.
I think I was lucky to live (perhaps the only place in the planet!) in a country where congregation prayer (jama’ah) was placed at the very high importance in the society. Also at the workplace mostly nobody would argue/deter you to perform your prayer on time after azan – meetings would be interrupted , works will be halted at azan just to attend the call of prayer to the God All Mighty! Allahu Akbar!

]]> http://rizalafif.net/2007/12/the-prayer/feed/ 1 http://rizalafif.net/2007/09/relocating-again/ http://rizalafif.net/2007/09/relocating-again/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:27:14 +0000 rizal http://aminur.info/?p=3 I am relocating again.

Alhamdulillah ,its the holy month of Ramadhan 1428 – also marked almost a year since I came to Saudi Arabia.
The busiest month for ibadah and also the start  of the busiest month for my career for 2007.

Its also the busiest month for my wife website Resipi.net where traffic doubled ( I meant it!) than normal day (you know-lah why..) and CPU issue came up again due to high number of queries for recipes .
And again the hosting will close the website down for few days which meant time to move to a new hosting yet again.

And that’s not all , we’re moving to a new home soon.

And I thought hmm I should change my blog again!

So ,
Wait ..

]]> http://rizalafif.net/2007/09/relocating-again/feed/ 1