Why we need to learn Arabic

I have been in Saudi for over 3 years now but my Arabic knowledge has not much improved – my bad. I have heard many lectures , read many books about the importance of reading and understand Quran but it has never giving me the same impact that these lectures on myself. Mashaallah it was really clearly explained! Just listen to brother Nouman Ali Khan you’ll know why learning Arabic is important to learn and understand the miracle of Quran.

Nouman Ali Khan – Divine Speech Prologue – Part 1

Why and How to Learn Arabic for Comprehension of the Quran

You can visit his website  Bayyinah.com where he teach (I wish I can visit him one day!) and don’t forgot to download his  podcast of tafseer Juz Amma here

Competitive Strategy

The new semester had started for my Competitive Intelligence study at OUM - I have to take two subjects for this semester which are Competitive Strategy and Macroeconomics .

As an online student- not being able to attend to the seminar in MY, I had no choice but to find alternative ways to understand the course so I turned to podcast and alhamdulillah I found one.

It is based on a taught course by Professor Mark Juliano (I think he’s a telco veteran!)  in the University of Carnegie Mellon University  in the MISM masters program. Topics include idea generation, company formation, funding, writing a business plan, sales & marketing, IPOs and acquisitions, and giving an investor presentation

It  is quite popular in the internet according Professor Juliano’s blog

The initial podcast episode was created in January 2007. Since then, the episodes have been downloaded/listened to over 40,000 times, and average about 1,500 downloaded episodes per week. I’m proud to say that I have now had many more students take the podcast course than in my total tenure of live teaching at Carnegie Mellon. My goal was always to reach as many people as possible. Isn’t podcasting great!

The links are as below:-

The podcast page

The blog

The course material

The ISM page at CMU

The Makkah and Madinah trip

This was the first time I drove with my new Trailblazer from Riyadh-Makkah-Madinah-Riyadh. It was enjoyable trip with additional passenger – Pah. She stayed with us for almost 6 month and only 2 weeks before leaving that we managed to bring her here. Apa nak buat I was busy with Hajj, project and also the OUM exam . Glad to hear that she was happy with the trip

Trip Madinah

The time lapse video was taken in early January 2010 . I started taking the shot after maghrib and completed it around 9am the next day. This was only our second trip to Madinah — took Pah with us before she’s leaving Saudi Arabia back to Malaysia.

Hajj Day 1: 8th Zulhijjah 1430

As we enter Makkah area from Taif – the journey was getting slower – the long queue of buses and cars at few checkpoints took us hours to reach Masjidil Haram area – which on an ordinary day it would only take at most 1 hour. The bus stopped ~ 2km from  the Masjidil Haram area around 4.30am -and we walked out of the bus towards Haram that morning  but stopped for a while to get wudu’ in a mosque nearby.

The bus stop area

After 20 minutes walking we reached Haram and as expected the tawaf area around Kaabah was crowded with people doing the tawaf – we managed to sneak in and the groups splitted [it is almost impossible to do the tawaf in group with such crowd] . As we’re doing Hajj Ifrad – I did tawaf Qudum and Hajj Saie that day and completed both around 7.40am.

A photo of me and Halim just after the saie – we promised to meet at the exit of Marwah before leaving to the bus waiting area . Around 11am we reached the Mina camp area.

I heard about it, seen it and finally Allah gave the oppurtunity to experience the life in Mina Camp.

Among the first thing that I did is to find a place to charge my mobile and the GPS receiver which was dead.

The bed for me for this few days – Raznan’s place just next beside me.
We had “laham mandi” – Arabic rice with mutton that evening and alhamdulillah for the gift of food from Allah.
I had cough that night perhaps to do excessive Navel orange I ate that night, luckily I brought with me my favourite cough syrup – Exylin and slept better after that.

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