Hajj Day 0: 7th Zulhijjah 1430
I left home around 6.30am that day on the 24th November 2009 – the weather was fine الحمدالله and I still can’t believe that I made it after all – after the boss told me two weeks ago that I should postpone the trip to next year. I did not gave up – called some colleagues from China and India etc to find a substitute for me to work during the Hajj period. Lot of drama – and I am glad I did not utter words that might affect relationship between me and my boss due to my “ketak puas hatian” to his decision . Added to that my cancelled trip to Bangkok was revoked and I went there for the training while I was in fever just a week before the Hajj trip. Despite all that – maybe the dhua from my mother, families and friends made him changed his decision at the very last minute -only Allah knew how happy I was hearing the good news less than 24 hours before the actual trip.
So that day six of us from Apartment Sri Wangi headed to Mutiara Restaurant where all other hajj “candidates” gathered waiting for the bus. We had breakfast first and around 8am the two buses started moving – then stopped at some government office place to collect the tasreeh [the permission to do Hajj] .
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We got the tasreeh perhaps in 20 minutes time but the bus had to wait for a while as there was a mechanical problem with the front door of the bus. There was a “mobile foreman” around so he took about an hour to fix the problem — [I later found out that it was very important for the door to be fixed as it needed to be properly locked to protect our stuffs inside . Imagine -- a place like Mina where thousands of people "living" around the area anything could happen -you can see people around opening the luggage compartment of most the buses so that they can sleep inside.]
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The bus then continued the journey and we arrived at the Miqat Qurn Manazil in Taif area around 9.50pm . Ustaz Ahmad the “leader” for our bus told that the bus will stop for about an hour to allow us to get ourself cleaned and changed to ihram . The picture below shows us the Miqat Area — we did not stop at the masjid as it was normally crowded with pilgrims so we went to some private “hotels” around the area [the messy green track in the picture shows the location]. Normally they had a room with bed(s) and a toilet – and the normal rate would be ~SAR20 per hour but on a peak season like Hajj — the price would go up –so we were charged per-person basis that day — SAR60 for six of us.
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After did my ghusl (shower) , applied some perfume according to the sunnah and got ready with the ihram - we went to the masjid nearby to perform the ihram prayer and later we recited the niyah out loud.
“Labbayk Allahumma Hajjan.”
“Oh Allah here I am performing Hajj.“
Around midnight the bus left to enter Makkah . There was a long queue after this – the police and Hajj authorities started checking all the passenger who entered Makkah . Obviously they were checking for the tasreeh . You can see people running around in ihram which I believed were those who came to do Hajj without the proper documentation or tasreeh. Can the authorities stop them? Ustaz Hassan reminded us before about the ayah :-
And proclaim to mankind the Hajj (pilgrimage). They will come to you on foot and on every lean camel, they will come from very deep and distant (wide) mountain highway (to perform Hajj)
Trip Details to Dammam
Start: 2009-10-08 08:01:29
End: 2009-10-08 12:10:09
Total time: 0 days 4 hours 8 minutes 34 seconds
Distance: 417.16km
Average speed: 100.7km/h
Max speed: 164.0km/h
Max altitude: 1151m
Time zone: GMT+03:00
Type: Normal track
————————————————————–
Stop (1):
08:01:30 to 08:06:23
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 4 minutes 53 seconds
Stop (2):
08:07:48 to 08:11:26
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 3 minutes 38 seconds
Stop (3):
08:11:46 to 08:17:11
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 5 minutes 25 seconds
Stop (4):
08:24:03 to 08:25:52
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 1 minutes 49 seconds
Stop (5):
08:27:19 to 08:30:01
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 2 minutes 42 seconds
Stop (6):
09:36:49 to 09:42:04
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 5 minutes 15 seconds
Stop (7):
09:42:05 to 09:53:13
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 11 minutes 8 seconds
Stop (8):
11:54:24 to 11:55:58
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 1 minutes 34 seconds
Stop (9):
11:58:33 to 11:59:37
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 1 minutes 4 seconds
Stop (10):
12:02:26 to 12:04:01
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 1 minutes 35 seconds
Stop (11):
12:05:05 to 12:06:07
Stop for: 0 days 0 hours 1 minutes 2 seconds
End
————————————————————–
Total moving time: 0 days 4 hours 8 minutes 34 second
Total stop time: 0 days 0 hours 40 minutes 5 second
————————————————————–
Speed Category Definition Distance %
————————————————————–
Congestion 0mi[ 0km] —> 6mi[ 10km] 26.56
Slow 6mi[ 10km] —>40mi[ 64km] 16.62
Medium 40mi[ 64km] —>70mi[112km] 07.85
Fast 70mi[112km] —>80mi[128km] 10.87
Excessive 80mi[128km] + 38.10
————————————————————–
Time Category Definition Distance %
————————————————————–
Early Morning 2 am — 6 am 00.00
Morning 6 am —10 am 57.43
Noon 10 am — 2 pm 42.57
Afternoon 2 pm — 6 pm 00.00
Evening 6 pm —10 pm 00.00
Night 10 pm — 2 am 00.00
————————————————————–
Weekday Category Distance %
————————————————————–
Monday 00.00
Tuesday 00.00
Wednesday 00.00
Thursday 100.00
Friday 00.00
Saturday 00.00
Sunday 00.00
————————————————————–
Driving Category Times
————————————————————–
Hard Braking (1sec change < 10mi[16km]/h) 0
Extreme Braking (1sec change < 15mi[24km]/h) 0
Hard Acceleration (1sec change > 10mi[16km]/h) 0
Extreme Acceleration (1sec change > 15mi[24km]/h) 3
————————————————————–
Average Speed (Driving Time) 100.7KPH
Reading Competitive Intelligence
I’ve been busy this year. I had this sudden urge to pursue my dream of having a Master degree — something that have been delayed for so long due to financial reasons+ my lack of confidence of getting the approval from any university due to my poor first degree result. One day in a Malaysian gathering at my aparment, I met this one Prof l. who lived nearby, and he convinced me that I should proceed with it (he was a part time lecturer in OUM) so I was inspired — not looking back (since I have an extra budget which have a strong possibilities of being used for some unnecessary stuffs in life) –so Bismillah .. — and I just applied for a place– first my application was rejected (my fault! I did submit the required forms properly.. yes I do have this problem with forms..) but later was accepted by OUM in February (thanks to the friendly and helpful staffs!) while I was away in Helsinki. So here it goes.. myself with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering continuing my studies in a new area System (Master in Information Science) .. ok not so new since I’ve been doing it for work.
I think I was the first long distance student accepted for this Competitive Intelligence course in OUM. (I have been reading about the course for quite some time but have no courage to pursue it!) I enjoyed the reading but serious reading with an exam ahead of you is something new — submitted my coursework in the very last minute (hey! Its not easy for a working father with 4 children to do self study at home!) so a week before the exam I took a week leave from work (3 days in Makkah for umrah + 4 days at home) and later sat for the exam in the Malaysian Embassy in Riyadh! It was tiring where at the end of the 2nd day of exam .. my brain almost stop functioning and my hand was crammed for too much writing.
The result?
Just got the complete transcript yesterday and Alhamdulillah! I am speechless ..
Read MoreDreams
I think I “dream” a lot – many times that my wife would shout at me asking if I heard what she just said, the regular answer would be Err ehh what was that again? … as I explained to her that it was a genetic thing. I got it from my father and my son Imran now inherit it from me too (at least that’s what most of his teacher said at every Parent’s Day session I attended to ).
Enough said about my day dreaming– do you know that dream is a serious thing ? Sigmund Freud wrote a famous book about it more than a century ago and those “neuro” scientist had their idea on where it came from too though I merely understand what those neuroscientist talked about here is a quote.
Allan Hobson is a retired Harvard psychiatry professor who did a great deal of neurophysiological work on dreaming and is vehemently anti-Freud, suggesting that dreams are just the higher cognitive centres creating a narrative out of essentially random brain stem activation.
[http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/10/the_big_fight_over_t.html]
Being a muslim, we have to refer back to the source — Quran and hadith . Here is an interesting lecture from my favourite online “teacher” — Anwar al-Awlaki about some rules of dream interpretation. Hope we can benefit from it, inshaallah!
Read MoreBerakhir sudah Ramadhan..
Selamat tinggal Ramadhan .. sedih jugak sebenarnya meninggalkan Ramadhan kali ini — mungkin sebab Ramadhan kali ini lebih bermakna dari yang dulu2– OK I have to admit I was not terawih regular before..selalu skip especially yang hujung2 tu.. Tiap2 hari kami yang dok di Apartment “Sri Wangi” Riyadh , berbuka bersama kemudian terawih pun bersama beramai2 ke surau di hadapan rumah. Imamnya al-hafiz so solat terawih kami memang lengkap 30 juzuk bacaannya sepanjang Ramadhan– terbayang2 angan2 suatu hari nanti anak2 menjadi hafiz dan hafizah walaupun perjalanan masih jauh — Imran dan Sabrina akan masuk ke sekolah Arab 11 hari lagi (Imran keluar dari Multinational School — he told his teacher that he moved because he wanted to be a good Muslim! That was exactly what I repeatedly told him — explaining about the move to the new school to get him mentally prepared for the new school) — after a year of soul searching+ fact finding we decided they better off going for “a classical education” (hey! they like watching The Smurf too!) and science + math and english can always be homeschooled .. Dah terbayang masalah yang akan kami hadapi di sekolah baru memandangkan ilmu agama kami yang cetek ditambahkan lagi dengan “arabic vocabulary” kami yang masih “limited”. Tapi kami percaya dalam perjalanan menuntut ilmu ni — yang penting usaha dan banyak berserah kepada Allah insyaallah akan ditunjukkan jalan 
Sambung cerita puasa , anak2 makin membesar — Imran , 7 tahun Oktober 18 ni buat kali pertama puasa dan cukup sebulan! Seronok agaknya bersama rakan2 sebaya walaupun liat nak bangun untuk sahur dan solat subuh. Ammar skipped few days of school because abahnya liat nak bangun 7am untuk hantar ke sekolah (Saudi working hours untuk Ramadhan pukul 10am – 4pm! ) Sabrina pun sibuk ke hulu hilir dengan 2 rakan sebaya main bersama dengan adiknya Alysha.
Aktiviti Ramadhan yang lain? Seperti biasa resipi.net hosting overloaded! Kami berpindah lagi buat ke sekian kalinya –trafik naik 4 kali ganda! Leceh sebenarnya kerja pindah hosting ni — ended up all other (at least 5!) websites have to be moved too..
Other than that I got back into old hobbies — electronics but this time its more serious — bought few books from Amazon dan other gadgets like multimeter, oscilloscopes, Arduino microcontroller and the mission– to learn building a robot! . Cisco CCIE project also still ongoing now I have 5 routers with NM-4A/S as frame relay switch + the NM16/A as the terminal server — maybe considering CCNP first to force myself get into it seriously.
Raya? Today is the first day!
Akhir kata Salam Hari Raya dari kami sekeluarga di Riyadh -Maaf Zahir dan Batin !
Some pictures here .
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again..
