Since Ammar saw his works in Youtube he was so excited – he even asked me to scan his latest drawing even the uncompleted ones!

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

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

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

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.

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

Wow! How inspiring  but reading was much easier than implementing it   I knew that there is  better method from the traditional Islamic education system – the madrasah! And recently I found a book which clearly explained the life in a madrasah.

Check this out – a book from Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies about the life in Nadwat Al-Ulama in India. A forgotten and misunderstood education system inherited from the glorious Islamic ages – a must read!

Madrasah Life

A student’s day at Nadwat Al-Ulama
By Mohammed Akram An-Nadwi – Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies

As quoted taken from a book written by MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. H. SLEEMAN,1788-1856. Resident at the Court of Lucknow, India describing the education in a madrasah.

Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

Perhaps there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn, through the medium of the Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our colleges learn through those of the Greek and Latin–that is,grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After his seven years of study, the young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled with the things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford–he will talk as fluently about Socrates and Aristotle, Plato, and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna: (_alias_Sokrat, Aristotalis, Aflatun, Bokrat, Jalinus, and Bu Ali Sena); and,what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through life.

And again I am inspired !

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.

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] .

The Tasreeh

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.]

Route from Riyadh to Makkah

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.

Miqat Qurn Manazil.

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)

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

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 ..