Love

Love is a natural and essential aspect of our being. But when it is transformed into “true love” – love of the Creator – it acquires its true nature and colour, and later becomes “pure” pleasure at the threshold of union.

~~~

In the way of love, even a slight, imagined inclination of the lover to someone or something other than the beloved means the end of love. Such an inclination is forbidden. Love continue as long as the lover sees the beloved in everything around him or her, and regards every beauty and perfection as the manifestation of the beloved. If this is not the case, love dies.

- M. Fethullah Gülen
Pearls of Wisdom

Two Years of Working

A week ago, it was the completion of exactly two years of my working in the Civil Service.

Co-incidentally, last Monday I was invited by the Public Service Division to give a short talk to some interns at the opening day tea of the annual Civil Service Internship Programme. What I shared with the interns is an indication of my working experience in the Service.

I shared that the main reason why I joined the service was because I was interested to spend my time trying to achieve the warm and fuzzy people-oriented goals of the Government, as opposed to the cold and calculative profit-oriented goals of a private company. [I had done an internship at a PR firm in my Uni days and found it rather disappointing that so many talented people worked so hard under an ideology whose primary objective was to meet profit margins of the firm]. Indeed, the Civil Service aims to primarily deliver the best policies and programmes to the public using available and limited resources.

The two years have been a nothing short of a whirlwind for me - it took me very long to get adjusted to the scheme of things. Life was initially very tough, with the steep learning curve, the immense expectations and workload. Looking back, alhamdulillah I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to go through it all and come out alive, a stronger person.

Having been exposed to the massive system, the processes are easier to manage and anticipate, but there is still a great deal to learn. But the main things I've learnt are that...

a) There will always be work to do, and you can never finish it
b) Work needs to be prioritised, if not, you will go mad in trying to do everything at once
c) No matter how nasty people can be, just be yourself and "do da rite thang"
d) Work is not everything - it's just a temporary part of L.I.F.E.
e) I don't carry the world on my shoulders

These are just the main things. There are more. But I shan't bore you with those. If you want I can share the gory details over some teh tarik and mee goreng at ABC market hawker centre.

The heart

We hurt the people we love the most, knowingly or unknowingly. We could be taking them for granted, or taking their love for granted. Whichever it is, it hurts all over.

The one that almost got away

I’ve finally gotten the chance to go for a class run by one of my very good friends, an Ustaz.

Most – no – ALL of my Ustazs became my friends after I was their student – however, only this Ustaz became my friend first. I have not had the opportunity to become his student so far, due to bad timing, work commitments, location and what not. There was once he gave me notes for one of his earlier classes, for which I couldn't attend – but the notes just didn’t cut it, as there was so much of potential dialogue that was missing from the pages of the notes. The worst thing is, I’d always tell him, jumping up and down, “Yes bro, I’ll come down! For you, for you, peace out!” but there’ll be some stupid reason or another that would hinder me from going.

Recently, I was not able to go for a class of his on jurisprudence, as it was the aftermath of a whole range of developments in the family. Just when I decided to go for one of his last few lessons, a doofus vacuum cleaning salesman had to make an appointment and demonstrate his $3,000 vacuum cleaner at my house. I had to go back home as my wife and kid were all alone, and I had initially forgotten about it. What gave the salesman the looney idea that he could just walk in and try to sell me something, the money for which I could use to pay the bills for Zayed’s pampers for more than a year? Ludicrous! (as one of my profs from NTU used to say)

The following week, I got held up at work for something, and again I wasn’t able to go for the class. Subsequently, I decided not to go at all for the class, as I felt I had fallen short of my own limits in keeping my word.

Then a wonderful opportunity came a-knocking, and finally, I realized that this was the only window I had been given to be taught by my friend before he travels abroad for further studies. I jumped at the chance and decided to even forgo my weekly tafsir sessions at Abdul Ghafoor mosque, which unfortunately clash with the new class (I'm hoping to get audio recordings from the masjid).

I feel that I have so much to learn from my friend, and from the bottom of my heart, it pains me that he will be overseas in less than 3 months for two things - one will be the sense of loss of the physical presence of a friend whom I've come to know for the whole of my working life so far, one who has kept my spirits afloat during the most testing of times at work and in personal life. The other loss is that I feel that I have not even scraped the topmost layer of his immense knowledge. Wallahu a'lam.

But there is a reason and purpose why we met. May our paths intertwine in the years to come, Insha Allah, for me to gain some knowledge from him.

Mind Your Own (Family) Business

"Family business". A term loathed by those who are bound by it and envied by those who aren't in it.

My dad set up shop in 1981, and named it after me. He used all the contacts he got at his former workplace, an English textile company, after the company decided to wind up. After a lot of hard work, my dad managed to get several steady clients. The business was very successful - it was a niche market with few players and relatively good yields. It was the textile business - my dad would purchase the "raw materials" needed to make a good suit/tuxedo or shirt, sell it to tailors, and voila - a B2B arrangement was born.

With the advent of the PC in the 90s, my dad bought a computer, at the insistence of my then teenager elder brother. The deal was this - if my dad bought him a PC for his own use (which was bloody expensive those days for a 286 Mhz model), the PC would give economies of scale by also being useful for the computerisation of the the business! Great work, thought my brother. The PC was bought, and then the business changed.

From www.freedomministries.com

My dad's operations became more automated, and more professional, so to speak. Invoices were typed by my brother on the "Sherry" computer (Wordstar! Wordperfect!), and printed on a dot matrix printer. So the administrative work was largely handled by my brother, while my father remained blissfully IT unsavvy.

Then my brother had to go to NS and University... and slowly the mantle was passed to me. I did all the invoicing for a good number of years, mainly in my NS and Uni days. I resented it and really did not fancy working for the family business - I especially did not buy the idea that I should rightfully be doing the work because the company was named after me. Like I asked for it. I was more interested in my free time and academic pursuits. In retrospect, I could've managed it fine. But the sudden nature of the work (there was no fixed time - it was all ad-hoc) gave me much grief. Further, the boss was my father. So the conflicts that arose often blurred the lines and gave everyone at home much to grieve about as well.

When I graduated and got a full-time job, I told my dad that this was it - that I was resigning from the family business. Of course, it did not go down too well, but it was a reality everyone had to face up to, as I was really up to my neck with my own work. So my younger sister stepped into the role, reluctantly, and did all the work (as she studied at NIE) right up to Dad's passing.

~~~

The company's breath and soul was my dad. After he left, the company was breathless and struggled. There were accounts to settle, and transactions in transition, and stocks to clear. I remember the week after the funeral, I had to make a few urgent deliveries to some customers - I had to go down to the warehouse, hunt down what the clients asked, transport them to their swanky offices in the CBD area, and issue invoices. After the tiring three days, I sat down and cried for a good 15 minutes. I just couldn't believe that a 62-year old man had subjected himself to such physically strenuous work, plus dealing with a drafting invoices and accounts for each of the 15 or so clients he served, for the last few years.

I realise now that he would have never rested, if not for the perpetual rest he is now in. In fact, he had made some deliveries on the morning he passed away.

As the days went by, there was more and more work that we were unearthing. Banks loans, outstanding amounts, uncleared stocks and a whole lack of inertia to work on these things. We've been acting on these things the last two days (mostly my brother and sister, as I was occupied with work). Ironically, the thing we loathed to do all these years is something that has been the core of our conversations for the past 3 months. Wallahu a'lam.

Slowly, we're trying to give the family business a closure it deserves. Many criticised us for not wanting to take over the running of the business - they said it was what fed me and my siblings all these years.

The family business did not feed us. Allah is sufficient for everything. The business was a means through which we were fed. Now the means has changed. We have our own careers and that is the way things were meant to play out.

The other truth is that the nature of the industry is such that many businesses do not require agents to do their work for them. My dad provided several niche products, and combined with a winning personality, he was able to get a fair amount of custom. I don't believe any of us children would be able to match up to his flair for handling clients and being their "friend".

I hope that in the next few weeks, we would be able to settle all the outstanding financial and legal issues, and in this, dad would be happy that at least we finished what he started, in a good way, Insha Allah.

Shaggy

Sufficient to say, the past two days have been bloody tiring.

A family business is something that sticks with the family, for good or for worse. It feeds the family, but also attempts to swallow the family. Resistance need not be futile, but it will be delayed. More on running a family business soon.

Until then, I'd just like to say that I like Paula Abdul's latest single. I know it's kinda late in the day, but I just heard the song two weeks back. The song is cool, and the video is similarly cool. Randy Jackson's cool too, and Paula is still able to do her moves. Everything's cool, doooode.

The Pampered

We stayed over at mum's place, and the house became alive with Zayed's cooes and cries. Last night, as he fell fast asleep, we decided to steal some time away to watch the mindless Harold & Kumar sequel - totally obscenely hilarious. I marvelled at how the far M18 rating has come from the R(A) days.

There's something about mindlessness which is addictive, and it's all in this movie. I watched the first one four years ago, and this movie is basically a rehash of the old one with different settings, characters, moral story etc - Sorry, no moral story here. The producers just say that a few bad eggs within the American civil service make the whole country look like a bunch of baffoons, but actually they are nice folks, and they have a cool President. The lead actors did a good job, like the previous one - totally into the role and enjoying it (at least Kumar).

After the movie, we swung over to the very popular Rex MacKenzie chicken rice stall at Prinsep Street. They are so busy there, they didn't see us coming. So we had to get the menu ourselves and order with an auntie who suddenly realised we were sitting on the table meant to cut cucumbers for the chicken rice. The side dishes relatively cost a bomb, but overall, the food's pretty good. The hotplate beancurd is a winner. For an old outfit fitted with old aunties, they even have a website.

~~~

Today was wonderfully lazy Vesak Day holiday. Mom cooked a coconut-milk laden lunch (the coconut rice, chicken curry, mixed vegetables) which put my wife to a brief sleep. I fought the sleepy feeling because I wanted to surf the net. But I lost the battle and slept briefly on the couch, as Zayed fed on non-coconut milk, called Similac.

It always pains my mother (and mother-in-law, for that matter) when we leave the house with Zayed in tow. They would miss the cries and baby-talk, and all things related to Zayed, including his soiled diapers. We returned to HQ Kim Tian today, where in a few short minutes, Zayed's other grandmas came to visit him. It took a while for him to get his bearings right - "Whoa! All these grandmom's are fussing over me! YES! I'm feeling L.O.V.E.!"

Tomorrow we're going to tonsure his head. Nope, there's no malice here. Simply, his hair is growing and I think it needs to be short. Might as well tonsure it to get 'air' his scalp and make him feel comfortable for a few days, since he perspires a lot.

Reaching out

Yesterday Masjid Al-Amin organised its inaugural monthly Tamil talk, on issues pertaining to Islam. It became a fashion about 2 years ago to have monthly talks by the Imams of the different Tamil-based mosques. So each mosque invited the other's Imams regularly. Telok Blangah has a strong Indian-Muslim presence, but suggestions for a monthly talk fell on deaf ears for about 2 years. Finally, it was made a priority and alhamdulillah, it was a successful one yesterday. I thank my dear friends who made time for the event to help out by snapping photos (Jalsa) and doing random acts (Ali). (Good jobs guys!)

On the "Responsibilities of Parents", the talk did not start off with a full house, but eventually about 70% of the seats were filled. The content of the talk was basically a collection of hadiths that our Master s.a.w. had said about parenting.

I feel that a talk given by any India-based Imam is never fully in sync with the needs of a diverse Singaporean, Indian-Muslim audience. The audience consists of those who - yes- come for a exposition of hadiths, but it also consists of working professionals who seek Islam's practical relevance in their lives, and interested youth who are forming their opinions on their faith in relation to other faiths they come across. In view of such diverse needs, just quoting and unquoting acontextual hadiths will never cut it. There needs to be a mix of messages for the different groups.

I look forward to future monthly talks, where hopefully, we can control the content of the talks by actively engaging the speaker beforehand, and try to make it even more meaningful for those who attend.

Randomisation

The organisation I work for had its annual get-together/retreat/funfair event three days ago. One of the items was a skit that aimed to tell staff the new policies that had been implemented recently. Being a thespian with a virtually non-existent international track record, I ws naturally considered for a bit role. It had four lines. Anyway - the other actors were not thespians, but they had the enthusiasm and can-do spirit to make up for it.

It was fun to act with some of them. They seemed so thrilled to be part of it, and so excited that they had make-up and were actually nervous before making their onstage appearance. It was like they were re-living the primary school days they never had.

~~~

Bosses have a way of calling you in for a meeting right before you are about to leave for home, and have lengthy policy discussions and armchair speculations. Today was one such meeting and felt like throwing an atom bomb at my boss. There will always be a point when the meeting would seem to come to an end with "Ok, that's all. Hey. I was just thinking about the monkeys in Guatemala..." and a fresh new discussion on monkeys in Guatemala will start. This will happen a few times until you feel like throwing a few atom bombs at the conversations-starters' faces. Meetings...

~~~

I don't believe it. I walked straight into my kitchen cabinet door and received a cut and a swelling on my face. It just missed by left eye by that much. "Doofus" doesn't quite cut it.

Cool Iron

Five reasons why I think Ironman is worth the money:

1. Robert Downey Jr gives Tony Stark a characterization never seen for any comic book hero before. His interpretation of a womanising, laid-back, brilliant and at times obsessive billionaire scientist is a joy to watch.

2. The Robert Altman-styled improvisation of dialogues gives the movie a realism to the movie, making some scenes remarkably impactful.

3. Ironman is all about technology - and the world we live in eats, drinks and breathes technology. It is a movie that attempts to deal with the constructive and destructive power of technology in a contemporary setting.

4. The movie is intelligent and superbly hilarious.

5. The Ironman armoured suit, if it really existed, and really worked, would be the most awesomest and coolest thing ever made.

I've said my piece. The money you spent on both the Fantastic Four movies could've been well spent watching Ironman twice.

My Role

Abdul Ghafoor Mosque - Photo taken on 17 Nov 2006

It was a late day in the office. I was tired and my muscles were aching. The laptop weighed down on my back like an anvil. The phad thai and pineapple rice, dinner for tonight, hung over my tightly clenched fingers. The half-watermelon added to the weight, straining my fore-arms. The tin of baby poweder, for which I had to make a detour to Fairprice to the get the fairest price (no less), completed the gravitational torture my arms had to endure after a tiring day at work. Every step I took, I felt as though I was forcing myself to inch forward. The headache did not help to ease matters.

Just then, a voice asked me: "When you have everything laid out for you, on a gold platter, with fruits and milk, fragrance, and cool wind, will you not suffer a bit for Him?" At that point, I realised the folly of my thinking.

This is not the time to think about resting. This life is all about working. The Creator has provided the created with gifts unimaginable to most people. He has also given his creation the task of being the wasilah for those around him. Throughout our lives, we have various wasilah who are there to dispense the mercy of Allah onto you. The Prophet s.a.w. was the greatest wasilah of Allah, who gave us the message of Allah, in effect being the wasilah of the greatest of rahmah of Allah.

And so each of us is a wasilah for someone else. We are Allah's servants only if we realise it to be. I am the wasilah for my wife and son. Food must reach them for their well-being, and I am the conduit for that. A little inconvenience on that path is just that - a little.

I straightened my crooked gait and increased my pace. I will fulfill my duties, Insha Allah. I forgot any pain I felt, and endured this brief discomfort for the sake of Allah. The healthy body that Allah has bestowed upon me - Masha Allah! - is a tough and a good one.

No Go! India & Time for Eulogy

There are three mothers in the family now - my mother, my wife and my sis-in-law (mother-to-be lah). I surprised my wife with a bouquet in the morning, as presented by Zayed (who was, as usual, lying down and talking to the air-conditioner). Later for lunch, we decided to bring my mother to a restaurant at Vivocity known as Go India!.

I was struck by Go India!'s diverse patronage - 90% North Indian nationals, 9% Singapore Indians, and 0.5% each of Caucasian and Malay. (Of course, this is a highly biased observation taken on one day at one point in time.) But you get the drift. Somehow, it's very popular with the India Indians.

The food was very good - the mango lassi one of the finest I've ever had. The decor was commendable. Chic and all that jazz, complete with an alfresco option, overlooking the scenic construction and multitude of cranes that are working hard to finish the IRs.

But the service seriously sucked. No one asked us what we wanted. No menu. No water. It was as if we had to instinctively know that there was a lunch buffet going on and we had to join in the fray. So we did. The menu came upon request, as with the water. As with everything else. Hell - we could've left the place and nobody would have asked us to pay!

~~~

I went for a 7th-day prayers of a person, which is basically prayers conducted on the 7th day since the decease of the person. Prayers can be conducted any time - but my community has a way of setting the odd days aside for special prayers, like the 3rd, 7th, 10th and so on (with the exception of the 40th day).

The prayers can take any form - recitation of Surah Yaasin, followed by repetitions of the names of Allah, or with a combo of recitation of Qur'anic surahs and exaltations of Allah (ratibs) and so on. Today, the ratib Jalaliyya was recited, with repetitions of over a thousand times of Allah and His qualities, and asking of forgiveness from Him.

As we recited, I realised that many of our gatherings where we pray for the death do not include talking a bit about the person who passed away - eulogy equivalents. Today's sessions had not a single mention of the lady who had passed away, except for the part where the recitation of the Yaasin was dedicated to her. There was no mention of her character, how she lived her life, and what legacy she left behind in this world - things that would make us remember her with joy.

Maybe it's just this majlis. I know for my dad, one of the imams I had invited to conduct prayers actually spoke at length about death, the condition of my dad in the Hereafter as a result of our prayers and so on. At least there was something about the person for whom the whole session is conducted.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, we all don't talk openly about our love for a person or talk about a person after they're gone. But I feel it'll do the family members a lot of good to just talk about the deceased person, and about how the person will be in the Hereafter. It will be a good opportunity for every majlis to reflect about the temporal nature of this life, and to anticipate the abundant joys of the next life, which is permanent.

Hairy Beach

There is definitely less beach on Sentosa. And more construction.

Baby Zayed, in his free time, likes to look at the sky outside, or speak (in Standard Baby) to the air-con unit at our master bedroom. To help him get a life and to also dump his shorn hair into the ocean, we decided to go to Sentosa. [The non-familiar among you may wonder - what "dump shorn hair?" It is a tradition in my quarters to release the shorn hair of a new born into the sea. Why or why not, I don't know. Maybe it's to signify that the baby's first hair shall be "one with the Earth"? I don't know. All I know is that when you're older, your shorn hair gets stepped on and mixed with other hairs, and eventually swept up and disposed of at the barber shop, and picked up and dumped some more by Sembwaste.] Anyway, to all the environmentally mental folks out there - relax. It's not like I'm dumping crude oil into the sea or something. It's just 50 grammes of baby hair that will split up into millions of indivisible pieces.

Moving on. So we went to Sentosa, during the trip where Zayed promptly slept, like he usually does, boring fellow. We saw the construction of the IRs, where, in a few years' time, Zayed would chill out with his adolescent friends playing pool. (And not do other 'bad' things.) The whole place looked dug-out, it was amazing.

I also noticed and finally articulated in my mind something that I consider rather freaky in Sentosa. It is the presence of strange-looking speakers all over the island which play some in-house music all the time. They look like land mines and cameras all at once. They freak me out because they give a Big Brother look to Sentosa.

Freaky Object Emedded in Ground. Yikes.

We eventually reached the crowded Siloso beach, where my wife was asked to pay to experience the breeze. I mean, come on lah beb. You build the bloody bar/restaurant right in the smack of the beach where the wind comes in nicely, and you put nice tables and chairs by the beach, but you won't let people sit unless they buy an overpriced Coke from you? Hallo friend. Whatever happened to the beach culture, which includes scantily-clad folk and some hospitality?

~~~

The hair dissipated almost instantly. Job done.

Zayed tried his best to look interested in the scenery, but failed miserably. He only woke up at Coffeebean to demand his own non-ice blended Similac.

Wife enjoyed herself, she practising a more outdoor lifestyle these days, after the grind of the weekday indoor routine of bathing and feeding and rocking Zayed. A good prelude to her first-ever Mother's day today.

I'm just happy the family got to lepak a bit at the nexus of the sun, the sand and the sea.

The beach (duh)

"I like to sleep, even when Dad tells me that the beach is beautiful."