Energised

We were able to kick off one event and one idea recently, both that were in our minds for a few months. now.

One was to organise a talk describing the doa's and practices a Muslim usually undertakes during pregnancy and after birth of a newborn. When Zayed was born, we were quite blur on the necessary prayers to recite for a smooth delivery and for good children, amongst many other things. We invited our Al-Qur'an Ustaz, Zulkiflee Bachik, to do the talk as he was very knowledgeable of the Qur'an. It's happening on 30 June, so if you're interested, come to www.shajr.sg and register.

The other idea stemmed from my interest in teaching Zayed (and eventually Talha) Arabic and some basic knowledge of the tenets of Islam. I asked Yasmin if she could draw up a nice curriculum for him, using her pre-school/child development skills and expertise. We thought about it some more as asked ourselves why not we make it a bigger class of about 8 kids and have a small Muslim playgroup? Seemed like a fine idea and initial checks revealed a lot of interest in such a group. Looking forward to making the idea a reality...

rethink

We recently took a 3-day trip to Batam to unwind. There was no agenda - well, the agenda was to have no agenda. We got ourselves a nice 2-bedroom suite at the Holiday Inn. I had some learning points:

1. I really need to relax. Like chill. Less uptight, less quick to blow my top and whack the kids or scold someone. This uptight thing has been going on for at least 2 decades, I'm sure, but I've been feeling it's consequences on my life more than ever.

2. I need to convert a lot more local currency when I leave Singapore. This time at Batam, we were all blindsided with the amount we needed to pay for a fuss-free holiday. For example: The hotel's cab contact was safer, but a major rip-off, and we almost didn't have cash to pay for that.

3. Prayer timings. Research prayer timings in a foreign place well in advance instead of scrambling and worrying about it the whole day (see 1).