Syafeeq & pakistan

“Whatever.”
-Musharraf

For the moment:
Symphatique-Pink Martini

PAKISTAN AT CROSSROAD

Date: 1st February 2008
Day: Friday
Time: 3.00 pm – 5.00 pm

Venue: Conference Room 1, Research Center, International Islamic University Malaysia

Speakers:
1. Prof. Dr. Arujunan Narayanan (School of history and civilization, IIUM)
2. Prof. Dr. Abdullahil Ahsan (Department of history and civilization, IIUM)

Moderator: Prof. Dr. Malik Badri (Department of psychology, IIUM)

*Thank you Asmaa’ Alwi of IIU for the invitation.

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On another note. An extended relative of mine, Syafeeq bin Alwi bin Muhammad Alhabshee, son of Nawal binti Nasir Binshahab, passed away this morning. He was involved in a car accident. For those of you who know him, the congregation leaves Al-Falah mosque at USJ Taipan after Asar.

Brief

Before randomalphabets.com was set up in Nov 2007, it was on another URL which was established in Nov 2006.

The resettlement program is still underway. A few days ago I transferred two posts from the old portal, to the one that you’re reading now.

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*Do not comment on family pictures*

This post is about a very (very) oblivious/ignorant girl who embarrassed herself (and perhaps country) in front of her boyfriends family. They broke up a month after this very (very) funny incident.

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*Sharp receptionist*

This post is about perhaps a visually impaired lady I came across that had perfect eyesight. My literal interpretation of her words and a twist of sarcasm. Unless it was her being very subtly sarcastic with me.

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*d a r l y’s f u n h o u s e*

A good friend of mine is selling off some clothes she own. Some new, some used. All in decent condition nevertheless. She is a part-time fashion consultant. Her pictures might not be similar to those that made Adam King-Guinness Man of The Year, but this good hearted girl does have style. She delivers personally if you live in the Klang Valley. By courier/post if it is not.

I vouch for most of her style, and would probably buy some for myself. But I can’t afford the sex op.

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Condition a fake accent

“Helloy mate. How are youy?”
-N/A

For the moment:
Can’t Get You Out Of My Head-Kylie Minogue

*If you are a woman, or a man, or a woman, or a person or an animal that has or once had an accent, or dyed your hair to a colour that is natural to another race, and have been criticized for it, then this post would interest you more than it would to my 2.4 million readers.

There are people around me who smoke, drink, take drugs, train in the sport of pre-marital sex, gamble, blog, dye their hair (generally brown, slouch, have tatoos, make fascinatingly lame jokes or dress fairly bad. These are all the things, I have been taught directly or by implication, not to do either on the basis of my religion, tradition, peer, custom, surrounding and/or culture.

To make your reading convenient, lets call this, or the elements above as ‘conditioning.’

This also relates to the post I wrote about the 11 years of conditioning in the Malaysian education system.

I have spent an amount of time in other places as well or with a group of people that use a peculiar word not used by everyone. I pick up those words and use it frequently when I’m at a different place. But as it is not reiterated, I gradually reduce using it.

I am easily influenced in that area.

A significant number of people I know are annoyed with others who travel, studied or lived overseas and come back to their home country, speaking with an accent. There are times I find it annoying as well. However, there are times, they deserve the benefit of doubt. To be fair.

This benefit can be found on Page 2, Item 13(b) when you open a Savings Account with CIMB.

The annoyance that most people have is generally on the basis that, how could someone go through 20 or so years speaking in his native accent, study abroad for a short few years and have an accent conversion?

*As I am a Maslem, and know much more Maslems than non-Maslems, I will share my observation amongst them. Not to say that it only exists amongst Maslems, but because my lack of contact, I rarely get to gauge what the view of the non-Maslems on this matter. So my capacity to use them as a point of reference do not cease to exist, but never did exist in the first place. Much like global warming and Charles Darwin.

I have come to notice that a significant number of urban Maslems in Malaysia, commit one or more conspicuous sinful acts that they are aware of. Despite it, they still appear as or are Maslems. It is their prerogative. Neither foreign, nor pretentious. But still these are the same people, whom throughout their upbringing, their culture, religion, surroundings have taught them not to do so. Their conditioning have consistently and persistently told them otherwise. But they still do it.

In case my red light laser pointer failed its fanciness, what I am trying to point out here is that despite our conditioning, we succumb to some form of external influence. To some point and to a certain degree. This might not be absolutely true to each person of our time or prior, but generally it seems to be the case.

As an illustration. There are people whom throughout their upbringing, all their life, namely in the formative years, have been told by their parents, peers, teachers and members of their society that say for example….smoking marijuana is wrong and they should not do it. And then one day, maybe when they’re with friends, or travel, or just sitting on their own, decide to start and smoke it (despite still agreeing it’s wrong).

On this part, the issue here is not marijuana. It is committing an act contrary to something that they have been conditioned and told allll their life to not do.

Second part is, we live in a society where experimenting or consuming marijuana is either accepted, condoned or encouraged by some and the number grows as we get more ‘civilized.’ My stand on marijuana here is irrelevant, what is imperative to point out is, how can you want to be so hard on someone with a fake accent (or something pretentious) when there’s another person who is also going against his conditioning and that (latter) persons act is in fact a crime and a sin.

The external influence may cause us to commit or behave in a certain manner that might be rude or deem to be rude, might be sinful or deem to be sinful, might be unwise or deem to be unwise.

Each of us are uniquely influenced in various areas of our lives. If you’re going to be hard on someone for being something you feel that is utterly pretentious, at least be fair. I find your rationality and mental capacity rather disturbing if fake accents (or anything similar) bothers you more that what many others agree as a crime/sin either within their country or faith, if not both.

By saying that I am not condoning certain acts committed by others or validating mine. I myself have never been accused of having a fake accent or smoking marijuana although I have done things in my life against my set of conditioning. However, I do feel that this thought is something we might know deep inside the left hand corner of the Olympic size pool, but never did submerge.

And it would help Market Communism and people of the world to understand each other better if a slouching underweight 6 footer took the time to draft this post, sacrificing his nap.

Scent of a woman

“Intelligence. Of which you have none.”
-Lt. Col Frank Slade

For the moment:
N/A

In 1992, Al Pacino starred in an amazing movie that won him his only Oscar to date. Below are two of my many favourite scenes.

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His take on the beauty of women.

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His tango of Carlos Gardel’s Por Una Cabeza.

Global warming cat

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”
-Herm Albright

For the moment:
Save Room-John Legend

This morning, I found a cat sleeping in my helmet.

Bikers have a choice between locking their helmets to their bikes (somewhat exposed) or to keep it indoors.

I locked it to the bike. Which means, you can’t steal it but you can spit in it. Since it is parked in a fairly decent civilized place among many other bikes, the odds were very much against someone doing anything to it.

Picture this: 9 am, just showered, all fresh and dressed walking to your mode of transportation to go to work, and then you see a cat snuggled inside something you protect your head with. When I saw it, I literally said, “Yooo, come on man.” He jumped away. My eyes followed him.

I then realize that waiting for the animal to respond to my statement is just insane.

I place my hand on the insides of the helmet and found certain areas warm. Probably from the cat’s body heat.

If I could travel right now, there is only one region* in the northern hemisphere that I’m interested to be in.

Longitude: 15-45 degrees east, Latitude: 30-60 degrees north.

Let’s just assume that my head is the crust of the earth and the helmet its ozone layer. I think that is the same region* where the cat’s asshole was.

I hope I’m wrong because it was a 15 minute journey to the office.

I don’t know about you, but that’s one fcked up climate change experience.

Women are right

“All I need in this life is me and my girlfriend.”
-03 Bonnie & Clyde

For the moment:
Irreplaceable-Beyonce

*At the time of posting, WordPress was/is being a (mega) slut. This post was edited and polished by Lyrical Lemongrass.

Men are never right. When it comes to shopping.

A cousin of mine, a marketing graduate who’s been head hunted twice within a year of his first job, once told me something very interesting about marketing and merchandising.

A few years ago, he told me about a study that showed that when men enter a retail clothes shop, they have a tendency to go to the left and would generally need clothes laid down and displayed to captivate their attention.

On the other hand, women would turn right. Aisles flanked by clothes hung on rails are sufficient to spark their curiosity and produce a purchase.

I suppose what we’re looking at here is what a retail clothes store has to do in order to captivate general groups of their customers, and result in a sale.

There’s strong evidence in this.

1. Observe a couple walking into a shop. The man would be holding his woman’s left arm with his right. Her right hand would be holding a phone to her ear. In her preoccupied state of mind, you will observe the man’s right hand attempting to reach into his wallet. To hide some of his cash money and cards into a safe compartment so as to allow his woman to contribute to the economy of the country he pays taxes to.

2. This is my personal experience. 5 years ago, after my girlfriend bought me that fabulous car, I moved in with her.

To my surprise, only 4 out of the 37 compartments in the wardrobe was empty. They were all on the left. But for some odd reason I always forgot that my stuff was on that side of the wardrobe.

We broke up.

She even took the car keys back when I came over to pack my stuff.

To make me look even more stupid, she repeated a few times which part of the room my stuff was at. Except this time it was in a bloody box next to the drums.

Now I heard the bitch is going out with some hiphop superstar.

Meeting online personalities in good faith

“We also forget that many of the current cultural practices of the Malays have been adopted or influenced by other cultures, and not necessarily Islamic ones at that. For example, Farish Noor, in his book From Majapahit to Putrajaya describes how the notion of derhaka (treason against the ruler) was ‘taken from the discourse of Hinduism and the Sanskrit language’. I’m sure we can list many other examples, if we sit down and think over a cup of teh tarik.”
-Page 31, In Good Faith

For the moment:
N/A-Massive Attack, Bjork, Tricky & Portishead

I am now reading Zaid Ibrahim’s In Good Faith*. Last night I had dinner with two online powerhouse personalities.

*My take on what Marina Mahathir said about the book.

Food blogger Lyrical Lemongrass who runs 4 digit a day traffic A Whiff of Lemongrass and Riz Ainuddin who works very closely with Fried Chillies TV, which generates 1.5million hits per week.

There’s a possibility that all three of us will document, one way or another, the outing. What I should note is that, despite the age difference between the three of us, we got along fairly dandy, extending beyond the one thing we definitely, initially have in common.

LL admitted her addiction without guilt. And accused me and Riz of being holier than thou when we concurred each other that while we all spend a significant amount of time on the ‘keyboard attached flat panel idiot box’, its an abuse we try to curb.

Addicts are, usually in denial.

LL suggested that I should pick up a book. I told her I have over 3 new books and 4 second hand books in my room unread. I explained, I do this because it gives visitors to my room that I am an intellectual well read person, without me having to say anything to them.

That was sarcasm. If you didn’t get it, go read a book.

At 4.41 pm today. I did. I suppose because of the circus of the Malaysian Judiciary at this moment and me neglecting domestic literature for a sometime now due to my anglophile nature, I picked Zaid’s book.

Whenever I have a random thought, whether for private use or in view to be documented here in randomalphabets, I type it out and save it in my phone as Drafts. Moments ago when I got to page 31, I paused and reach for my phone. As a hiatus can at times be a brief moment of reflection, I found myself saying,

Fcking amazing book.

I was about to continue with the book until I overheard two tame pre-teen female monkeys engaging in yet, another argument in my sisters room. As a responsible homo sapien, I went over on site to mediate the matter, only to find out there was a difference of opinion between the two mammals as to the best strategic approach to put on bed sheets and quilt covers.

Casino on sesame street

“Should’ve stayed in Food & Beverage. Too much flossing. Too much Sam Rothstein.”
-Lost One

For the moment:
Lost One-Jay Z

Ernie as Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro. Bert as Robert De Niro as Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein.

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