saying so long to the blog. it's been some time since i've posted on this blog. although there are many things that i could write about, i've been dissuaded by my inability to keep the blog relatively private. google makes all things a little too easy to get to :-).

i'll keep writing but probably in a more private forum like notes on facebook or something of the sort.

thanks for tuning in.

hajj season is around again and a cousin of mine emailed to let me know that he and his wife are going. he asked for any advice i had for him. for those of you who don't know, the wife and i went on hajj 2 years back. here's a copy of the email i sent him.

hajj advice.

I'm so happy for you both. May Allah accept your journey and make it easy for you.

Pack light. I can't stress it enough. Take only the things you will need and nothing more. Sumaiyya and I took large camping backpacks as our main bags and fit all our clothes, ihram, etc. in those bags. They were easy to carry just in case we needed to trek from place to place instead of bussing. Many times walking was quicker than bussing.

I know that Airborne has been proven to be nothing special, but we took a pack of vitamin c water mix ins and Airborne with us. We mixed it with our zam zam once or twice a day. It seemed to do a good job in keeping us healthy. We stopped when we got busy and that's when we got sick. Not sure, but it seemed to help.

Make sure you look at the cups you take from the water stacks before you use them. Better yet, don't use them. Take a water bottle with you and fill it up continuously. Don't take one that's so large that it'll be a pain to carry around or one so expensive that you'll feel bad if you lose it. You should be perfectly comfortable losing everything :-) you take to Hajj.

If you're planning on spending the night outside at Muzdalifa then it may suit you to take a decent sleeping bag. It can get cold. We were told it was going to be cold but I was still sweating. The other thing you'll hear is that it is windy. We took a small umbrella with us just in case the dust got to be a huge issue. (We would have put it up next to our heads to protect ourselves).

Some people make small keychains with tawaf beads on them. Move one bead every time you finish a round. It sounds kinda odd but trust me you can forget how many times you've been around.

Make your own prayer book. Buy a small book from a craft store that you can write in. No matter how many books you read, you'll never know one as personally as one you've written. Copy all the du'aas and procedures etc. into this book. What I did was have different sections for the different parts of Hajj. Specifically for Tawaf, I dedicated one page to each du'aa when going around the Kabah (the recommended du'aas). By the end of tawaf I had them memorized. Same for Sa'ii etc. Hopefully you can fit this book in your thaub pocket or it's small enough that you don't mind carrying it around. I would write in an ink that won't bleed (or pencil as I did) because the book will get sweat-ed on if not by you then by someone else. I know, hehe.

Energy bars are good to keep just in case you get hungry during travel.

Practice putting on your ihram before you get to your Meeqat. It's not as easy as it looks (for guys). Ask your dad to teach you how to wear a loonghi. They have a foolproof beltless hold that will stay faithful to you during your tightly packed tawaf.

I'll send more advice as I think of it. Enjoy - this is the best experience evar.

Sumaiyya is putting CACA in her hair. Sorry I had to share.

i've got my iphone hooked up to my blog again now so now posting images to my blog is as easy as snap and send. woohoo. that means you'll be seeing a lot of useless images in the near future. aren't you excited? i haven't figured out how to add captions either so in addition to being useless, the pictures will have absolutely no context. lucky you. i wish i could read blogs like mine.

so what do you do when you have 8 lbs of cherries? you make cherry everything. cherry ice cream is where we started. it's a pretty simple recipe that is essentially vanilla ice cream with cherry puree mixed in. for the added cherry kick we cut up cherries into chunks and threw them in on top. we've sampled but not truly tasted the final product. it's in the freezer waiting for a "dessert party" next wednesday. yes, you read right. you can comment and make fun of me. i will be attending a "dessert party" and that too on a wednesday.

today was a step forward for me in a way that many of you may see as being negligible. i admit, before today, i probably felt the same way. over the past few weeks i've been researching cars. i was looking for a car that would bring back what i was missing with my civic - small, zippy, fun. i also wanted to venture out of my comfort zone and get a manual transmission car. for so long, i've been living in the comfortable world of automatic transmissions. 3 pedals? you crazy? it should be as simple as gas and brake, gas and brake, gas and brake. where'd the haddi in the kabob come in - clutch. but lately, it's become more and more intriguing - not so much because of the transmission itself but because of the challenge. it's a challenge which i've been shying away from for years - so at a time when i've been losing motivation elsewhere - why not pick up something to get me going again?

anyhow, i bought a car on saturday. sunday, my cousin naheed took me out for some lessons. it was a hellish experience filled with speed bumps, starting and stopping, stalling, and all the goodness you can imagine. in the end, naheed made me drive home. not nice. it built my confidence and allowed me to get to a point where i was comfortable with the gears and somewhat with the clutch.

there's an interesting similarity (get ready for some deepness) between driving stick and living life: getting into first gear is the hardest. once you're rolling, it's pretty much butter. taking the analogy a step further - you gotta know how much to release the clutch and how much to push the gas; timing is essential. you may be doing all the right things but at the wrong time they won't do you no good and at best you'll stall. at worst, you may grind your gears and end up really hurting yourself. have confidence, don't care about the jerk behind you honking in his ford f-150, and take your time to get things right. once you get the hang of it, things will go a lot more smoothly. taking an analogy from my commute to work this morning - choose your path wisely. it could be the key to your success. figure out what the tell-tale signs of failure are and avoid them at all costs (sharp turns, places where you'll have to slow to a halt and restart from 1st gear, lots of stop and go traffic).

time for some rest. talk again soon.

1000 words a day. 

ok that was odd. i was writing 1000 words a day in my title and i looked to my right and saw someone writing it on a whiteboard. freaky. maybe it's a sign!

anyhow, i'm finishing up an audio cd set about educating your child in the west. one of the things it encourages is to build consistency in reading, writing, and speaking. expressing yourself effectively is a skill that can open many doors in life and help you to progress in your goals.

my 1000 words a day will be about anything and everything. don't mind my rambling - John Taylor Gatto told me that it doesn't matter how i write. i should be simple and just get my thoughts out. i don't need to have fancy schmancy words like "rambling".

when i was a kid i used to watch doogie howser md. remember that show? well, at the end he would reflect on his day in a journal that he kept on his computer. come on, honestly - you know you've tried to do the same. i've tried and consistently been inconsistent. i think it's the need to write something interesting that stops me from writing. the truth is that i barely have anything profound to say - i have to learn to love thinking out loud and maybe then something profound will develop. nawhatimsayin?

a friend of mine started a website called giveme27.com. it's a mashup of a bunch of google products used to track how many pushups you do every day. it's simple but oddly motivational. oh - what? no. it hasn't gotten me to do any pushups yet but i'm sure i'll try it out sometime. there's a forum where you can discuss your love for said exercise method with like-minded individuals. i'm not sure how much i can talk about pushups but eh.

i'm working on a new project at work that has me pretty stoked. in case you haven't heard that word before it's because normal people don't use it. it's a california term i guess. i didn't want to use it. i swear. it just happened. any way i'm pretty stoked about this new project. i'm finding myself networking well with folks outside of research to make myself and them useful resources for the company. we're "cross-pollinating" ideas and having a good time. it also taps into personal interests and the experience i gained while i was in india. fun fun. (413 words in case you were counting).

taking a break. be back in a few.

we learned morphology in arabic class today. morphology is a study of the structure of words. in arabic, words are formed (mostly) from three letter roots. it's amazing to see how scientific the language is. to an engineer, i'm sure the rules just make sense. i can't wait to be fluent. ah, another asipration of mine is to learn arabic calligraphy. do you know any calligraphy teachers in northern california? if so, please let me know. i'd love to learn.

biggest lesson learned today: work on effective communication skills - you never know how or when you'll need them. today, we had an "all hands" meeting for the user experience team. it was motivating to see so many people from our group who are skilled presenters - orally and visually. humor, class, technique, style, and a strong understanding of their area of focus helped these guys and girls impress the audience and convey their thoughts with ease. hopefully as i express myself more i'll be able to speak with the same confidence.

well, that's all folks. time for me to call it a night. i may/may not start posting notes on facebook rather than my blog - it allows me to share with only people who i know. i'm starting to get a bit wierded out by knowing that anyone could be reading t h i s   r  i  g  h  t   n    o     w.

g'nite.

So when I was a kid I had two favorite movies: Naseeb and Mahaan - both Amitabh Bachchan classics. It's amazing the emotion that was in these movies that I simply overlooked as a kid. To me, it was all about the fighting scenes and the comedy sequences. The song below is actually sung by Amitabh in his own voice. A bit dramatic, but have a little patience - it's a great song.