Salam 'alaik all. 

"Anugerah Syawal" (read: the "Gift of Syawal"). 

Why Shawal is an "anugerah"? Because we all Muslims with Allah's bless of vitality managed to complete yet another course of our 3rd Rukun Islam: Fasting during the Holy Month of Ramadhan, of which contains the yearly awaited night, "Lailal-ul Qadr" (means "the Night of Decree", read more of it here). 

And yes, Syawal is celebrated with mixed feelings of sadness due to the end Ramadhan and the joy of completing the obligation. Whichever the feelings were, I embraced each moments when I was home, gathering, collecting, capturing all the memories and being all-there. For that, I'm really thankful (we are talking about 9 days holidays here, peeps!)

I think I must be really insane if such long holiday came without a single photo. I took a lot, I mean A LOT of them. While waiting for my film photos being developed and printed from the photo shop, here are some of the photos taken on my Xperia SP:

*Plays To Build A Home*

(From clockwise)

1. Malam raya without some pelita would be so mainstream, so we bought ourselves some!

2. My cousin brought some firecrackers, and I did a nerd dance with them (proof is in the iPad).

3. Me and my bro.

4. We couldn't stand smiling, and laughed instead.

5. The only decent family photo we had.

6. Fuad and Imran (wearing kopiah).

7. "PROFILE PIC APPROVED".

8. Masjid Kayu at Kampung Seberang Jerteh, Besut. We were here to visit my grandparents and aunties (mum's side).

9. Motif??

10. Nyan cat alert!

11. Mum and Imran.

12. Electric leaves.

13. Happy kid got happy smile!

14. My grandma's (dad's side) vintage clothing, I even thought of stealing some.

15. A retro print on the cushion fabric.

16. Rare childhood drink. Halal ok, made in Kelantan summore.

21. Pretty pink tiles.

22. 7 for 6 cherries.

23. Vintage pump station, me think. Wouldn't hurt to stop the car and snap one while my mum and brothers laughed hysterically as one of them took a photo of my butt-photographer pose ;_____;

24. Brothers and our uncle (dad's side).

Edited using Magic Hour (self-made filter + Clearly HD by UpUntilNow).

I can never get enough of timelapses. It's awesome to see something we've never seen before, though they are happening all around us every day. Subhana Allah. Here's a good one for you:

An amazing flower timelapse by Katka Pruskova, a professional photographer from Czech Republic. To create this video, she took more than 7100 photos in more than 730 hours.

"The world is pretty and everyone should be quite and enjoy it" - a first grader

We went to the floral nursery this evening, right after enjoying a nice nasi minyak at the by-the-road stall nearby the post office we went to initially. Here are the pictures taken at the nursery which I have done a little tweaking onto them using a number of adjusted Photoshop Actions:

All images were taken via SE W890i + mini detachable macro lens. I honesty don't know almost all of these flowers' name 'cause I was too busy taking pictures to care to ask the uncle hahaha. However, it was good to unwind your sights with these colourful nature once in a while :)

Such a wonderful piano/cello cover of A Thousand Years. I was mesmerized by their talents. What a gift Allah has given to both of them :')

I'm so thrilled upon receiving the RM200 voucher from the faculty staff. I mean, really, how excited it feels when someone gives you something very worthy, even though they are pieces of papers? Never in my life I have ever experienced this. Thank you Allah for this :) 

At first I was like, "Umm, another boring thing, another useless occurrence" when I heard somewhere that our government is giving out IPTA students the voucher for us to buy books. I had this thought in my mind because I had long left the reading habit #anotherweakness. Then, what is the point of giving the voucher to someone like me? And VOUCHER some more? Cash please!! *online shops drive me nuts*. I was rebellious and sceptical a lot about the voucher thing, without knowing the goodness it can bring to me.

However, once I received it I was like "Hey, this might be something valuable!". So right after receiving those vouchers, I've already spent RM50 of them at a little book fair held in the campus. Look at what I bought: 

And the good thing is, I'm slowly getting back to the reading habit, even though the consistency is still a problem. Hehe. Still, I have with me another RM150 of the voucher to be spent, on books! How awesome is that! I promise I'll use it wisely :)

I keep on thinking why I'm living such a depressed and boring life, without knowing the fact that I'm actually blessed. Blessed, because occasionally, throughout my life, I've been surrounded by ever-so talented people around me. My mum, she is an enthusiastic business woman. Even though making curry-puffs is the only thing she is skillful at doing, she put her 100% passion at it. She always put this smile of satisfaction on her tired, wrinkly face, that I always cherish whenever I am looking at one of those.

I have this friend, a blooming singer and guitarist, who is very keen on making her own art and never get tired of doing what she does best, every night and day. Behind her, I could see this shining, sparkling shadow of joy and triumph, a bright future she is heading to. The unseen confidence she is hiding inside herself - she need to have a stronger faith of her own, unique talent. If I can see it, why can't she? 

There is a guy, a potential photographer, who always has this very straight-forward, clear, serious visions in his life, which he is slowly able full-fill them one by one each day. Before this, he is just a casual photographer, only using a common gadget of RM500 or so to capture the best moments of his life. During this period, he always admire people who are better than him (in terms of gadgets and skills), but behind this admiration, he is determined to be one of them. And just so you know, recently he bought himself a DSLR worth RM3200. He did this by saving his salary for 5 months - he is a part-time tuition teacher. Could you imagine how on earth did he do that? Oh, what a satisfactory, victorious achievement! I was there all along this process, seeing his enthusiastic, shiny eyes; hearing those determined, eager voice of him whenever he talked about photography. I'm so proud of him. May he becomes a successful photographer in the near future :)

Another friend of mine, a writer, is full of thoughts and wisdoms in her life (well, sometimes she acted weird and blurry haha). People might think she is one of those nerds, the nobody, but people don't know, behind her baggy Pashmina (her favourite style of wearing the hijab nowadays) lies a successful writer, having her book sold all over those book-stores in town. Then there is also another guy of a skinny, bony figure, and with a glance, people might think he is a drug-addict or a drug-dealer something like that; but the truth is, he owns a printing shop by which he worked real hard for a few, struggling months for his dream to come true. How amazing they are, aren't they?

These people, they might not be as brilliant as Einstein, but they do something they are really good at, and they do this with continuous hard work, determination and dedication. If in any way your life is surrounded by people like them, be thankful and proud of yourself, because through them, you have gained the will of living and surviving the hard life of yours, for they are always be there as your daily source of inspiration. You have a wonderful life which others out there are dying to have. I'm blessed, same goes to you. Alhamdulillah :D

I have decided to write tonight. Not that I was urged by certain people to do so (they did successfully influenced me at certain extents), but then I think if I keep on being lazy to write, I'm afraid I might lose my interest in writing, forever. It's now or never. Not writing for more than two weeks doesn't mean I'm being dormant in this cyber world. My blog reading habit still remains intact (kudos to my blogger-mates, they wrote such great posts I never get bored to read!). Sometimes I wondered maybe they enjoyed blogging more than I do, by which I'm so proud of them to have such long-lasting interest span :)

Just to let you know, the new semester has started for three weeks now, yet I'm still in the honeymoon mood. Hehe. Sorry dear lecturers and friends, if I ever bored you in any way during the whole time I spent in the class. As usual, I'm starting to receive the "Scroll of Madness", from the superior ones. Urgh, inescapable. Same routines will come and go. The total full stop is when the last paper of the last subject is being handed to the invigilator. The feeling to face the busy, restless student life, again, is like you are out of the food heaven and then suddenly you have to enter the fat factory. Oh, no, no, it is unarguably does make sense. Believe me.

I've got to go now, but before that, I want dedicate this to all people who inspired me. Enjoice!

Wow time passed so fast I can't barely notice that it has been 10 days I haven't post a single update on my little blog. Maybe I'm still in the Raya mood? No, of course not. It's just that so many things happened around me, and I have put a lot of thinking cap throughout those 10 days. Those meaningful Raya moments, problems, unknown fears, and else makes my mind too crowded. I feel like writing them all here, but no, I won't do that, because some things are better to be kept secret. Oh well, they said no troubles are not meant to be solved, and that life is too short to be unhappy. I'm still alive and kicking, and I will continue living like that :D

I'm not so into these photography things especially during important occasion (yes I'm lazy), but anyway, care to take a look at some of my Raya photos? 

Oh hey, maybe it is not too late to wish happy Edul Fitr to all my blogger-mates right? And for that, I wish you guys a happy Edul Fitr! Please forgive my wrongdoings, and may Allah S.W.T. blesses us all till the end of time. Thanks for reading :)

So it was yesterday when my family and I went for our first time (during this holy Ramadhan) break fasting session at a local restaurant. This was actually beyond our plan - we always loved to eat home-cooked meal rather than anything else in this world, but my brother recently got his first pay-check, and that he happily decided to belanja us all. We, of course, immediately agreed lah. Thus, we planned this and that, and ended up leaving the home quite late (supposedly we left at 5.30 p.m., but the IRT Deadliest Roads programme on History Channel was really addictive, it turned out that we left out home at about 6.20 p.m.). Unluckily, we had to change our whole plan, as we could not book the meals at the planned restaurant because it was quite far from our home, about 20-minutes journey, if I was not mistaken). We got caught up in a buzzing roads full of cars rushing towards the destination with the same intention - to break the fast.

Going back and forth on the road, we finally were able to settle ourselves down at a nice seafood restaurant. Then it was my favourite moment - ordering the food! Since we had discussed everything earlier, ordering the food did not take a long moment. I ordered myself a glass of hot Nesloo, and after that, I saw this pamphlet on the table, which said, "Three-layer tea", with a huge picture of it on it. The picture was like, "Order me, order me!" - you could imagine how delicious and appealing the picture looked like. I thought, maybe it was a good idea if I ordered this, since I was never in my whole life, drank it before. "Pakcik, pangkah Nesloo tu, saya nak tukar dengan yang ni!", I said, with my finger pointing at the picture, as the Pakcik was busy taking our order. He nodded. My brother quickly gave a what-the-hell-are-you-doing-don't-order-that! stare at me. I made a what-are-you-staring-about? expression at him. "Mintak yang panas ye Pakcik", I told the Pakcik. "Yang panas tak ada dik. Three-layer tea tu memang buat sejuk". Oh, my heart sank down to the earth, as I was never a big fan of cold-iced drinks. "Tak pe lah Pakcik, saya order Nesloo tu je lah", I told him frustratedly.

So, we sat at a table waiting for the break fast time to come by. Foods arrived one-by-one, driving us crazy with their tempting smells. And I saw the same "Three-layer tea" pamphlet again, on our table. "Ma, orang nak sangat minum teh tu..", I told my mum who was sitting next to me. "Order lah kalau nak", she said. Yes! The exact answer I had been wanting to hear! Ignore that cannot-drink-cold-drink principle, I finally got the three-layer tea ordered, and within few minutes after that, the tea was being delivered safely to our table. 

"Caye lah cakap aku ni, benda tu tak sedap!", suddenly my brother told me. 

So, I understood his stare just now.

"Eleh, mung pernah rasa ke?". 

"Pernah sekali. Giler tak sedap, rasa dia pelik".

"Biarlah, aku nak rasa pelik tang mana. Tapi, orang cakap benda ni sedap".

"Tak tahu lah aku. Kena orang yang pandai buat kot, baru rasa dia sedap".

 

Then it was the break fasting moment, and the three-layer tea was the first thing I sipped. Yeah, it tasted quite weird, and I felt bad for ordering it, but, I chose to give it a second chance - come on, you couldn't definitely judge the taste from a few sips, in fact, I did not stir the entire gula Melaka yet. I pushed the three-layer tea aside, and finished my meal (I did not drink when I ate, it would make you fat, ya know). Back to the three-layer tea again, and this time, I stirred all the gula Melaka until the layer was no longer visible. I slurped it, and to my knowing, it tasted awesome! I urged the entire family to try it as well. Two of them (including my staring brother) did not like it; one of them liked it; I liked it (very much!); and my mum refused to drink it, because she said it looked weird. After a repeated efforts of forcing her, she finally gave up, and drank it, and she did not looked quite pleased with it. Hahaha. Well, everyone did have different taste buds didn't they? Regardless of what happened, I was glad that I took the courage to taste the three-layer tea. And after this, I will begin my search on the best three-layer tea in town. Bring it on!

Phewww, what a long 2-days hols.

I do admit, I miss being on-line so much, and being away from doing the thing I love the most is quite upsetting to me. What to say, I got a resolution to achieve. I'm actually in the process of restraining myself from anything electronic (TV and phone excluded), especially laptop, due to the fact that it is the main reason (which I believed) of me getting the bugging neck ache all these times.

In fact, you see, my room and the living area (where we got the TV system installed there) is just a few steps away from each other. So, while I am watching the TV, and then the ads come out, I tend to go straight to my room, checking whatever updates from the Internet (say FB, blogs, and such). I'm guessing that it's kinda rude to actually have to pause any conversation I'm having with either my brothers or my mum when we are waiting for the programme we watch to be continued after the ad. In fact, I rarely continue my watching when I'm deeply absorbed with whatever stuffs I did on the Net. In the end of the day, I tend to regret that.

 

I can't cope the way of living a life with myself sitting in front of the computer for almost 12-hours (approx.) a day, anymore (of course I would stop once a while to complete my chores). It's really tiring. I know it's wrong to do that, but once the addiction is in control of you, you are numb. And I hate myself for being so numb like that. I know, I need to fix that real soon before the new semester starts in next upcoming month. Action speaks louder than words. 

I need to break away from my own jail

Oh well, I guess I have to go now. My two hours of Internet surfing limit is almost depleting. Till then. Happy fasting everyone :)