Back in

It’s like being deprived of having your favourite meal for a long time and when you get the next opportunity, the taste is just so nice that you feel like you want the meal to last forever. Well at least it felt like that for me. After being out of training for 2 months, I stepped into the dojo yesterday not without feeling a bit of apprehension and nervousness. I don’t think I would have broken my leave from training if not for the their presence and I was glad I did it.

He’s famous in Indonesia for being that sensei who trains the special force unit of the military. In fact he is the teacher of a couple of our own teachers. Him and his wife run aikido dojos all over Jakarta. In fact we had wanted to have a stint in one of their dojos when we were in Jakarta last year but alas, he and his wife were in Medan and our path didn’t cross. This time round in Malaysia, when we got news they are coming to teach for a week, I’ve made up my mind I had to be there, although I have not properly ‘healed’. So yeah, we’ve finally managed to train under the Sensei.Hakim and his wife, Sensei.Shanti.

The session, somehow if I can put it more coherently– turned out to be almost like a sufi ’suhbah’ session in a dojo setting. The way he taught was like a sufi shaykh sitting in the semi-circle of murids, teaching us the extremely very basic albeit the most important fundamentals of the art, the whole spirituality of it , the connection between this art and the universe, with our natural way of life, the way our Creator intends it to be. We were reminded of the ‘intention’ before beginning everything else, the purity of the heart in it — no sincerity/purity of the heart= kaput techniques and how every part of it is applicable to our lives. And about controlling and crushing our ‘nafs’ / ego before we even start to practice this art, about respecting those who oppose us and about us facing our deadliest enemy– ourselves. And also, about focusing and controlling the mind from wondering about senseless things. And about positive thinking–about anything, anyone and everything. And about the 3 important goals of learning — 1) knowledge 2) wisdom 3) intuition. And.. oh so many other things.

So after the class, husband and myself  had a bit of chit-chat with him, where we commented that the deeper we go into aikido, the more it made us uncannily realise that it is so tightly similar to Islamic values especially the sufistic approach to life and the faith. He shared with us that when he was training in Japan, he mentioned the same thing to his teacher and his Japanese sensei replied to him that ‘of all the students here, you are the one who should find the most relevance in this art, simply because you are a Muslim’

For the first time I left the dojo at midnight, fresh and elated from the session. Somehow I felt as though I just came back from a spa holiday–rejuvenated, refreshed and recharged.

I am officially back in training. Onegaishimas!

…life is picking up and is good!

Babe Watch

It was quite a short write up in The.Star newspaper on 2nd July about Zahra, the Malaysian teenage tudung-clad lass who aspired to be the first Malaysian girl to successfully swim across the English Channel.

This young inspiring babe, however didn’t make it as strong currents forced her to stop at halfway mark, after battling it out for 12 solid hours. Even though she didn’t quite hit her target, she impressed me to no ends. Gone were the days when nicely covered up Malay girls in tudungs were often synonymous with taking the back seat in things and all those stereotypes which not so kindly sometimes place them into the wallpaper status. So yeah, the strong currents crushed her dreams, but her guts to even have that dream in the first place have won her my respect and of course, I can’t resist making her an example to my students.

Read about Zahra here and here.

The other half

The first half of the year has been good, although I feel it could have been better. I’ve completed some stuffs I set out to achieve like going back to training (aikido) after a self-declared holiday in December, weaning off fast-food and meat to become a pescetarian, pick up more skills – called for an ustazah to come to the house to brush up my mengaji and tajwid once a week, went for the translators course at the ITNM, shed some kilos ( not much.. just 4 kgs to date but oh well ! ) and amongst other things, improved my relationship with the other woman in the husband’s life aka my mil.

I wonder what the next half of the year will bring on. Life has a way of packaging surprises and throw it onto you when you least expect it. But it has been quite an ok year so far and I hope it can stay that way or even better.

And oh, I watched Departures, the Japanese film which even Yas.mi.n Ah/m.a/d blogged about and I like it alot. For the first time I saw the Japanese funeral rites and their almost similar way in handling ( cara mandi mayat ) the deceased to the Muslim one is quite uncanny. The film was really poignant and gives a good insight to the Japanese cosmology, worldview and mannerism which we all can learn from in one way or another.

a piece from shaykh.hamz/a yu.suf

Shock Dead, Everybody’s Gone Mad: Reflections on the Death of Michael Jackson By Hamza Yusuf On the news Everybody’s dog food Bang bang Shock dead Everybody’s gone mad… From “They Don’t Care About Us” by Michael Jackson As a little boy, Michael Jackson had an extraordinary charisma — as well as an absolute innocence — that was disarmingly charming. It captivated millions of Americans and eventually people around the world. As the years went by, his career took strange turns and he slowly turned white, transforming his face eerily into a pale and ghastly masque, perhaps to conceal the pain of alienation from his own self and family. He was also rumored to have unsavory predilections that would never have been suggested if one used the rigorous criteria of Islam before hurling an accusation. Despite the rumors, he appeared to have had a genuine concern for children, wanting to provide them with a world that was denied to him as a child due to the abuses he claimed to have suffered. I was very happy for him last year when he reportedly became a Muslim. He had apparently followed the footsteps of his dignified and intelligent brother, Jermaine, who converted to Islam 20 years ago and found peace. It seemed befitting that Michael sought refuge from a society that thrives on putting people on pedestals and then knocking them down. He was accused of many terrible things, but was guilty of perhaps being far too sensitive for an extremely cruel world. Such is the fate of many artistic people in our culture of nihilistic art, where the dominant outlet for their talents is in singing hollow pop songs or dancing half-naked in front of ogling onlookers who often leave them as quickly as they clung to them for the next latest sensation. In the manner of Elvis or the Beatles, Michael is unwittingly both a cause and a symptom of America’s national obsession with celebrity, currently on display in the American Idol mania. Celebrity trumps catastrophe every time. Far too few of us make any attempt to understand why jobs are drying up, why mortgages are collapsing, why we spend half-a-trillion dollars to service the interest on the national debt, why our government’s administration, despite being elected on an anti-war platform, is still committed to two unnecessary and unjust wars waged by the earlier administration, wars that continue to involve civilians casualties on an almost daily basis. Instead, we drown in trivia, especially trivia related to celebrity. And the response to Michael’s death is part of the trivial pursuits of American popular culture. The real news about death in America is that twenty Iraq and Afghan war veterans are committing suicide every day. But that does not make the front page nor is it discussed as seriously as the King of Pop’s cardiac arrest. Nevertheless, Michael’s very public death notice is a powerful reminder that no matter how famous or talented or wealthy one is, death comes knocking, sometimes sooner than later. Michael has now entered a world of extraordinary perception, a world that makes his “Thriller” video seem mundane. It is a world of angels and demons, and questions in the grave, a world where fame is based upon piety and charity. Given Michael’s reported conversion to Islam last year, Muslims count him as one of our own, and we pray that he can finally find the peace he never found in this world and that he is in a place, God willing, of mercy, forgiveness, and solace.

While he is sleeping

There is something therepeutic about watching Milo sleep. He would curl his paws and sometimes give cute whimpers as though he is having some kind of a dream. He drools too. We’ve had other cats before Milo and Tito but Milo is the only one from amongst our feline companions that drools in his sleep. Sticky, slobbery saliva which sometimes sticks onto the floor on which he sleeps on, or on my blouse or shirt if he happens to choose my comfy body as his mattress. But that is rare. He loves the cold terrazo flooring or the warm carpet or simply our bed, with his head on our pillow. When that happens , he would sometimes stretch that half asleep stretch,  and if I happen to be near, reach out to my face for a quick sniff to make sure that it is me that he is sleeping on or next to and then go back to his deep slumber.

and he passes on…

and one of the most controversial person in the music industry has kicked the bucket.

His old looks which I’ve always prefered.

Krispy and Kremeee

So it is now settled that they have nicely  landed on Malaysia’s shore, giving the overly sweet and dense Dunkin’ and the oh so delicious Big Apple a run for their money. In midvalley, it’s nicely tucked in about 10 metres away from Dunkin and a corner away from Big Apple. Of course, the sinfully  ( but a tad too sweet, I find ) delicious KrispeKreme is here, tantalising and cajoling us to add more calories in the already hard to resist food haven.

Oh well, I had 2 for brekky with old friends on holiday here yesterday. New York cheesecake donut ( which was so rich it was ‘muak’ towards the end ) and the freshly fried original glaze, which we were all given free, hot and piping. Washed them down with ice latte.  Ohhhh.

In denial, I rightfully reminded myself that Ramadan is coming … Alas…before I left, I couldn’t resist parting with another Rm 2.80 to wolf down their chocolate cake flavoured donut. Ya, it’s nice to be here )

Image taken from here.

Get up, now.

I have not written about aikido for a long time because I have been out of training for two months almost for health reasons ( and no it is not pregnancy, as suspected by fellow classmates ). I miss it very much but as a senior in class reminded me, it is not just about the physical training, it is about a way of life.

The one extremely important lesson I learnt in aikido is the ‘ukemi’. That is the falling technique. To fall gracefully.

I have since realised that ‘ukemi’ is not just about falling and landing nicely on the mats of the dojo, in the ‘hakama’, while sparring with the ‘uke’. It is about practising it in life where there are days when one really needs to fall, so that one can learn to get up again and continue fighting. And then fall again. The more ‘ukemi’ we do, the more graceful our falls become. This, I realised happens in my life as well. The more often I fall, the more graceful I take my failures and the stronger I get up to face life’s ‘uke’ . Challenges in life I have since learnt, are like ‘uke’. They are not really opponents, just sparring partners to teach one the martial art of life.

Of his early days

I am currently reading Memoirs of a Menteri Besar,  Tan Sri Datuk Dr Mohamad Said– Early Days, ( just don’t ask how I came to own a copy of it, which you can neither buy nor borrow out from the National Library ) formerly the Menteri Besar of Negeri Sembilan.

Reading on how he travelled in those days, all the way from Linggi to Kuala Kangsar to attend school at Malay College Kuala Kangsar through all the odds and tests and whatever else physical challenges he had to face–just to get the best education he could possibly get, is not only inspiring, but tear-jerking as well. Definitely a welcoming break from other tear-jerking reads of Malay mat-rempit boys getting into hardcore social troubles.

One thing he wrote in there which struck me hard was that he wrote about his mother, that his thirst for knowledge stemmed from the very root that his mother was a voracious reader, despite their humble background. So what JohnWood wrote in this book is confirmed here in the Memoir-that once you educate a girl you educate many more generations to come. For the hand which rocks the cradle rules the world, kan?

New kid on the block

I’ve not touched our trusty oly for quite a while. It has served us really well and we have been to places with it, not forgetting the two times it came in handy in two minor road accidents we met with in the last two years. But oly has reached its twilight days and recently, a new breed of its kind made me gawk non stop since it was up in the limelight.

Image taken from here.

This new olympusep1 has the slim body of a compact camera/mobile phone but the full function of a dslr camera. Its price tag can pay our rent for about 3 months or so. Hence, at the moment I shall just continue to salivate over it.