Forgiveness

Narrated Shaddad bin Aus:

The Prophet said "The most superior way of asking for forgiveness from Allah is:

'Allahumma anta Rabbi la ilaha illa anta, Anta Khalaqtani wa ana abduka, wa ana 'ala ahdika wa wa'dika mastata'tu, A'udhu bika min Sharri ma sana'tu, abu'u Laka bini'matika 'alaiya, wa Abu Laka bidhanbi faghfirli innahu la yaghfiru adhdhunuba illa anta."

The Prophet added. "If somebody recites it during the day with firm faith in it, and dies on the same day before the evening, he will be from the people of Paradise; and if somebody recites it at night with firm faith in it, and dies before the morning, he will be from the people of Paradise."

[Sahih Bukhari: Book 75, Number 318]

The translation of supplication in the hadith is as follows;

"0 Allah! You are my Cherisher. There is no deity except You. You have created me and I am Your servant and as far as possible, I abide by my solemn promise and covenant (which I made to You). I seek Your protection against the consequences of my wrongdoings. I fully acknowledge the grace You have bestowed upon me and I confess my faults. So pardon me my sins as none besides You can pardon sins."

Far away

I have received an email from my long lost friend today. He is getting married in a few weeks. This is another event that I will be missing since I'm far away from the place (hence the title).

If you lived far away from your loved ones eg family, you are certain to miss several important events. That is an inevitable consequence when you choose to study overseas. You can say there is the internet instant messenger and phone call to bridge the distance but the feelings will not be as similar as compared to the person who is able to be there. Your family may describe that the food that they ate when they attended a certain event is delicious but you will never know the exact proportion of deliciousness of those food. The same goes for your younger siblings. The last time you saw them, they are still small childish kid and when you met them 2-3 years later, they are bigger and have experience a lot of things without you.

Am I homesick? NO. This thing spontaneously came to my mind when I read the email.

Living far away from home does not mean you lose a lot. You will gain the joy of finding new friendship and new perspective towards your religion and your own beloved country. In fact, you may learn a lot of new things such that it may change your mind and way of thinking. Some people who went overseas for a couple of years changed a lot, either positively or negatively and surprisingly, some who doesn't change at all.

I hope that by living far away from home for several years will change me to become a better person. There are things that I would like to improve and things that I need to achieve. And when I have completed my study here for good, at least hopefully, I am able to say to my family that I have become a better person than the one they sent to the airport few years ago.

p/s: There is an interesting quote posted by Fahmi here.

Don't kill fetus but we can kill people...

Straight quote from here

Knee slapper from the NYT:

President Bush told Congressional leaders Thursday that he would veto any legislation that weakened federal policies or laws on abortion.

In a two-page letter sent to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Mr. Bush said his veto threat would apply to any measures that “allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.”

(That’d be my emphasis.) I guess President Bush doesn’t count the $585 billion for the Department of Defense, much of which goes toward guns, bombs, and missiles–pretty sure those have destroyed thousands of human lives in the past few years.

An irony....

Feed readers

I have been using Google Reader for the past few weeks. Google Reader is a feed reader and it is still in the Google Labs. Thats mean there are a lot of new features yet to be introduced ;).

There are many versions of feed reader on the net. Bloglines and Newsgator are few of those examples. This is my first time of using feed-readers since my blog-reading behaviour has increased exponentially in the past few years. It is now easier to track all the updates on my favourite blog/website. As long as those websites have RSS or Atom feed (in Firefox, you see the orange icon on the address bar), I can add the feed into Google Reader. And one additional benefit is that I can give the comment on those blog/webs as soon as there is a new entry.

Google Reader also provides a blogger widget if I would like to share any interesting reading that I found on my feed. That functionality however requires me to upgrade this template first. Check Tawel's blog to see how the shared item in Google Reader is used. The shared item is located under 'Shared', below 'Podcast'

Do you have any favourite feed readers?

Oral presentation. Done.

Alhamdulillah. My oral presentation is over. I have presented my thesis today in two different audience. The first presentation was in front of fellow AMS students and paediatricians. The questions was moderately easy. I managed to impress them with the size of my study :).

The second presentation was in front of paediatric endocrinologist and the whole staff in my department. I used the same content from the first presentation. The questions this time were harder than the first presentation since they know quite well in my area of research. Alhamdulillah, I managed to answer all of the questions.

Now, only one more thing left before AMS officially over. That is the submission of the thesis due May 18. Less than 3 weeks to go :).

p/s: On another note, the timetable for my next 2 years already out. Need to sort that out too.

updated: Interesting reading here.

Kenapa Mahu Menjadi Doktor?

Ramai yang hantar anak buat perubatan supaya boleh rawat ibu bapa sendiri nanti. Tetapi realitinya, kamu bukan manusia pertama boleh muncul memberikan rawatan jika berlaku apa-apa kepada ibu bapa. Malah ketika di bilik pembedahan dan wad kecemasan, ahli keluarga bukanlah calon terbaik untuk merawat ahli keluarga sendiri. Namanya, profesionalisma”, saya menyambung provokasi.

“Kamu nak tolong suami, isteri dan anak-anak? Rasa saya, suami doktor, isteri doktor dan anak-anak doktorlah yang paling banyak kena berdikari”

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