random thoughts from the weekend

assalaamu alaikum

and i mean random:

it was a tiring camp. but a good tiring. a "cleanse the soul with mud, rain, sweat, basketball, and lack of sleep" tiring. there were times when we had the choice to go back to our cabins and sleep for 2 hours, but each time, we ended up playing basketball, either in the dead heat, or the rain.

we also played square of death. in the process of tackling somebody, my finger got cut somehow. now i'm not usually somebody who cares about getting cut up, cuz usually i just leave them and don't even think about washing them up, much less putting a bandaid on em. but this cut HURT man, and it was on an area where it wouldn't close up and the blood wasn't clotting. i guess cuz my finger kept opening it up every time it moved. so i'm trying hard to bear the pain while still playing. next play, i almost get rocked and the dude rips like a whole layer off of my shirt. aH ala thalik. i used the strip of cloth to wrap up my finger and the cut, n keep the dirt out and stuff, and kept on playing. i felt like i was in the movies, getting stabbed and tearing off a piece of his shirt to wrap the wound. on a smaller scale of course. but still. oh yeah. :coolguy:

one of the things that hit me in one of the talks and i mentioned later on during the closing reflections session was how each and every one of us has been chosen to be muslims. and every time we pray, we were chosen for that prayer, and seperated from the millions of people who do not know what prayer is. when we wake up for fajr, we've been chosen while so many people are still sleeping. when we decide to do dhikr or read quran, so many other people are completely neglectful. there is so much to be thankful for, and so much to work on.

Allah swt has a plan for each and every one of us. every single situation we are put in, we have been placed there for a reason. everybody we meet, say salaams to, just make eye contact with has been placed there at that certain time for a reason, maybe as a test for us, or us a test for them, or maybe as an oppurtunity for us to make a potential lasting impression. just one smile can do so much. and i know this because there were people at that camp that made lasting impressions on me without them even knowing. just by doing something as simple as smiling.

during one of the talks, the question was raised as to how many people have a regular halaqah they attend. a lot of people raised their hand. i wasn't one of them. so i need a halaqah.

didn't i say this was gonna be random?

the best thing about these camps is the brotherhood thats built. [i just decided to erase some of the entry just cuz...]

what hit me the hardest during those 3 days was on the last day, when we sat in a circle and after each of us shared our reflections about the camp, the brother who went last said that he hopes that he can be with these same brothers under Allah's shade on the day when there is no shade but his. and i began to picture myself on that day, so utterly terrified and confused, only to find solace in the shining faces of these brothers that were here with me in this circle so close, smiling. words can't begin to describe the humbling feeling of being with such good people, and having them make duah for the group, which happened to include me at the time.

so we wrote letters to ourselves that were gonna be sent to us in a years time. first thing i wrote was, hey, you might be dead by the time this things comes back to you. we were supposed to give ourselves advice, but i ended up writing about the state of mind i was in at the time, what plans and goals i had made coming out from the camp, and overall, the things that have been on my mind and what not, so that i could guage my progress or lack of progress. see what had changed, or if anything had changed at all.

by the way, i'm getting kinda sleepy.

a couple months back i made a post about a poem that i had been inspired to write. with that rock picture? remember? well i do. anyways, i started writing it during a 3 hour long psychology class session, then left it alone for a couple months, and finally finished it sometime last week. well, i read that poem at MAS. aH, it went real well. i tried reading it again when i got back, and stuttered so much that i was surprised i even got past the first couple paragraphs at the camp without getting stuck. clutch performances, zindabad.

Ya Rabbi, lakal hamdu kama yambaghi lijalali wajhika wa adheemi sultanik.

oh, and i'm still sore.

foremost to myself

assalaamu alaikum

we've all heard the stories of the prophets and heard of their miracles. and we think that surely, if we were present when Musa AS split the red sea or Eesa AS cured the sick and brought dead back to life by Allah's will, we would have no doubt as to who our creator was, and we would be complete and utterly perfect believers. wouldn't it be cool and so strengthening to witness one of those miracles? and so we neglect the greatest miracle of all, namely the Quran, that is right under our noses. and sometimes i think, we are the last nation. but say for instance, IF there was going to be a nation after us, or perhaps on the DOJ when everything is told, those who came before us would probably be dumbfounded as to how we could have neglected such a clear and obvious sign and miracle such as the Quran, the same thing we say and think about them when they killed the cow.

how could they be so stupid?

now although we have a tendency to follow others footsteps, right into the holes they crawl into and get stuck in, some of us claim that we try and learn from others mistakes. well i do, at least. so i have to be careful to not develop an attitude that prides itself on not falling into the same holes that everybody around me, my friends and peers, have fallen into, and continuously and repeatedly fall into. and so i remind myself, that every person has their own test. and where one person has failed, and i have succeeded, does not mean anything. that might have been easy for me and hard for him. and i look at myself now and see a hundred different things that i fail at everyday and others have no problem with.

its like when people say, "i can't marry somebody from back home, because they haven't faced the same struggle as i. they've lived around muslims their whole life, they haven't been exposed to the trials of the west, etc" this always bothers me, because Allah clearly says in the Quran, do you think you will be left alone saying you believe and not be tested? the people before you were tested until their foundations were shaken and they were left saying, when comes the help of Allah? sure, maybe you have been through certain things that other person hasn't, but you can bet your nikes that that person has been through a hundred things you have never experienced also.

the same way, our parents came here and aH, they established the deen. they built masajid, and now schools, and now institutions are being set up everywhere throughout the west. that was their job and their test. we can't just retake their test, because the answers are already on the sheet. we can't just keep on building masjids and schools. its our job to take it another step forward. and we have to figure it out and pass this test on our own. because its YOUR test. and MY test. in the end the judgement is for Allah. he tests whom he loves, but its not my job to figure out whether he loves me or you more.

paraphrased

"and so we would pray and taste the sweetness of prayer and iman until Allah decided to test us. and he took away that sweetness to determine whether we were worshipping Him or the sweetness. and that was the struggle, to pray with the same type of resolve, dedication, concentration, even when we didn't exactly 'feel' like it. and so Allah tested us and when we passed this test, he returned that sweetness to us."

word

salaamu alaikum

i took a break from studying for this math test and decided to eat breakfast. omlet and roti. don't know exactly how, but from that, i ended up on the comp. not to mention the plate that committed suicide by jumping from a great height and is now shattered all over the kitchen floor which i am now going to clean up.

anyways, my new favorite website.

Gangsta

Khutbah Vol. 2

salaamu alaikum,

Khutbah time...can't touch this tananana:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"There is in the body a clump of flesh - if it becomes good, the whole body becomes good and if it becomes bad, the whole body becomes bad. And indeed it is the heart."

As Allah said in Surah Az-Zumar (39:22), "Woe to those whose hearts are hardened against the remembrance of Allah." They are in obvious misguidance. Woe to those whose hearts hear the Quran and they do not become fearful and humbled as a result of it. Woe to those whose eyes are reminded of the Words of Allah, but they do not weep in fear of Him. Woe to those who are reminded of the Warnings of Allah and they do not humble themselves to His Words.

Why are our hearts so hard? The prophet Muhammad SAW mentions that whenever someone does a good deed, a white spot comes onto his heart, and if he continues to perform good, his heart will become so white with Noor and light that it will become like shining marble. The same way for the person that commits a bad deed, his heart is afflicted by a black spot of sin, and as he continues to sin day in and day out, his heart becomes completely blackened by these sins and it becomes hard to the point that his sins do not affect him anymore.

Isn’t this how we are now? Sometimes we wonder how when we hear stories of the Sahabah about how they would be up all night in prayer, weeping and crying and begging for forgiveness…and then to find out for what? Their minor sins! The tiniest things that they did that they thought to be enormous on their records that they would spend entire nights crying and seeking forgiveness from Allah. Most of us, we do not think twice about the person we backbited a few minutes ago. Sometimes we DO think twice, and with a quick astaghfirullah, its all good. A lot of times, we do not even take notice to the sins that we commit because they have become so regular to us. They don’t even bother us.

Sheikh Husain Abdul Sattar gave his own example to illustrate this point. Once while he was driving, another car came from behind him and hit him. Nothing happened to the car that hit him, but the back of his car was all banged up. So he gets out of the car and goes towards the two teenagers that step out, obviously nervous wrecks. And so they ask him to move his car out of the way so that traffic can pass, and he knows what’s up, but he obliges, and as soon as he moves his car, they peel off and drive away. The point of the story was that if his car had not been so beaten up already, he might of cared a little more. If he was driving a brand new BMW or Mercedes or something, he might have been a tad bit more concerned and upset that two kids with no insurance had just come and put a dent into his vehicle. But his car was already so beat up and dented up, that it just didn’t matter to him that another dent was just put in.

Our hearts are just like this. When our hearts have so many dents in them by result of the sins that we do so frequently, another sin, another Haram glance, episode of backbiting, or anything at all, will not bother us at all, because our hearts are already so hard; they are already so banged up and dented and dirty. But if we made our hearts into those beamers and shiny new Lexus’s, then the tiniest scratch would put us through the roof. The smallest sin would bother us to the point that we would want to seek forgiveness from it immediately as to not chip the paint on our souls. And not only would the sin bother you, but like the person you’re watching trying to back out of a parking space next to you, and is cutting it a tad bit too close? Just being close to the sins, in an environment of sins, just the notion of being succeptible to commit an injustice to your self, your heart, and that new Lexus, would cause you to begin to sweat.

Br. Nouman Ali Khan made 3 points regarding roadblocks towards softening our hearts, 2 of which I remember.

- Desensitization. Why are there some people who when a verse of the Quran concerning the Akhirah or the horrors of the fire of hell, break down and are moved to tears, while the vast majority of us remain unaffected. Even if we try to cry, sometimes, the tears just do not come. And its actually a very sad case in the west where we have been desensitized to any type of pain and injury by means of the media. So when Allah mentions the punishments of Hell, we are unaffected because of how desensitized we are. That is why when a person is making a conscious effort towards softening their hearts, a big step is to refrain from filling their minds with excess media.

- Intellectual arrogance. This is something that is very relevant to most of us who are living in the west and are studying in universities and what not. We have this false notion and idea of intellectualism, which suggests that a person who is intellectual and learned is somehow above these emotions that are triggered by the verses of the Quran or the remorse of a sin. And by this we develop a type of arrogance to say that it is beneath a person who has their emotions under control, is calm and collected, to cry out of the fear of Allah. Allah mentions heaven and hell, sure we believe in it, but we cannot be moved to tears because supposedly that is for the uneducated layman of back home. SubhanAllah. On an equal note, most of us brothers have developed the shell of a sort of apathy and disregard for emotions, and everyone knows what I am talking about. None of us would dare cry in front of his boys. So we fail to realize that the best generation ever, namely the Sahabah, whom no intellectual can surpass in status, would weep at the mention of death or the Akhirah. This is something that we, myself first of all, must get over.

"Do you then wonder at this recital (The Quran)?

And you laugh at it and weep not.

Wasting your (precious) lifetime in pastime and amusements." Surah Najm

“Had we sent down this Quran upon a mountain, you would surely have seen it humbling itself and rending asunder due to the fear of Allah.” Surah Hashr

Are our hearts harder than mountains? Have sins made our hearts so hard that a mountain would crumble by the weight of the Quran, yet we do not even feel our hearts flutter?

How can we cure this?

1. Make sincere Duah that Allah softens all of our hearts as individuals and as an Ummah. Ameen. And ask others to make duah for you. The Prophet SAW made duah for Umar bin Khattab, the hardest of hearts in Makkah, somebody who buried his own daughter alive, and Allah accepted and turned Umar’s heart around. [Quran, Surah Al-Baqarah 2:186 : "When my servants ask thee concerning Me, I am indeed close to them: I respond to the prayer of every suppliant when he calleth on Me; let them also, with a will, listen to My call and believe in Me: that they may walk in the right way"]

2. The Prophet SAW said it best, “Remember the destroyer of all pleasures.” Which is death. Death is certain upon every single one of us, and it does not discrimate age, health, or wealth. And know that the Akhirah for every one of us, starts at the point that we die. Remember death.

3. Read the Quran! And try to understand it. It’s so important for each and every one of us to make a sincere attempt at learning the language of the Quran. Because that is how the Quran is preserved. A translation of the Quran is not the Quran anymore, and can thus be touched without being in the state of Wudu. Quite simply, only the ACTUAL Quran, is the actual Quran. It’s like the lines of Urdu poems that my parents will decide to drop on me at random times, and then when I ask them to translate and they do, I am not able to recognize the same depth and beauty of the verse, and most of the time, I’m just thinking, “That’s it?” [Quran Az-Zumar 39:23 : Allah has sent down the best statement, a Book (this Qur'an), its parts resembling each other in goodness and truth, oft-repeated. The skins of those who fear their Lord shiver from it (when they recite it or hear it). Then their skin and their heart soften to the remembrance of Allah. That is the guidance of Allah. He Guides therewith whom He pleases and whomever Allah sends astray, for him there is no guide.

4. Do good deeds. And first and foremost, before all other actions, we must establish our prayer. If we aren’t praying 5 times a day, then we need to start lest our hearts become stones. If we ARE praying 5 times a day, then we need to ask ourselves, “Is going for prayer the highlight of my day? Is it what I look forward to?” The Prophet SAW, whenever afflicted with a hardship, the first thing he would do is go and pray. Prayer was a blessing for them, and for us it is a burden. The quicker we finish, Alhamdulillah. When on the Day of Judgement, we will WISH that we could pray again. This is the time for prayer, because over there, there will be no more chances to pray. Allah talks about the disbelievers in who will wish that they could go come back to this world and pray, and do good deeds, and not do what they used to do, but their time will be up, and Allah says that they have lost and destroyed their own selves by these things, and also that they are liars who would go back and do the same exact thing if they were given the chance. Ya Allah, save us from such a fate. Ameen.

[Bukhary, Volume 8, Book 76, Number 486: Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said Allah will give shade to seven (types of people) under His Shade (on the Day of Resurrection). (one of them will be) a person who remembers Allah and his eyes are then flooded with tears.]

I pray that Allah grants all of us soft hearts, and makes us from among those who are granted His shade.

sticking like ducttape

assalaamu alaikum

man talk about being hungry.

i dropped off my sister at her college early this morning, and then went straight to my campus to study. i didn't eat breakfast or anything so i come home hoping for some fresh rotis or something, but there is nothing. after looking around the fridge for a couple minutes, i end up pulling out a container of raw chocolate chip cookie dough, and begin my assault. its been in the freezer forever so its hard as a rock, and i didn't know it was possible to mutilate a fork so badly until i tried to hack away at the cookie dough and get a few bites in. and then by accident, i threw the fork into the trash can, and i'm too lazy to go dig through the trash and take it out, so its gone.

finish strong or dont finish at all

assalaamu alaikum

so the day finally came. the time for a decision. today is the last day to withdraw from classes, and after performing istikharah and debating the pros and cons of dropping math all yesterday and today, at the point of actually getting ready to drive up to the college and drop math, i decided to stick with it. there is no turning back now. i'm just going to have to buckle down and study.

3 weeks left in the semester.

in basketball, i want the last shot - more like every shot, shhh - but when it comes down to the clutch, i want it and i go for it. the same way, my entire life in schooling, whether it was the "last minute, up all night science fair project that wins", or the "did not study all weekend but come in monday morning 10 minutes before qari sahab gets there and memorize my lesson out of sheer terror", or the "last minute essay that keeps you up half the night" i've always come through at the end. maybe this spoiled me, but the thing was, i always KNEW that i could do it.

this one is different, because i hate math, and i really do NOT know if i can pull this one off. and now as the clock ticks, its almost dhuhr time. after dhuhr is class with the sheikh. then i gotta go to DC, and by the time i come back, who knows if i will still have time to reverse the decision.

but its done now. if i was to drop, i should have gone half an hour ago. then again, anything can happen, and at the end of the day, i might be writing an entry bout how this whole post was garbage, but as of now, its on. ball in.

prayer time.

walaikum assalaam.

assalaamu alaikum

dang homie

you know its bad when spring break's been over for 2 days, and you finally decide to look for your bookbag.

AND only to make it look like you were studying the entire morning and not wasting time eating roti with ice cream...

aha...dang homie

salaamu alaikum

back from the MIST party, aH, which is always good times. this was the first time during this "spring break" that i've actually went somewhere, and it was definitely a blast of fresh air. the thing is i feel so unproductive when i am at home. and when i started thinking about it and tried to figure out why, i came to the following conclusions (theories):

1. i don't really feel like my day has "started" for REAL until i've showered up and changed clothes and all that jazz. when i'm at home, i just sit around all day long, eat cereal, and sleep. do i ever leave the house? of course. five times a day at LEAST, which brings me to the next point.

2. i live 15.4 seconds away from the masjid. i sleepwalk to fajr, sleepwalk back, and hit the sack again. days that i'm off or when this is possible, ill waste time at home doing nothing until dhuhr, and ill still go the masjid without actually "starting my day". i could go the entire day like this, cuz the masjid is my backyard.

which really makes me wish that we lived a little further away. another reason is that living this close to the masjid has spoiled me. one of my boys would ask how its possible for me to be late to prayer, miss a rakah etc. he understood once he moved into the house next to mine. of course there are so many benefits of living so close to the masjid, but i can't help but wonder or hope that if i lived a little farther away, i would be so tortured by boredom that i would have to get out and come to the masjid, which would then not actually be my backyard, but me coming out to the community. it would make me a lot less lazy and teach me how to manage my time.

3. i am procrastinator extraordinaire. and my house has a lot to do with that. i cannot do a lick of work inside of the home. i can come home from college with a weeks worth of assignments to do or catch up on, and really have an intention to start on it, but once i step in the house, i see the sofa in the living room or the nice empty floor next to the computer, and oh wait, the COMPUTER. so you guys are prolly like "computer? i can understand that...but the sofa or FLOOR?" very simply put: i sleep there. all my room is to me is where i change my clothes, and maybe hit the bench when i'm feeling lucky. i sleep downstairs either on the sofa, or on the floor. therefore, when i am at home, i cannot study. its either sit on the comp, or feel very sleepy and just lie down.

4. i don't know what four is. maybe its because i'm not even going to a real college. CCBC is just 13th grade. which is why i need to transfer as soon as possible, which i cudda done a semester ago, but chose not to for who knows what reason.

this semester started as a fully loaded killer for me. next thing i know, the darul uloom classes became less structured/scheduled and more "sheikh says come at this time tomorrow...ok." and i found out i didn't need my anatomy&phys class, resulting in me dropping it, and all of a sudden, i have so much free time, and i am so unproductive its not even funny. and whats really sad is that i'm still near failing math when i could be smashing it. (see all of the above post)

so, let me end with an intention and the crux of worship: duah.

Ya Allah, make us from those who You take Your work from. Accept us for this deen.

Ya Allah, purify my intentions and help me act when action is needed, and restrain when restraint is needed. Take away my laziness and make easy for me my endeavors.

Ameen.

dasss wasss goooooooood

salaamu alaikum
this is the 1st place winner for poetry in MIST 2006. congrats to my boy hasan, known also as baller4life. here it is:

In my head I’ve got these dreams, these depictions, descriptions
Barrages of collages, colors outside the spectrum of sight, just light beyond the range of my vision
But they fill me to the brim, no use to suppress them, no way to win
Except through the burning of my soul, the fat of laziness dripping off its end
By expending this newly born piece of flesh and muscle into its truer function
As it pumps my blood and life through these wrinkled veins into these flashes of imagination
No, more like personalized personification of a reservoir of emotion
Dampened, barred and hidden behind a veneer of the visage of men.
So instead I intend to attempt to paint this picture of thoughts and feelings with words
Because my fingers and hands cannot fathom subtleties left to the mind, hold, or grasp this burden of worlds
This sketch of a solemn soul sitting in solitary at the strand of a stream, holding stones
And it might seem like a dream, but if you know what I mean, he’s grinding them down with scorching coals.
This fiery heat of struggle, dirt falls away as it bubbles when he experiences trouble,
Sharpened and shaped by all the times that he felt prone to the suggestion, that he should just lash back in an act of reactionary aggression, because he can take revenge and avenge his pride for that snide comment or the backbiting from behind, but to swallow that coal, and take the cold in his eyes and lump in his throat and throw it away, disregarding the pain of bowing low and letting go of the hate, the ire in his gaze, the daggered words on his tongue, the fire in his ways, the urge to simply stain a steel sword red, or put a gun to a head, or just return what was said, and what’s been said has been said, so to take this to bed and forgive and forget without remorse or regret grants a greater reward, far more whole than the black hole of revenge, gratification of a soul with a spine that can bend like the kind tree that bears its fruit low to even the lowliest of men.

And no its not the end, he knows that rest is not his friend, he dodges a bullet from a gun, its the whisper of shaytan, to leave his stones alone and show his own that this is what he’s done, unless he wishes to undo the labor that he has done to none, by leaving his stone, his soul, his whole, outside in the sun, because the stagnant heart is nothing but a degenerating one.

So now he’s back, he was never gone, with this same stone clutched,
Grinding viciously with a heated coal that burns him to the touch,
Crouched over and working fiercely, because his mentality’s such,
That he knows he started this job, and finish it he must,
So with another chafe of his scrape he unveils the glitter of past times and present dates,
And takes a step forward when he couldn’t contemplate
The leaving of his prayer for the next time he would wake, because what if he didn’t wake and met his fate and his lord in this most miserable state, of heedlessness
So he wakes from his warmth in the cold air of the night,
And prays to his Lord takes the sweetness of Light when no one saw or heard
He took another step forward when he curbed his desires, blasting through the doors of vile indecency, by fasting on the day in which he would eat normally, or all the times that he felt the tug of this world come at him so bold, he’s hanging off a single strand while stranded at sea in the midst of a storm that swarms him so, that he surely would not persist in his hold of this string, but he does and that’s what strengthens his resolve and drowns his remorse and remolds his whole soul into a resilient slave and a true mortal.

And this rock that he shapes with his bloody hands and welling eyes, feeds his soul to mold one simple characteristic goal: Patience in relations, in frustrations, in temptations, bearing not the limitation of reactionary situations, but patience is pro-active like meeting your enemy with a smile, or walking that extra mile, plunge headfirst into that trial, and with this you turn that first rock in your pile into a rock no more, and you see that your efforts are worthwhile because you have just won one battle in a war and these metaphors can’t fully store the heat of this metamorphosis, but this process will be hard and bitter, sometimes even torturous, to take your sweat and time put your heart and mind to the test, you need a map? take the Quran and look up your coordinates, and become of those fortunate enough to read and actually learn from it,

And then if you see your rocks you’ll find that the stones are now refined, gleaming with light of Allah’s Noor and his signs, and you know in your mind, that this is small victory and you have so many more stones to find, and to grind each and every one will be just as tough, but for that you have just carved Patience into a Diamond from the Rough.

car woes vol. 32

assalaamu alaikum

after dhuhr, i was coerced into going to grab a frosty from wendy's and drop my friend off at bally's on the way back and make it in time for class. so after we get the frosty and what not, i pull into the parking lot for bally's and some guy with a huge ram 1500 is reversing out of his parking spot and reverses right into the side of my car. the rear right door panel pops off and is slightly dented. i got all the insurance info and the popo came and all that jazz. after it was all done, when he pulled off and left, some black bag fell from his cab and i picked it up. it had important documents (...) so i plan on returning it to him. after i got home and told my parents what happened, they were like too bad you only have liability, so insurance isn't gonna give you any money. oh hell no. even though it was HIS fault? how am i supposed to fix this thing up then? meh. so my plans of someday pimping out the bonneville and making it more gangsta than it is by default have been replaced by getting this door panel fixed somehow.

maybe i should sell him his bag back for the cost of repairs. yeah, that'll work. hustle baby.

gimme da rock

salaamu alaikum

i dont write when i want to, i write when i must.

poetry isnt a hobby for me, but sometimes ill be inspired to write a piece if ive seen something or i got certain thoughts or emotions to express. i just made a poster out of this picture on the side via a program called "rasterbator" (dont ask me bout the shady name) and hung it up in my room, and during my 3 hour long psychology class on thursday, i started writing a piece for it. its not done yet, but iA, when it is, ill put it up or something.

diagnosis

assalaamu alaikum

leaving out the details as to why i had to put this off for so long, i finally went to the doctor on wednesday, and after she did her checkups and what not, she was like its either a hernia or avascular necrosis. now BEFORE i even went to the doctor, i was telling ppl that based on my own diagnosis i thought it was a hernia, and simply "knew" how a hernia must feel even though i've never had one before. after an ultrasound (shutup) and xray, i was right. i have a hernia, and today i'm supposed to go to a referred surgeon doctor dude to see what hes gonna do about it. pretty obvious right?

now the thing is, the doctor told me that i shouldn't do anything physical, meaning lift heavy things, work out, or PLAY BASKETBALL. man, thats what i look forward to the entire week. i rest myself just so i can play ball on fridays and sundays. and i've had this thing for 6 months now, and i've been playing ball with it on the regular. i understand not playing AFTER the surgery to heal up, but if this thing isn't gonna go away without surgery, what harm is me playing like i always play gonna do BEFORE the surgery? its not gonna affect whether i gotta get the surgery done or not, cuz thats a given.

i dont know. odds are, that if i roll up into the gym tonight with everybody playing, i won't be able to just sit on the sidelines and watch. this will probably be my last week to play before i gotta lay off for surgery n crap too, so i might as well...

whats that like 2? i got 68 more excuses to go...

EDIT: so who wants to school me on how to embed audio files on this page? i've seen ya'll do it, so share the knowledge.

i suck at school

assalaamu alaikum

so today i successfully failed my first biology exam. woohoo. too bad its not over. i have a psychology test tomorrow (more like today) and since i missed my last math class, i gotta catch up with 2 new chapters of stuff i don't understand by tomorrow (more like today). and then for bio, i have a paper due on monday which i gotta do over the same weekend as MSA EZ, and that same day, i have a lab practical for which i gotta memorize like a billion and one random greek derived bone names and be able to identify slides and junk.

yo i'm the worst student in the world.

oh yeah...

well at least i know what NOT to do next semester

madina market

Assalaamu alaikum

this is what i'm using for my hair so it can grow all nice and pretty. it never does. its always all thick and messy so that i just keep it cut mad low.

but this stuff is nice. it smells off the hook too.

i am the anti-you

assalaamu alaikum

cousin: do you ever dress up?
me: ... o_O
cousin: like in nice dress clothes?
me: uhh yea, whenever i go to court.

is that often? not really. 3-4 times in the last year? your call.

but i gotta go again tomorrow. dunno for what. these dudes just keep summoning me. if i say anything stupid like "yo" or "man", i'll let you guys know.

woo!

assalaamu alaikum

my phone is back. it fell in the toilet yesterday, and i had to watch it bubble as it filled with toilet water. for a second i thought of just reaching in and grabbing it, but i decided that whatever had happened to the phone had already happened, and there was no need for haste. so i flushed the toilet to drain the water and tried a variety of tools to fish the phone out. eventually a metal hanger did the trick. i washed the phone off and let it dry over night. this morning it still didn't work. so i used the blow dryer on it earlier while watching a college game and then left it alone, being told that it prolly short circuited or something geeky like that. came back home right now, turned it on and voila. its back.

alhamdulillah

kitchen chronicles

assalaamu alaikum

so i did it again. i made paratha again. by myself. and yes, i ghouned the atta too. my fam left food on the table for me when i got back, but for some reason that chicken didn't taste right, and i was starving (i used my last 50 cents in school on a tiny cup of hot chocolate to keep me from falling asleep in class) so i go around the kitchen and through all the drawers until i find the atta, add some water and start mixing it. i'm actually looking forward to trying out our new stove. after like 10 years of living in this house with the same busted up stove, the thing finally broke down and they finally replaced it for us, giving us this brand new fancy stove that has a shiny plastic (?) stove top and is all sparkly and what not. it looks mad out of place in our kitchen but whatever. i'm ready to try this thing out.

i swear, i've never been pissed off at a stove until this day, and i'm convinced that this thing is the worst stove in the world. our old one was better. bring it back. after i do all the atta stuff and roll it out into roti shape (and yes, it was round and proportioned) i throw that thing on the roti pan and set it on the stove and crank it up to "high". this thing sucks. i ended up spending at LEAST HALF AN HOUR on making ONE paratha because it just wouldn't cook. i go out the kitchen and walk around the living room expecting a burning smell any moment so i gotta run back, but when i look back after 5 minutes, this thing isn't even smoking.

30 whole minutes for 1 paratha. and finally i was so hungry, i think i ate that thing half kachi. i couldn't wait any longer. i started eating that thing and put the next one on the stove. the second one is taking just as long, and i'm over here wondering how in the world i can make this thing go higher than its highest setting. after a good 10 minutes of wasting my time with the stove, i was like man screw this, and i scrap the middle man. i take the roti on the spatula and just cook it over the stove place like a smore. meanwhile the metal spatula is getting hotter and hotter and i'm getting ready to burn my fingers. so i switch hands while this thing is cooking and i can see the smoke and everything, and even thought about putting on those grandma mittens but finally the roti was done. it took maybe 30 seconds for it to become pakki (cooked) after i took it off the pan and just cooked it gangsta style.

with hardship comes ease though, and i was rewarded with a delicious meal of hot nihari and fresh paratha. i washed it down with a glass of cold water, but only after i was almost completely done with the water, i looked in the glass and saw all the foreign objects that were inside of it.

yum. just another weeknight.

alhamdu lillahillathee at'amnaa wa saqaana wa ja'alnaa minal muslimeen. ameen.

wassalamu alaikum

carson palmer syndrome

assalaamu alaikum

aH, its no where near as bad as what happened to the bengal's quarterback, but thats the idea. we were playing football, i was QB, i'm in the pocket, i try and step up through the gap, and get hit; my forehead smashes into the mouth of another dude and his lip splits open causing him to have to go to the hospital and get stitches.

i hit the ground with a cut on my forehead, but that wasn't what i was worried about. my knee got hit somehow from the side and bent inward; a pain that i'm familiar with cuz that was the same knee that i dislocated 3 years ago. nothing broke and no ligaments tore, alhamdulillah, but i'm sure they stretched.

(btw, i didn't go to the doctor, but i've been injured so many times that i can do my own simple diagnosis by now. seriously.)

so that's why i'm limping. and that's why i won't be able to start taking kung fu again. and that's why i probably won't be able to play in the Darul Taqwa vs. ICCL game next week.

soo make duah that i recover quickly and fully and can get back on the field/court as soon as possible!

friday

salaamu alaikum

i just remembered earlier today that i gotta give a khutbah tomorrow (actually, its now...LATER TODAY). and i have no idea what its gonna be about.

yes. the excitement.