artikel di bawah dipetik dari majalah al-falah keluaran sebelum exam. Mungkin dah terlambat untuk kanak-kanak newcastle, but it might be helpful to all others yang masih di ambang exam. good luck!:

Musim peperiksaan sudah hampir tiba. Masing-masing sibuk mengulit buku-buku, nota-nota dan gambar-gambar. Perpustakaan tiba-tiba penuh luar biasa. Aktiviti-aktiviti masa senggang banyak yang ditinggalkan demi memberi penumpuan kepada peperiksaan. Debaran peperiksaan sungguh kuat sehingga ramai yang menjadi gelisah hanya memikirkan tentangnya.

Lebih-lebih lagi, untuk yang bergelar pelajar perubatan di bumi Newcastle ini, ramai yang sedia maklum tentang cabaran getir melalui peperiksaan dan mengapa lulus itu sangat-sangat mustahak. Antara lulus dan gagal, ada satu jurang yang besar. Gagal bukan sahaja bermakna terpaksa mengulangi semester tersebut, malah ia juga bermakna terpaksa menambah tempoh pengajian, terpaksa berhadapan dengan risiko ditamatkan penajaan, terpaksa berhadapan dengan ibu-bapa dan keluarga,  dan yang paling getir, terpaksa berhadapan dengan diri sendiri, mempersoalkan bagaimana ia boleh berlaku sedangkan segala usaha telah dicurahkan, cuba mencari di mana kesilapan diri dan cuba meyakinkan diri bahawa peluang masih ada.

Bukan niat penulis untuk menakut-nakutkan pembaca dengan isu gagal ini, tetapi kita perlu membuat persiapan mental bagi menghadapi sebarang kemungkinan. Pertama sekali, kita perlu meletakkan keyakinan sepenuhnya kepada Allah dan meyakini bahawa segala perancanganNya adalah yang terbaik. Sepertimana firman Allah dalam surah Al-Baqarah, “Tetapi boleh jadi kamu tidak menyenangi sesuatu, padahal itu baik bagimu, dan boleh jadi kamu menyukai sesuatu, padahal itu tidak baik bagimu” (216) Allah sentiasa mengetahui yang terbaik untuk hambaNya. Di sini kita perlu ingat bahawa tujuan kita menjadi doktor adalah untuk menyelamatkan nyawa manusia. Mungkin,hikmah di sebalik kegagalan dalam peperiksaan itu ialah supaya kita mempunyai lebih masa untuk mendalami ilmu itu dengan lebih  tekun sehingga kita akhirnya menjadi seorang doktor yang lebih baik di masa depan. Mungkin juga kerana Allah tahu bahawa kita belum bersedia.

Hakikatnya, ramai tokoh-tokoh yang hebat lahir dari golongan mereka yang gagal berkali-kali tetapi setiap kali mereka gagal bangun kembali dengan gagah membetulkan kesilapan yang lalu. Saya pernah diberitahu oleh seorang doktor yang hebat yang dalam perjalanannya untuk menjadi seorang doktor, dia pernah menghadapi kegagalan. Tetapi dia tidak menjadikan itu suatu alasan untuk berputus asa. Dia tidak berasa tertekan melihat rakan-rakannya terus maju ke depan sedangkan dia terpaksa mengulang semester yang sama, kerana dia sentiasa memberitahu dirinya, ‘Biarkan orang lain berlari, aku akan terus berjalan sehingga aku sampai ke destinasiku’. Dan akhirnya dia betul-betul sampai ke tempat yang dituju dan menjadi seorang doktor yang hebat.

Ingatlah, gagal dalam peperiksaan itu juga boleh menjadi satu bentuk cubaan Allah terhadap hambaNya. Mereka yang gagal itu mungkin sahaja mereka yang rajin belajar dan telah mencurahkan segala daya usaha mereka tetapi Allah hendak menguji mereka dengan ujian yang kecil. Ingatlah firman Allah, “Apakah kamu mengira bahawa kamu akan masuk syurga, padahal belum nyata bagi Allah orang yang berjihad di antara kamu,dan belum nyata orang-orang yang sabar” (3:142) Setiap dari kita akan diuji oleh Allah, cuma mungkin dalam bentuk-bentuk yang berbeza. Selagi kita menaruh sepenuh kepercayaan terhadap janji-janji Allah, insyaAllah Dia tidak akan mempersiakan doa kita.

Dan ingatlah juga bahawa setiap kesukaran yang kita tempuhi bukan penamat kepada segala cita-cita kita. Sepertimana firman Allah di dalam surah Al-Insyirah, “Maka sesungguhnya bersama kesulitan ada kemudahan” (5), dan Allah menegaskan sekali lagi dalam ayat seterusnya, “Sesungguhnya bersama kesulitan ada kemudahan”. Sekiranya kita berpegang teguh dengan kalimat-kalimat ini kita akan mendapat ketenangan dan kita akhirnya akan menyedari betapa besarnya hikmah dari segala yang berlaku.

Saya sendiri mempunyai rakan-rakan yang telah dan pernah merasai peritnya sebuah kegagalan itu. Dan saya melihat betapa kuatnya mereka ini. Dari luarannya mereka mungkin nampak kerdil tetapi dalam diri mereka ada jiwa yang teguh dan tidak mengenal erti putus asa. Walaupun pahit mereka tetap mengutip kekuatan diri dan terus tegak mengharungi kepahitan itu. Dari manakah mereka memperoleh kekuatan sebesar itu? Pastinya dari kepercayaan yang kukuh kepada Allah dan pengharapan sepenuhnya kepadaNya, Yang Maha Pengasih lagi Maha Penyayang.

Akhir sekali, ingatlah juga kata-kata dari Henry Ford ini, ketika orang-orang di sekelilingnya langsung tidak menaruh kepercayaan kepadanya dalam usahanya membina sebuah kenderaan yang tidak memerlukan tenaga fizikal untuk digerakkan, dia hanya berkata, “Aku tidak akan berhenti membuat sesuatu sehingga aku menamatkannya”. Jalan boleh menjadi sangat berliku sehingga kita tidak punya harapan dan keyakinan untuk menjumpai jalan keluar, tetapi selagi kita mempunyai azam untuk terus mencari jalan keluar itu, kaki kita akan terus juga melangkah.

Selamat maju jaya diucapkan kepada semua yang akan menempuh peperiksaan. Marilah kita mendoakan kejayaan setiap dari kita.

“Dan janganlah kamu (merasa) lemah, dan jangan (pula) bersedih hati, sebab kamu paling tinggi (darjatnya), jika kamu orang yang beriman” (3:139)

kegilaan kami ialah membaca - balqis dan afiza

between me and afiza, we can spend hours together just talking about books, just like what we did last night. afiza actually was in the mid of writing up her patient follow through report, while i, having been just come back from morrisset, was exhausted, and yet, talking about books made us forgot everything we were up to (or not up to), and thus we got hooked till almost midnight talking about the joy of reading.

we went from one book to the next one. afiza's list of books plus mine was simply huge. listless. on the top of afiza's list is the kite runner by khalid khosseini. i agree, it's a very good book. but my top of the list is surely: to kill a mockingbird by harper lee. it's simply undescribable; it's not the plot, maybe the language and wisdom, but it surely is the miracle that makes it so superb. and it's definitely one of the books that i just can't afford to put down before i reach the last page. ask my mum. i was at home last year while reading that book: i read the book during breakfast beside my plate of nasi goreng, i reluctantly agreed to go out shopping with my mum, and i only stopped for prayers. that's how hooked i was with the book. and until you read it yourself, you'll never undertsand my feeling.

among the books that we agreed are good:
books by jodi picoult; but not all of them; nineteen minutes, my sister's keeper, keeping faith, are some of the good ones.
john grisham is a thumb up too, (though the last time i read john grisham's one was years ago, shud start reading it again): the runnaway jury, pelican brief, the chamber.
I've never read one but afiza said dan brown is good: the davinci code, angels and demons.
Khaled khosseini of course: the kite runner and a thousand splendid suns (i gave this book to afiza as her birthdy present and she jumped up to the ceiling ;))
the sequels: apparently narnia is good, but i don't like harry potter or the lord of the ring, afiza said she just reads them because they are popular.
the old literatures: pride and prejudice, sherlock holmes, the secret garden, the jungle book, oliver twist, journey to the centre of the earth, etc.

i also enjoy the non-fictions ones: making the cut: a journey of a man in becoming a surgeon is really good, written by mohammad khadra. as well as wild swans by jung chang, which i read halfway through and then stopped to focus on this ergional rotation. and among ohters that i can still remmebr: from beirut to jerusalem by dr.ang swee chai, mayada daughter of iraq, sophie's world (oh this is a really great one!).

and of course, i read faisal therani's too, the only malay novels that i like to read, and that i thought worth my time reading.

so you see, with this long list of books, it was no surprise at all if we even took the whole night talking and exchanging our experiences with these many books. we are just crazy book fans. indeed, to be given a book as a present really really really does make me happy. so thank you kak yani for giving me those set of books :)  just can't wait till the end of the exam to indulge myself in book savouring again.

terhenti separuh jalan

out of boredom while i was in my room (there's no internet in gosford's hostel), i browsed through the folders i have on my laptop, hoping to find anything interesting that i've not discovered yet but happen to be in my laptop. and sure enough, i found a big chunk of folder that i've neevr opened before. i think i got it transferred from kak yani's folder when i was getting many of her inetersting collections of photos, softwares, songs, electronic books, etc. this folder contains many inetresting articles. and there's this one article that really captures me and i think it's worth sharing it with others.

Most revolutions began as guerrilla terrorism. The American Revolution started out as terrorist acts against England. The "Boston Tea Party" is a prime example of terrorism. Colonial revolutionaries sneaked aboard an English Tea Merchant Ships, where they threw thousands of dollars worth of tea into the Atlantic Ocean. Americans today think of that incident as a stride to freedom, but the English look at it as the beginning of countless terrorist acts.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish underground in Palestine was described as "TERRORIST." By 1942, the Holocaust was occurring, and liberal sympathy with the Jewish people had built up in the Western world. At that point, the terrorists of Palestine, who were Zionists, suddenly started to be described, by 1944-45, as "freedom fighters". You can find in some old books and posters pictures of Israeli Prime Ministers, like Menachem Begin, labeled as "Terrorists" - Reward 100,000 British pounds!

From 1969 to 1990 the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, occupied the center stage as the terrorist organization. Yasir Arafat was described repeatedly by the great sage of American journalism, William Safire of the New York Times, as the "Chief of Terrorism."

In September 29, 1998, it was rather amusing to see a picture of Yasir Arafat to the right of President Bill Clinton. To his left is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Just a few years earlier Yasir Arfat used to appear with this very menacing look and a gun appearing from his belt. I am sure you remember those pictures.

And do you remember the picture of President Reagan, in 1985 receiving a group of bearded men. These were very ferocious-looking men with turbans and flowing garments looking like they came from another century. President Reagan received them in the White House. After receiving them he spoke to the press. He pointed towards them, and said, "These are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers". These were the Afghan Mujahiddin. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the Evil Soviet Empire. They were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers!

Up until this time the old adage, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" was still valid. But now there is no such thing as a freedom fighter whether it is the oppressed fighting for liberty in Chechnya, Kashmir or Palestine. Every freedom fighter has been reduced to a "Dirty Rotten TERRORIST".

In August 1998, another American President ordered missile strikes from the American navy based in the Indian Ocean to kill Osama Bin Laden and his men in the camps in Afghanistan.

And yet again another President of the United States, in November 2001 launched a devastating campaign to 'Smoke these men from their caves'.

The embarrassing reminder is that Mr. Bin Laden, the great 'Satan of the East', was only a few years ago the moral equivalent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson! Now of course Mr. Bin Laden is very angry over the fact that he has been demoted from the moral equivalent of the 'Founding Fathers' to the moral equivalent of Raspoutine.

The reason to recall these stories is to point out that the matter of terrorism is rather complicated. Terrorists change. The terrorist of yesterday is the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday becomes the terrorist of today. This is a serious matter of the constantly changing world of images in which we have to keep our heads straight to know what is terrorism and what is not. But more importantly, to know what causes it, and how to STOP it.

check out who's birthday is on today.
it's yee ping's!!!!
happy 21st birthday dear. i'm sorry i can't be there to celebrate ur birthday this year, but we can do it belatedly as we always did with ur past birthdays, can't we? muehehe ;)
I browsed through my files on my computer to find nice extravagant pictures of you, but i only found a couples. so sad :( it means that we have to spend more times together and take more photos :) anyhoo, here are some of the few photos i have of u. enjoy!!!

yee ping

yee ping and jiah


i like this pic the ebst. ur attempt at wearing tudung, and u are so cute:)

again, happy birthday and enjoy it. don't get too stuff up with the exam. as if u will ever be lah kan, but just enjoy!