putik manggis.
this is the bud stage of a mangosteen. teka berapa ulas dalam buah manggis ni nanti (insyaAllah)? 

balik kampung

weekend lepas drove up to senawang balik my parents house. rasa rindu.and, balik kampung juasseh (kuala pilah). sejak balik dari hajj, this is the first time balik sana.
plus, ada kenduri kat rumah sedara nearby rumah kampung.
the main thing was for marsya to meet up with her friend (dua pupu) syafiqah. selalu sangat she imagined talking to her on the telephone.
quietly i arranged for the weekend untuk balik kampung.
naza was made busy jadi timekeeper johor state netball meet (mssj) from friday til sunday in jb, so tak ikut sekali.
how happy marsya was, main² dengan syafiqah sampai habis basah kepala dia berpeluh² (plus bahang tengahari kat kampung).
on the way back around 3pm, about five minutes in the car dia dah tidur dah, sampai la lagi 60km to home. about 2 hours sleep. penat sangat la tu.

manggis memang menjadi tahun ni. at least, putik manggis banyak betul. perhaps, ganti buah tak menjadi tahun lepas.i've never seen manggis berputik sebanyak tu. alhamdulillah, hopefully nanti menjadi boleh buat makan ramai² anak cucu atuk.
i love mangosteen. you need some sort of a skill untuk kupas buah manggis.
unlike rambutan, manggis still ada value sekarang² ni.
you could tell (subhanallah) ada berapa ulas buah manggis dalam tu, by looking at the 'tampuk'. i think, the most i had was 8 ulas dalam sebiji manggis. jarang jumpa 9.
when enjoying mangosteen, here's a caution: keep your hands away from your shirt. getah manggis tak boleh hilang.

keruing tree (dipterocarpus spp.). looked up and saw this while trekking down the trail in endau-rompin national park.

look up above

how often do we look up above us?

try these:
1. go outside, and look up above. beautiful sky on a sunny day.
and breathtaking moon and stars on a clear night sky.

2. stand (or sit down) under a tree, and look up above.
amazing array of leaves and branches. if you're lucky, you'd see a bird's nest or a squirrel.

don't forget to utter this: Subhanallah.
enjoy your views!

honest work

i went to pusat penyerahan mel pos malaysia pasir gudang at sri alam counter saturday morning with Marsya, after sending Naza to school for her meeting. Naza didn't quite have the time to go collect Dawud Wharnsby Ali cds that finally came in the mail (a gift from me, actually), so i took the liberty of collecting them myself (completed surat penyerahan kuasa with forged signature... hehe...).

it's only 8.45am while the counter opens at 9.00. i stayed in the car with Marysa for fifteen minutes and then went inside.9.00am and still the counter is not yet open, so we wait outside.

i showed Marsya the magic of daun semalu. she enjoyed it very much.

i peered in and saw that all the postmen having their morning briefing. and du'a recital.
it struck me that the du'a is very important for all of us before doing any work, particularly in this case, the postmen.
imagine that they have to be honest 100% every working day. or else, there would be mails and parcels kept hidden somewhere.

i approached one of the postmen there (and he seemed delighted), and said to him that it is heartwarming to see that they do have a du'a recital. he replied, it is a rule for pos malaysia postmen to have the morning session (the whole of malaysia). he added 'sekurang²nya hati boleh dididik jadi jujur'. alhamdulillah.

oh, and i have the cds now. good songs.
visit dawud wharnsby ali's site here, and here for details of the cd package that i bought.

what's in a name?

Ijam -
it's derived from Hizam. lose the H and change Z to J.
Ali (Nazri Adam) my childhood friend used to call me Ijam Bedek, or rhyme it Ijam Bukit Mertajam. teasingly, of course.
i'm not sure who first called me Ijam. anyway, it's the name i'm used to people calling me with, be it friends or family.
until i'm 6 years old, then only i had a shock. i'm in the kindergarten, and Ms. Michelle called me 'Akmal'. for life, nobody had ever called me that! it's making me rather uncomfortable.

Akmal -
now i personally prefer people to call be by my name. Akmal.
it has a really special and very good meaning. thank you Ayah for coming up with such an unusual (during my childhood days - more of this later on) name, altho i was not very fond of it when i was young.
Akmal in arabic means 'perfect' or 'lengkap/cukup' in bahasa melayu.

when i was young, there were no other Akmal in school besides me. me, a black sheep? oh, man.
i remember when i asked Ibu to change my name to other more common ones. so Ibu asked me 'Ijam nak nama apa?'. came my reply 'Mamat ke, Ahmad ke'. common, right?
i was really overjoyed when one day i know that my name is in al-Quran. this means that my name is after all not an unusual one. and it has a very good meaning too.

i really like the fact that my name starts with an A, so i get to be among the firsts in any list at school.

Lapt -
i got this during MRSM years in Jasin, Melaka.
it was orientation week, in dewan besar. a few of my new friends sitting in a small circle, and they decided that we oughtta have nicknames. some sort of a boarding school tradition/norm.
and so names like Mat Patt (pet pot pet pot), idung (you should see his nose), dol (jendul), etc., emerge there and then.

the Lapt story - Matt Patt (Dzeimy) was thinking for my nickname. Akmal... Akmal... Hah! Makmal. Laboratory! yeah, right. nobody would call people with mouthful 'Laboratory'. and he continued... Lab! plain and simple. and from that day i can't quite recall my friends calling me Akmal. they call me by my nick.
i thought that 'Lab' is quite strange for a nick, so i changed the spelling to 'Lapt'. still plain and simple. and without any meaning.
the name stuck with me during my MLA, A-level, NCUK years.
oh, and i should mention too that Zaleq (Razali) coined 'Laypo', and Fab (Faizal Abu Bakar) fondly calls me 'Laporpo' during a-level years.

Haji -
when i got back here from hajj friends and family calls me 'Haji'. 'Haji Akmal', 'Haji Lapt'. teasingly, or seriously, or perhaps just a gesture of respect, i may not know for sure. i don't mind them calling me that. for me, in a way, it's a du'a. perhaps i'd be able to perform hajj again some other time.

wrapping up -
it can be awkward sometimes to carry my names.
i reserve 'Lapt' for my close friends and friends who choose not to call me by my name 'Akmal'.
i would usually introduce myself as 'Akmal' to people i meet now.
Adlee introduced be to his father (my cousin) Abang Bakar as 'Lapt'.
one time during a-level year i went with Naza to her cousin Myra's birthday. she introduced me to Aunt Dahliah by my nick 'Lapt'.
until now, most everyone present that day call me 'Lapt'. Aunt Dahlia and Unc Bob call me Lapt; Myra, Lana, Aliff call me 'abang Lapt'. and Abang Bakar too, still calls me Lapt.
which one do i prefer, then?
plain simple Akmal will do. i love it very much. and for the respect of Ayah who gave me this name.
anyway, if you feel awkward to call me by my 'new' name Akmal, cool 'Lapt' will also be ok.

what should i call you, my friend?

hajj diary

i've created a blog for my hajj journey here:
hajj diary

will be updating it daily with a day's worth of jottings during the pilgrimage, insyaAllah.

hope that we could learn a thing or two from it.

safely back home

alhamdulillah,
we're back home in Malaysia today, flight touchdown KLIA 20 minutes earlier than scheduled 1046hrs local time.

I together with my wife Naza, mak and akak (my sister-in-law) went to Makkah-al-Mukarramah for hajj and umrah, and Madinah-al-Munawarrah for the obligatory ziarah.
So it has been nearly 2 months this blog is free from any posts (from me, at least).

InsyaAllah, there will be a blog about my hajj, umrah & ziarah mission. I've been toying with the idea since the beginning of the departure.
And there are a lot of factors that encourages me more to post the stories, experiences, bits and pieces of it (with photos of course) in a new blog. May Allah guide me and with it I could send posts to the blog, for the good of the ummah. InsyaAllah.

Will post a message in this blog when the first post in the hajj blog published insyaAllah.

mail-to-blogger

hey hey hey. i published this entry via email. this is convenient.

time lag

just now i realised that there is a time lag between the clock on my PC and the time stamp on my blog entries.
it is actually a 16 hour lag. it's 4pm local time in Malaysia (+8 GMT) when i post this entry.

how about you? what's your time lag?

wish you a better year ahead

new year is not a public holiday in Johor (swap with Awal Muharram), and this year it falls on a Saturday. not working at the office, free to work at home (chores - basuh lantai, kemas garage, fixing stuff around the house).
as usual, no new year resolutions for me (been a few years now). still with the old one - improve myself continuously. not much pressure there.
start working in the new year today, and the feeling is good. fresh and energized. is it because of it's a new year or is it because it's a Monday, i'm not sure and don't really care. i feel really good.
happy new year and may this year makes you and i better persons, prosperous and happy.

screenshot of the wallpapers page

been to my pages yet?

i've put up a personal website (thanks Geocities) earlier this week. you can visit the site here.

the main idea is for me to share wallpapers [1024x768] and a series of windows keyboard shortcut 'tutorial', with those who might be interested.

it had been quite a while since the birth of the idea that i finally put up the website. big thanks to adlee for giving me a little nudge (and this piece of photo for one of the wallpapers).

it's nothing quite spectacular, but it's there now, finally.

go Malaysia!

recent tiger cup matches for Malaysia were good.

beat the Thais with Khalid Jamlus scoring 2, beat Indon with Liew Kit Kong scoring 2. and i never thought i'd ever watch Malaysian football matches, let alone knowing them players!
so here's a hooray for the players. the coach and the whole team deserves a pat on the back for their work so far.

i'd say we are improving. it's good to see Malaysians on the pitch appears bigger and stronger, sturdier than the opponents. and everyone also knows that we need to keep improving, don't linger with the wins we had. keep on creating a new glory.

i wanted to show my support for Malaysian football by wearing a home jersey. no luck so far. adidas Malaysia don't have a website. last night i went to al-ikhsan sports store in plaza angsana and asked for one. the guy in there told me they don't stock any, although there were many requests recently.
there goes my wish of putting up 'AKMAL' (as in Akmal Rizal Rakhli - the striker) on the back of a Malaysian jersey. instead, he offered me a lookalike jersey. huh? i asked him to get the message across to his boss - people want to support Malaysia, they are going to bukit jalil this saturday. bring the jerseys in.

at last

for quite some time was procrastinating on having a weblog (and a website), accidentally found one way to blog when downloading google toolbar.

so, here's the first post ever. in plain black font.