Life in the 90s

I am the 90s baby

Well, I plan to make this post a short one and get straight to the point.

If you lived in the same era as I do, You must have known Hanson! Check this out if you have no clue;

Did that ring a bell? Now that's the Hanson brothers. They are one of the best pop band back in the 90s. I remember singing along to their songs 15 years ago, loved them so much.

Right. 15 years had passed ever since and I haven't listened to them for ages. But guess what? Unlike other 90s boybands which got disbanded when it gets to this new millenium, my Hanson brothers are still awesome now! Because I missed listening to the good music of my childhood day, so I decided to go for youtube walking. And voila~ here's what I found;

This is video recorded in 2003 when Hanson was going for their world tour. I bet people who went for this concert are just about my age!

It's awesome. The same people on stage, the same song, the same feeling. That's so nostalgic.

Isaac (oldest) plays guitar
Taylor is the lead singer and keyboard
Zach (youngest) is the drummer

And it's hard to believe that these people are all married with cute and adorable kids. Isaac Hanson is 31 with 2 kids, Taylor Hanson is 29 a father of 5 kids, Zach Hanson is 26 with 2 kids.

This was them 15 years ago

from left: Isaac, Taylor, Zach

 And this is them now

from left: Isaac, Zach, Taylor

from left: Zach, Isaac, Taylor. Hot daddies!

 

I would choose The Hanson over The Jonas! wohooo~

It's just me

well

it's nothing

it's just me

Solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike

Alhamdulillah. This morning one of our colleagues gave a tazkirah about what's going on in Palestine. Truth is, this Palestine issue is not something that we all get pumped up one moment and the next it'll go *poof* in the thin air.

For instance now, it's getting 'brown-er' around facebook.

Changing DP accordingly isn't something we do just because it looks cool. It's more than just a trend. Most important is the du'a that we make for our brothers and sisters in Palestine.

To those who're still wondering what's all this fuss about can click here.

As I quote 'Ammar said "Ukhuwah isn't just when we're meeting our friends, it's when we know that we're somehow connected because of Allah"

The same goes with all Muslims in Palestine, and Muslims all over the world; du'a of us Muslimeen, is what connecting us, is what keeps the ukhuwah grow.

This a reminder to me too.

Free Palestine! Allahu Akbar!

Love for mum and dad

These days, seems like my eyes easily got moist whenever I talk family. I figured out that the more years I've lived, the more I became attached to the bond; the blood bond. The more I realized, family comes first, how the love of family Allah sent to you keeps you going in life, how important they are.

Not to say I am a bad daughter. But we've all had been a bad daughter/son if not many times, once. Try to recall your memories. Even if we're not that rebellious teen type, think of how much mess we'd caused when we were babies.

A few days ago, I had a little conversation with my sister;

Sis Addie: Just now mum talks about you during dinner
Me: Really? What did mum said?
Sis Addie: Mum said you were such a brave girl last time
Me: Last time? When I was little?
Sis Addie: Yes. And when you were schooling. You've grown up to be patient
Me: I can't remember particular memories that were significant, but sure mum sees it from different views than I do...
Sis Addie: Mum knows best remember. Perhaps you're just losing grip but don't worry you'll get back to track. It's just a matter of time

'You've grown up to be patient'
I swear I cried knowing these words came from mum.
One. It made me realized that mum, always watch me grow, she sees me growing. And she sees it from a different angle, from the eyes of a mother.
Two. It made me realized that I've grown this much and, what have I done to my mum to thank her.

Suddenly emotions filled my head. I have lived for 21 years and just noticed that very little time did I spent with my parents. I enrolled into a boarding school for 5 years. Only come home during school holidays. Then I got myself to USIM, foundation and 1st degree now. Only come home during semester break. This hits me hard.

I wonder if they've missed to see me growing in front of their eyes. And eventhough I rarely tell mum all my problems, but all in all, I know mum would always pray the best for me. And I believe of all these years, mum does see me growing into human.

I wonder if a few days ago when my sister told me this, did my mum actually missed me? I'm a terrible daughter, I just realized I haven't gave mum a phone call for a long time.

I wonder if mum and dad feel lonely. At the moment, all of us kids are away, studying or working. Thank Allah Sis Addie lives with my parents (her workplace is within driving distance). But what if mum feels lonely when she has no one to talk to?

I forgot that mum and dad is also growing old. Even though mum is still busy working as a teacher and dad is busy with his little business, I am too busy and too selfish studying here. Little that I have in mind to go home over the weekend, though Johor is just 3 hours away. Keep thinking I'm busy with activities and all.

I have 3 years more to go before I graduated, till then I can't really be home everyday. I have 3 years to go before I graduated, till then I still don't have proper income to give to my parents. So the best I can give is to make du'a for them. Lots and lots of du'a.

Dear mak and abah,

I'm sorry I can't always be by your side, if you're lonely and when you need someone to talk to.
I'm sorry I can't come home that often.
I'm sorry that even if I'm home, I didn't really put a lot of effort to make up all the years we've missed when I was in boarding school and when I'm still studying now.
But please stay in good health, until after I graduated, so I can move in back into the house, and live together like when I was in primary school.
Please stay in good health, until after I graduated, so I can buy you nice things.

sincerely,
your daughter, Za

Dear Allah, please take good care of my parents for me. You're the one and only who can take care of them best.

left row from top; along, kak ngah, kak addie. right row from top; as, me, didin

I'm keeping my pace

This entry is the sequel of continue where I left off

9th April - back to Johor for mid semester break
14th April - Attended Ain and Najmee's wedding in Kelantan
16th April - 2nd half of 6th semester started
21st April - inter-residential college netball tournament
27th-29th April - being facilitator for 1st year's English Getaway
30th April - research proposal dateline
5th May - 3s (salam,senyum,sapa) closing
12th May - MSC (Medical Student Club) Day out in Taman Warisan Pertanian, Putrajaya

I really wanted to write an entry for each and every one event. And if I insist, that would be tonnes of pending post! So I'll just give a snip of each.
 
Najmee and Ain's wedding was the 3rd wedding of our batch; after Zuhairah's and Mael and Anie's. They held a simple and modest reception. Ain offered me to do the makeup for her because she (and Najmee) personally preferred something simple. Note that I never had any professional experience with makeups except that maybe out of 30 girls in our class, I'm the one with most makeup products collection, but I accepted her offer with honor. I think that after the bride and groom, the 2nd most important person would be the one who keep the bride pretty *winks*

Inter-residential college netball tournament in main campus, Nilai. We had regular attackers lineup for the games, but for our defenders we had new ones. Maybe we weren't as strong, but alhamdulillah we won 2nd place out of 7 teams.

English Getaway is our faculty annual students' activity. Specially for the 1st year freshmen. It's pretty much like an English-in-camp except that we had a more sophisticated name for it. We called it 'getaway' as in to get away from the hectic life in campus, being a medico and enjoy the weekend without books. Highlight of it is of course, an All-English policy over the weekend. I had my getaway 2 years ago and this year I came back as a facilitator. We had a lot of fun activities; group cheers, sandcastle competition, reading aloud, treasure hunt, indoor games, students' performance. Since we were doing it near the beach, we had a little beach-y moment, played in the water and stuff. My English Getaway 2 years ago was a blast! No joke! And glad to received thumbs up from the juniors this year.

me and the sunset? me in the sunset? the sunset in me?

  3s closing. We had a lot of activities such as Citrawarna competition (a fancy name for students' performance) separated venues for male and female, explorace etc. 3rd year won 2nd place for citrawarna. The girls did musical and the boys did medley, only practiced for one night and proud of it!

MSC Day out is considered an annual MSC activities, this year's was the 2nd one. It's pretty much like a family day where students mingle around regardless what year they're in and have fun playing games and riadhah. Ustaz Nazri was invited to be our VIP yesterday an as i quote from his speech;
'I'm happy to see all of you here joining activities, because I love to see ukhuwah'
Yes, ukhuwah. I'm not promoting ikhtilat here. Talking about ukhuwah in general, it's beautiful to see people getting to know each other without any bad intention.

Netball tournament, English Getaway, MSC Day out, my skin was constantly exposed to sunlight! I've had this suntan for weeks! Oh please, when can I get my original skin back!

Journey to AIMST #epilogue - what I'm fighting for -

What I'm fighting for

I'm fighting for this Deen
I'm fighting for Islam
Allah's command over me is forever executed
To serve Him with 'ibadah
To become a khaleefah on Earth

I wanna strive for Jannah
And I want as much brothers and sisters to do too
I have a lot of flaws
But doing it together, that's ukhuwah

I can't change people. But at least I hope I can inspire some while me myself is undergoing the process of 'being a better person'

Journey to AIMST #7 - the debate session, it's show time! -

The debate session.

It started at 4pm
Motion: This house believes that abortion should not be allowed upon personal request
I am in the closing government bench along with Kok Jun.

The debate was held in the medium-sized lecture hall and it went on smoothly. People clapping, cheering here and there rooting for their favourite speakers. And I personally felt relaxed this time around. The atmosphere was a little laid back; it's not really like the usual stressful feeling I experienced in typical tournaments.

My speech went well and I feel confident with what I was proposing.

Kok Jun and me after the 1st round

 The end of first round. The judges then chose 2 best teams to proceed to the next round aka the final round. That means 2 teams from my venue and another 2 teams from another venue will meet up.

To keep in short, Kok Jun and I managed to get to the final round. And for the venue next door who debated on health policy, Hanisah my junior who're also from USIM, her team won too!

Me and Hanisah, we're always teammates in tournaments. But this time, we'll go debating against one another.

The final round was held immediately after. We drew motion and it was on legalizing euthanasia. Personally if you ask me, euthanasia is kinda a lame motion to be debated on, but yet it's a hard motion too.

And I am the opening government who need to set up the case at the first place! Oh god, legalizing euthanasia.

We had 30 minutes of quarantine and off we went on stage. Final round was held in the great hall.

Me and Kok Jun as opening government

Hanisah and Darshini as opening opposition

The Prime Minister giving her speech!

Despite my lack of substantive (it's legalizing euthanasia for god sake!), I kinda enjoyed the mic and the moment I had on stage. The debate ended at almost 7pm and we staright went for closing ceremony.

Hanisah team got the 1st place.
Me and Kok Jun? We got the 4th :P
Ahh.. Too bad but that's ok. At least we made it to final round.

prize giving ceremony

 And after the closing ceremony, we took a lot of pictures!

these are the people i hang around with for 2 days in AIMST. they're awesome!

All in all, I learnt a lot of things. From trying to fit in to treasuring friendship, from strength to confidence. Thank you Allah for the opportunities.

With that people, that's the end of my Journey to AIMST entries!

Journey to AIMST #6 - Sherlock Session result is out! -

Sherlock Session result is out!

In my previous post, I did mentioned about Sherlock Session. It's a medical quiz. 1st round we had answered 40 MCQs. And on Sunday, they promised to announce who made it to the next round. Before I get to that, let's hear what we had on Sunday morning ^^

Sunday morning, we had 2 talks. But my bad, I can't manage to pay full attention to the talks. Why? I was busy writing my arguments! I'll tell y'all how was the debate like in the next entry.

So back to Sherlock Session. After 2 talks during morning session, then they started calling names for the 2nd round breaker. One by one names were called, but I couldn't care less. I have substantive points to elaborate here!

Until they called 'Zawani Zainudin from USIM'

I was like 'was that my name? did i somehow misheard?'

I remained not sure and dumbfounded until my groupmates started cheering on me. They all congratulated and, oh so it started to make sense; that was really my name.

2nd round of Sherlock Session will be held in less than 30 minutes. Great! Now I have 2 big things I should get tachycardic over! Fine. There I left my papers and arguments, I should get ready for Sherlock Session.

For 2nd round, I wonder how they'll conduct it. I'm dead if it's another quiz.

All top 47 scorers were divided into 4 groups and we were brought to small cubicle upstairs (the ones where press and medias would sit in any events to get the best view). I was in group A, and there were 14 delegates in my group. We were briefed that this session, we'll have group discussion instead of real quiz (phew~). But our discussion will be taped on camera and everybody else in the hall will be able to access what we're doing, live.

Never mind. I prefer discussion, more mind opening rather than answering quiz on your own. I kept making du'a so Allah would ease me in everything I do.

Again, the questions were on antibiotics. It covers typical and common diseases we found in the hospital; TB, asthma, malaria, URTI etc.

We had Shaun Ng, final year medical student from AIMST as our facilitator and the discussion was awesome! It pretty much gave me chance to revise things.

Then the time came for case presentation. So I volunteered to answer  few questions. Those were on betalactamase, Diethyl Carbamazine Citrate and filariasis.

Filariasis. Disease of lymphatic system, blocked by nematodes (roundworm) namely Wuchereria Bancrofti and Brugia Malayi. For a moment, I thank god that Prof Adel my Parasitology lecturer kept talking bout this in class.

At least, I really can share with everyone what I've learned!

while presenting from up there ^^ *pic from mujahid*

the hall i see from above

they're watching our discussion live!

from cubicle A. standing 2nd from right is our facilitator, Shaun Ng

 After the discussion and presentation, we were given 8 questions to answer. They said the highest scorer from each cubicle will proceed to the final round; cubicle A, B, C, D.

Well, I did my best to answer. I didn't put my hope too high. Getting to 2nd round is already out of my expectation, so I don't mind even if I didn't go to the final round.

The 2nd round ended right after we finished answering the questions and off we went down back to the hall. Not long after that, they announced the highest scorer from each cubicle. There are 4 of them and as expected, I didn't make it for final round. Well that's ok. At least I can concentrate back on my debate.

After final round of Sherlock, we had lunch and zuhur break. That Sunday afternoon we got another 2 talks that I literally missed too. I had to be on standby for my debate at 4pm.

Up next is my the debate session! Please anticipate.

Journey to AIMST #5 - the debate discussion -

Hi everyone! How long has it been already since my last update? I can't remember how many weeks ago was it myself. Truth is I have a lot to share here. But I guess I can't really reach them all as long as I haven't settled my 'Journey to AIMST' entries. Let's continue where I left off then.

The debate discussion.
Saturday evening, of course we had fun in the clinical skill labs! That night we were ought to have debate discussion. The debate will be held next evening (on Sunday). All delegates were divided into 2 big groups, and each group was divided into government and opposition. Each government and opposition then was divided into 2 group respectively; into opening and closing team. Yes, if you got what I meant we're gonna have British Parliamentary style debate.

To keep long story short, the motion was decided. My venue, we'll debate on 'This house believes that abortion should not be allowed upon personal request'. The other venue, they'll debate on something about health policy.

The thing is, we need to decide who should be the speakers. My team, we were the closing government. There were almost 30 of us, and we barely know each other. Believe me, to choose 2 speakers out of 30 so-called strangers is not easy.

What about me? I was in between the 2 feelings; whether to volunteer or not. Debate has always been my thing (let's put aside whether I'm really a good debater). I don't feel like debating there because I kept on telling myself there should be others who're better than me. But the other side of me kept telling myself I should grab the chance! Like in the place where my community is the minority, why don't take this opportunity to let others know USIM.

While I was in dilemma, my friend, Mujahid encouraged me that I should just volunteer. Having my friends to go rooting for me, then I know I should do this! So I volunteered!

So  told myself 'how bad could it be? let's just have fun'

That night, the discussion went well. Everyone contributed, sharing ideas.

my closing government team

And that was how my night ended. Up next is Sherlock session result! Please anticipate :)

Ps: betul kata Sayid Aiman, susah jugak features baru blogger ni. Tak biasa -_-