Winter Road Trip 2012

بِسْــــــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِارَّحْمَنِ ارَّحِيم

Alhamdulillah :) alhamdulillah, as I type, I've been given another moment to contemplate on His rahmah.

So, for winter road trip 2012, kami sekeluarga pergi ke Dallas, Texas. I fell in love with the city's architectural buildings such as the Fountain Places, The Perot Museum of Science and Nature and the promenade site where it serves as a recreational place for picnics, playground, quite like the promenade at the Millennium Park of Chicago. Cakap pasal promenade ni, reminds me of my French class T_T it's a french word for strolling in a public place. sebelum road trip, bilik kesayangan ni telah melalui proses rombakan secara besar2an. The few things that I still keep from childhood were my French exercise books. I keep them because they might come in handy one day :) Plus, the books are too colorful, filled with stars and smile faces for me to throw away. hehe. Kelolo. i remember how in mahad, when we took 15 mins breaks from our Arabic classes, the girls would circle around me and tell me to teach them French instead of memorizing different fi'ils. Haish...sekarang terhegeh2 nak keep up dgn Arabic! tu laa. T_T

Thom Mayne's deconstructionism architecture of Perot Museum of Nature and Sciene

One part of the modern and post-modern architecture of Dallas

Knit bombinggggg! Finally I saw a garden of you. Yeay. ^____^ 

Ade kisah di sebalik Nasher.

dah rindu kawan2 ni.

with Amirah, Maryam and Ayesha - Sheikh Jangda's princesses.

Anyway...

Our journey to Texas was quite scary. We left home early to avoid the snowstorm that was predicted to happen in the evening. We were at the border of midwest region by then and still terkena tempias snowstorm tu. The cargo that was clamped on the rooftop of our minivan was going lose because one of the clamps broke from the pressure of the gusty wind that was huffing and puffing our cargo.

Lots of lorries, more than my fingers could count, were overthrown by the sides of highways from skidding on the slippery roads. None of us slept when we tried to cut a lorry that was constantly skidding in front of us, right to left, without warning.

On the 6th day of our holiday getaway (i think), we decided to leave muktamar and cut short or trip early because the weather didn't permit us to make our way to Houston, Alabama and New Orleans. Instead we had to head back our home-sweet-home, Chicago. Some heavy blizzard and tornado were predicted to hit those areas in proximity said the weather forecast. So, we bade Muktamar farewell after Sh. Abd Yaseer Jangda came close to ending his lecture on Happiness at Home. After seven hours of journey reaching Memphis, when we were only 0.3 miles away from our hotel destination, our car got stuck in the snowstorm. During christmas eve, who would be available to help us pull out the car? Quite a few people, actually. Alhamdulillah. there were two four wheel trucks that lingered around the area to help pull out cars that got stuck in the snow. Subhanallah, alhamdulillah. Very kind people. We got up the hill just to find out that the hotel is full. So they referred us to another hotel not far from from the place.

Much to our surprise and reluctance, the next hotel was situated on top of a hill too. While thinking whether we should risk climbing up the hill or not, the car once again got trapped after a few seconds of stagnancy. I guess that's how rapid the snow was building up. Once again, there were so happened to be two strangers just kind of walking by in the midst of snowstorm who came willingly to help us push the car. Our car was parked in another hotel across the street and on feet, we climbed up the hill carrying our luggages to stay in for the night. Alhamdulillah. Your help is impossible to deny!

Other than that, I witnessed a boy giving his newly bought cardigan to a stranger whom he found so strange. Strange, right? I know! The guy was acting weirdly, suddenly with much enthusiasm asking for everyone's name, date of birth and jot them down in a notepad. He said, he hangs around here a lot and he always does what he does because he wants to make some friends. Suddenly we saw him vacuuming the place and cleaning up even though there wasn't a trace he might be a worker of the restaurant. He might be different and special. Maybe autistic a bit? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Another incident, was when I witnessed a girl giving a bracelet that she loved much to her friend. She had had the bracelet for a couple of years now but for almost a year it remained unworn because the bracelet broke. She finally got it fixed just to be give it away a few days after when she heard her friend saying that she wanted to find a bracelet like hers.

A local committee member in Texas actually took a week off from work to deal with Muktamar 2012 and make sure it went smoothly. Subhanallah.

Muktamar 2012's board of committee started working on the event since February 2011.

all this lavish and benign courtesy for what and why?



Saya terfikir (this is the moment when we say "ha..dia mula dahh"), kan...
Subhanallah. Dakwah dan legasi Rasulullah SAW sampai kat ummah dia hari ini. The hard-earned reputation of Islam as an established religion and deen on this Earth today still lives up to our generation! Dari sirah dia, kita belajar mengenai akhlaq dia, ketaatan kat Allah dan kasih sayang dia kat kita. Ajaran Nabi Muhammad S.A.W. tu sampai kat kita sampaikan kita sendiri cuba emulate dia walaupun kita tak pernah jumpa dia. Kalau kita kata cinta cyber tu gila sbb sepasang kekasih suka sama suka tanpa pernah bersua, cinta ummah kat  Rasulullah S.A.W. and para sahabat lagi gila sbb never mind not seeing him, we don't even love, care or know about our ancestors, great grandfather or even grandfather as much as we love, care and know about our prophet S.A.W.  who deceased some 1400 years ago! That's ancient! That's a longgg time ago, wouldn't you agree? But yet, his teaching reaches us...and we try to emulate him as much as we could, out of love for him. The compassion that I witnessed got me thinking, this must be what his compassion and love were like, and even more.  He was Allah's sent rahmah to the whole world. This act of kindness and not expecting anything in return is pure and beautiful. Maashallah. Hebatlah what akhlaq Al-Quran can do. If that's not amazing conduct out of compassion and taqwa, I don't know what is.

External beauty, gets old and forgotten as it withers away.
But internal beauty lives and remembered even after you've passed away.