Sakinah Abdul Aziz

"In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back." - Albert Camus

Of course nobody likes the flu bug. We groan and sigh because we just have that too many things to do that we cannot afford to fall sick. And then we blame the "bug", or the people whom we have come in contact with 24 hours prior to experiencing the first onset of flu (normally would be a terrible sore throat for me). But of course at the end of the day, we blame ourselves for failing to immunize ourselves against these viruses and bacteria floating around in the hot, humid Singapore air. To have come to this point, I am aghast at how we tend respond to falling sick. Sometime back, I was down with a mild fever (and probably a diarrhea that did not really manifest itself very well, thankfully) after my weekend trip in Bintan, and what I suspected, after savouring the delectable street food. On Monday, I went to see the doctor and I was given a 2-days MC as he was afraid I had dengue. But of course, I had too many things to do, I stubbornly went back to work on Tuesday, an...

Z: I sometimes feel like I'm looking down on myself. Like there's this older, wiser me watching over this 19-year-old rough draft, who's full of all this potential, but has to live more to catch up with that other self somehow. And, uh, I know I'll get there. It's just sometimes I think I want to rush the process, you know? And I don't know, maybe, um - maybe I thought you were some sort of shortcut. Does that make any sense? J: If I wrote you, I would be like, "This is the best rough draft ever." - J: I think one of the things I loved the most about being here was the feeling that anything was possible. It's just infinite choices ahead of you. You'd get out of school, and anything could happen. And then you do get out, and... life happens, you know'? Decisions get made. And then all those many choices you had in front of you are no longer really there. At a certain point, you just got to go, "Oh, I guess this is new its going down...

Today, my father reminded us all on what Eid truly means. Eid is an Arabic word which means festival but it is also derived from its root words carrying meanings of "to return". We were reminded to always bring ourselves back to our Creator and to always put Him in the center. " Here I am at Thy service, O Lord, here I am ".

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give." - Kahlil Gibran And when you truly give, you put your whole heart in it. It is not gifts of compassion, or love, or joy, or gratitude if you do not open up your well-hidden hearts into it. It is not meaningful work but pure labour if you do not put your hearts in it. And when you truly understand the centrality of your heart, you would do anything to nurture it. To nurture is to also liberate it, free it. It is not to bubble-wrap it and keep it safely hidden and locked up in your selfishness. To give freely is not to expect or concern yourself with how much you receive in return. The moment you free your heart, that's when you truly, fully, unconditionally give.

The Morning Hours "I swear by the early hours of the day. And the night when it covers with darkness. Your Lord has not forsaken you, nor has He become displeased. And surely what comes after is better for you than that which has gone before. And soon will your Lord give you so that you shall be well pleased"  - Holy Quran [93:1-5]

You know, I have never really thought much about zombies previously. Well yeah, I grew up listening to 'Zombie' by The Cranberries thanks to my uncle who played it rather frequently back in our old house and I loved how they repeatedly sang "zombie-eh-eh-eh", but I never really wondered what the heck zombies are. Not that they truly or predominantly exist (but then again, I can never be sure). But I was introduced to a game of zombies sometime last year and I learnt that they are these people who are ironically alive while being dead, walking around, soulless. Pretty terrifying creatures with stains of cold, hardened blood on their decaying clothes who walk weird and make weird noises. With this, I suppose all the more you feel motivated to shoot them in L4D2. Anyway, sometime ago I caught the movie 'World War Z' and learnt that the dead cannot be any dead-er so it is pretty hard to kill 'em and pretty recently, I finally succumbed to watching 'Warm B...

I believe I've always been a spontaneous person and my close friends could attest to that. I love diving into stuff without having much proper advanced planning. Although for most stuff I do appreciate some general, structure or brief sketches here and there, I don't quite fancy too structured or too detailed planning because they don't quite turn out the way you expect them to and it could kill potential elements of surprise and adventure. But somehow since the past year, I have lost this so-called spontaneous tendencies. That is not surprising since executing spontaneous-ness would require a great deal of time in our hands. Anyway, I absolutely loved how I managed to slowly regain back this spontaneous-ness recently, almost effortlessly. My mom and I booked a flight to Langkawi 2 days prior to the date of departure, I booked a room at a beach resort 1 day prior to arriving there, I decided to catch The Internship while I was at work right about 5:50pm, for the 6:50pm...

After 1 year, today, 2nd September 2013, 4:33pm, I admit that this is hard. This is tough. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. But there is no giving up. I will get the hang of it soon and be more equipped and be more resilient alongside these trials, inshaAllah.

This is perhaps the advice that I need at this point in time. "Everything changes when you start to emit your own frequency rather than absorbing the frequencies around you, when you start imprinting your intent on the universe rather than receiving an imprint from existence." - Barbara Marciniak