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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

#ukecPAN #mercytour

         In my previous visit to London, a Malay lady approached and asked me the location of the 'tukdin' restaurant; a place to eat delicious Malay dishes, well they say. Padahal aku bukan orang Lundang pun. And again, a few days ago, I was stopped by a Malay couple in front of the msd, asking direction to the nearest halal restaurant. I recommended them Taza at the Queensway. Dan banyak lagi kejadian seumpama ini berlaku ke atas diriku.

        It's as if muka aku macam kaunter pertanyaan tempat makan. Anyway, motif aku ke London baru-baru ini bukanlah sebagai jurutunjuk restoran, sebaliknya untuk meraikan program ukec dan mercy mission, iaitu Projek Amanat Negara (PAN) dan 'The death of the prophet - The life of his sunnah'. So, I attended PAN in the morning and the 'mercy tour' in the evening. Pagi pasal dunia, petang pasal nabi.

         The first session of PAN was about corporate stuffs with representatives from Boustead, Scomi and KPJ. Unfortunately, makcik sheikh a.k.a margaret thatcher versi malaysia from KPJ tak dpt dtg. I could not comment much about this session, sebab dia mcm dull je, haha. Dah nama pun korporat, apa beza dengan keparat?

         The second session talked about civil society and direct democracy, which was a thought-provoking one that owed a few of my tweets. Clare Brown stressed that direct democracy can only be achieved through freedom of speech, thought and media. The only thing that itched my thought is that freedom have limits, and it is not discussed to what extent freedom can fall into. You know, Malaysiakini can sometimes be a badass. It was at this point that I suddenly remembered an old saying of 'buang yg keruh ambil yg jernih'. Ingat, bukan saja-saja orang tua-tua cakap macam tu.

         Reading this, one might wonder what the limits are and of course it is none other than our moral values. Ours are not the same as we often relate it to the West. Oh, and Angela Yap is pretty, and I love it when she started her dialogue with a strong meaningful sentence. I am especially relieved for the session was soooo not BTN or of the 'listen let me speak' sort. ahhaha.

         I'd my lunch at the venue after forcing myself to listen Shebby Singh's session. Oh well, he was annoying as usual. Then, we're off to Kensington for the mercytour talk. Suddenly along the journey we found a Zara outlet at Oxford street and one cannot simply miss the sale it had to offer so i found myself in the outlet for about 15 minutes, by chance to bump into my Integomb junior Afiq Jalil who is studying in Russia… alhamdulillah.

         The mercytour talk was quite short, but it was the bomb. Pencerahan agung melimpah ruah ke dalam jiwa, mcm diorang yg baru balik drpd muhasabah kendiri mk. Syeikh Tawfique Chowdry said 'Abu Hurairah was sent to be the man who represented our prophet's sunnah. Everyone knows that. The sahabah were sent for their own significance. The question right now is what is your purpose of being sent here…?' 

         The moment Syeikh asked the question, I raised my head up from staring at my shoes into looking directly at his face. He was so serious in stressing the purpose of our life. The next question for me would be 'when will i gonna be serious about this?' I hope it's not 'later'.

         Syeikh said, quoting a poem by Allamah Iqbal (correct me if i'm wrong) "People who have purpose and direction, they are the qadr of Allah". Indirectly implying that those who do not have directions (bukan merujuk kepada directioners) are the ones who are being pushed to the left and to the right by the qadr. He then said "we choose what we want to be". Have I choose mine? T_T

         I might not being honest to myself at this stage because I think that there's a lot more to tell. And oh, nothing beats majlis fikir kyuem's intellectual discourse. Eh apahal tiba2, haha. Till then, bye assalamualaikum.

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