Alchemy Anyone?

Alchemy Anyone?

In the City

Some may stand the pressure of City life while others just go potty.

A scene taken 2 days ago at Ampang Park LRT Station Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Rubbish, art & religion

These do not mix but I found them all in one day today at Wangsa Maju.



While taking my morning walk this morning I saw this. For some people life is so easy, just throw away any of their unwanted item anywhere. Don't they have any conscion/concern?



At noon I saw this. Art in a very crude form, art on the sidewalk wall. Still its art. Well I thought, its not bad.



And that evening, on going to the An-Naim Surau I saw Ustaz Mustaffar Umar giving tazkirah. That was a surprise. But it was a welcome sight. He had been with us over many years before he decided to return to Indonesia.

A sense of pride

This I must record. Today I went to the wedding of one of my nieces who I hardly know. Look at the photo, a beautiful couple indeed!.

The sense of pride springs from knowing that her mother who is my half sister, my mothers only daughter by another husband after she got divorced from my father, had lead such a miserable life (in my way of thinking) from the challenges she faced trying to be educated properly with very little money (I had to give her some money in my younger days), with no proper home, had enough education to get a good job, got married to a young man who asked her to leave her job for a life in a fanatical religious organisaton (Al-Arqam), sold her inheritted piece of land for a pittance, had 3 children (2 sons and 1 daughter), moving from places to places with that religious fanatics, and when that religous fanatics got disbanded by the Government she had to re-organise her life, educate her children, find jobs to earn a living, and after such a hard struggle has managed to have a good footings ......... children managed to get reasonably good jobs and her daughter now married.



I am proud of her.

Look what my neighbour did!

My neighbour did all these by himself. Such skills!

RM 5.00

For RM 5.00 (USD 1.00 = RM 3.80) you get a half plate of boiled white rice, a few pieces of fried meat, a fish, some hot 'sambal' paste, and a glass of unsweetened tea, for an afternoon meal in Kuantan Town. What more can you ask for?

a grave situation

Once upon a time the founding fathers of Kuantan Town (Pahang, Malaysia) buried their deceased by the Kuantan River, like these graves. As time progresses, the people of Kuantan wanted to use the river bank for recreational and commercial purposes. So they moved the dead to somewhere else, except these.



This car park now stands on where they were a lot of the graves of the founding fathers and their families.



So is this Shell petrol station.

when you are old...............

This old building in Kuantan Town was built in 1925. It was built near the old Kuantan Port, in Town then. Its now abandonned, neglected and looks most likely very soon it will be torn down. Soon it will just be a memory.......... in some old man's mind.

A new building will rise, the old and the 'has been', forgotten forever. They call that progress.

But life must go on.

Is solace discovered or searched?

To a Muslim sitting in a masjid before, during and after every prayer is a solace. Or even sitting in a masjid doing nothing is a solace. But in Malaysia there is a challenge to overcome wanting to sit in a masjid doing nothing or just ‘iktikaf’, most masjid are locked to prevent theft of masjid’s properties by bad elements in that area or passing that area, and in certain big masjid one cannot really sit at peace doing ‘iktikaf ‘as there are always other people walking about especially the masjid contract cleaners – they have a job to do. Unless one is really stubborn, ‘iktikaf’ is raely done. But one can always find solace at other time in a masjid. And one has to like the environment of that masjid before one finds solace.

In my few years in Kuantan, I have found only one masjid that I feel the solace when I enter it. (Maybe I have not visited enough masjid in the area to make the right choice but the one I shall describe is the nearest to my feeling of solace, and what I expect of solace). The masjid is a small masjid, old building and situated on the outskirt of Kuantan town, right on the verge of a very busy road – in fact there were evidence that some vehicles have hit the out wall of the masjid once or twice. And the noise of the traffic passing by outside can be overbearing sometime, especially of big lorries, but when one is in a solace one can hardly be disturbed by such loud vehicle noise.



As one enters the masjid, one can see that it was originally a building built away from the road, but the building had been extended right to the road edge.

One can see the pulpit clearly (by the side of the electronic prayer time clock)




as one nears the original entrance, and the ladies partition on the left. Some men can be seen waiting for prayer time.



One can see some people waiting for prayer time, especially if one views from the front. Normally very few will wait for such prayer times, and the call for prayers by the mu’azim. After that may more will walk in to attend to the prayers at the prayer time, and they walk out again after the prayers, leaving the masjid empty and most likely locked up.

But sometimes the masjid will also be used for teaching the readings of the Koraanic verses for the local children, so one may see a bit of activities inside the masjid especially in the afternoons. And such children such as these are enouraged to join the prayers in the masjid.




But the masjid sometimes is used as a place where marriage solemnisation ceremony take place,









and that is when one can see more people, the guests, and the ladies out of the ladies partition. But such occasions are far in between.


And in this masjid I find solace. Its small, few in the congregation, and has that rural feeling about it.