GDG Devfest @ Georgetown 2015

GDG is Google Developers Group and "devfest" is short for Developer's Festival (if I am not mistaken). Apparently it is GDG season and there was one happening last Saturday in Georgetown.


I was lucky to be invited by a friend of mine to this whole day event in Wisma Yeap Chor Ee. It is a beautifully restored British colonial building with dark wood flooring, white plaster walls and huge windows that reminds you of ballerina class, Steve Jobs' house when he first moved in and also from the classic movies.



Up to your imagination to fill up that beautiful space.

What's there? The main objective of the devfest was (in my layman talk) is to serve as a platform for software and apps developer to share their products and success stories. You can say, it is something like a TED-talk for geeks. Other things, well, there are the normal things related to Google's stuff and other tech gadgets. A robot that you use to teach kids programming, a self-made segway, Virtual Reality (VR) headsets with fun graphics to test, (man) shoes that adds 7 cm to your height (say what again?) and one that caught my attention; art projects that integrates electronics into it which I assume to get more girls to be interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).




I attended all the Main Hall lectures and skipped the code lab (didn't brought along my laptop) and one thing I noticed was that all of the talks were given by men, except for one; the very last talk, which was actually a forum set up to discuss about Challenges Women Face in Tech Industries.



One of the panel looks like The Big Show from WWE (now I'm going off tangent).

That was a good topic to talk about because apparently it was quite obvious that men out-numbered women in any tech events. I don't know why.. yesterday I hung out with three guys, made new friends where half a dozen of them are guys and only two ladies (!). So where them girls at?



A lot of thorns. Am I right or am I right?

I'll probably elaborate more on that topic on my next post.

Postgrad Will Make You Believe In God (Part II)

This second part took some time to be published, let's hope it is still within context.

Last time, I spoke about doing my MEng and had a weird and horrible time going through the darker stages of my life, when I was not near to God.

Now that I am much more older and hoping that I am much more wiser (yeah, 5 years fresh from the last experience), I decided to embark on the journey again, now doing my MEngSc. It was actually supposed to be PhD, but there was some technicalities and I fell on the short end of luck, I had to do my Masters first instead. I was filled with so much confidence that I believed I will be able to complete my Masters within or less than two years (which wasn't the case and I ended up extending by two more semesters, more about that later).

So this time, I wanted my postgrad experience to be different from the last time. I also prayed that I won't fall into depression again like last time in UK. I promised myself that I won't deliberately miss any of the 5 fard prayers and keep in check my actions. In addition to that, I was also almost entirely sure that the Mayan predicted the apocalypse will bound to happen in 22 Dec 2012. So, yeah... better be safe than sorry.

All in all there weren't any dramatic experiences to share about this except that in that course of two years, I did not realised that I was also on a journey of self-discovery. The thing that I discovered was I hated my postgrad life, I was dissapointed by the university system, did not get much support from my supervisor, felt like I was left hanging and most of all I realised I felt "lost" most of the time. Lost in academia. and also I was easily distracted by the internetz. It's very disorganised and I was overwhelmed. That is the reason why I had to extend my postgrad duration, because I needed to find the right path back to the goal.

Maybe it was the perfect timing of the revolution of conciousness that has started, but I noticed that there were many friends posting a lot of useful and mind opening Islamic content on fb. I've also found many useful websites that are working for the betterment of the ummah and some could even rival the main non-islamic websites that discusses productivity and thoughts. They were Productive Muslim and Muslim Matter. I've also discovered a few notable speakers that clicks with me, Nouman Ali Khan, Nasir Jangda and Yasmin Mogahed. So during some free time, when I was not distracted by the internet, I would listen to Podcasts from these speakers and also read articles from the websites and learn from them.

I've hit a brick wall many times. I have been going in circles for the first 3-4 months trying to figure out how the active indutor worked, tried the get help from my supervisor and the only brilliant thing that came from her was "do reverse engineering". So I did some solat hajat and made specific du'a asking to get me out of this Groundhog day. And indeed He did took me out from that vicious cycle, I forgot how but I could see how the gyrator theory works.

Realising that my progress will only depend on the will of God, I always asks Him for help whenever I come to a brick wall. However, I still feel miserable doing my thesis. I don't know why? I feel like quitting everyday. Is this what we are supposed to feel? my dad and Sheri both said it was normal. I think I can feel Atik agrees too.

However, despite the terribile feeling I had, the good thing is that I did not lose my mind and did not pushed away any human contact with anyone. Socially, I was a butterfly. So my mind and emotion in this section was spared from torment. But maybe I did tormented my friends with my continous laments about how my masters sucked.

I think I was less 'suicidal' working on this postgrad is because of the Grace of God, even despite all the hardship and mental challenge and lack of motivation, I was still able to gather relevant data and finish my thesis and still in one piece. I believe that all my prayers and supplications did gave positive results.

Eventhough I was broken, there was a higher power that picked me up and super glued me back together. Thank you Allah.




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Repurposing the Istikharah

I just want to share some thoughts I have about Solat Istikharah.

We are told to make this special prayer when we want to make decisions, especially when deciding to get married to a person, or not. We do the Istikharah prayer maybe 7 nights in a row before going to bed and hope to receive a 'sign' either in our dreams or some other ways that tells us which decision to make.

I think Istikharah has been under rated by me until now. These past couple of months, I've been listening to a few Islamic talks from a few scholars about this and I have came to a conclusion that this prayer has been overlooked by me. Let me explain; with what little knowledge and understanding I have.

1. It would be most beneficial if we understand what we are reading/reciting when we do the prayer and reading the supplements afterwards. For example, in the guidebook on how to perform Istikharah, they advice to recite Al-Fatihah followed by An-Kafiroon and Al-Ikhlas in each rakaat respectively.

The Al-Fatihah is a surah which is also a du'a from us, the slave, asking from the Lord of all creation, Master of the Judgement Day, who is the Most Merciful and Most Giving. The One we all must bow down to and ASK from, to GUIDE us onto the straight path and prevent us from going down the wrong path by giving the example of two kinds of people; the ones whom He gave blessings and the one whom He is angry with.

Even before we read the Istikharah du'a, we are already asking from Allah to guide us to the right path.

The Al-Kafiroon in a testament of our faith that Allah is the only God (monotheism) and we will not bow down to other man-created deities.

Al-Ikhlas is another testament of our faith that Allah is the ONLY God and He does not have a child and He is not begotten.

So one surah to declare against all other religions created by man and the other against the wahyu religion misled by man (Christianity), which strengthen our faith in Allah that He is the rightful Creator to ask from and not from other creations.

2. Then after finish praying the Istikharah, we are advised to say "Subhanakala 'ilma lana,illa ma 'allamtana innaka anta 'a limun hakim"
- which says Glory be to Allah, we do not have knowledge except what is given to us, and He is the most Knowing and Most Righteous.

This is to say, we human beings have very limited knowledge. We do not have any knowledge beyond anything of what we know. I mean, we do not know if something that we like might not be good for us in the future.. Only Allah SWT knows because His knowledge encompasses everything in and out and beyond everything.

So we ask from Him, the Knower of all things to guide us.

3. In the final part, the du'a, there is a part where we tell or ask Him to make easy for us the decision that we are going to make IF it is good for us in our deen, life and after life and then bless it.

However if the decision that we are about to make is bad, then we ask Him to take it away from us and make us ridha with His decisionnto take it away and then replace it with something better.

So I think that section in the du'a is a good one because in any case, we are setting ourselves in a win-win situation (in a good way, not in the greedy-opportunistic way).

Isn't Islam beautiful? We submit ourselves as His servants, making decisions wholly in His guidance, asking Him for His blessings and fully trusting Allah that whatever happens next is something that is good for us.

Back to re-purposing Istikharah, I think it should not only be done only when one decides to get married or other big things in life, like, buy a house. It's best to just do Istikharah for any decisions that we want to make because in all of it, we are asking Allah with His vast knowledge to guide us in making a good decision in this world and that will also affects the next.

Wallahu'alam. This is just my opinion using all the little intellect I have. Do guide me if I am wrong.


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