The year was 1998 and I can still remember clearly my trip to Istanbul, Turkey.
It was a stop off point before I went over to Mecca and Medina with my family. I was only 11 then I think. After a long week or something I remember coming back to Istanbul for another couple of days stop and I saw snow falling in a city. The first time i saw snow was in Oz and it was on top of a glacier and I almost skidded off cos my mom gave me a snowball right in the face.
The trip to Istanbul was awesome! The pretzels were generously HUGE and hot and the town square was big and everything was Moscow-ish. The culture grabbed me by the throat. I knew I had to go back there but the recent earthquakes have been putting me on hold.
One of the things I brought back from Istanbul was an English translated Holy Book, one of those things I really really wanted at that point of time. We were on a tour of a Qur’an printing factory.
You can still smell the printing solution.
All these while ive been reading and reading the Arabic writings and knowing all the rules of pronunciation but I know squat of what it’s saying!
It’s like you’re reading hanyu pinyin and u can fluently pronounce all the words but u noe nuts about what it’s saying.
I still know how to read Arabic - much better than the self-proclaimed I’m-more-religious-than-you-Audi Hazrita (Hasrul) – but sadly after I bought the book it has never been opened. It went around; from on the study table to inside the cupboard…. for the next 8 years.
Gimme the time and space and I'd read all these like i'm reading English.
So the last few weeks when I was on a hiatus doing some soul-searching (cos I found out that what we think we know isn’t what we know and we’re all being fooled by government scientists….) where I somehow came to a conclusion that most religions are intertwined together somehow.
It’s like finding out that Alexander the Great was in fact a prophet and is indeed mentioned in the Bible and Qur’an. That for some reason most cultures all over the world speak of this huge flood/disaster that wiped out a great deal of the world. Astounding.
I know so much about the Bible, it’s contradictions, it’s modifications and all the seven other Nicene creed branches of Christianity and stuff like that. But I know so little of what’s in my own Holy Book. It’s amazing how I still regard myself as a Muslim. ( I don’t pray, I’ve eaten pork and took a sip of beer, though unintentionally for both, and nearly had sex.)
My favourite short text.
I opened the book up and….. I have nothing to say. The feeling is different. I’m like “All these years ive been repeating these lines over and over again and this is what it says?”
I read about heaven and wine… I read about hell and its fire… I read about family values and journeys of the prophets. Somehow I connected many of the things around us and gosh all about the flood…. The way things work…. Secrets under our feet and all these seemingly simple ways we think that spark wars and gosh… I have nothing to say.
It’s like the Taoists were right in a way that no matter where you are in history…. Everything is the same and things just go about in circles.
That human behavior is still the same; we get angry we become sad we fall in love with girls two years younger etc etc etc that I start to realize that the only difference between us and the people of ancient times is….. nothing. Just maybe some key technological points.
It’s interesting to point out that the history of man probably doesn’t go further than 7 thousand years. Darwin was gay.
Accidentally, as I was reading, I twitched and flipped over one side of the book. It turned immediately to a page and I saw that a piece of photograph was stuck in between it.
On it read, “4 yrs old. Kindy school.”
I flipped it and after what I saw was on the photo I went, “My God…. Was that me?”
I guess it’s inevitable you lose your innocence as you grow older. At this point of time, I’d say, “If you wanna risk anything…. Go ahead and do it. Have all the fun and rampant monkey sex you want. But once you reach a certain age…. you had bloody damn well better knock some sense back into you.”
It seems as if there are more things that we should do than idolize movie stars or writing the best horror script or slug all day long in an office. There’s just some hidden side of the world out there that needs more people to realize that there is.
I look like Mr. Tan Chin Boo!
I’ve planned my future already. I’ve talked to Tharik about it and he seems to have noticed a few things that I have and made some similar plans as mine. I’m just afraid if I told Aik and Henry they’d be in furious rage at the both of us.
And so i wanna give them the time of their lives before I go.
It was a stop off point before I went over to Mecca and Medina with my family. I was only 11 then I think. After a long week or something I remember coming back to Istanbul for another couple of days stop and I saw snow falling in a city. The first time i saw snow was in Oz and it was on top of a glacier and I almost skidded off cos my mom gave me a snowball right in the face.
The trip to Istanbul was awesome! The pretzels were generously HUGE and hot and the town square was big and everything was Moscow-ish. The culture grabbed me by the throat. I knew I had to go back there but the recent earthquakes have been putting me on hold.
One of the things I brought back from Istanbul was an English translated Holy Book, one of those things I really really wanted at that point of time. We were on a tour of a Qur’an printing factory.
You can still smell the printing solution.
All these while ive been reading and reading the Arabic writings and knowing all the rules of pronunciation but I know squat of what it’s saying!
It’s like you’re reading hanyu pinyin and u can fluently pronounce all the words but u noe nuts about what it’s saying.
I still know how to read Arabic - much better than the self-proclaimed I’m-more-religious-than-you-Audi Hazrita (Hasrul) – but sadly after I bought the book it has never been opened. It went around; from on the study table to inside the cupboard…. for the next 8 years.
Gimme the time and space and I'd read all these like i'm reading English.
So the last few weeks when I was on a hiatus doing some soul-searching (cos I found out that what we think we know isn’t what we know and we’re all being fooled by government scientists….) where I somehow came to a conclusion that most religions are intertwined together somehow.
It’s like finding out that Alexander the Great was in fact a prophet and is indeed mentioned in the Bible and Qur’an. That for some reason most cultures all over the world speak of this huge flood/disaster that wiped out a great deal of the world. Astounding.
I know so much about the Bible, it’s contradictions, it’s modifications and all the seven other Nicene creed branches of Christianity and stuff like that. But I know so little of what’s in my own Holy Book. It’s amazing how I still regard myself as a Muslim. ( I don’t pray, I’ve eaten pork and took a sip of beer, though unintentionally for both, and nearly had sex.)
My favourite short text.
I opened the book up and….. I have nothing to say. The feeling is different. I’m like “All these years ive been repeating these lines over and over again and this is what it says?”
I read about heaven and wine… I read about hell and its fire… I read about family values and journeys of the prophets. Somehow I connected many of the things around us and gosh all about the flood…. The way things work…. Secrets under our feet and all these seemingly simple ways we think that spark wars and gosh… I have nothing to say.
It’s like the Taoists were right in a way that no matter where you are in history…. Everything is the same and things just go about in circles.
That human behavior is still the same; we get angry we become sad we fall in love with girls two years younger etc etc etc that I start to realize that the only difference between us and the people of ancient times is….. nothing. Just maybe some key technological points.
It’s interesting to point out that the history of man probably doesn’t go further than 7 thousand years. Darwin was gay.
Accidentally, as I was reading, I twitched and flipped over one side of the book. It turned immediately to a page and I saw that a piece of photograph was stuck in between it.
On it read, “4 yrs old. Kindy school.”
I flipped it and after what I saw was on the photo I went, “My God…. Was that me?”
I guess it’s inevitable you lose your innocence as you grow older. At this point of time, I’d say, “If you wanna risk anything…. Go ahead and do it. Have all the fun and rampant monkey sex you want. But once you reach a certain age…. you had bloody damn well better knock some sense back into you.”
It seems as if there are more things that we should do than idolize movie stars or writing the best horror script or slug all day long in an office. There’s just some hidden side of the world out there that needs more people to realize that there is.
I look like Mr. Tan Chin Boo!
I’ve planned my future already. I’ve talked to Tharik about it and he seems to have noticed a few things that I have and made some similar plans as mine. I’m just afraid if I told Aik and Henry they’d be in furious rage at the both of us.
And so i wanna give them the time of their lives before I go.
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