What's Happening?

So what is new? Juzar is off to Japan, but thankfully, instead of next Thursday, he is arriving tomorrow. Hopefully, he won’t have to go on any other business tours.

Pity me. My H button on laptop is not working, so I have to push it really hard. That last sentence had lots of h’s. so did this.

Oh well. Give me a sentence without an H. Please.

Kids are doing very well, in their respective levels. As usual, not willing to do any chore not specifically assigned to them. Actually, not willing to do any chore, period. Getting ready for summer, swim classes, and other activities. I do seriously declare that Summer is more hectic than regular school days.

Answer, anyone?

Yesterday, my eldest – all of 11 years old –  asked me a question. Are Americans enemies of muslims? He listens to news mostly during car rides, and more from the Time for Kids etc. magazines they get at school. I dont know where he got this idea from, maybe the news or maybe someone said something to him. I dont believe that Americans are enemies of muslims, but I do know that American knowledge of muslims and Islam is very limited. There are many blogs on the internet about Islam, but how to know that what they say is true or false? Then the news media is also quite happy in glorifying the gory details, but not providing any background for those news, or happenings. I find most of what I read in newspapers or watch on TV to be quite misleading, at least in terms of explaining the principles or teachings of Islam.

I explained most of the things to him, and hopefully his question got answered satisfactorily.

Milad Mubarak

Maula(TUS) 97th Milad Mubarak is approaching swiftly, and mumeneen all over the world are doing various Taabudaat Aamaal during these auspicious days. Our family is also doing its small part. We had so many different activities, some deeni, some fun.

The taabudaat ayyaam start with Milad-un-Nabi(SA) and end with Milad-Dai-iz-Zaman(TUS). For us, we had added barakaat of visiting Yemen during these days, and getting the sharaf of ziarat of Syedna Hatim(RA), and Maulatena Hurratul Maleka(RA).

The days are very busy, as we have activities on individual basis, jamaat basis, madresah programme as well as Burhani Women’s Association programme. On top of this, my son has baseball practice and games for 3–4 days a week.

This is wishing all mumeneen all over the world a very happy Milad Day.

New Server

We will shortly receive our new pc from dell, which I am planning to use as a windows 2008 server. My present server, windows 2003, is OK, but the hardware is really old(not obsolete, but very near!). So, now I get to update my server softwares, and will be able to hopefully update all other softwares simultaneously.

 

After Effects

Had a Chhatthi to attend yesterday. For those who don’t know what that is:

Chhatthi is the naming ceremony in our community(Dawoodi Bohra). We name the child on the sixth day or seventh night actually, as the ceremony is after sunset.

So there I was, and there was the baby, as yet unnammed, and lying peacefully in her aunt’s lap. I could only marvel at such a tiny being. My youngest is 6 years old, so I was obviously very out of date with the physical attributes of the newly born. She was named Ajab, and none of us had guessed at that name. My own guess was tasneem, (my name). So no one got that price :).

After the ceremony and the eating, (there is always eating at our functions, whether they are happy or sad occasssions), the baby finally made it to me. I very seriously checked out her toes, and fingers. I looked at her face to see any resemblance to her mom or dad. I couldnt find any. So I gave her some advice – Daughters look like their mothers, even if they are their father’s princesses! My daughter, people say, looks like me, which is very nice to hear, since both my boys look exactly like my husband.

Sunrise

Sunrise, beautiful over Hutaib, in Yemen. The mountains looked majestic in the early morning mist, as I waited for the sun to rise and enable me to snap this photo. I was almost at the same level as the mountain peak seen here.

More photos on the photogallery.

Social Bookmarking

You may have noticed that I have put up some social bookmarks below my posts. I had put them up in the old Blogger template(before xml), but when I converted, they got lost. I had a hard time figuring out how to add to the new template, and exactly what to add. I did a search on del.icio.us, and found many sites which were quite helpful. After many tries, I could get them to work and here they are.

For those of you who want to add these bookmarks to their blogger sites, but dont know how, here is how to do it:

Login to your blogger account, click settings, click layout, click edit html. You will see your template in the editable box. Check the expand widget templates checkbox. I put all my links under the footer class div. The code is:

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<!-- quick links-->

| <a expr:href='&quot;http://del.icio.us/post?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Del.icio.us</a> | <a expr:href='&quot;http://technorati.com/faves?add=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Technorati Faves</a> | <a expr:href='&quot;http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&amp;output=popup&amp;bkmk=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Google Bookmarks</a> |  <a expr:href='&quot;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=&quot; +  data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title'>Digg it</a> | <a expr:href='&quot;http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=&quot; + data:post.url  + &quot;&amp;t=&quot; + data:post.title'>Furl</a> | <a expr:href='&quot;http://ma.gnolia.com/bookmarklet/add?url=&quot; +       data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title'>ma.gnolia</a> | <a expr:href='&quot;http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;t=&quot; + data:post.title'>Yahoo MyWeb</a> |

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That’s it. Enjoy.