An interesting video clip

Warning: This video clip has a religious theme. Please view with an open mind. : )

I have my own views on religions, politics etc. which I rarely blog about because I think it's not me to do so. Plus I'm not eloquent and well-read enough to convey my views to others. But this interesting video clip (link sent to me by Jian) touched upon an issue that I have pondered before and that is concerning the "tudung"/"hijab"/headscarf that Muslim women don. The video clip didn't answer my queries, but it's enough to portray the situation in Malaysia to a certain degree of genuineness.

So take a look if you are curious too: Hijjabed

Side notes:
1. It's nice hearing true blue colloquial Malay being spoken. Been hearing mostly Bahasa Indonesia since I went to Singapore @.@ Nothing against it... just... colloquial Malay feels more like home : )
2. Video production by MMU (Multimedia University of Malaysia)! Great job guys!

Carrefour Batu Pahat now open!

I know I rarely go back to Malaysia but I always read up on thestar.com.my for Malaysian news updates as well as getting "local" (i.e. Batu Pahat) info from family and friends.

So the latest hot news in Batu Pahat's development in my opinion would have to be the opening of Carrefour Batu Pahat! In my opinion it's long overdue, considering that there's a rather significant population in Batu Pahat and surrounding areas that would surely "support" a hypermarket. With the opening of Carrefour in Batu Pahat, people from Air Hitam, Parit Raja, Yong Peng and Tongkang Pechah, or even Muar and Kluang, would not need to travel too far for their hypermarket shopping experience.

And they've got a website too: http://www.carrefour.com.my/bp/index.html

Interesting things to note is that the tenants include Delifrance and The Chicken Rice Shop who are newcomers in the restaurant/fast food market in Batu Pahat, and that'll bring more variety. The last restaurant that attracted my attention was Secret Recipe along Jalan Rahmat.

The location of Carrefour Batu Pahat is rather obscure, so that explains for the many signboards placed along Jalan Batu Pahat/Jalan Kluang. It's a convenient location for many Batu Pahat resident however, as there are at least 10 housing estates near there (Carrefour Batu Pahat itself is located within Taman Flora Utama). It's also near to many schools though, such as Convent girls school. I bet it will be a popular hangout place in the future.

Went to an online Batu Pahat forum (in Chinese) to see what people thought about it. Most of them mention that the hypermarket would be a strong competitor to nearby shops, markets and even bakeries. I guess that's inevitable... those shops just gotta modernise themselves, improve on their services, layout of their shops, products etc. so that they do not become obsolete. (Resistance is futile... muahahahaha...)

Prior to Carrefour, Batu Pahat residents only had the option of going to The Summit (which is getting boring... it opened in 1997 and hasn't had any significant refurbishment), Wira Court (which is under-maintained), and a bunch of smaller departmental stores (The Store, Fajar). I've heard that a "Pacific hypermarket" (linked to "The Store") or something is coming up too, and the forum people say it's a main tenant at Batu Pahat Mall which is under construction. But what I really sure is that there's a Batu Pahat Mall being built that is like the largest retail cum service apartment development project I have ever seen in Batu Pahat. And it's situated along the busiest road... Jalan Kluang. Forum people say its slated to open in January 2007... The mall only, coz there's not enough time to build the apartments.

Another thing to note... Batu Pahat is also quite popular with Singaporeans. So I guess we'll also see more Singaporeans travelling up to Batu Pahat. (Gosh, reminds me of the queues at McDonalds during the Hello Kitty craze... @.@ Crazy Singaporeans... hahahaha...)

Beautiful Sufi poem

Hannah sent me a link to this beautiful Sufi poem below:

************************************************************************************

"We all aspire to the same goal:
to worship God in a way
that satisfies us and that pleases the Lord. Looking at it in this way
provides a basis for all people of faith
to find common cause and find a way
to achieve harmony and to work.
It is like we are all together inside
a big black box
with many pinholes along the exterior.
We look out and see
pinpoints of light shining in.
Each person picks one source of light
and says ' that is the one I follow'.
But outside the box,
there is only one sun shining."

-- Shyakh Hisham Kabbani (of Naqshbandi Haqqani Sufi Order)in an interview with the Middle East Quarterly in 2000. The above quote, so beautifully put, has been taken from an article 'Sufi antidote to religious terrorism' by Mafoot Simon, The Straits Times, 12 September 2006.

'The Milky Way is as flotsum on the vast ocean of estatic love.' -- Rumi (born Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi, 1207-1273

1 and a 1/2 days back in Batu Pahat

My brother's convo was on Sunday and since I could rush back in time to attend it, I did. And I ended up going back to Batu Pahat for the shortest time ever, 1 day and a 1/2.

Strictly speaking it was longer than that... I was back in BP by Saturday evening in time for dinner and came back to S'pore by Monday morning, slightly before noon. Could have gone back on Friday, but I decided to linger around at AIESEC Singapore's Jumpstart! event for as longa as I could coz I am after all in the AIESEC NTU committee.


Anyway, the last time I went back to BP was sometime in late June / early July I think... before the Gunung Tahan trip and before the World Choir Games in Xiamen trip. Considering that it has been only about 2 months +, I'm amazed at how much BP has grown.

First of all, when the bus reached the Air Hitam highway exit, there was a sign that said: "Carrefour Batu Pahat: Akan Dibuka" (Carrefour Batu Pahat: Opening soon). Well, I knew all along that Carrefour was being built in Batu Pahat, but as I had not seen the building, I didn't know how far they have proceeded. This time I got to see it and it's almost completed! Wow... This should really make the retail scene in Batu Pahat more interesting. I foresee more people from Kluang, Yong Peng and Air Hitam travelling down to Batu Pahat in the near future.

There is this space between the Projet petrol station and a Chinese primary school where a row of shops and other buildings were razed by a fire a few years ago. The last time I went back it was a construction site and piling work was being done, but I had no idea what was to be built there. This time around 3 storeys of a building were already up and a signboard in front announced: "Batu Pahat Mall". Based on the "artists' impression" drawing on the signboard, it was a shopping complex with 2 apartments (or office blocks, I dunno). That's amazing... coz there hasn't been many big projects in Batu Pahat for quite some time, no constuction of tall buildings, and no new shopping complexes (BP has only 2 main ones; The Summit and Wira Court).

This also kinda signals an expansion of investments/projects etc. to the more suburban areas. There has already been significant growth in Parit Raja town, which has and will be further fueled by the expansion and increasing intake of Kolej Universiti Tun Hussein Onn (KUiTTHO). The scale of the projects are huge and many of the projects focus mainly on residential houses and shophouses. The BP-Kluang link has long been an important development corridor, and there are lots of industries and industrial parks along the way. Major corporations that have invested here include Fujitsu and Sharp. Air Hitam, which borders the North-South expressway has a new township plan; Sri Gading (in between BP and Parit Raja) also has a similar plan if I'm not mistakened. All in all, amazing growth!

Other stuff that I've noticed... More bus companies are servicing between BP and JB, such as Causeway Link and Transnational, but apparently it's still not enough. I reached Larkin Bus Interchange in JB at 3.15pm and the earliest bus ticket I could get was 5.45pm. It wasn't like this last time... I wonder what has spurred the increase in travelling frequency of the passengers. KKKL, which I usually travel with, has even bought double decker buses (however, not sure if they use it for the JB-BP route).

I had a surprise when I alighted in BP... I heard a bunch of Vietnamese speaking! Omg! I guess the 'crazy' growth has spurred more foreigners to work here. Last time it used to be mainly Bangladeshi/Indonesian workers.

And that ends my report on the latest developments in BP. Haha...

AIESEC induction #2, Retail Therapy

Had AIESEC induction #2 on Saturday. Managed to get the projector this time... We started off with dances and then a simple ice-breaker game. After a small break I started with the recap, then OGX went on to present their part on AIESEC eXchange. Mayas is a good presenter... then Wang Jing presented. Avinaash then presented the ICX part. It was too fast and I was worried the induction session would be too short. Anyway, it was still OK, ended at 12.00pm, after Alvin's sharing session on his (all-expenses paid, 10 days) trip to Taiwan to attend an AIESEC conference.

Then on Sunday I went out with Yi Cheng to Queensway to buy shoes (KV came along as we needed his fashion sense and expertise... haha). In the end he bought a pair of red Adidas shoes and I bought a pair of beige Adidas shoes which I really really liked. I only had a vague image of what I wanted to buy at first, but when I saw that pair of shoes I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was in a shop called "Limited Edition" and I didn't see it anywhere else. Like what Hannah said, it "called out" to me... hahaha... It wasn't as cheap as I would've liked it to be, but I think it's a good investment considering that I buy shoes only once a year.

On Wednesday I had skipped my German class (i had informed my tutor beforehand) to participate in the X-Campus run 2006. After waiting for more than an hour they said they had to postpone it because of the rain and lightning. Oh well, I just wished they had come to a conclusion earlier so that I may have been able to attend my German class for awhile.

Anyway at 7pm I went to Nanyang Executive Centre along with KV and Jon for the annual Aerospace Social event. We (the 2nd year students) were clever enough this time to eat the cakes first because we know that if we had taken the buffet spread first the cakes would be gone in an instant. Haha... Talked to professors and industry people about the aerospace course and also chit-chatted with juniors.

On Thursday my experiment group's discussion was cancelled (by ourselves), so I got to join the other Aero people for Badminton! Yay! Haven't played in ages, so I was a bit rusty, but it was fun.

Nothing really interesting on Friday except for the URECA orientation. URECA stands for Undergraduate Research Experience on CAmpus. So basically we find a research topic we are interested in from a list of a few hundreds, and then we'll talk to the professor in charge of that research topic to find out more and to take it on. It's considered as a General Elective worth 3AUs and we'll be graded at the end of the project. It's rather time consuming though... a minimum of 10 hours a week, for a minimum of 8 months. But the upside is that we get paid S$10 for each hour we put in. So at the end of the project I should be able to earn a minimum of S$3200 : )

On to something else... There's this guy who lives a few rooms away from mine and he always says "hi" to me even though I dunno him. I think he and his roomie are German since they hang a German flag on their door everyday. He said hi to me again today and I was like "that does it!" because I feel bad mah...

So I went up to his room and said:"Hi, are you German?"
Yes.
Ach so. Ich komme aus Malaysia.
Oh, you speak German!
I'm still learning. I'm Sze Fei but my German teacher calls me Stefan. You are?
Jorg.
J-O-R-G?
Oh, actually there's 2 dots...
Oh, umlaut...
Haha, you know...
OK, nice knowing you. See you.
See you.

Kinda strange that I'm speaking to a stranger because I'm an introvert you see... so weird eh? Haha...