For Sahur, i had something a little more substantial, a croissant sandwich with cold cut meat, cheese and mayo (mmmm...cheese and mayo...)

Plus i ate a little more than usual, seeing as how i could only fit in five dates and five glasses of water.

I made an effort to stay awake after prayers but alas, after making yesterday's blog entry, i succumbed to sleep... (that means less brownie points for me!)

The day was spent tagging along with my Guru, Chin Lai to Fitness First Subang and True Fitness Sri Hartamas where i helped him run the Yoga/Yogalates classes. Some of the members were surprised to see a Muslim boy in the Gym during Ramadhan. But to quote one of the older members, he said its fine for me because I 'Have youth and energy on my side'. I guess it helps being young and healthy.

It was difficult not to notice the various attractive women in revealing gym attire... Something i should not be looking at, lest i *koff* fantasise *koff* too much :p. It wasn't difficult spending time with the aunties but every now and then comes along a pretty young thing in a sports bra...so...well...Allah forgive me...:p

The afternoon was spent rushing my final project paper to my supervisor, only to discover a few more mistakes, to rush fixing them, only to realise i forgot my Bank draft.

I went home to search for it, only to realise i lost it.

Needless to say, i got a serious shelling from my parents... not a very good way to end a day of fasting really...

For iftar, we ate at home, rice and prawns and veggies and fried fish.

Yum. Tried not to eat too much.. :)

After 8 ra'kaat (repetitions) for Tarawih, we went back.

My room was a mess, from and Islamic point of view, mess=bad. But i was too tired... so i decided to postpone my cleaning 'ibadah'(religious obligations) to the next day...

Survival

What is survival?

The simple definition would be to stay alive, to continue in one's existence..

However, there is another type of survival. The survival which compels the parent to sacrifice his or her life for the childe, the survival which compels the martyr to martyr himself for his belief, the survival which caters to the higher form of intellect possessed only by humans.

This form of survival is what i like to call the Emotional Survival.

Often i wonder, what is it that compels these people, parents and martyrs alike, to put themselves in harm's way, to threaten their very own physical existence...

What strong, compelling force is it that makes them do the things they do?

Perhaps with parents, it is the need to protect their offspring, their progeny, their future generations which will ensure the survival of the species which compels them so.

But with the martyrs... its something else.

Think about it... why would anyone be willing to die over something which they can't see, touch or taste?

These are what we call warriors of faith. It does not necessarily have to be a religious struggle as we have seen communists and nationalists fighting to preserve their ideology and independence, respectively.

The power of ideologies, to unite people, to unlock their instincts for emotional survival... it is both awesome yet baffling.

Ideologies make people feel as if they belong, to make them feel as part of something bigger. To give them a 'family' to call their own.

If there exists a threat to this family, then it is when these people feel threatened, inividually, it is then when their emotional survival is triggered.

Emotional survival's rationale is usually like this : 'let me die or my body broken, as long as my ideals and ideology live on'.

Hence the survival in essence, is not survival of self but more of survival of belief.

Perhaps these martys have indeed achieved a higher plane than the most of us. Believing in life after death, not in the spiritual form, but in the ideological form. Believing that the spirit of one's faith, of one's conviction goes beyond the physical self. Being able to understand that existence in thought is better than existence in person.

As for me, i have come to believe that survival is my priority, which includes my emotional survival. I do have ideologies of my own and my faith, however i have begun to notice threats to them, but i feel powerless against these threats. Perhaps my instincts for physical survival are higher than that of my emotional survival....

Perhaps one day, i may have the chance to redeem my self and ensure that my spiritual and emotional self continue to survive in my beliefs.

Priorities

Priorities...

Perhaps one of the most unique and strange words in the English Language.

to prioritise means to rank different activities which one is currently doing in the sequence of importance.

But often the problem with prioritising is... all activities seem awfully important. And even if one does prioritise, there are spur-of-the-moments where seemingly inane and unimportant activities become important for that moment (case in point: me blogging).

So what is it with prioritising?

Well, for me it has always been a futile effort to try and focus on one thing at a time. There are so many things which i would like to do or continue doing but unfortunately because i have only two hands and 24 hours in a day (8 hours of which are spent in bed), it becomes almost impossible to follow through with all these activities.

Some times it just feels unfair to have to prioritise... it feels unfair to have to rank the importance of activities against one another... most of all i find it ironic that the human brain, in all its infinite capability is made to prioritise because it has been given the human body which has been limited by the confines of the physical world.

I have grown up learning that man is one of God's greatest creations because he has the ability to make decisions. Decisions that affect his life and the world around him.

Perhaps prioritisation is just a form of decision making. The decision to organise one's life, to draw attention to the more 'important' activities in life.

I often find that different people have different priorities. (work, family, God,...etc) and they sometimes find it hard to respect other people's priorities.

Right

But then again you probably knew all that

So what are my priorities?

I guess survival would be my number one priority

Outlets

After having started two previous blogs, thematci ones, i found that my life is too dynamic to be tied down to one particular theme. So in an attempt to provide an outlet to vent my thoughts adn frustrations, which are unable to be categorised into my previous blog, this one shall be the one which contains all my random ramblings.

The thing about blogs is that.... they are like online diaries. Diaries which would otherwise contain your deepest, darkest secrets, where you vent all your frustrations and fears. Diaries are oxymoronic in the sense that you need to pen down your thoughts, to share them with someone but you don't want to share them with anyone for fear that they may know the inner workings of your mind.

Then comes the blog... the online blog allows users anonymity when penning down their thoughts but at the same time it allows them to share their thoughts with a larger audience, allowing them to get feedback from their readers. So, psychologically speaking, they get a form of moral support from complete strangers reading about their deepest, darkest secrets whom don't even know who they are....

Tis a strange world we live in nowadays.

So much like everyone else who is blogging.... i have decided to blog as well. Realising that i too have a lot to share with everyone else. Preferably those who don't know me... because i am very secretive and to me, secrets are power.... power over those who don't know you well enough... being predictable is a disadvantage.. because your enemies can predict your every move... however if one is unpredictable, or even better, fake predictability.... your enemies would both fear and respect you...

It sounds dark but thats how my mind works. So here is my confession, here is my story, here are my secrets... to those whom wish to read. But my identity... perhaps if one has enough time on their hands, one could hack into blogspot to discover who i am.... but really, i'm hardly important enough...

enjoy.