FIND A MENTOR/S

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There's this one time when my dad, Zamri Sulaiman joined Dr Azizan's seminar and he came home with this mantra. 

It sort of sounds like this;

"Always find good mentors. Be humble and learn from them."

Well today I wanna share with you about one of my super-saiya mentors. My mom, Norhafizah Safdin. When abah is the one who keeps me motivated, mama keeps me running (but sometimes I walk hehe) towards my goals.

When I was 10, my teacher asked us to write an essay about our idol. I wrote about my mom. I remember asking her the details about herself when she was cooking (wow brain, you doing great ) and she told me where she went for high school, her uni in Sydney, being a Petronas scholar and many more.

That was the point where I started to copy her trail. (I'm sorry if I'm so obsessed to be you, Ma ) So I worked hard and went to the same high school as hers and come to the same country, Australia for my degree. Up until now, she still be my source of references (and HAPPINESS) and will forever be.

Being a second year student, I feel the urge to do my internship so I tried to secure one. My mom has been very supportive and encouraging by giving tips and help me to choose which companies to aim for.

While we are at it, I personally think 'GRADUAN: Go Digital' book that I received last year during its career fair is very very very very useful. There are guidelines on career and self-development as well as emails for the companies that are looking for interns and graduates (which make it easier to get our resume/CV directed to their recruiting team).

So my friends, do find yourself inspiring mentors and don't forget to attend Graduan - MASCA Australia Career Fair 2018 this coming Saturday, 29th of September 2018! You won't regret your decision, trust me! See you there, folks.

CHERRY PICKING AND START THINKING

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Salam and hi all.

As you know I did my summer school recently (and if you don’t know, well now you know lol), so I came back to Melbourne earlier like on the 31st Dec. Doing a single subject during summer school indeed gave me a plenty of free time. So to treat my poor heart for having to cut my holiday short, I went for cherry picking with my friends.

Anyway, that’s not the main point. Because you know, it was just a typical cherry picking experience like you just go there, pick some cherries, eat some of ‘em, snap some pictures and have to pay a lil bit more for wanting to take the cherries home. Nothing much. BUT THE THRILL STARTED WHEN WE DECIDED TO GO TO A WATERFALL OMG. This. Is. Legit. 

It was a cute-yet-my-thighs-still-sore mini hike before we get to reach the waterfall lookout. And guess what, when reached there, mashaAllah guys, it was spectacular. And then Sr Farhana shared this one verse from Ali-Imran: 191;

ٱلَّذِينَ يَذْكُرُونَ ٱللَّهَ قِيَٰمًا وَقُعُودًا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِهِمْ وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِى خَلْقِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هَٰذَا بَٰطِلًا سُبْحَٰنَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ ٱلنَّارِ

Who remember Allah while standing or sitting or [lying] on their sides and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying], "Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You [above such a thing]; then protect us from the punishment of the Fire.

This is a continuation from previous ayah that mentioned, “…. Indeed, in (the) creation (of) the heavens and the earth and (in the) alternation (of) the night and the day (are) surely Signs for men (of) understanding.”  So who is these men of understanding? Allah mentioned in verse 191, those who understand is those who remember Allah by standing, sitting, looking at the nature or even lying down. Which mean every single time, these men of understanding will always think of Allah. Anything they do, anything they see, anything they learn, all will be related to Allah as The Most Powerful Creator. 

“Won’t it be exhausting to always remember Allah?”

She then added, that’s why our beloved Prophet came out with supplications and selawat which are considerably short and easy to be memorised to ease us. To help us in remembering Allah all the time. Isn’t that incredible? So what are we waiting for now? Let’s try to implement this in our daily routine and try the best that we could to always remember Allah in whatever we are doing!

May we be eased.

Not a cherry-lover;

Aini Syahirah

7+1 RAMADHAN RECIPE

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25 Syaaban 1439H.

Guys, did you realise that Ramadhan is in a week time? Oh.. My.. Goodness.. 

ARE YOU EXCITED? I AM! 

Even I'm happy that the semester is ending very soon, but knowing that Ramadhan, the most awaited month is juuuust right around the corner, I am EXTREMELY happy. I believed we all should, right? 😻

With that, have you ever wondered what should we do to welcome our guest? No? Yes?

For me, I did! I was wondering, what should I prepare myself with in order to give my best for this guest. Should we prepare some good food for it? Should we put on nice clothes to welcome it? Should we gather our family and celebrate this VVIP guest? Man, what should we do? I'm freaking out.

Then, Sr Farhana came up with these suggestions to me. Useful tips in welcoming this blessed month, insyaAllah. Very student-friendly and busy-people friendly in general. 

Are you curious to know what she told about the 'secret recipe'? 👀

Well, get ready, correct your posture and go grab a pen & papers (if you like taking notes, but if you don't, I suggest you to 'bookmark' this page for future reference in case 🤓).

Okay families and friends, leggo.

DISCLAIMER: These are just suggestions, in case you have a better one, can you please share at the comment box down below for everyone's sake. Would love to know too. Thank you in advance mate!

1. Fast like this is your last Ramadhan

Ya Allah, to be frank, I always get emotional when people said like this to me. I mean, I know that's the reality. We will at some point of the time, be having our last Ramadhan and we most likely won't know that. 

Thinking about my grandfathers who used to be with the family, breaking fast together and now there are not here with us to celebrate Ramadhan anymore, my heart hurt. But thinking on the positive side, we, who are still alive at the moment should be very very very grateful if we are being given a chance by Allah swt to experience Ramadhan again this year. InsyaAllah, amin. 

So when we know that only certain people that will be selected to have this golden opportunity and  if we get that precious chance again this year, use it to the best optimum ways we could! Allow me to give you an analogy.

Let's say we only have one month to spend with our parents before we go to jail. I bet most of us will try to do everything every single time with them. Some might need no sleep because they feel like they should use the time given to the max. They won't miss the time given even to a split of second. Right?

Same goes to our date with Ramadhan. If we treat this as our last Ramadhan, we would want to do all the good things with full sincerity and genuinely try to accomplish all those. Agree? So yah, when we got selected, prove that we really deserve it. PLAN YOUR TIME WISELY. We have a month to give our best shot. Are we up to this challenge? Ready Player 1.

2. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

P.L.A.N. Make goals. Let's ask ourselves, what we wanted to achieve this time? On what aspects we wanted to improve? Here, it is highly suggested that we include the Holy Quran in one of our goals, at least. And also, typically, majority of us wished to finish the whole Quran in one month right? If you are capable to do so, mashaAllah may Allah bless you. Go on. But to some people that are still struggling with that, that's okay guys. Try to improved the quality first and then we'll proceed with the quantity. You can choose one surah to read, understand, memorise and learn the tafsir about the specific surah that you chose. That would be nice as well. 

Since everyone has their own desire/ goals, this plan is 100% unique to everyone of us. Before Ramadhan starts, let's just sit down, grab some A4 papers and start to list down all those things that we hope Allah can train us through Ramadhan. And if we see our friends are striving their best to achieve their goals, let's give them our strongest support shall we? Promise me 🤙🏻 (that's a pinky promise lol) Chaiyok guys! We got this!

And the remaining points would be pretty short.

3. Avoid Multitasking

"Wait what? Really? #multitask4lyfe"

Yes fam, multitask is good. But sometimes, we can't give the best that we have if we are not focusing on doing that one thing. So in this blessed month, let's try to provide the best services that we are capable of in making ibadah for Allah. A quality one insyaAllah

4. Minimize socializing. 

Try to refrain ourselves from talking things that are not beneficial to us.

Try to refrain ourselves from having excessive entertainment and fun.

Try to refrain ourselves from gossiping about others.

Limit our communication to only something that can improve our faith, insyaAllah.

5. Keep your food simple.

Month of Ramadhan is a month for us to grab all the extra rewards that Allah offers to us. Keep other things simple like in this case, try not to spend too much time cooking extravagant dishes that can lessen our time to be allocated for our ibadah. Recommended dish for easy-to-go meals would be soup or tomyam. Prep and cooking time that wont consume too much of our time. 

p/s: Do you guys have any other suggestions? I might get bored repeating these two meals for 30 days straight haha.

6. Finalize Eid Preparation. 

Let's try to settle all those things for Eid earlier so that when Ramadhan comes, we can reserve our time only for supplications, prayers and good deeds. This is the time to keep up with our Ramadhan goals, geng!

7. Step Up Your Game

Think about extra stuffs that you can do to gain more and continuous rewards from our Lord. Maybe we can think of how we gonna turn our sadaqah into riskfree and high return investment. For example, buy an Al Quran and give it to the masjid, so that whenever someone reads it, you'll get the pahala too. How cool is that right? So yah, don't just be a dull. Start brainstorming now!

8. Plan Your Iftar When You're Having Your Period <Applicable for Ladies Only>

When we are not fasting, but still wanna get the same rewards as those who are fasting?

Feed them for ifthar!

Since we have extra energy during the day, why don't we help our housemates/ friends/ volunteers to cook for the breakfast right? Or maybe during taraweeh, we can still go to the mosque and help to take care of the kids while their parents are praying. Or maybe we can try to wake up early and cook for our beloved one who were tired the whole day before, for sahur. There's a lot of things to do to still get the same returns as those others. Be creative girls! 

Hope this can help us all to plan for our Ramadhan goals and to seize the moment given to us. I prayed that we all have a blessed Ramadhan and manage to reach our target for this time being! 

Oh btw, you are welcome to share your tips as well. Would love to hear from you too.

Ahlan ya Ramadhan!

Hoping this excitement last till the end,

Aini Syahirah

MOVE IN & MOVE ON

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Salam all and hi.

First of all, I would like to congratulate those who just passed their exam weeks and now are enjoying their sem break which I wish I am too. (Un)Fortunately, I am currently doing my summer class and we have gone thru the first half of the course already. Yayyy omg I should congratulate myself too! *pat my shoulder* 

Besides that, another thing that happened to me last month was I MOVED IN TO A NEW PLACE. Alhamdulillah. From being a resident at Malaysia Hall Melbourne to a housemate to my housemates lol. It has been a year since I learned to do almost everything by my own. Pay the rent and utilities, buy groceries and cook for myself, deal with real problems that made my head ached etc. These adulting things made me miss my childhood more. And even sometimes made me homesick. 

I did cried when I have hormonal imbalances or maybe when I just feeling like to. Being moody for the fact that I have to be an adult now. Being immature for the fact that I have to start being mature now. 

But then, I wiped the tears. I bought chocolate or Pidapipo ice cream to make myself happy. I tried to socialise and get to know more people to learn from their life experiences. I challenged myself to be mature and professional. 

Because at the end of the day, I know, I mean we all know, that time won’t go backwards. We’ll be older day by day. So bear with it.

Move on, honey.

“But, it’s so hard to move on when you are too attached to something.”

Dude, I get whatchu mean. I really do. 

When I was during my transition period from a Syeder to Unimelb-ian, I struggled a lot with my emotions. Since I have the best friends that I could have had during my high school time, I tend to compare them with my new friends here. And also I was deeply in love with the way my teachers used to teach us back in Tun Syed, now I hate the way the lectures were held here. What an immature girl I was, I know. 

As you can see, what I listed just now were my problems. Those things that deter me to move on. Those things that keep me tangled with my awesome past experiences. I used to look at ‘em as setbacks until one day, I can’t hold it anymore. I can’t live in present hoping it to be the same with the past. So I tried to change my perspective. I tried to view those problems now, as a starting point for me, to move on. 

I tried to spend more time with my friends, even though it was sooooo freaking awkward at first, I tried to act cool like I'm not affected at all lol. We make plans together, have brunch, study group, sleepover bla bla bla. And it turned out not that bad. We are now even planning for our New Zealand trip (OMG!!). But for the lectures, I cant do anything much about it haha. You just have to accept the fact that your spoon-feed method of learning is outdated. The latest one now is I’m-gonna-just-read-the-slides method. Deal with it fam. Haha. 

Oh and one more thing, be adventurous. For me, I try to mingle up with people outside of my comfort zone like the locals, the elite and seniors. This helps me to always keep myself challenged and improve my skills. You can get to know a lot of interesting things from them too e.g you can use phosphorus to keep raccoon away from your place. How cool is that right?! Other than that, you can try those activities that you wished to do. For instance, I really wanna do boxing. So I joined this one female-only gym and I'm now not just being able to learn boxing, I do piloxing toooooo which is way cooler than boxing haha. So mate, keep yourself busy with good things. Force yourself do beneficial stuffs to distract yourself from the past. Then, insyaAllah, sooner or later, you’ll be able to move your ass on. 

Aight? Give it a try and share your experience here! I would loooove to know. 

See you guys in the next post. Cheers.

Still trying to move forward,

Aini Syahirah

REPENT OR RESENT

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Salam all.

It’s been months since I wrote the last post gosh Aini Syahirah. I’m truly sorry for not being able to keep the entries updated ‘cause I’ve been dealing with a disease. (I named it procrastination hehe) #pray4meguys

Anyway, back to the topic, recently I just found myself easily butt-hurt with advices that my family/ friends gave me. Even sometimes, they don’t even say it to me, but I still think that that comment is for me. Buat teruk ja lel. 

At that moment, what they say on their insta stories, I feel offended.

What they tweeted, I feel like it is addressed to me. 

Whatever they said, in my mind, I was like “Are you trying to critic me, honey?!” 

And the worst thing is when some of them directly criticised me, I hold grudges. I started to feel uncomfortable with those fella. I began to dislike them. 

But, at the end of the day, I realised that what they said is true. I hate to admit that, BUT IT IS INDEED THE TRUTH. 

I also knew that my name was not even in their posts, not even being mentioned in their stories, so why on earth am I being extremely offended? Such an ill-minded person. Sigh. 

I realised that this kind of act, thinking that “I’m under attack by those nice people” will harm me in future. I realised that the reason why I butthurt to what they said is because I did those things that they nagged about. I feel insecure because of my bad habits. 

These thoughts make me noticed that I have to start improving myself. I need to eliminate the flaws. Get rid those shitty attitude. Be a nicer person. Accept critics with open heart. I need to be more rational. I should be grateful for having people around me who are still care about me. *thank you guys* 

So instead of being resentful, I should learn to repent. Frequent self-reflection should be in my resolutions list. (And frequently update the blog too lol) Anyway, I sincerely ask you who read this to correct me if I’m wrong and to happily give constructive criticism if I’m slack in any of the stuffs I’m working on. 

For the sake of our self-development, let’s give constructive comments to our friends,families and even to those we don’t know & learn to accept the fact that we are not perfect and people did that just to see us becoming a better individual. Cheers.

Still learning how to manage my anger,

Aini Syahirah