whats the plot

i guess i may just be going through some weird phase in life, but here’s what’s on my mind this morning at 2:30 am…

1. for some things, right and wrong are undoubtedly clear. but for others, how do you really know? two extremely good people with two extremely good (albeit different) view points can really leave you in the middle, unsure of what the right answer is.
2. why is it so easy to hurt someone you care about accidentally?
3. why do people get carried away trying to live out the “american dream” (ie nice job, nice brick house with a white fence and a dog named spot?)
4. why is life so repetitive and cyclic?
5. why are we as humans so impatient?
6. why are we as humans always looking to be accepted by others?
7. why do we let what people say and think drive our actions and affect them so much?
8. “history repeats itself” – but sometimes it doesn’t… or does it?
9. why is it that most of us are in much better shoes than so many people that we know, and yet we are still not happy?
10. how do you distinguish people being “politically correct” with you and people treating you with sincerity?
11. why do we try so hard to flaunt our accomplishments, yet at the same time rush to cover our weaknesses?
12. if one dies an unexpected death tomorrow, would they have done anything to make the world a better place? would anyone besides their close family notice or care?
13. why do the moments of happiness feel so short in comparison to the times of hardship?
14. why does life feel so hard at times?
15. how do you know who your real friends are?

before someone goes sheikh-style on me answering these questions, let me clarify one thing – i am not asking these questions from a religious perspective, i am just asking why we, as humans, feel this way about certain things.

peace. err, its been a week since i posted last.

so i found an awesome masjid not too far from where i live now. 23 acres of land, they have a school (not sure how big the school is or to what grades/levels, etc), a gym, basketball court, soccer field, etc. the founder is a very well educated guy [according to the (website)]. i heard him speak because he came to the masjid which i go to for jum3ah and he gave a really nice khutbah about the ornaments of this life.

also last week, i installed 1gb ram in my mac mini. opening the mini wasn’t too bad, but closing it was pretty bad. but i managed to do it without scratching it up, al7amdulillah. now everything seems to run a lot smoother.

i also took a little glance at an objective c tutorial. it seems as though you can write osx cocoa apps either in objective c or in java, and that there’s some means of bridging between the languages as well. pretty neat, but haven’t actually written any code with it yet.

i went apartment hunting this weekend… found nothing yet…

but anyway, that’s all for now.

greets… oh so last weekend, i moved out of babarstan and into batrastan. so far its going well, the place is pretty clean and i am pretty much settled in. but yeah, i don’t like moving…

oh and i am going to atlanta tomorrow insha’Allah. its been almost two months now…

peace outs.

peaces. came back from the trip yesterday (sunday nite around 9ish). the traffic coming back was insane for part of the way (130 miles in 4 hours…). but al7amdulillah we made it back in ~14 hours.

the sky was really beautiful. i was driving around the close of 3asr and entrance of maghrib time, and man it was beautiful. it was like there were all these shades of blue that were coming together in some places. in other places, you could see what looked like a rainbow, but it was just because of how the different colors merged in layers and stuff. too bad i left my camera here though.

i saw the incredibles with my siblings on thanksgiving, it was a nice movie, i liked it (and so did they).

i guess that’s about all. i did a tiny bit of code after work today, played some kingdom hearts too.

the only bad thing though is that i broke down and bought WoW (the normal one, not the collector’s one). haha, OK is gonna kill me, and he has good reason to do so too… but i will insha’Allah not play too much. as a matter of fact, i haven’t even opened it yet.

anyhow, time for bed, peace outs.

peaces. insha’Allah am leaving for home in a few hours – not too excited about the 12 hour drive, but its worth it hope everyone has a wonderful break insha’Allah!

so the other day (tuesday to be exact), i went to get my license renewed, and ended up waiting in line for more than 4 hours! i learned (albeit a little too late) that one can renew their license online — but you have to apply at least 60 days before… i guess i’ll try to remember that for the future.

it was pretty cool though – i ran into one of the teachers from highschool, and was able to find out what all my other teachers did. i haven’t visited in a long time, maybe i will consider visiting sometime..

not much going on in this neighborhood… just finished the project webpage, making me officially done with the project! thank God! in case anyone’s actually interested, the webpage is here.

on sort of unrelatedly related terms, i still need to finish up this webpage at some point in time… that’s all for now.

greets all. so yes, i guess as one of my respected friends pointed out, i need new entries to get more interesting responses… maybe… just maybe… i’ll try posting semi-controversial things and see what happens…

anyhow, you can learn quite a bit of random stuff from tv… i was flipping through the channels and learned two interesting facts. first, i learned about this interesting trend of celebrities naming their children weird names… one actress named her daughter “apple” — i ran a google search, and i found out that names get much weirder than that — there’s a couple who named their son “pilot inspektor,” and there’s also a couple who named their son “audio science,” and yet another couple who named their son “moon unit.” based on this trend, i guess when i have a child, i’ll look around the house and the first thing i see is what i’ll name my child after… i do have to say though, one of the actors, rob morrow, named his daughter tu, making her name tu morrow… i think that’s pretty neat.

the other interesting observation was about brittney spears – she’s got a *lot* of money (masha’Allah) – she’s got some nice sports cars and she gives her parents uber expensive cars for any major occaision…. plus she owns a bunch of really nice properties around the states. i think it said she’s worth like $50 million….

so what i am wondering is… all she does (with all due respect) is come up with lyrics and sing. i can sing too, can i make this much money? anyone willing to buy a plotting album if i make one?

on a more realistic note though; i don’t know why; maybe this is a weakness on my part, but when i saw how rich she is just by writing songs and singing, it made me want to make it big too — not so i can spend my life partying and buying cars and stuff, but so i can do something to make my life worth while – something that leaves a mark on this world and makes a difference…

it would be very superficial of me if i fail to realize the fact that any money and wealth accumulated here in this life will go away and won’t accompany us to our graves when we die — life is short and i realize this, and i also realize that this life is a test and that we’ll be accountable for what we do. but realistically speaking, a lot of the cool humanitarian project ideas a person comes up with are not really easy to accomplish without a large capital. and sometimes, fundraising just gets in the way and is a waste of time…

i guess at the same time, it is very difficult because wealth can be a source of fitnah. and while some of our great predecessors were very wealthy and remained at a state of uber piousity, we don’t really compare to them…

i would say in summary that regardless; the ultimate goal is the same: to change the world to a better place, to help people lead happier lives, and to do all of this purely for the sake of Allah, awaiting no reward from anyone but Him. if Allah allows us to accomplish this, regardless of the means (be it great amounts of wealth, great amounts of knowledge, or even a simple idea), that’s all that matters.