i love sheikh mohammad, the sheikh of mca. i also love his amazing marketing skills in bringing the youth to fajr. check out this picture of the t-shirt he gave me:
i love the "and smile" part - and i love how he signed his name at the bottom 
my own tea company? nah, that's just my distant cousin, ahmad with an a... he makes good tea though 
this t-shirt is awesome. the arabic translation is, "i am not a terrorist."
about a week early, i got this binary cake slice.
courtesy of rlo (tm).
eid mubarak to all... eid mubarak big arguments, like every year, about when eid is, when we can and when we can't have eid, some people want others to fast 31 days because they think its impossible for the moon to be seen today... but anyhow, i looked online at a lunar calendar and it says that the new moon is tonite, which makes eid tomorrow, so whatever man... that's what my masjid is doing, that's what a lot of people are doing, and al7amdulillah, that's what i am doing. its not worth such a big fight, argument, and controversy as far as i am concerned.
anyhow, so our masjid, islamic society of central jersey rented out the new jersey convention and exposition center for eid prayers. very interestingly enough, no the convention center's site, there's a "events calendar..." -- i took a screenshot of the calendar because this will go away tomorrow... (if its showing up small, click the image for the full size picture).
imagine that... "pakistani prayer service" - mind you, this masjid is mostly arabs too... i wonder if they won't let me in because i am egyptian... Allahu a3lam.
peaces... this weekend was pretty adventure filled... friday i watched sin city, but didn't quite get understand why it had such crazy high ratings...
saturday went to nyc with achin, salman, and mansoor... went to ground zero, jefferson heights [desi town (tm)], and walked around times square. ate at platters and "king king kabab king." pretty fun trip. saw some cool performances on the subway...
met a lebanese guy making paintings on the sideways with spray paint cans -- he was making these paintings really fast, and they were really awesome looking... and he was charging $20 each. i had to have one... and everyone with me bought one too. here's how mine looks like:
today was a pretty uneventful day... i spent most of the day id3 tagging my mp3 collection and did nothing particularly noteworthy or interesting. switched my ipod to hfs rather than fat... which means now i have to sync it on my mac and only on the mac. but i have no problem with that at the moment. finally got the firmware on it upgraded too.
anyhow... that's all for now.
update [4/11/2005 @ 11:05 am]: made the image smaller so it doesn't make the layout on planet arabeyes look bad.
so i turn on my palm pilot this morning to see this:
i have no idea how this happened...
greets, peace, etc. today, i decided to upload the nasheeds i have produced over time to this webpage. they're all in the new "audio studio" section on the webpage. and yes, they're not great nor listenable-toable, but they're there to induce (slight) laughter. there are still some other things i want to upload to this page, but it's a matter of time...
it was sooooooo cold today! [i learned that my camera does some cool stuff today when i looked at the book to find out how to get the camera to automatically take this picture after 10 seconds... i want to take some pictures!].
oh yeah, the other day at the masjid... *sighs* (as one could tell from my previous post, i really prefer the environment of the masajid in atlanta...) -- but the other day (friday), i ran into two awkward situations (i got a whole list of these by now hehe).
so they changed the time of 3isha from 8:15 till 8:00 (desi standard time) -- and i had forgotten, and i remembered around 8:05 and so i left late for the masjid. when i got there, it looked as though they hadn't prayed, so i asked someone if they had prayed yet, and i was told that the imam hadn't come yet. so i went up and sat down in the front row. the brother next to me, one of the first people mansoor and i met when we got there, tells me to lead the salat (3isha) because its getting late. so i lead 3isha, and when i had finished, the imam had come back, so he lead tarawee7 as normal.
so after the 20th rak3ah, the imam said, "salat ul witr" (as usual), and was faced towards the qibla, so i glanced at my watch to see what time it was (itching to go home hehe), and suddenly he turns around and looks at me and says, "can i lead witr?" -- and i am like huh!? (and at the same time feeling really embarrassed, thinking to myself, "is he asking me this because he saw me looking at my watch and thinks i am being disrespectful by checking the time?") -- and he said, "can i pray witr, because you lead 3isha," and so i said, "please, please do." (and i was very puzzled at that).
so after finishing tarawee7, a lot of the times i just tend to leave *right* after witr. but due to that situation, i decided that i would stay for the short talk after witr to avoid further awkward situations. so as soon as witr was being completed, before i could even say my second salams, the guy next to me, a really old uncle, touched my hand. i was like, "huh? maybe an accident?" - so anyway, after witr, i sat for the short talk.
and the talk ended, and i was ready to go home. but when i came to leave, the uncle touched my hand again. and i shook hands with him and the other people and began to walk towards the exit, and he followed me, and asked me, "did the imam read only one rak3ah at any point during the tarwee7?" -- and i am like, "yeah, at the very last rak3ah he did." -- and he started going off on this whole spiel about how in pakistan, all the scholars agree that a person must read at least 3 ayahs per rak3ah for the salat to be deemed valid; and how he experienced people reading less in other masajid and his conversations with them and so on. and all this time i am thinking, "why is he telling me this?"
so anyway, not knowing what to say, i say, "jazakAllah khair" and continue walking towards the door, get my shoes and put them on. and as i am about to leave, the uncle starts to talk to me again and says, "you know, if you know quran, you have more right to be leading than him [the imam] because you have (and he touches my "beard") this." and other people start coming towards where we are; and i was taken by shock and had no chance to reply, and he says, "i'll talk to you about this later." -- and he leaves.
two very awkward situations... so on saturday, to resolve the first situation, i went to the imam after salat and i apologized to him for having lead 3isha (thinking that maybe he got offended or something) - but apparently he wasn't upset, he said, "no its a good thing that you listened to them and lead 3isha, because when the salat time comes we should pray at its time."
as for the second situation, i didn't see the old uncle on saturday, and on sunday (today), i saw him but avoided him at all costs. dang, people want to use me to overthrow the current imam.
not to mention that the statement he made is untrue -- because 1. the current imam's memorization is multiple folds better than mine, (and there is NO exaggeration in this statement whatsoever, i am a fake hehe); 2. he has a lot more knowledge than me; 3. he is older than me; and 4. i feel that he is very sincere, to the extent that although he studied deen, he then persued a degree in computer science so that he supports his family from a "non-deen" occupation so that his deen work is totally for the sake of Allah.
so yeah; the current imam is masha'Allah a very sincere and very nice guy -- not to mention his memorization is insanely strong masha'Allah, and the fact that his one way drive to work is ~3 hours (!); and yet he still manages to take time out to lead tarawee7 masha'Allah (whereas during normal non-ramadan times, he would stay at a hotel throughout the week and just come home on the weekends). so sub7anAllah, that takes insane dedication.
but what can i tell you, there are always those people who will complain about a small thing that they see that a person has done that is wrong in their eyes, rather than look at the great amount of effort which a person may exert in the sake of Allah... sub7anAllah.
that's my rant of the day. i got nothing more to say for now. peace out.
less than a week after sufi left the residence, she was replaced with two cats, whom my brother decided to name "peach" and "mango" -- not quite sure why.
i guess that's all for now...
we got a cat! i think my little brother and i have unanimously decided to name him sufi.
*update* - its actually a "she," not a he.