Events of the events..

One of the differences between studying here and studying in local uni is having the opportunity to bring up two ends of world together. Being in Ireland, whose people are mostly urrmmm...Whites(?) and Catholics, our arrival of variety skin colours and religions might trigger their curiosity-ness of who really we are. (Or so we would like to think as that)


Thus, events like International Cultural Week and Islamic Cultural Event are our golden opportunity to give them some exposure on who we are. What we are. Why we are doing stuff like this and that and every whatnots questions they have in their mind that might disturb them all this while (cey poyo je)...

Story 1

I was accompanying Wany at Muslim Cultural Society (MCS) booth which was opened to educate them on what Islam really is. They exhibited basic things in Islam like what's Hijab, Halal food and stuff. Honestly, that was my first experience of this kind of thing because all this while there has been always a conflict with my class schedule.

And so we were approached by a guy, who seemed to be interested with our leaflets of information. He took the FAQs leaflets. I began to converse, and that was the start of the almost never-ending discussion with the guy.

The guy is an atheist (a free thinker, like that) and so he has a lot of thing in his mind against the idea of believing in God. What I understand that he thinks that we don't need a God to tell us what's wrong or what's right as those things can be deduced by our own moral thinking. Some of the questions he asked me was : -

• the response I got from local people ie the Irish. To which I replied the reponse has been so far so good as I haven't really encountered people who show their hatred to me etc etc. But my answer might be very biased as my world, so far revolved mainly around school and home only...

• whether I felt opressed by wearing Hijab. To which I replied not at all. And I don't even see the idea of opression by making us wearing this Hijab. Instead, this Hijab has save us from a lot of damages, I guess?
  

• whether Islam has put men on superior against women. To which I replied not really and then I passed to Kak Izzah to which she replied about how woman needs a man and vice versa. We also stressed out the point that opression of woman by man doesn't really occur now as we (as in, we, woman) can still go abroad, to study, work etc etc

• my opinion on Gays. To which I replied they are going against nature and trying to make the world upside down. The guy strengthen his stance by saying "Do you belief in God? SO why don't you belief God has His own plan by making them gay" in which I think is totally ridiculous. He even said that they are born to be gay and said something about being genetically gay. Oh cmon, how do gays passed on their genes to begin with? Now don't even talk me about IVF or any other ridiculous idea of gay couples getting a child. They are just destroying the child's future as they will make the child confused about themself. I belief in Allah. and I belief Allah create man and woman for them to complement each other. In Quran, we've been "warned" about this homosexual issues by the story of People of Lut. eh kenapa tibe2 panjang sangat explain pasal gay ni hahahah..
  

• the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

The heated discussions went on for a while that I had to disengaged myself to entertain other people coming to our booth and let Kak Izzah continued with the guy. heheh...

And my evening at the MCS booth was spent promoting our chicken pies, beef pies, sweet porridge (bubur cha cha), chocolate cakes and bread savoury (?) in conjunction with "introducing" them about Halal food. It was really a good experience indeed :)

Story 2

Before Story 1 occured, I was in the Student Centre watching the performance of my fellow Malaysians for International Cultural Week. This annual event was organized by International Student department and each year, Malaysian booth must be the most urmmm...interesting I must say. Last year I was having my Biochem exam on the same week so I didn't get to perform/take part that much. It has been sort of a tradition that this event will be carried out by the 1st years. With the amount of 1st year students we have this year, the job was done excellently I must say!


I skipped Pathology class that evening to attend both events and I must say the experience that I got were really worth skipping the class!

Story 3

After our tiring Biochem lab, on the way out, I was having conversation with my Botswanian classmates F and KB

KB : You know the pie that u gave me yesterday (refer to story 1).....was it the rambutan meat?
Me : Huh? Rambutan? No that was CHICKEN pie.
KB : No no no it was rambutan meat, I know it was rambutan meat. The portion u gave me for the rambutan pie was so small
Me : What rambutan? Rambutan doesn't have meat
F : Yeah yeah yeah, in Malaysia you have a lot of oranggutan. you must be really eating tthem..

At that time I started bursting laugh...what??? ORANG UTAN rupenye..

Me : Oh no, that was not Orang Utan. That was chicken. And that's not how you pronounce it. It's o-rang (I paused) u-tan. Not oranggutan
F : Orangutan.
KB : yeah yeah it's orang (he paused) utan

And so they kept on repeating orang--utan for few times. heh~ sabo je lah...

Story 4

On the same day as the event in Story 1 & 2 happened, I (as in my housemates + Dayah and I) performed on the stage in front of the audience. For the second time of my life, I am contributing my sumbang voice to torture the audiences' ears. Hahahahha...it was even worse this year as I was still having my sore throat and I was struggling from not bursting cough. Hohohohoho....



anyway the event went well. and in the end of the day, I got to play with the adorable Darwisy Fakhrullah the tough guy. Hehehehe...

And I still find it hard to address myself as Aunty Nad. I guess I still am not used to the generation difference thing :P


Ahhh..okay.I really should get going now. The cough syrup are really making my world goes around literally...