I went to pay the annual quit rent at the Land office. I got a queue number that has 145 people ahead of me to pay similar bills. I waited a while to see how the queue progress. It was, as expected, slow. Ram was then at Hussein Onn Hospital for her eye appointment. She called my cellphone when she had finished and I could drive all the way to the hospital to fetch her and returned to pay the bill at the land office and yet my queue number was not yet up. There were still about 50 people yet to pay their bills ahead of me. One kind lady asked if I want her number as she got a friend to pay for her. Her number was about 30 before me. I took it and passed mine to someone else whose number was much larger than mine. Why can’t the Land Office allow on line payment like most other establishments, eg. utility companies, collecting payments from the public. They used to have drive-through payment counters years ago but somehow stopped the practice. I wonder why.
After settling the ‘must pay’ bills we were quite free to do our own thing. We had been looking forward to join our religious commune activities that were scheduled for Wednesday 8th. In a previous posting some months ago I wrote of a visitor, a preacher, who came from Yemen and a Deputy Rector of a religious college there.
This time we welcomed the Rector himself, Al-Habib Umar bin Hafidz, and his entourage. As usual I was a little late in arriving at the place. It usually takes about an hour for us to reach the place but this day the traffic was exceptionally heavy and it was raining heavily in PJ too. But when we arrived at the mosque it was dry and the sky was clear. No impending rain too. There was already a large gathering of people. 
We had a tight squeeze when sitting or when praying. After the evening prayers, Al-Habib Umar gave his lecture that centered on the present generation of followers who forget their promises to the Almighty. Although they pray five times a day or more and make these promises in their prayers, yet in their daily activities they chase after the worldly things more than their spiritual obligations. 
Everyone seems to give priority in obtaining worldly things and become tools to these things instead of making these things as tools for their submission to the Almighty. The evening continued with more prayers, reciting verses glorifying the Almighty and His Prophet pbh., and supplications to Him. The session ended at about 11.00 pm followed by dinner of course. Dinner was briani rice with lamb, beef and dhall curry or known locally as dalcha!. There was enough food for everybody that night. It was close to midnight when we left the place for home reaching home at almost 1.00am.Shaffik was in KL for two days to attend an assessment on position grade and job grade mismatch at his work place. Hopefully the anomaly can be sorted out and he gets an upgrade at the end of it, may the grace of the Almighty be with him. We went to meet him at his hotel on Thursday night and spent the evening with him. He left for Bintulu early the next morning.
From Friday onwards, both Ram and I were down with flu’. It started with a sore throat followed by sniffling nose, and by Saturday our voices were hoarse, we were coughing and our heads were heavy and throbbing and throbbing and throbbing. We had to give the wedding of a relative a miss. We just could not get out of bed that day. Ram’s sister said perhaps we have been running around exerting ourselves too much. Perhaps we had. And it is now time for us to rest….. Tessa came home in the evening to see us but I noticed that she too was sniffling and repeatedly clearing her throat. She had the same thing we had, only perhaps a little lighter. This time it runs in the family I guess. We were resting at home right through. I hope that we will be well enough by Wednesday. The Retirees Fraternity is making a day trip to the University Technology Petronas on Wednesday at the invitation of the Rector and we do not want to give that trip a miss. We have been looking forward to the trip and hope, with the grace of the Almighty, we can be well enough to make it………..
No prize for guessing who this cutie is?
MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
Petaling Jaya
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