It all started with a dream. A dream one of Ram's nieces had and spontaneously the siblings decided to hold a prayer gathering. They requested to hold it in our house, us being the elder, in the absence of their parents. We were delighted. We were more than willing and they were most welcomed to hold the prayer session in our house. Never mind the negativity detractors say about holding prayer sessions for the deceased, this even came from an 'ustaz', a preacher (I totally disagree with him!!) but we were determined that we were doing the right thing. Ram cooked the rice and prepared salad while the siblings, amongst them, brought the various dishes, fruits and sweets to go with.
I was asked, by default, to lead the congregation in the dusk (Maghrib) and the evening (Isya') prayers and in between the two prayers, the reciting of verses from the Quran; glorifying the Almighty and the holy prophet followed by supplications seeking His guidance and forgiveness, for the deceased as well as for the living. All participated, Babang and Dedek included, although Dedek could not hold his attention long enough through the session. And then there was Ehsan, aged between Babang and Dedek, the youngest of one of Ram's nieces, who also could not hold his attention long enough. Both Ehsan and Dedeks antiques kept those present amused, although somewhat silently while in prayers!!
As it was decided to hold the prayer gathering at a short notice some family members could not attend, two of them being away overseas and one family in Singapore could not make it. It was fortunate that Ram's sisters were here to keep a doctors appointment and that Shaffik and family were here too. Since this session was held at the 'spur of the moment' it was decided that sufficient notice be given for future gatherings to allow proper planning of the event. Ram and I are ever willing to participate.
All in all it was a worthwhile gathering. It has been a while since we were all gathered together like this and it was a welcomed event in deed. Most agreed that we should continue doing the sessions, at least two or three times a year. Detractors aside, we seek the Almighty's guidance in this and we pledge allegiance to Him seeking His forgiveness. May the Almighty be pleased. Wabillah-Hi-Taufek....
MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Petaling Jaya
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Monday, May 29, 2006
Month of May gone to Virus?
The month of May is almost over and throughout the month I have had limited use of my laptop. I had to reformat it three times!! to sort out the virus problem, losing all my data and records in the meantime. I hope I have now, finally, sort out everything and can be back in cyberspace again, phew!
Apart from the virus thingy, there have been alot going on in the family. Son, Shaffik and family together with his in-laws were here for a holiday. We held a prayer gathering in my house to remember Ram's late sister and brother in-law, we made a trip to JB for Shaffik to meet his grandmother and the little kids to see their great-grandma. 
Fahrul, Sita and Najla too were here. Fahrul's parents also came to visit. So it was a series of gatherings and reunions. It was fun.
This month was also the month where we continue to celebrate 'maulud', the birthday of the prophet, which was held at a number of locations including one at our favourite mosque where we regularly go to to attend religious classes. We even went to Singapore to attend a 'maulud' at one of the mosques there. We stayed in Ram's nephew's house for two nights. I will try to write more on this maulud sessions later.
A very sad thing also happened, and this was last weekend, the day (Friday) when we returned from Singapore, when my niece's husband passed away. He had a heart attack while at home. He was only 51 years old. We stayed for the funeral and prayer services.
We returned to PJ on Sunday. I spent the whole day today reformatting my laptop, yet again, and as it is now, it seems to be behaving itself!! I hope it will continue to function properly and not fail on me again.
Many thanks to son Shaffik, son-in-law Fahrul, and nephew Azam for assisting me and giving tips on what to do to correct the laptop 'misbehaviour'. Without their help and input I would have taken much longer to put things right. Of course I can just send it to the shop and get them to repair the laptop but that would cost me much money and something at the back of my mind tells me that these computer shops are just waiting to pounce on me with hefty bills when you are in this situation and dilemma..... ah well.... I am being pessimistic.... some say I am being overly suspicious of them.... but then I cannot help being suspicious.....
MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
Petaling Jaya
Apart from the virus thingy, there have been alot going on in the family. Son, Shaffik and family together with his in-laws were here for a holiday. We held a prayer gathering in my house to remember Ram's late sister and brother in-law, we made a trip to JB for Shaffik to meet his grandmother and the little kids to see their great-grandma. 
Fahrul, Sita and Najla too were here. Fahrul's parents also came to visit. So it was a series of gatherings and reunions. It was fun.This month was also the month where we continue to celebrate 'maulud', the birthday of the prophet, which was held at a number of locations including one at our favourite mosque where we regularly go to to attend religious classes. We even went to Singapore to attend a 'maulud' at one of the mosques there. We stayed in Ram's nephew's house for two nights. I will try to write more on this maulud sessions later.
A very sad thing also happened, and this was last weekend, the day (Friday) when we returned from Singapore, when my niece's husband passed away. He had a heart attack while at home. He was only 51 years old. We stayed for the funeral and prayer services.
We returned to PJ on Sunday. I spent the whole day today reformatting my laptop, yet again, and as it is now, it seems to be behaving itself!! I hope it will continue to function properly and not fail on me again.
Many thanks to son Shaffik, son-in-law Fahrul, and nephew Azam for assisting me and giving tips on what to do to correct the laptop 'misbehaviour'. Without their help and input I would have taken much longer to put things right. Of course I can just send it to the shop and get them to repair the laptop but that would cost me much money and something at the back of my mind tells me that these computer shops are just waiting to pounce on me with hefty bills when you are in this situation and dilemma..... ah well.... I am being pessimistic.... some say I am being overly suspicious of them.... but then I cannot help being suspicious.....
MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
Petaling Jaya
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Virus! Virus! Virus!
I have not been able to use my laptop for quite a while now, more than a month in fact, and it has been very frustrating, all because of virus infections. I had to reformat the hard drive, loosing all my data along the way, although some of them I had backed up in thumb drives, but only to find out later that that too were infected by virus!! Even as I am writing this blog posting I am aware that the laptop is not functioning to its full capacity. I can still detect some 'bugs' in its performance and is driving me to wits end!! errrrrgh!!!! There are still worms in my laptop!!
Frustration? Now that I think about it I consider the cyberspace lull as something that is preordained. I was to lay off computer for a while and there had been something good that came out of it. Hence, it was frustration unfounded. I would sometime sit for hours infront of the computer screen, surfing the net, sharing information with my peers, friends and relatives, that other things are left unattended. I would be carried away in cyberspace. When the computer was out, all those unattended things were attended to. I have to learn not to get unduly frustrated when things do not turn out right for me. I have to learn to make good of the situation, any situation for that matter, and not get stressed up unnecessarily. Like what it is now with my laptop, although there are still bugs in it, I will have to find ways to eliminate the bugs and meanwhile make do with its current availability. I realise that I am better off then others who do not even have laptops or computers at all. That is 'looking at a glass half-empty' against 'looking at a half full-glass'!!
Catching up on the happenings over the last 6 weeks or so, there had been quite a number of activities that I want to record. As usual, during that period, Ram and I travelled to Kerteh and Johore Bahru several times. One of the trips to Kerteh we made by taking the bus instead of driving and it was a very relaxing travel indeed. Other than travelling we had attended several religious gatherings to commemorate the birth of the prophet pbuh, attended retirees club functions, received several visitors and relatives in our house, held a religious and prayer gathering for Ram's late sister and brother-in-law, attended weddings of friends' children and also of Ram's grandnephew and most exciting of all was the presence in our house of our three Bintulu grandchildren together with their parents and also the other grandparents for two weeks. Time permitting, I will write on these later.
MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Petaling Jaya
Frustration? Now that I think about it I consider the cyberspace lull as something that is preordained. I was to lay off computer for a while and there had been something good that came out of it. Hence, it was frustration unfounded. I would sometime sit for hours infront of the computer screen, surfing the net, sharing information with my peers, friends and relatives, that other things are left unattended. I would be carried away in cyberspace. When the computer was out, all those unattended things were attended to. I have to learn not to get unduly frustrated when things do not turn out right for me. I have to learn to make good of the situation, any situation for that matter, and not get stressed up unnecessarily. Like what it is now with my laptop, although there are still bugs in it, I will have to find ways to eliminate the bugs and meanwhile make do with its current availability. I realise that I am better off then others who do not even have laptops or computers at all. That is 'looking at a glass half-empty' against 'looking at a half full-glass'!!
Catching up on the happenings over the last 6 weeks or so, there had been quite a number of activities that I want to record. As usual, during that period, Ram and I travelled to Kerteh and Johore Bahru several times. One of the trips to Kerteh we made by taking the bus instead of driving and it was a very relaxing travel indeed. Other than travelling we had attended several religious gatherings to commemorate the birth of the prophet pbuh, attended retirees club functions, received several visitors and relatives in our house, held a religious and prayer gathering for Ram's late sister and brother-in-law, attended weddings of friends' children and also of Ram's grandnephew and most exciting of all was the presence in our house of our three Bintulu grandchildren together with their parents and also the other grandparents for two weeks. Time permitting, I will write on these later.
MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Petaling Jaya
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Dioxins - Do not believe all that you read!!
I received yet another message on dioxin from a member of my chat group dispelling the earlier notion that dioxin is released into water in the freezer and so on. Read on....
Researcher Dispels Myth of Dioxins and Plastic Water Bottles
The Internet has been flooded with email warnings to avoid freezing water in plastic bottles so as not to get exposed to carcinogenic dioxins. One hoax email has been erroneously attributed to Johns Hopkins University since the spring of 2004. The Office of Communications and Public Affairs discussed the issue with Rolf Halden, PhD, PE, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Water and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Halden received his masters and doctoral degrees researching dioxin contamination in the environment. We sat down with him to set the record straight on dioxins in the food supply and the risks associated with drinking water from plastic bottles and cooking with plastics.
Office of Communications and Public Affairs: What are dioxins?
Rolf Halden: Dioxins are organic environmental pollutants sometimes referred to as the most toxic compounds made by mankind. They are a group of chemicals, which include 75 different chlorinated molecules of dibenzo-p-dioxin and 135 chlorinated dibenzofurans. Some polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also are referred to as dioxin-like compounds. Exposure to dioxins can cause chloracne, a severe form of skin disease, as well as reproductive and developmental effects, and more importantly, liver damage and cancer.
OC&PA: Where do dioxins come from?
RH: We always thought dioxins were man-made compounds produced inadvertently during the bleaching of pulp and manufacturing of pesticides like Agent Orange and other chlorinated aromatics. But dioxins in sediments from lakes and oceans predate these human activities. It is now generally accepted that a principal source of dioxins are various combustion processes, including natural events such as wild fires and even volcanic eruptions.
Today, the critical issue is the incineration of waste, particularly the incineration of hospital waste, which contains a great deal of polyvinyl chloride plastics and aromatic compounds that can serve as dioxin precursors. One study examined the burning of household trash in drums in the backyard. It turns out that these small burnings of debris can put out as much or more dioxins as a full-sized incinerator burning hundreds of tons of refuse per day. The incinerators are equipped with state-of-the-art emission contr ols that limit dioxin formation and their release into the environment, but the backyard trash burning does not. You set it ablaze and chemistry takes over. What happens next is that the dioxins are sent into the atmosphere where they become attached to particles and fall back to earth. Then they bind to, or are taken up, by fish and other animals, where they get concentrated and stored in fat before eventually ending up on our lunch and dinner plates. People are exposed to them mostly from eating meat and fish rich in fat.
OC&PA: What do you make of this recent email warning that claims dioxins can be released by freezing water in plastic bottles?
RH: No. This is an urban legend. There are no dioxins in plastics. In addition, freezing actually works against the release of chemicals. Chemicals do not diffuse as readily in cold temperatures, which would limit chemical release if there were dioxins in plastic, and we don’t think there are.
OC&PA: So it’s okay for people to drink out of plastic water bottles?
RH: First, people should be more concerned about the quality of the water they are drinking rather than the container it’s coming from. Many people do not feel comfortable drinking tap water, so they buy bottled water instead. The truth is that city water is much more highly regulated and monitored for quality. Bottled water is not. It can legally contain many things we would not tolerate in municipal drinking water.
Having said this, there is another group of chemicals, called phthalates that are sometimes added to plastics to make them flexible and less brittle. Phthalates are environmental contaminants that can exhibit hormone-like behavior by acting as endocrine disruptors in humans and animals. If you heat up plastics, you could increase the leaching of phthalates from the containers into water and food.
OC&PA: What about cooking with plastics?
RH: In general, whenever you heat something you increase the likelihood of pulling chemicals out. Chemicals can be released from plastic packaging materials like the kinds used in some microwave meals. Some drinking straws say on the label “not for hot beverages.” Most people think the warning is because someone might be burned. If you put that straw into a boiling cup of hot coffee, you basically have a hot water extraction going on, where the chemicals in the straw are being extracted into your nice cup of coffee. We use the same process in the lab to extract chemicals from materials we want to analyze.
If you are cooking with plas tics or using plastic utensils, the best thing to do is to follow the directions and only use plastics that are specifically meant for cooking. Inert containers are best, for example heat-resistant glass, ceramics and good old stainless steel.
OC&PA: Is there anything else you want to add?
RH: Don’t be afraid of drinking water. It is very important to drink adequate amounts of water and, by the way that’s in addition to all the coffee, beer and other diuretics we love to consume. Unless you are drinking really bad water, you are more likely to suffer from the adverse e ffects of dehydration than from the minuscule amounts of chemical contaminants present in your water supply. Relatively speaking, the risk from exposure to microbial contaminants is much greater than that from chemicals.
And here’s one more uncomfortable fact. Each of us already carries a certain body burden of dioxins regardless of how and what we eat. If you look hard enough, you’ll find traces of dioxins in pretty much every place on earth. Paracelsus the famous medieval alchemist, used to put it straight and simple: it’s the dose that makes the poison.--
Tim Parsons
Public Affairs media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Tim Parsons or Kenna Lowe at 410-955-6878 or paffairs@jhsph.edu.
Having read the above and also my previous posting, which one is to be believed?? If one really wants to be on the safe side .... use glass containers.... Hmmm I wonder....
MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Petaling Jaya
Researcher Dispels Myth of Dioxins and Plastic Water Bottles
The Internet has been flooded with email warnings to avoid freezing water in plastic bottles so as not to get exposed to carcinogenic dioxins. One hoax email has been erroneously attributed to Johns Hopkins University since the spring of 2004. The Office of Communications and Public Affairs discussed the issue with Rolf Halden, PhD, PE, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Water and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Halden received his masters and doctoral degrees researching dioxin contamination in the environment. We sat down with him to set the record straight on dioxins in the food supply and the risks associated with drinking water from plastic bottles and cooking with plastics.
Office of Communications and Public Affairs: What are dioxins?
Rolf Halden: Dioxins are organic environmental pollutants sometimes referred to as the most toxic compounds made by mankind. They are a group of chemicals, which include 75 different chlorinated molecules of dibenzo-p-dioxin and 135 chlorinated dibenzofurans. Some polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also are referred to as dioxin-like compounds. Exposure to dioxins can cause chloracne, a severe form of skin disease, as well as reproductive and developmental effects, and more importantly, liver damage and cancer.
OC&PA: Where do dioxins come from?
RH: We always thought dioxins were man-made compounds produced inadvertently during the bleaching of pulp and manufacturing of pesticides like Agent Orange and other chlorinated aromatics. But dioxins in sediments from lakes and oceans predate these human activities. It is now generally accepted that a principal source of dioxins are various combustion processes, including natural events such as wild fires and even volcanic eruptions.
Today, the critical issue is the incineration of waste, particularly the incineration of hospital waste, which contains a great deal of polyvinyl chloride plastics and aromatic compounds that can serve as dioxin precursors. One study examined the burning of household trash in drums in the backyard. It turns out that these small burnings of debris can put out as much or more dioxins as a full-sized incinerator burning hundreds of tons of refuse per day. The incinerators are equipped with state-of-the-art emission contr ols that limit dioxin formation and their release into the environment, but the backyard trash burning does not. You set it ablaze and chemistry takes over. What happens next is that the dioxins are sent into the atmosphere where they become attached to particles and fall back to earth. Then they bind to, or are taken up, by fish and other animals, where they get concentrated and stored in fat before eventually ending up on our lunch and dinner plates. People are exposed to them mostly from eating meat and fish rich in fat.
OC&PA: What do you make of this recent email warning that claims dioxins can be released by freezing water in plastic bottles?
RH: No. This is an urban legend. There are no dioxins in plastics. In addition, freezing actually works against the release of chemicals. Chemicals do not diffuse as readily in cold temperatures, which would limit chemical release if there were dioxins in plastic, and we don’t think there are.
OC&PA: So it’s okay for people to drink out of plastic water bottles?
RH: First, people should be more concerned about the quality of the water they are drinking rather than the container it’s coming from. Many people do not feel comfortable drinking tap water, so they buy bottled water instead. The truth is that city water is much more highly regulated and monitored for quality. Bottled water is not. It can legally contain many things we would not tolerate in municipal drinking water.
Having said this, there is another group of chemicals, called phthalates that are sometimes added to plastics to make them flexible and less brittle. Phthalates are environmental contaminants that can exhibit hormone-like behavior by acting as endocrine disruptors in humans and animals. If you heat up plastics, you could increase the leaching of phthalates from the containers into water and food.
OC&PA: What about cooking with plastics?
RH: In general, whenever you heat something you increase the likelihood of pulling chemicals out. Chemicals can be released from plastic packaging materials like the kinds used in some microwave meals. Some drinking straws say on the label “not for hot beverages.” Most people think the warning is because someone might be burned. If you put that straw into a boiling cup of hot coffee, you basically have a hot water extraction going on, where the chemicals in the straw are being extracted into your nice cup of coffee. We use the same process in the lab to extract chemicals from materials we want to analyze.
If you are cooking with plas tics or using plastic utensils, the best thing to do is to follow the directions and only use plastics that are specifically meant for cooking. Inert containers are best, for example heat-resistant glass, ceramics and good old stainless steel.
OC&PA: Is there anything else you want to add?
RH: Don’t be afraid of drinking water. It is very important to drink adequate amounts of water and, by the way that’s in addition to all the coffee, beer and other diuretics we love to consume. Unless you are drinking really bad water, you are more likely to suffer from the adverse e ffects of dehydration than from the minuscule amounts of chemical contaminants present in your water supply. Relatively speaking, the risk from exposure to microbial contaminants is much greater than that from chemicals.
And here’s one more uncomfortable fact. Each of us already carries a certain body burden of dioxins regardless of how and what we eat. If you look hard enough, you’ll find traces of dioxins in pretty much every place on earth. Paracelsus the famous medieval alchemist, used to put it straight and simple: it’s the dose that makes the poison.--
Tim Parsons
Public Affairs media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Tim Parsons or Kenna Lowe at 410-955-6878 or paffairs@jhsph.edu.
Having read the above and also my previous posting, which one is to be believed?? If one really wants to be on the safe side .... use glass containers.... Hmmm I wonder....
MKI Ramblings Unlimited
Petaling Jaya
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