We are now in mid-Shaaban (see pic below snapped by my eldest son using his phone) and soon we will be in Ramadhan, insyaAllah. I sincerely hope there will be a significant positive change for me and the family this Ramadhan. In any case, ontok-ontok mode is still on.
A lot of my work has been delayed much due to my health. Despite the acquired knowledge of the diseased heart recently, it is my bad back that affects me the most. Yesterday when we went to the laundrette to dry my clothes, I had probably strained my back a litte. Thereafter, I felt some pain while stepping my right foot down. Took a heavier dose of pain killers in the evening and hope this pain will slowly go away.
Not having a 'job' to help me with increasing expenses and being pretty limited with house chores (due to back pain), the feeling of being 'useless' can be depressing. Like always, one has to snap out from this self-pity and carry on with one's life. At this juncture, I remembered listening to Xiang Xueqin talks negatively about his own father, coming from the Baby Boomer generation (like I am). He spoke about such generation being driven by selfishness, becoming agents of decline for the Western civilization and economic growth was utilized at the expense of the younger generation (to this, he included his father). I was really surprised by this since Asians tend to have stronger family ties with respect to the elderly. I guess he was simply demonstrating the analysis. I examined myself on this idea and I would not include myself with such attributed Boomer characteristics. On the other hand, I see younger generation has lost their traditional Asian values and there is a tendency of being more transactional and selfish. Hope my children will hold more closely Islamic values than we were.
On a slightly more mysterious development, there have been many strange happenings in our house but most of the time we simply ignore them. This includes the teapot incident that I have reported earlier (which certainly fall as an extreme case of such events). For the Muslims, we do entertain the 'unseen world'. Recently, another event occurred. My other half, from time to time, prayed and recited Qur'an in my son's room at the far end, partly not to have the room being vacant for too long. Last Thursday, she told me that the Qur'an that she was reading and had left it on the bed in the room, was on the floor and the prayer mat was displaced from its usual position. I asked her if she had forgotten leaving it there or any of our cats had entered. To the latter, she replied in the negative and for the former, I certainly do not believe that she will leave the Qur'an lying on the floor since we don't normally do that out of respect for the scripture. Well, thereafter, we started reciting Surah Al-Baqarah, so that we felt spiritually safe. Below is the pic of the Qur'an and one can see that it is too heavy to be accidentally displaced.
Back to 'normal matters', our son from JB (whose room my other half is using) came back to visit us a few days earlier. On Tuesday that week, before going back to JB, he brought us for lunch and the PnC restaurant.
