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Thank you for being an amazing companion.  Thank you for always being such a loving cat, and for being amazingly adorable and caring.  You always greeted us every time we returned home.  You always wanted to be brought to the food bowl and you loved spending time with us. You were so charming and amazing my friends would always ask how you were doing.  Your intelligence, sweetness, and love captured the hearts of so many, even those who'd never met you personally. I know that whenever I left for Canada, you would go to my room looking for me.  You would do the same whenever one of us wasn't around for longer than usual.  You could count and you remembered people.  Whenever someone was home alone, they could be sure that you would be nearby, napping away, and occasionally pestering for food.  You were never needy in the way other cats were.  You enjoyed quiet moments when everyone was lounging about.  You loved being the centre of attention but you never wanted too many p

Eating in public during Ramadan should not attract harassment

Yet it does.  As Ramadan comes to a close, I feel like I should pen this article.  It will most likely be a fairly short article. This past Ramadan, I have heard unsettling stories of people being harassed for eating in public.  Not just Muslims, but non-Muslims too.  I feel this is wrong.  One's fast is purely between themselves, and God.  You do not know what ailments the person may be facing that is preventing them from fasting.  For example, chronic hypoglycemia can lead to seizures and if emergency medical aid is not given, can lead to death.  For the ladies, they may be on their period, something which prevents them from fasting.  C'mon guys, we've learned this in school.  My 4 year old cousins know this.  Your actions are inadvertently telling me that you know/care less about your faith than a 4 year old.  That's embarrassing, bro. A common retort is that they are 'disrespecting' Muslims by eating in public.  Bullshit.  It is you who are weak-willed.

Toying with the idea of a new article format and a new blog

I've been thinking; since most of the articles I have been posting of late (despite the infrequency of my posts) are definitely of the... opinionated type, I will apply what I have learned in university.  By that I mean whenever I post an article, I will do my best to include sources. Will it be a pain to format the references section in this medium?  You can bet your bottom dollar it will.  But I feel that if I do not do this, my arguments lack credibility.  How many people read my blog?  Probably only a few.  But again, this blog was never really created as a platform to reach the masses.  It has always been a place for me to articulate some of my opinions.  In the past, I encouraged discussions in the past but due to Blogspot's somewhat annoying comment/reply system, the fact that I do not have many readers, and compounded by my general distaste of people who get riled up and leave nasty comments without presenting any valid arguments, such discussions have been very far a

Are we really moving towards the banishment of racism or away from it?

In this era of hyperconnectivity and superfluous information feeds, there is literally more information pouring in to us than we could ever possibly process.  Thus, we pick what we feel is either a) important, or b) entertaining enough to give attention. This has led to increased awareness of racial and gender inequalities, systemic injustices around the world, so on and so forth, which is a good thing.  It is very important that even those unaffected by some of these injustices are aware of them. Naturally, one of the prevalent causes this generation has decided to rally around is racial discrimination.  It happens around the world.  Which is good as it teaches us that there exists races aside from which we grew up in.  Literally a whole world of different culture, languages, food, etc! On an unrelated side note; It has always bugged me how some movies portraying interplanetary relationships (such as Star Trek) have generally shown worlds with a homogeneous culture and yet on o

Do Not Be So Quick To Judge

Many moons ago, I penned an article about how I felt many muslim Malays (one of the three main races in Malaysia) are very quick to judge and condemn all Jews as laknatullah (damned by god).  Just to reiterate what I said in my aforementioned article, I vehemently abhor this behaviour.  Also, this is most definitely not the view held by the majority of muslim Malays, but rather those of a troublingly large minority.  If you wish to read my entire article, you may find it here . Back to what I wanted to say; this article will be a sort of extension of my aforementioned article.  It is just something I came across, and wanted to share. As some of you may know, the geopolitical situation between Israel and Palestine has been littered with controversies, humane atrocities, harsh accusations, and at times, violence.  I just wish that more of my fellow muslim Malays weren't so quick to judge all Israelis and/or Israeli companies as 'evil'.  An excellent example is this com