Letter to Julia 201109015

Hi Julia, my beautiful love! My, it's mid-September already, huh? It should be autumn in Salt lake City by now, maybe there's a little residual heat left there from summer. I do love the cool air of autumn in the mountains and the falling leaves, just like I love the first snowfall of winter. Here it's always most pleasant right after the rain stops. There is soooo much life in the Malaysian countryside, and the animals are very active right after the rain. Lately it's been raining a lot, again. We were right on the edge of another massive flood, again. Some areas did wind up flooding, but God kept my village right on the edge. We've been on the edge of flooding quite frequently recently.

I have been taking it slow as usual, there's no point in rushing for me, especially with what I do, and the condition of global media as it is. When Allah makes it happen, then it will happen... then you'd better get ready, because I'll be coming out to get you, and marry you. I'll try to slow it down, but you should know how Allah works by now. It would seem that things happen all of a sudden, when there was actually quite a lengthy and massive buildup. That's why we must be patient, and put our trust in Allah.

Meanwhile, I made another batch of chili. Ah, this one is an excellent batch, since I'm in no real hurry, so it's been cooking slowly for about 7 hours already. It's still not done yet, it'll probably be ready by midnight, just in time for a snack. Ah, chili is heavenly when the beans break up right at its saturation point. So much flavor! That's why you must never add potatoes in chili, for potatoes saturate sooner than beans, and ruin the flavor. A good bowl of chili is one of the best foods in the world, even though it's poor man's food. It occured to me at the 7th hour that I should have made some bread, but I forgot, and now I'm too lazy. Tortillas are a pain in the ass to roll out by hand, anyway. I should have bought a tortilla press while I was in Arizona. Well, I wouldn't have been able to bring it back here. I had some sourdough starter in my cooler. Yeah, I learned the art of sourdough while I was in Salt Lake City. So instead of bread, I made sourdough pancakes to go with the chili. Which didn't work, because I guzzled all the pancakes already, and the chili's not ready yet. Something about sourdough pancakes, it doesn't need anything else.

Sourdough is definitely something that takes patience, after all, you're not going to get that flavor from fresh flour. So you be patient too, and do not transgress. A woman of your position (and mine) simply does not have any room to transgress anymore because it will be noticed immediately, and all you worked for up until now will go up in flames. Maintain your prayers, in the mornings and evenings. Good things remove that which is evil, please remember that. Be firm in patience, and let the world see how firm you are, For Allah will not allow the reward of the righteous to be lost.

Letter to Julia 201109012

The Matrix has you, Julia. Yes! Since we were talking about business, let's discuss next about what is fair and equal in balance as regards to business. I'm sure you've felt unhappy many times over the amount of work you had to do in respect to the returns you received. Since you are my mate, the balance is more lop-sided than you figured. Since the situation is spiritual in nature, it becomes even more lop-sided than that. God is the Best at taking account, so I suppose that means that which way the scales drop depends on one's service to God. Not just by acts of worship, but also by acts of justice and compassion (which could also accepted by Allah as acts of worship).

The most basic form of fair balance is for example, when you buy groceries like fish and cooking oil, you would not want it to be overpriced. Then you would wonder why would it be overpriced: perhaps somebody 5000 miles away would pay extra or buy more volume, so that you as a local would have to pay extra. Then you would feel that it would be fair to give the locals a more accessible price as they are the ones that generate the product. Or maybe they spent the money on some sort of speculation, that they became steeped in debt, and are now placing the burden of repayment on the consumer. Or perhaps it is a simple case of greed, that those who set the prices would want see how much money they can squeeze from the consumer before the consumer resorts to corporeal action. But I'm sure whoever they may be are really nice people who use the extra money they make to feed the poor and replenish natural resources.

Allah takes detailed accounting of every deed, every intent and every cent spent or withheld by every human. What we perceive to be wealth could be a lifetime of accumulation of short measures, and since these people have not received their reckoning yet, they are perceived as right, and immune. Allah pays special attention to family matters and inheritance, and the proportions thereof are specified in detail in the Qur'an. After all, we are never able to be repay in fairness to our parents, who gave birth to us. Also it seems that the influence of my family is more consideration to others than Allah.

Since I have chosen to marry you Julia, you are sharing the influence of my lifetime's work, and the music given to me by Allah. Entertainment business is certainly a trial, but the influence of the music is both tangible and profound. But of course I am perceived as powerless since I don't have all the material possessions that greed aspires to, plus the gold adornments. They simply can't understand anything else. I trust Allah for my sustenance, for the end is for the righteous, then insyaAllah the scales will come crashing down heavily in my favor, if Allah accepts my work and my worship. Ya Allah, please grant Julia and I and the sincerely righteous peace in this lifetime and the next, and make our path easy.

Letter to Julia 201109010

God knows exactly when the first human being walked on this this earth. What we do know is that humans are born naked, and that was most likely to be his state when he first came upon this world. Then his mate was naked too, and they probably ran naked everywhere, fornicating in the open, relieving themselves wherever they felt like it. Then something made them cover their bodies with leaves, animal skin, wool or whatever. Why? Maybe it was the cold, heat, rain, bugs, or whatever. Then came woven fabrics, put together into outfits of varying purposes, that could be able to cover the entire body.

Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) predicted there would come a time when a woman would be naked even though she was clothed. Perhaps he meant that her clothes would be transparent, or that her clothes would be skin-tight and revealing. What is for certain is that it wasn't always this way. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all had their time when women dressed modestly, and anyone who dressed less than that in public was obviously out for debauchery. Nowadays, it is not so easy to make that distinction, or even to force it on others. One could attribute this to a modern state of mind reflected in attire, a revolution, perhaps connected to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, though the most noticable change in fashion occured after World War I. But a revolution by definition is not something new, but a return to a previous state, as a point on a wheel which revolves to the same point, as the wheel turns. So this reflects in modern fashion where women wearing less and less being the norm, added to "freedom" of promiscuity, returning humans closer to the point where people ran around naked and had sex in the open.

Then, there is business to consider. In music and fashion today, there is the notion of having to be sexy, as part of the business. This can be a forced act, and a dangerous force it is. One may argue that such experience is necessary for the sake of experimentation, but it is NOT necessary. Sex is all the same, it is the same old "penetration and violation" theory rehashed into a sickening stew. It is NOT necessary to do want you don't want to do for the sake of money. The devil may trick you into wanting it, or that it is part of the business, but the devil can be tricked too. I convinced the devil that I was a lesbian. But even so, I didn't want to slut around, or do anything I didn't want to do for the sake of business or even experimentation, so I repented, and put my life in the care of Allah. Thus, I don't pass anymore, even though I'm technically a chick singer. Like I said before, it's OK for a man to be butt-ugly. That is the mercy of Allah.

But all this analysis is very secular, and I don't like secular because it is the same as atheism as it forbids the consideration of God. I've chosen my camp, and I intend to die there. The truth is that the union between husband and wife (man and woman) is a creation of God, and that makes it sacred. Yeah, people are going to do whatever they want to do, so let them do it, as long as they don't involve the innocent in their acts. Whoever Allah leaves to stray, there can be none to save them. I have a spiritual agenda: I want to please Allah with music. And I choose you to be my wife, so I believe that makes our union sacred. Ya Allah, please bless our love.

Letter to Julia 20110908

Hello there, my beautiful beloved Julia. Yes, you are a beauty, a truly global beauty. Yes, I love you and I want to marry you. Yes, of course I have been missing you, because I have great longing to be with you, but I must be patient, until Allah grants me the means to afford to give you and our children a good life, as I said, I do not want to give you my poverty. It is not impossible my dearest, but we must be patient, and we must pray. You do know that I do not look for you on the internet. Because no news is better than bad news, which leaves me my love, imagination and desire to fuel my tenacity to be married to you. And I want to marry you, Julia. I have on this old computer of mine, which runs on Windows ME which I rebuilt from the trash dump, a randomized slide show of your photos which I accumulated when I first proposed to you back in 2009, as my view into your eyes and soul, something to pray for. Certainly, we are both private people, so I just want us to be married. For insyaAllah, I have not been untrue to my promise to marry you, and have been waiting all this while for Allah to allow me the means to give you the happiness and security in marriage that we both need.

Truly, there is nothing else for me to do but wait for you. I am older than you so I have less time, but that's OK. I don't feel like going anywhere anymore, I just want to be like a tree and take root, and be with my Julia, and give her a good life.

Letter to Julia 20110906

Ah, Julia! How are you, sweetie? No sugar for me today. There seems to be an excess of holiday cookies in my kitchen. Just because I have all that sugar doesn't mean that I must eat them, even though I'm compelled not to waste. Want a cookie? Say ah! Thus, I'm feeling a little agitated and rushed for time today, which is ridiculous, because I'm just a country bumpkin. And what does sugar have to do with that?

I know I shouldn't babble, but I have to talk to my sweetie, and I don't really feel like talking about the greedy and the oppressive today. Who really cares if they live or die anyway, if they have no respect for Allah? Actually, today I want to talk about fish. Do you like fish? Well, in lieu of something more interesting to tell my sweetie, let's talk about fish. For someone of my economic means, fish is the logical choice, because it feeds both me and Chee Cheah. Perlis has high quality seafood which is usually affordable, but not recently. I suppose the prices went up because of the holidays: not just mackerel, but all the fishies. My Mom gave me some money to buy fish, so I decided to go for something other than mackerel. Malaysia has a native species of tuna, which is the short-tailed tuna, or what the locals call the "tongol". It's a bigger fish than my usual fare, I figured I would get more fish flesh per dollar value if I bought a big fish. Wrong. Plus, one can't eat the bones. I supposed this tuna is called a short-tail because the stomach cavity extends to 60% of its length. The flesh is quite good raw, except for the extra dark area by the stomach. I thought the skin would be scaleless and easy to peel, because it was smooth and bruises easily. Wrong. I mangled my fillets, Julia! I'm so bummed. **sobs** I don't know what to do with this fish. I don't have wasabi, so no sushi. Maybe I'll do a shabu-shabu with the fish broth I made of the bones and fish head.

Oh no, I have another kilo of fish to fillet! I'll do it tomorrow. It's not mackerel, but some other shoal type fish with big-eyes, which I don't know the English name of. The locals name it after a classic singer, Uji Rashid. Nice to be named after a fish, huh? Now, that's love. Hey, do you still want to talk about fish? Maybe we can do some trawling from our ark, insyaAllah. Or just rent a nice boat for a romantic cruise around the islands. Perhaps I'll catch a bluefin tuna. I'll be happy with a yellowfin. The adults grow to 2m! What a party for me and little Chee Cheah. Meanwhile, you please stay patient and maintain your prayers. InsyaAllah, we'll be together soon. Come and join me in Islam, my beloved.

Letter to Julia 20110904

Hi Julia, you intense thing you. Your intensity may scare others, but I LOOOVE how intense you are. Woooo! I pray you are taking good care of yourself and your lovely body. Please make sure you are eating peoperly, and getting enough beauty rest. The fasting month was a time of plenty for this poor musician: there was always some free food somewhere everyday, so I was spoiled. Now, reality has sunk back in, and I am back to cooking rice twice a day, and processing leftovers, and unwanted plant and animal parts, into some sort of creative cuisine. My Mom gave me all sorts of traditional cookies for the Eid, but I can't stomach all of them, so I have to try to find some sort of use for them. For instance, I can't eat those crumbly cookie types, so I used them as a breadcrumb substitute for fried chicken. Hm.

Anyway, I have to remind you again to please be patient. Use your intensity to start to slow down: slow everything down, take forever to do things. When we get together insyaAllah, the goal is to slow things down even more. The purpose is to appreciate the time we have together, to seek the best solutions to our trials, to savor whatever little happiness that comes our way, to give our hearts the pleasure of beating. Why would you seek security in a relationship, namely marriage? Because we are not getting younger, so slow things down.

The intensity level in general is very high, not just in my case, but because Judgement Day gets closer and closer. So we must slow down. I am building an ark, would you join me? To set sail to you, little by little, piece by piece. Oh, so slowly.

Qur'an 20110904

In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Merciful.

32. They said, "O Noah! You have disputed with us, and you have prolonged the dispute with us. Now bring upon us what you threaten us with, if you speak the truth!"

33. He said, "Truly Allah will bring it on you, if God wills, and then you will not be able to frustrate it!"

34. Of no profit will be my counsel to you, much as I desire to give you counsel. If it be that Allah wills to leave you astray, God is your Lord! And to God will you return.

35. Or do they say, "He has forged it?" Say, "If I had forged it, on me were my sin! And I am free of the sins of which you are guilty!"

36. It was revealed to Noah, "None of your people will believe except those who have believed already! So grieve no longer over their deeds."

37. But construct an Ark under Our eyes and Our inspiration, and address Us not on behalf of those who are in sin, for they are about to be overwhelmed.

Hud 11:32-37
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If I had forged it, on me were my sin! And I am free of the sins of which you are guilty!