3 Weeks in the East Coast.- Kota Bharu, Kelantan.

I have just returned from a two weeks trip to the East Coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu to say hello to my long time friends and family and relatives. I was a fruitful trip having been able to catch up with most and enjoying their gracious hospitality. I had stopped over in Kota Bharu where I visited my friend Fadzly Mubin whom I had know for over fifteen years when his children were but preschoolers and now the eldest is in college.. We spent most of our time talking about Islam as I found out that Fadzly has become a very religious man deep into the study of the religion where he spent most of his free time at the mosques listening to the Ustaz giving talks on the  subject. He has been recently laid off from work so has ample time to do so and my visit to his home was an opportunity to revise what he has learned on this heathen. To me Fadzly is one of the most intelligent man who was educated in England to become a computer engineer when computers were in the infant stage of development, however he has chosen to give it all up where he could have earned a healthy income had he pursued a career in computer. He once opened his own cyber cafe in his home state of  Kuala Terengganu and this was where we met. He later insisted that I start Blogging from what he saw of my art journals and he also set up my web page back in 2004 or perhaps earlier.

For three days and nights we sat chatting about Islam with me playing the devil's advocate countering his knowledge with questions that were mostly deflected by quotes from the Quran and Hadith of the Prophet. To avoid any tension I reserved myself from approaching the arguments from the Buddhist perspective and stuck to pure logic and intellectual approach. Fadzly stuck to his guns quoting the Quran and Hadith which was not easy to argue against and so I relented. As far as he was concern the human mind is incapable of unraveling God's intentions, while I simply had the reasoning that God gave man the mind to think and come to a personal spiritual conclusion; this is my personal journey towards self discovery. Who am I and what is my relationship to the rest of the universe and the Creator of this universe; before I can have faith in the great unknown I have to have complete faith in who I 
am. Hence most of my points in facing Fadzly's discourse is based on the fact that God has no problem in my life, I do and facing life's endless challenges is my way to God. Take care of this moment in the here and now, the family, the friends the daily routine, take care of your health, physical as well as mental well being,in short be in the here and now, for God is right here in this moment not just in the after life when all is said and done.