The final outcome at work was that four developers got put under risk of redundancy - and the one who we were hoping was going to get picked to stay found work elsewhere. Another developer got excluded from the group, because he shouldn't have been there in the first place, (he was only a front-end developer), and that left me and one other guy. They picked me to stay because i'm a more skilled developer! Man i'm so disappointed: i missed out on nearly £5k! Oh well qadrullah wa ma sha'a fa'al.
On the bright side, at least i'm guaranteed two months work plus a new project to add to my CV.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Fearing ar-Rahman unseen
I was reading Shaikh Ibn al-Uthaimeen's tafseer of surah yaseen before Ramadan and its quite a good book. Regarding verse 11 [You can only warn him who follows the reminder and fears the Beneficent Allah unseen; so announce to him forgiveness and an honorable reward] he discusses three different explanations for the meaning of "fearing the Beneficent unseen":
1) the person fears Allah even though he doesn't see Allah: Allah is "unseen" to him.
2) the person fears Allah when he is unseen by others. Meaning that when he is alone and no one sees his actions, he still fears Allah.
3) the person has fear of Allah in the place which is unseen and is not heard: in his heart, and this relates especially to situations like the prayer when a person's limbs might be still and portray a sense of fear of Allah, whereas, his heart is distracted with thoughts and ideas about everything but the prayer.
1) the person fears Allah even though he doesn't see Allah: Allah is "unseen" to him.
2) the person fears Allah when he is unseen by others. Meaning that when he is alone and no one sees his actions, he still fears Allah.
3) the person has fear of Allah in the place which is unseen and is not heard: in his heart, and this relates especially to situations like the prayer when a person's limbs might be still and portray a sense of fear of Allah, whereas, his heart is distracted with thoughts and ideas about everything but the prayer.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Ramadan Mubarak
Alhumdulillah, Ramadan has started. A month of blessings, and mercy and forgiveness. I pray Allah does not let this month depart except that all our sins have been forgiven.
The recitations at tarawih have been beautiful for the most part. I've had the pleasure of listening to 4 different reciters. The Egyptian and Moroccan Imams were amazing, masha'Allah. The Moroccan was so good that i've placed an order for an IRiver MP3 player/recorder so that i can record his recitation.
One Imam has got me thinking though: his recitation starts off really nice, but then the melodious tone goes a bit OTT. And i wonder, is there a point when the recital goes from being a recitation of the Qur'an, to something sounding more like a song. Because sometimes when he is reciting it reminds me of Mohammad Rafi.
Khair. On the workfront, we've finally been given a bit of meaningful news: they're looking to make 10 out fo the 15 odd IT staff redundant. My chances of staying don't look good! What really surprised me was that my colleagues kind of forced me to represent them on the Employee Representative Committee which kind of liaises staff concerns to the powers that be. In any case, the deal is completed this Friday insha'Allah, and the following Monday, the staff who are to be made redundant will be notified, insha'Allah.
Watch this space...
The recitations at tarawih have been beautiful for the most part. I've had the pleasure of listening to 4 different reciters. The Egyptian and Moroccan Imams were amazing, masha'Allah. The Moroccan was so good that i've placed an order for an IRiver MP3 player/recorder so that i can record his recitation.
One Imam has got me thinking though: his recitation starts off really nice, but then the melodious tone goes a bit OTT. And i wonder, is there a point when the recital goes from being a recitation of the Qur'an, to something sounding more like a song. Because sometimes when he is reciting it reminds me of Mohammad Rafi.
Khair. On the workfront, we've finally been given a bit of meaningful news: they're looking to make 10 out fo the 15 odd IT staff redundant. My chances of staying don't look good! What really surprised me was that my colleagues kind of forced me to represent them on the Employee Representative Committee which kind of liaises staff concerns to the powers that be. In any case, the deal is completed this Friday insha'Allah, and the following Monday, the staff who are to be made redundant will be notified, insha'Allah.
Watch this space...
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Had the meeting
I had my 1:1 with the CTO of the new company. How did it go? I'm not sure. He asked a bit about the work that i do, what i want to do in future, the usual stuff.
I'm not too confident about his own technical knowledge - he sounded like he didn't know the difference between Java/C++ and scripting languages. hmmm...
I don't want to move across to their company because their site is written in Perl, and they don't look like they want to move to any different technology.
I've been hearing conflicting news at the moment regarding when the deal will be concluded: some are saying its going to be put back to the 14th of November, whereas, our CTO told me that the MD is trying to bring it earlier to October 14.
In other news, my new passport has arrived. They've stretched the pic sideways so i look REALLY overweight. My paternal aunt has decided that she wants to come with me too, so alhumdulillah, that will be cool. May Allah accept it from all of us, and make the journey easy for us. My other aunt wants to come as well, but she's not mahram. I'm going speak to her sons and try to convince one of them to go.
I'm not too confident about his own technical knowledge - he sounded like he didn't know the difference between Java/C++ and scripting languages. hmmm...
I don't want to move across to their company because their site is written in Perl, and they don't look like they want to move to any different technology.
I've been hearing conflicting news at the moment regarding when the deal will be concluded: some are saying its going to be put back to the 14th of November, whereas, our CTO told me that the MD is trying to bring it earlier to October 14.
In other news, my new passport has arrived. They've stretched the pic sideways so i look REALLY overweight. My paternal aunt has decided that she wants to come with me too, so alhumdulillah, that will be cool. May Allah accept it from all of us, and make the journey easy for us. My other aunt wants to come as well, but she's not mahram. I'm going speak to her sons and try to convince one of them to go.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Recovering
I'm recovering from a cold that i've had since last Tuesday. Alhumdulillah, i was off work until yesterday so i put my time to good use ;)
The great thing was that i was able to do some solid revision of the Qur'an. When you're at work for most of the daylight hours, its harder to revise/memorise the Qur'an because you're knackered by the time you're home. Another reason i guess to encourage people to do this kind of stuff when they're young.
But then, if you think back to the time of the sahaba, they worked longer than the 9-6 day that we do: they would be up from Fajr, all the way till Maghrib working on their farms, yet they still found time to learn from the Prophet, pray tahajjud, memorise the Qur'an, wage jihad. Subhanallah, what an excellent generation!
That reminds me, I read a really interesting booklet a couple of nights ago called "Show me the way to the market." In it the author shows how much importance the sahaba & the early Muslims placed on earning a living by the work of their own hands and not being a bum who is living off of hand outs, making no effort to earn a salary. And he re-defined zuhd (abstinence) in a way that i'd never thought of: he points out that the greatest people of zuhd in the ummah were the sahaba, and then he lists the inheritance that 7 of the 10 who were guaranteed paradise left behind - and my jaw just dropped. They were huuuge! If anyone is interested, i'll post them here, otherwise, i'll translate the bit and send it round to my mailing list (insha'Allah).
The great thing was that i was able to do some solid revision of the Qur'an. When you're at work for most of the daylight hours, its harder to revise/memorise the Qur'an because you're knackered by the time you're home. Another reason i guess to encourage people to do this kind of stuff when they're young.
But then, if you think back to the time of the sahaba, they worked longer than the 9-6 day that we do: they would be up from Fajr, all the way till Maghrib working on their farms, yet they still found time to learn from the Prophet, pray tahajjud, memorise the Qur'an, wage jihad. Subhanallah, what an excellent generation!
That reminds me, I read a really interesting booklet a couple of nights ago called "Show me the way to the market." In it the author shows how much importance the sahaba & the early Muslims placed on earning a living by the work of their own hands and not being a bum who is living off of hand outs, making no effort to earn a salary. And he re-defined zuhd (abstinence) in a way that i'd never thought of: he points out that the greatest people of zuhd in the ummah were the sahaba, and then he lists the inheritance that 7 of the 10 who were guaranteed paradise left behind - and my jaw just dropped. They were huuuge! If anyone is interested, i'll post them here, otherwise, i'll translate the bit and send it round to my mailing list (insha'Allah).
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