I wanted to post pictures of my Glasgow trip, but now I've realized that my digital camera is lost.. Sigh.. The last time I saw it was in Glasgow.. It must've slipped somewhere along the way back to Southampton.. Sigh (again).. When I had the camera, I kept complaining about its poor quality so much.. Now God's taken it away from me.. Serves me right.. Now I'd rather have a (bad) camera than no camera at all :/
Oh well, you know what that means.. eBay shopping! Woohhoo.. Hehehe :P
Anyway, what was I about to tell you.. Oh, right, Glasgow.. We set off from Southampton on 27 December.. We took all sorts of transportation modes.. First we took a bus to Bournemouth.. Then a taxi to the airport.. Then the plane to Glasgow.. Then a train to the city centre.. Then another taxi to where we were headed :P
I went to a Winter Retreat organized by the MSM.. It was attended by almost 400 Malaysian Muslim students in the UK and Eire.. Because of the sheer size, the venue was separated into 2, each for brothers and sisters respectively..
When I got there, the program had already started.. I was drafted into Group 11 where I met my ex-collegemates, H and Y there.. My facilitator was Kak M frm Dublin.. She totally rocks.. Whenever we answered her questions, she knew which ones were real and which ones where 'skema jawapan' (model answers).. It's refreshing to find people like her because she makes people relate to real-life experiences, not some vague sentences copied from books..
The next day, we had a session called Explorace.. Our group was given a map of Glasgow city and Kak M would tell us where are the next checkpoints.. At each checkpoint, she would give us either quizzes or challenges.. At the first checkpoint, we were told to give her some money, no questions asked.. Next, we had to choose one 'prisoner' whose sole duty is to follow the group wherever we go but can't contribute to any of the quizzes or challenges..
At one of the checkpoints, there was a 'taaruf' quiz which is supposed to test how well we knew each other.. Each piece of info was awarded with a point and we had to collect 25.. H was my senior back in college and secondary school, so I contributed 12 points just by talking about her.. Hehehe :)
The following day, we went skiing.. Nobody in the whole bus knew how to ski so embarassment was out of the question.. The journey took about 4 hours.. After stopping by Aviemore to get our gloves and hire suits, we went to The Lecht to experience my first bit of snow! Yup, for as long as I've been in the UK, this is the first time I've seen a think blanket of snow all around me.. Lots of people prayed outside on the snow with their hard-as-rocks ski boots on but I took the easy way out and prayed indoors in some secluded corner behind a vending machine.. heh.. When the action went underway, there were lots of painful falls, high-pitched screams and ultra-speed collisions.. Oh, BTW, I suck at skiing.. LOL.. I think at one point I must've spent a good one hour just to put the skis onto my feet :P
When we got back to Glasgow that night, we found snowfall! The snow was about 1-2 inches thick on the ground and snowflakes were still flying through the air.. We Malaysians became jakun and started to build snowmen and throw snowfights all along the roads.. Even most of the snow that fell onto cars parked at the roadsides were wiped clean by all of us :P
The next few days were filled with more talks, including a montage of Edisi Siasat footage concerning social problems in Malaysia.. One of the talks that really struck me was how passionate Rasulullah s.a.w. and his friends were in spreading the message of Islam.. Ships that brought Muslims from northern Africa to Spain were burnt down so that turning back didn't become an option.. I can't imagine that happening now, not in a world where you can't even advise someone without being told off to mind your own business :/
On the way back from Glasgow, we were running from one place to another all the way to Southampton.. We rushed to catch our train.. We rushed to catch our flight.. And we got lost trying to find a taxi stand :P
In the end, we got back to Southampton safe and sound.. Unfortunately, I caught a bad flu ever since then.. heh :P
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NHA at 8:04 PM ::
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