My Lab

When i first came to Swansea, our lab was at the Technium building. It is a very modern shaped building.. That unusual shape building below is the Technium. i love the place because after 3 months of stay, i got the best spot in the lab. I sat at a corner over looking the Fulton house - center of most activities on campus! If you look closely at the Technium photo, my place was just beside that partition at the far left of the picture (near the stairs there)... And even when i had to stay very late, i know that the porters were there and it was quite safe... it was quite a secured room and Siti sat next to my desk. We were good friends - we shared many little things and laughters. We would giggled, talked about the States, sometimes about our childhood - u name it... we love to share things probably because we don't have anyone else there... and we were like kindred spirits too! We both went to the States for our first degree.. and although our experiences there were so much different.. there were many similar things that we shared. Doing PhD is at times quite stressful. So it is good to have someone to talk to. We don't just talk together.. we travelled together too. She is good at managing things and myself... i don't know what i am good at but we made a very good team when it comes to traveling. It all started with a discounted ticket to Budapest for £10 return ticket. Then we were just on the roll... we travelled every month for 6 months not counting the local UK trips. Our family members were close too.. my son and her son were very close at school. So we went together to Budapest,Italy (Venice, Pisa, Rome), Stockholm, Burg (Belgium) and Holland. Every time we travel, the kids enjoyed so much... in-between the travels - during the breaks, the kids would ask, when are we going on holiday again? We travel most of the budget airlines.. Ryan Air, easy jet, thomsonfly.. u name it! And we, most of the time, would take with us, rice cake and some gravy/rendang. It is easy when you travel during the winter .. the rice cake stayed good for 3-4 days. Well, we don't travel for longer period... usually only across the weekends! These are one of those things about living in UK.. it is like living at the heart of the European countries where you can fly to east, west, south, or north whenever you want to ... provided you have money and time. Well! We usually do not spend much.. always try to find the best deal to get to somewhere interesting..

(Back to my story)
We move to another building later - fourth floor Faraday building. The travelling started from when we were at Technium until we move to Faraday building. And after sometime, Siti went home. She graduated and i still have a long way to go. There are many others in the lab.. they are nice students, young and friendly. I thought that's it... i have no more best friend now. Then after sometime, Allah send me a good friend - Liam. Amazingly, my son's best friend is also Liam. After knowing him for sometime, i get to know that he is one of the best student in the department. He is very smart and likes to solve matters at hand. If i asked him anything or a problem, he will investigate until he knows the answer to it. When i did my experiment, he scored all correct... he said he likes to make sure he tried his best. He is young.. considering his age, he can be my son... He is very helpful and helps me a lot in many of my tasks. When he comes in the morning, he will come to my desk and give his report of his yesterday's activity or anything at all.. We don't actually have common interest, but we get along very well. One time when these students have an evening at the pub, he invited me to go with them.. Funny... i guess many of them still do not understand our point of view about this matter - so i told him! I tried to be very frank with him most of the time.. i tried to tell him about Islam whenever i can because it is our responsibility to inform them.. so many around us has misinterpretation of Islam... Some of the non-muslim who reverted to islam sometimes asked why they were not informed before! So we have to play our role to inform them..

Anyway, I understand so much now... when you ask Allah for help, he will send his help through people around you and make them kind and helpful. This is Allah's mercy and He knows what is in our hearts and what we need more than we know what we need ourselves. So i make dua that Allah will continue to help me in this journey. Without His help, who am i? All praise be to Him, Lord of the worlds.