And the verdict is.. I fell asleep at 1.40am, having set the alarm for 2.30am. I deliberately slept in the most uncomfortable position possible so that I'd be easy awakened - obviously not a hard task to do these days, but nonetheless, I wanted to be sure I didn't miss Subuh. I even managed to wake myself before the alarm rang, but the downside of it all was that I was quite disoriented, and althought the quantity of the solat was there, the quality left quite a bit to be desired.

I went to bed soon after that, and found myself pretty much awake at about 9.45am, but I felt sluggish. After taking a shower and downing some lethal coffee [and putting on clothes, in between all that], I managed to waddle into the office at about 11am. I did my usual time wasting stuff - checked my email, went on YM to say hi to people for a bit and voila.. it was already midday. A whole morning wasted and nothing to show for it.

Conclusion of the saga - I think I'll stick to the bed-at-midnight, up-at-three routine for now. At least that way I can force myself awake at 8.30am, be in the office by 9.30am latest and get some work done before lunch. It is appalling that tomorrow will already be Thursday, and I have not yet finished a two page proposal I promised Peter I'd have done this week! Okay, so Monday was spent on the annaual review report; but apart from all that, I have been spending too much time trying to set things up on Moveable Type.. time I can't afford, frankly.

Now that the undergrads are virtually done with their exams, I am beginning to have a social life again - and that, while voluntary at best, messes up my schedule as well. But I have been cooped up ever since they started their exams, and missing some good old games of football or badminton would be hard for me to do. Only tonight me and Ana joined in the staff / postgraduate badminton session at the sports center with Paul; I think we had a good couple of games but I am rusty - my drop shots, my net play and my movements are still very much out of sync. It will take a while, no doubt about that, to get things back together again.

And so tonight begins my big experiment - will I function better if I wait for Subuh prayers, which should come by at about 2.30am, and THEN go to bed as opposed to going to bed at about 12am, getting up at 3am for Subuh, back to bed at 3.30am, and then be back up and running by, say, 9.30am? I think in the latter case my body reads my sleep pattern as beginning at 3.30am instead of 12am, because I can only function after waking up at 9.30am. So now if I went to bed at, say, 2.30am and get up at about 9am, I should be getting the same hours worth of sleep. Almost. Sleep, as with all other aspects of life, is about quality and not quantity.

The issue is, of course, what do I do between 11pm and 2.30am? I have fond memories of various methods of trying to stay awake; ranging from sitting up straight at the keyboard [usually resulting in my forehead kissing the spacebar] to calling other people up on the internal phones for a conversation [only to both fall asleep with the phone still cradled between the ear and the shoulder - and both missing Subuh prayers]. Yes, one of the novelties of being on campus is the free, internal phone - where you can talk to each other for hours on end and not pay a penny. One of the things I will surely miss once we move off campus in July.

I am, to be honest, in two minds about staying off campus. Always have been. On the one hand, being off campus allows me to save money. Our rent, even when adjusted for projected bills and bus fares, is cheaper than staying on campus. Potentially, we could splurge on Sky, which is a nice thing to have, but how economical, I am not quite sure yet. I will also be getting a bigger, cosier room for a lower price - on campus I would be theoretically paying almost twice as much for a room that is twice as small.

On the other hand, most of the action will be on campus. I can foresee myself spending more time on campus than off; and if everything goes according to plan, I will probably have a place to crash on campus anyway. I will also miss being able to go online at all hours - broadband has yet to reach the outer limits that is Lancaster - and not having an internal phone may mean more usage of my mobile, but hey.. at least my free minutes will be used up! All in all, though, I can't really say being off campus is good or bad, until I go ahead and do the deed.

-----
It has been quite a warm few days as of late - a scorcher of a weekend and while today started off as being quite gloomy, things quickly picked up later in the day. We decided to have a game of football - the boys and the girls together - today, for old times' sake more than anything else. Messing about on the astroturf at 7pm felt like walking around town in Malaysia at 5pm, almost. We ended the day with a meal at Popeye's - yes, Lancaster's premier halal fried chicken outlet.

Most of the undergrads will be going home for the summer - in fact the last bastion of hope for the undergrad's representation in Lancaster this summer is having second thoughts as we speak. Summer is usually a quiet and lonely time for me - postgraduates, while there are many of them, are mostly married with kids, and can't be as spontaneous as the undergrads are when one has a spur of the moment idea. Having said that, it could be beneficial for me - mostly in line with my maturing process - to mix with older people; perhaps come September I will be able to act my age!

-----

So David Beckham has left Manchester United for Real Madrid, if all the news reports are to be believed. Soccernet is carrying it as its lead, as is BBC Sports Online. I am not quite sure what to comment on this; on the one hand I am devastated with the sale, having seen David Beckham come through the ranks like he did. I have pictures of Beckham as a 19 and 20 year old still kept tucked in a folder somewhere - I remember keeping that article, which was from Match magazine, just in case he did make it big.

But across the years, the Beckham that I see in the papers today is not the Beckham of young that I remembered. The glamour and the media coverage endeared him less and less to me; I am a firm believer in the tenet that the best footballers should let their football do the talking and lie low otherwise.

So, could this be Fergie's biggest mistake? Will United crumble under the lack of Beckham's midfield presence? Or will the team just march on regardless, just in the aftermath of Cantona's retirement? United arguably still have Juan Veron, who jostled for first team status with Beckham last season. Perhaps Beckham's departure will be the catalyst for the re-emergence of Seba. Why sell Beckham and not Veron, one may ask, especially if Veron was the more inconsistent one last season. My answer would be, there is some face-saving that needs to be done - Ferguson will be the last to admit that Veron is a £28.1m flop.

My dad used to say, sometimes people who look at you or see you from their lenses, know things about you more than what you know about yourself. Of course, the context of his argument was to say that he knew me better than I knew myself, and that if he saw fit for me to take up medicine, then somehow or other things would work themselves out. Needless to say, it didn't quite, and I am now resorting to other methods to allow my parents to finally be able to declare that there really is a doctor in the house.

Anyway, I was thinking of that very quote when the good Malaysian people of Lancaster voted me in as President for the Malaysian Students' Association last Saturday. I have come to know myself in various forms and functions over the past 25 odd years, and I would like to think that I know myself the best. I am more than painfully aware of my limitations. I know my weaknesses to a T, and I somehow don't think leadership is one of my strong points. I have always viewed myself as the perennial backbencher, always in there to lend support, but not the one calling the shots.

Fact of the matter is, I can be quite a lazy person. On my bad days, I am a very unmotivated person, and I can't get focused enough to get down to work. Even on a good day, I 'multitask' quite frequently, alternating between reading articles, surfing the web, messing about on Yahoo! Messenger and looking at data. I also possess a disturbingly bad temper. Alhamdulillah, over the years, I have managed to rein in most of it, but at the worst of times, it tends to resurface. And I tend to forget about the rest of the world when I am so tuned in to my work; be it my research or my reading or anything, really. Through my lenses, I would never make myself a leader.

Took a nice long break today, and went to Sheffield with Khalid, Ana and Adniz. I really needed a break from Lancaster, especially after the events of this weekend. Am actually quite tired now, so I won't waffle on too long. Just long enough to say we took the Peak District way to Sheffield via the Snake Pass; but instead of it being dark and dreary like it was last time we went over the Pennines, today's startling sunshine made it a beauty.

Being a leader isn't something one should take for granted. To be given the responsibility and the task to administer a group of people, be it big or small, is not something that can be bandied about and not taken seriously.

Leadership in Islam is based on the emphasis of doing the ma'aruf (good) and avoiding the mungkar (bad), where all aspects of the leadership itself should be focused on what is constituted in the Quran and Sunnah.

Leadership isn't just about being the top guy or having all the power. It's about knowing what to do and how to resolve situations and doing the right things. It's about fairness, it's about rationality over emotions and it's about doing what is best for the whole, and not for parts of the whole. Most of all it is about being humble, and being always ready to admit your mistakes.

Read the newspaper over breakfast today - yesterday's newspaper, that is, not today's. Apparently a Palestinian dressed as an Ortohodox Jew committed a suicide bombing act. Which got me to thinking - what's to say he wasn't an Orthodox Jew pretending to be a Palestinian dressed up as an Orthodox Jew? Or, for that matter, a Palestinian pretending to be an Orthodox Jew pretending to be a Palestinian dressed up as an Orthodox Jew? Yes, extrapolate that in any manner that you want; fact of the matter is we can no longer believe everything we see or we read.

George Orwell [did you know his real surname was Blair? Wise man, he was, to change it] wrote 1984 in the late 1940's, predicting the advent of a world where everything and everyone was watched over by an unknown entity called Big Brother. His book takes things to one extreme, but don't for a moment think what he insinuated isn't happening. Maybe we are not living robot-like lives where every hour of our day is meticulously planned to a T, but we do now live in a world where we are told what to believe, or rather, force fed the slightly-administered truth that a group of people think is best for us. Thankfully, there are still ways out - some people do call the bluff; but it takes a lot of effort trying to discern the truth from the soap opera - Private Jessica Lynch episode quoted again.

I have been writing since I was seven years old, I think. Poems, short stories, all that. Started keeping a journal ever since I left home to go to boarding school. But most of the things that I write, I rarely share with other people. It took quite a lot of nudging and egging on by my friend Jiji [TKCian 9094, for those who may know her], to actually get my first article -ever- published in the Young Times pages of the NST. Then of course I went on to build a mini sideshow for myself writing feature articles for YouthQuake and Life & Times; but that was quite all right because I was writing about other people, and not myself.

Ever since I began to have issues with trust, I stopped writing about me. [Which is not a bad thing, really, because me as a subject isn't all that interesting and getting too self absorbed in yourself isn't a good thing anyway.] I wrote about other people and what they felt and what they did, and I waxed lyrical over other people's achievements, but I stopped writing about what I thought, what I felt and what made me tick. Nobody complained, so it was all for the better really.

When I did choose to express what was going on in my head, I usually reserved that for my journal or for close friends - one of whom was Ramzi who kept urging me to start letting other people read what I wrote as well. He used to call them my Idlan Jones' Diary series. It took a while, it took a bit of thinking and deliberating, but late last year I started my own blog - and slowly I've regained confidence to write about my life and my thoughts as well as other things that irk me or tickle my fancy.

Here is one of the pieces I wrote in the early days of being at Muadzam Shah - I don't remember if I've posted it here before, but I thought it suited the mood of exams and all that.

-----------
Lectures again. Today is not a very good day. At least, not for my students. I give them back their test papers. Approximately half of them have managed to royally screw up this test, and I can judge from the gasps I hear as I continue to distribute their answer booklets, they are as shocked as I was.

But somehow, I have learnt, some people do not know how to function if they are not guarded under a strict regime. The freedom not to have to hand in exercises means to them, a freedom from having to do anything. They need rules and regulations to guide them to achieve their potential, and they are unable to set these limits by themselves. Indeed, a sad day for individuality and self-expression.

I ask my students what else I can do for them to help them out. Inside I ask myself why I even bother. I ask myself why I care. After all, their existence is a bane to me - if they didn't bother to come all the way here, I wouldn't have to trek accross Malaysia every Monday morning to ensure they know their debits from their credits (some of them still don't).

But the deal is, I do. I look at their faces. Most of them look like they wished they were somewhere else. A thought that, for so many weeks now, echo mine. For some of them, though, there is an earnestness, an eager shine in their eyes. They know they haven't done extremely well, but this doesn't deflate their spirit.

I say to them, if you failed my test, then come and see me. I'll see what we can sort out. I walk out of lectures. One student approaches me the minute I step out of the door. She asks me if she can see me, and I say yes. I know her - she did extremely badly. We come back to my office. She sits and looks at me. She asks me if it is too late. I tell her, there never is such a thing as too late. I tell her, if she is prepared to put in a few extra hours, she can succeed. I assign her some extra reading. As she walks out, I wonder if I will see her again.

Another student comes in. She apologises to me for flunking my test. She knows she owes it to me to get a good grade. I tell her, the only apology you need to make is to yourself. We talk. She leaves with a rekindled spirit.

The next student who came to see me left in tears. She hated the sight of her marks. I tell her my rule of 48. You're allowed 48 hours to mope, I say. Any more than that and you're a loser. She manages a smile. I think she will be okay.

As I was sitting in my office the next week, the first student walks in. She tells me she has tried the questions, but she is still confused. We do a few examples together. I tell her to go back and try some more questions. She walks in today, telling me she could master the questions I assigned yesterday. I assign her another chapter, and they I sat back. Don't do this today, I said. Give yourself a break. You've achieved something this week.

She walks out with a smile on her face. I remembered the question I asked myself. Why did I care about these students? I still don't know.

But to see that student walk out with a sense of achievement, a renewed spring in her step - maybe I made a difference in her life today. Maybe she was worried, and what I said raised her spirits. Maybe she felt tired, and what I said injected some strength.

I smile at my own dramatics. Chances are, she probably had an okay day. Maybe what I said did nothing more than to keep it an okay day. That's good enough for me.

I thought I'd write something special tonight. Something 'of substance' , as I would like to call it - a bit different from the mundane dronings that I've been limited to since the whole marking thing started. So as soon as I came home, I sort of tried to get myself in the mood. When I don't feel too inspired, I need to create a 'mood' to write in - which usually involves turning off all the lights, opening the curtains so that the light from outside can get in and putting some moody music on.

What it creates is a situation where I am a bit more focused because there are no bright lights to distract me, so it usually helps me write better. I usually do this when I need to force myself to write [i.e. when there is an urgent assignment that is due in 3 hours, for example]. Not so much for blogging, because I try to be spontaneous when I blog, because I want to capture both my thoughts and my mood.

But tonight... tonight, I thought, I'd try and do something different, because in between all the marking a lot of thinking had been done and I wanted to reflect a bit more. So I got everything ready, even lighted a candle to give it a bit of a 'feel'. Then, of course, it had to happen - random Greeks started shouting downstairs as they stumble out of the bar, very much drunk. Yes, they can be pretty LOUD. So no.. it's not going to be a good night for writing after all.

So back to mundane droning - heh - yeah, I got the marking done at about 10am this morning. [No Asran, I haven't failed anybody yet. Some of these students don't need examiners failing them - they have an uncanny talent of failing themselves]. I started to key in some of the marks, as well as preparing for the talk me and two other PhD colleagues were to give at 2pm that afternoon. It is basically a hints & tips thing, a method to help them approach their dissertation. Supposedly we are to be quite the experts in the area; looking at the development of my own research, I don't quite know what I've done that gave that impression, but anyway, anything that we get paid for, we're happy to do.

Managed to finally finish all the keying in at about 1930 and prepared a sheet of personal comments for the auditor when he audits our paper later on. Then it was off to Bardsea for dinner cooked by the experts in Flat 8 - [I'd flatter them with anything for another plate of free food!]. It feels so good now that my self-imposed quarantine is over and done with. It felt good to be among friends again, without having to glance over my shoulder to check who is looking.

Having aged 30 years after the marking process and wisened somewhat marginally, I thought I'd share some of the things that might be useful for those of you taking exams. Yeah, so most of you are done, or are just starting a new semester, so I'll probably repost this when exams are nearer. But here are some of my own thoughts, anyway.

- Handwriting is of utmost importance when you are doing essay type questions. What the examiner can't read, the examiner won't mark. If you know your handwriting is particularly atrocious and you've been on the receiving end of poor marks before because of your handwriting, go see your student support counselor. Sort something out so that you get the marks your intellect deserves.

- Paragraphs, please. Looking at a whole page with no separating paragraphs can really be a pain, especially when you are marking script #214 out of 546. Skip a line, indent, capitalise, whatever, but indicate that you are starting on a new point. It makes things easier for the examiner. A happy examiner is a kind examiner.

- Use the marks to gauge how much you should write. Don't write two pages worth if the the question is only for 7 marks, and then write two paragaphs for a question that has 15 marks up for grabs. However much you know what the answer is, you will not earn anywhere near the 50 or 100 marks up for grabs if you write your answers in random bulletpoints on 2 sheets of paper. Be sensible.

- Answer the question. Look at what the questions asks from you. If it says state or name something, then clearly state or name whatever it is. If it asks you to discuss, the examiner is expecting an essay which argues both the pros and cons of the issue. Explain questions require some narration.

- Don't try and be cute and write little notes with the aim of trying to induce sympathy from the examiner. Chances are we will just laugh at them and they will become the joke of the moment in the staff coffee room for the next couple of days.

At the time of writing, it is 1755 hours. I have finished marking question 4, and am now attacking the pile that is question 3. I will probably be here till about 8 or 9, and then head off to Popeye's for dinner. I've been craving fried chicken for a while now.

A small reminder to students yet to take exams:

Paragraphs, dear! Use paragraphs to separate your points. Even at 25, my eyes go all wonky when I see a whole page of unparagraphed drivel. Imagine your 50 year old professor with twice less eyesight than yours truly.

I went to bed last night basking from the beauty of a nice summer June day - and awoke thinking it was already October. Rain of torrential proportions greeted my morning, and continued way into the afternoon. I bet my fellow Malaysians would like a piece of that rain, yes?

There is no attempt from yours truly to write anything remotely clever, witty or randomly intellectual tonight. Any and all levels of thinking capability all maxed out after 5 gruelling hours of exam marking - albeit interspersed with 'conversations' of a virtual nature with some friends. In particular one of my juniors from high school has kept me company over the past week or so [hah.. amacam.. saya bagi awak glamer skit nih] and since tonight was her last night at home before university started again, we managed to deal with some deep topics. Heh. Like how deep can I get anyway?

I managed to polish off about 19 scripts today - another 14 to go for question four, and then it's the pile of 54 answers for question three. I have yet to do any grocery shopping this week; given that there is this marking to be done, and a meeting with Peter to prepare for on Tuesday, chances are it would be Thursday or Friday before I get any done at all. I don't really mind shopping at Spar on campus, but except for the random item, the prices are very much to the higher end of the spectrum.

I desperately need some E45 cream as well; the aqueous cream isn't working all that well for my eczema / dermatitis [ I got that from a medic student.. heheh] that I always get during summer. My skin doesn't deal with heat too well - a blight and a shame to the sawo matang tone of skin that I have. I wasn't born very dark - I have endless hours basking under the sun for hockey/track and field [badminton was played indoors] to thank for my slightly 'well done' look. So maybe I don't have that much natural resistance to dry heat.

I am planning to watch a DVD tonight, perhaps after Maghrib prayers. I still have The Rock, John Q and Artifical Intelligence to watch for the first time, and Spiderman and Good Will Hunting has not yet been re-watched since it arrived on my shelves. I came back from the office quite early but went to Ija's for a meal. Her parents came over with her brother and son - we go a long way back: my parents and her parents were together in Durham when my dad did his PhD, so they've known me practically all my life. I feel a bit gutted that I haven't had so much time to spend with them, to take them around and the such, but it seems everyone else is filling in nicely. They leave on Tuesday, so I thought I wanted to spend a bit of quality time with them as well.

Subuh prayers are getting earlier - circa 2.30 am these days - and I am tempted to try plan B and stay up until subuh, sleep afterwards and reward myself with a few extra hours in bed. But the current routine - bed at 12, up at 3.30, back to bed till 8 - seems to work fine and I don't want to upset my rhythm too much. Sleep is a much craved after commodity for me; if I can get a good routine going and wake up refreshed the next morning, then I don't want to spoil it. Maybe I can try that next weekend.

I also wanted to reorganise my room this weekend - redo my wardrobe by storing all the winter clothes and all that; given that we are moving early next month it'll be like packing of minor proportions; but this weekend hasn't been too good to me. Exam invigilation on Saturday morning, marking in the afternoon, marking and work on Sunday as well - not a very relaxing weekend. Perhaps next weekend will be better. I have both days off from work, the marking should be done by then, and no meeting with Peter looming on the Tuesday.

InsyaAllah.

------------

Who was I trying to kid? Of course I'll have time to jot something down in the blog, be it long or short. I have not yet reached the point of being compulsive about blogging - I reserve that for someone who can make multiple real entries per day.. heheh - but I often do feel compelled to write something down. Is it because I have too many things swimming around in my head, so much so that I use blogging as the draining process? Or am I just psychologically feeling some sense of self-importance; as if the world will not be saved if I fail to make my posts? Something for my therapist to help me figure out, I suppose.

Anyway, yeah.. I am in the midst of marking exam papers. I wanted to go straight into marking after I got the scripts back at the office; but there was an ever enticing invitation for a game of badminton or three with the usual crowd. Couldn't resist flexing my muscles and showing some not-so-skillful strokes off. I've never been able to resist playing a game of anything [except volleyball]. I remember being a student in high school and having to always play something in the afternoon, even during the 'off-season' when people were swotting for their exams. It was a lucky thing I found kindred spirits. Healthy body, healthy mind, I say.

There are 100 scripts, and they have to be done by Friday. Not really an unmanageable task, given that even though I am marking 2 questions, students choose to answer one of the two. So technically it is only 100 questions that I am marking. If I manage approximately 20 scripts a day, I should be done by, say, Wednesday or Thursday. Perhaps I can even go a bit more than 20 a day, given that I've managed 15 today beginning at 4pm - with abt 2-3 hours of a break between then and now.

I've done worse before. I've had to mark 150 case studies - consisting of say.. 2-4 questions each - within the span of 7 days. 5 working days, only I am usually stuck at the office during weekends doing just that. And this had to be done on a weekly basis as well, over the course of a semester. Add to that the fact that I was also tutoring for other subjects and needed to get some level of preparation done; well, you should be able to understand how late hours at the office and excessive stress and working under pressure doesn't faze me, much. Although I don't handle stress as well anymore.

I don't like marking. But not as much as I don't like invigilating. Standing for hours on end doing nothing except being the toilet escort, even when you're paid for it, is painstakingly boring. Worse still when it's all done for free. Lancaster's okay though. They do pay. It softens the blow.

Anyway, a few interesting observations after marking 15 odd scripts :

Some people need to go to handwriting school! I've had 2 papers now where I had to guess what the written word scratch was.

Photoblog updated.

I've reached a mini-milestone of sorts today. I managed to complete the board monitoring dimension of my proposed corporate governance index; I've readjusted the formatting and everything. All I need to do is reread it to make sure the arguments are sound; and then I can send it off to Peter to be reviewed.

In the movie Orange County, lead character Shaun is a surfer dude turned aspiring writer after he stumbled upon a book by Marcus Skinner, a professor at Stanford University, on the beach. Inspired after reading it, he made it his quest in life to go to Stanford, to become a writer and learn from Skinner himself. The class president with a SAT score of 1520, his college councillor told he was a shoo-in. He did not count on, however, her mistakenly sending the transcript of Shane Brainard, SAT score 940, by mistake.

After getting the rejection letter, he embarks on a do-or-die mission to get into Stanford, any which [legal] way he can, culminating in a 3 hour car ride to San Francisco. In a particular scene, Shaun sits on a bench with girlfriend Ashley, contemplating his future as his latest shot at gaining admission was dashed yet again... [Lancastrians: Watch this movie. It's on Lusernet].

Ashley: You know, I really believed that you wanted to go to Stanford because you wanted to study with Marcus Skinner. That's not it, is it?

Shawn: What are you talking about?

Ashley: You wanna to run away... You wanna be free of everybody. And you think by coming up here you're gonna meet people that are smarter.. and saner.. and better. You know if you went to Stanford that'd be the end of us...It doesn't seem to me that that thought ever crossed your mind.

Shawn: Ashley c'mon..

Ashely: Shawn.. I'm sorry you didn't get into Stanford. But if you think going here is the only way you can be the person you wanna be.. then I just feel sorry for you.

Why is this scene of particular significance to me? Well, today marks 7 months since I first arrived in Lancaster for the second time, my heart set on getting my PhD. Within that seven months, I have often contemplated on the decision that I made to virtually drop everything and come back to one of the few places where I've found myself at peace. Don't get me wrong. I want my PhD, and I am more than aware of the gruelling and arduous task it is, and I did come mentally prepared for a bumpy ride. But did I come because the time was right, or, did I, like Shawn, want to escape?

It is no secret to the people close to me what a nightmare year it was for me in between my Masters and me coming back here for my PhD. I had never felt so demotivated, so worthless and my emotions reached a rock bottom I wish never to revisit again. The offer of a place on the PhD program had been hanging over my head for quite a while. I had received admission for October 2001, but my employers, God bless their souls, thought it better that I come back and serve part of my contract.

Which I did, playing the part of the subservient, ever-obliging employee under an obligatory service contract, up to the point where I put my sanity on the line. The main obstacle between me and a plane ride back to England was sponsorship of my PhD; and when the offer of a departmental award came through in August 2002, I pounced on the Get Out of Jail card like a starving cat attacking a dazed mouse. Even before my students took their exams, I had managed to land myself back here.

Do I want to be here? Yes. Do I want a PhD? Yes. Am I up for it? As I ever will be. So what is there left for me to contemplate, I hear you ask. It is the life I left behind.

I left behind a little sister, now barely 18 months old. To date I have missed her first word, I have yet to see her take her steps and not a day goes by without me thinking about her. Pictures of her line my wall and decorate my table, and yet each picture is a distortion of reality because every time a set of pictures arrive, she has grown a bit more.

My mum casually mentions that she is now into picture books with cats in it; at the drop of the hat I run into Lancaster and went scouting for that book. It was in the post first thing the next morning. Even as an Ebay customer, I have never made a payment that fast. I try to teach her to say my name on the phone; I doubt it will be a word she utters until I go home and teach her in person.

My sister sometimes turns on the webcam at home and I see her and she sees me, but she has no idea who I am, not like the way she recognises her other siblings. I missed watching my sister Farah grow up as a toddler because I was away at STF; this time, now that I am more appreciative and eager to be a willing participant in her life, the distance grows longer.

I may be well onto my third tertiary qualification within the span of 8-odd years; and yet I have gotten nowhere in my personal life. I have never had the time to think about boys and men and settling down - I am one-minded and driven when it comes to my education because I feel I lost so much messing about playing the fool at STF; and I thought maybe when I start working I would be able to focus on getting my personal relationships into gear.

That didn't quite go the way it planned; within weeks of landing at KLIA I was sent to a location where decent, educated men who weren't drug addicts or pornography connoisseurs were outnumbered by wild boars. The moment I get out of there, I am back in the UK - in study mode again. Does all this bother me? Not as much as it should. I am not complaining; I am [hopefully] not whining; even if I have priced myself out of the market by getting a doctorate and not having plastic surgery to correct my physical flaws, I still believe in hope.

I am still rebuilding my relationship with my family. I left home aged 12 years, 6 months and 13 days; and only came home properly when I was a few months past my 21st birthday. I am trying to reacquaint myself with my parents as adults; we are perhaps getting there, but it's not an easy thing to do over the phone. But at least there is a phone; and email and webcams and the Internet. Ten years ago I'd be reading what was purportedly last week's news which became last month's news thanks to the efficiency of Pos Malaysia and Royal Mail.

I know I needed to get out; and I know here is as close as I can be to my family without added financial obligations, without the stress and without the same people who screwed me over asking for their money back instead of the other way round. By being here I have bought myself time; time to plan, time to analyse, time to design before I execute. I have bought myself some space so I can go searching and find myself as a Muslim. There is no better place for you to learn the true meaning of who you are, then when you are a minority. I am here because I am trying to secure my future; so that we can all live together and I can finally gain some closure. I am ready and prepared to do this today, for tomorrow's sake. But I still can't help thinking about the life I left behind. Is this the only way for me to be the person I want to be?

My entries have been rather mundane as of late; I haven't written on as many issues as I have in the past. Not for the lack of ideas, but more so for the lack of time. My research has now taken off in the style that I am very motivated to work on it - I spend every waking hour, literally, in the office going through journal articles and constructing my official proposal and the methodologies that form the basis of my study. By September - my 9 month landmark - I should aleady be able to download masses of data and be running the relevant tests.

So my day at the office usually begins 45 minutes after I wake up - if I get up at 7am then I will be in the office before 8am; and it ends just before Maghrib, at approximately 8pm. This is all, mind you, voluntary - no one is holding a gun to my head or anything; and there is no obligation for me to be sat here for 10 hours a day - I am allowed to work in my room, if I wished - but now that I've got the buzz going I actually don't mind being sat here for hours on end. Occasionally some people chat to me on Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger, and that takes the boredom away as well.

Bottom line is - since I spend most of my time doing work, I don't even have time to read the newspapers that I religiously buy every day. A common scenario is me hunched over yesterday's newspaper while having breakfast the next morning - and that's if I have time!

I do have a few issues that are lurking around in my head. I just don't have the time to research them well enough to post anything of substance. So you, me and everyone else who comes here now have to be satisfied by the mundane happenings in my life, instead of my idealistic musings on how I, Idlan Rabihah Zakaria, will one day save the world.

As you can tell, I've had an hour too many spare. Actually, not quite the story. I've been wrestling and grappling with the issues relating to the whole board size vs performance thing all day and finally managed to wrap it up just before 4pm. And I thought I deserved a touch of destressing; and so a new template was born. Ta daaaa. It started out as being the template for my photoblog which should be launched very soon; but the whole design grew on me and I stuck with it...

Let's see.. when was my last entry? Thursday midday. What has been happening since then? Hmm.. let's begin with Thursday night - the PhDs from our department went out for a meal at Sultan's, which is one of the more upscale Indian food restaurants in Lancaster. There were a few places being bandied about, but I personally wanted Sultan's because of the whole halal meat issue; Alhamdulillah things did go the way I wanted and I didn't have to spend the evening worrying about whether the food was or was not halal.

We left for the meal at about 7pm and headed back to the University at about 10pm, and that was nicely worked into solat times as well. Nowadays daylight is getting longer and nightfall only arrives at about 9.30pm. The usual struggle is for Subuh prayers - 3 am or thereabouts. I find it hard to wake up again if I've only been asleep for less than two hours; so if I'm not in bed by 1am I usually try to tough it out and wait for 3 am, which usually ends with an episode of me slumped in front of the computer asleep, or me sat beside my bed fast asleep sitting up straight. The good, thing, though, is that since Maghrib isn't until half past 9, once we get Zuhr prayers out of the way at 1pm, we are usually free to travel around for the rest of the afternoon. It is the opposite during winter - Isya' is at 5.45pm or thereabouts, so after Isya' only do we start moving about.

Friday, I had a meeting with Peter around midday. It's been two weeks since our last meeting, so I did have a substantial amount of work already done, which I showed him. He seemed well pleased with the progress, and in a way that made me feel a lot better as well, as if my research now has some form of direction. Which is really stupid, when you think about it, because if the research never had direction in the first place, then how could I have focused my literature review, my structure and my research questions? But there you go, that's how a good meeting with one's supervisor can put a real spring in one's step.

I felt so good I thought I would take the rest of the day off. I went into town, armed with my favourite new toy and beings that it was such a nice, splendid day, I decided to take a walk up to Lancaster castle and the Priory. Even though I am coming to the end of my second year at Lancaster, cumulatively, this is only the third time I've been up there. Really, ironic, come to think of it, because the castle is smack dab in the middle of town. The first time I went in 2000, it was dark and wet - we went to watch the Bonfire Night fireworks show. The second time was part of my tour of Lancaster for the benefit of Cik Kieli who came up in December 2002; winter time - so it too was pretty much a wet and cold experience. This third time, I made sure to walk slowly and savour the view and the sight of one of the oldest buildings of its kind.

What made me want to revisit the castle was a conversation I had with nnydd the day before; how he frequented a lot of castles and ruins in Cardiff and its vicinity - and the fact that he knew more about Lancaster's history than I did! That was a bit embarassing; I guess I haven't embraced Lancaster in the same way I embraced the history of Durham - which I still consider 'home' in a way because I grew up and went to school there for a good four years. Perhaps after a few more years here I will feel the same way about both places. So I trekked up to the castle to take pictures and wallow in the sunshine; it truly was a nice afternoon in a quiet sort of way - had I brought a book I would have just settled under any random tree to read.

Since I was already in town, I though I'd better get my weekly groceries out of the way, given that I was working this weekend and didn't have time to go to town to replenish my supplies. What a massive surprise it was when I bumped into Ben Smith, my Masters classmate, outside one of the shops on the way to Sainsbury's! He had just stepped out of the shop, saw me and instantly recognised me. It took a few seconds for me to register that was him - mainly because I didn't quite believe we'd bump into each other in Lancaster, of all places! It was really good to see him again - me and Ben and Paul were really close when we were doing our Masters; we were study buddies as well as mates. Ben now runs not one but three sunbed parlours in the North West; he sometimes is in Lancaster and promised me that if he had a free evening, we would go out for a meal and movie, just like in the old days. My decision to take Friday afternoon off seemed quite worth its while at that point!

Later that evening there was an usrah at the mosque - a common fortnightly event that the women hold; followed by a big meal to celebrate the May babies' birthdays. By the time I arrived back at my room, I was knackered and only wanted one thing - bed.

Saturday morning was spent vegetating, reading Stupid White Men while The Saturday Show droned on in the background. I only left my book to catch snippets of Woody Woodpecker; and got ready to go to the office around midday. Work as usual in the afternoon, followed by a meal at a friend's place. Jerry Maguire was on on C4, I watched a bit of it but found myself fast asleep soon afterwards - not because of the movie, mind you - but my tiredness.

Sunday morning, got up bright and early for carboot sales. I think I made a pretty good round today - at Garstang I managed to spend less than £10 and managed to get a duffel bag - Tommy Hilfiger, three football jerseys - Barcelona, Ireland and England - three story books and a pair of second hand Doc Marten boots. Was well pleased.