Growing Up

Growing up means you are carrying more and more responsibility. You stop playing around, and start behaving like a grown up.

Kids live their life without worries. There's a good part in that. When you think less of the problem, you just keep going without thinking too much.

Every one of us used to be kids. You laid up yourself on the bed, and wish everything go pass by. Every problem solved while you fall asleep. There's always someone out there solving it all for you.

Some people love keeping it that way.

But that is such a waste.

A waste of what? A waste of talent.

There's a big superhero in you, and if you still want to live your life like a kid, then the world is missing a superhero. Maybe it's time for you to grow up. It's time to save the world.

Taking sides

When I started as an activist years ago, there were times in the early days that we didn't put any emphasis on standing behind a brand or a logo. We justified that act with a strong excuse of sincerity in working for islam. But that is already a thing of the past, and of course we all understand now that branding is very important. It is a tool to make us more sincere in working for islam. Imagine political party without any logo or brand. Imagine Coke and Pepsi without branding. It's just impossible.

One of the good thing of having a brand, is that we can easily get people's support merely with the brand's strength. There is a catch, ie the brand needs to be strong. This method works by manipulating on people's tendency to take sides. That's right. People love taking sides. Especially with a strong brand. It makes them stronger. At least it makes them look so.

We've seen this all around us.

iOS vs Android

Whenever there's a post on some tech news sites on Android/iOS strength/weaknesses, please browse to the comment section, and you can easily see a war/debate going on between the two sides. Android is more customizable, iOS battery life is better, Android design is rubbish bla2 you get the point. And between those debates, you will see people who's tired of all these debates, going like guys enough, it's just a phone, guys just buy both of them habis cerita bla2. 

UMNO vs PAS

If you know politics in Malaysia, then there's no way you're not seeing this. Especially in facebook. I mean where else can you find debates. I grew up with a simple perception of PAS vs UMNO is a battle between good and evil. PAS is an islamic party, and UMNO is a nationalist party. How easy it is to take sides? Super easy. PAS, scholars (ulama), islam, yes. UMNO, ministers, corruption, no. And the good thing about taking sides is that people can point fingers to bad things on the other sides, and it automatically makes them more superior. That is a really strong drive. Sadly, people don't see the real situation. Syirik is way bigger sin than corruption or drinking alcohol. Both needs dakwah. But when you have to choose one, pick the lesser evil. That's very basic.

When people takes sides, they don't have to go through all the hardships that the brand builder has went through in order to get the strong/win badge. That's why people love Coke. The image of people holding a Coke can instantly make it cool and hip. Compared that image with another guy holding teh botol. Ok not that bad actually.

My main point is that people should think and act more objectively. Both of the examples above are not strictly the only choice. It's not one or the other. You can buy both iOS and Android device. You can support both UMNO and PAS if they benefit towards islam. The only thing that you should be strict on taking sides are Haq vs Batil (evil). Islam vs Jahiliyyah. Period.

Times Bookstore, Sunway Giza Mall

I love going to bookstore and snaps loads of pics. Here are several books that catches my attention.

Buying upgrades in real life

You can often find in freemium apps/games these days, that there'll be some kind of a store or shop section, and people would buy upgrades using actual money via in-app purchase. It is a somehow more proven and effective business model as compared to selling the apps/games for 99 cents and they get everything.

The tips in making people go for in-app purchase is to frustrate them bit by bit in the gameplay experience. You progress through the game smoothly at the start, and as it goes towards the end, difficulty starts going to the peak, and people would eventually buy upgrades to progress through the game.

I was seeing the same thing happens in real life. As people grow, they will definitely face more challenges in their life. And people are actually attempting to buy upgrades to progress through their life.

Self help books

I'm talking about self help books. How to be successful, how to be rich, how to make money with facebook, et cetera. You name it. 

I always get this feeling whenever I went to MPH, Kinokuniya etc. You go pass the bookshelves, and there's like tonnes of upgrades that you can choose from. It's kind of deceiving. You saw a book called "How to become the next facebook", you pick it up, and it was as if you've automatically achieved it. Like an in-app purchase upgrade. And I saw people bought a lots of these upgrades. 

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with buying these upgrades. It's just people sometimes can fall into the trap of buying a whole lot of books, but end up not reading it. Or if they manage to finish it, or at least read a part of it, they didn't actually practice it. 

Recently I saw someone put an ad selling a lot of ebooks with titles like 'How to Be Rich' et cetera. They are giving hopes to the people who decided to buy it, with quite a price (about RM100 for dozens of ebooks). Yeah people can argue that as long as there is demand, then nothing wrong with selling those. But I'm thinking are those ebook authors really achieve something when they publish that ebook called 'how to get rich', apart from getting rich from selling ebook about how to get rich? Yes you can indeed call it richception if you want.

I'm not discouraging you guys from reading books. I'm just discouraging you guys from buying instant upgrades. Find a quality book. Don't judge the book just by its cover (or title).

Bagaimana membuat orang rawak terpacu untuk membawa aspirasi kita

How do you make some random person driven to fight for your dream.

Siapa boleh jawab soalan ni, please put forward your answer.

Mainstreaming Dakwah

In a Muslim minority country, dakwah is quite a mainstream thing among the community. Because the number of Muslim is so little relative to the non-Muslim in those country.

In Malaysia, Muslim is the majority. Maybe some people think doing dakwah is only limited to inviting non-Muslim to embrace Islam, which makes dakwah as not really a mainstream thing here. Because maybe they think there's enough Muslim here. Just let them do what they do.

On the kind of a same note, dakwah is also about asking our Muslim brothers and sisters to embrace Islam in an even more passionate way.

That's the dent that I'm going to put in the universe. To mainstream dakwah. Through technology. At least we can start here in Malaysia.

Getting a smartphone tips

This is a short list of (flagship) smartphone (iOS and Android only) release date:


2009
Mid: iPhone 3GS (iOS)

2010
Early: Nexus One (Android)
Mid: iPhone 4 (iOS)
End: Nexus S (Android)

2011
Oct-Dec iPhone 4S (iOS)
End: Galaxy Nexus (Android)

2012

Oct-Dec: new one from Apple

End: new one from Google

That is 1 new smartphone release every year per brand. Combine both, 2 new flagship phone per year. Every 6 months comes out new one already.

If you want to get a cheap android, buy 1 generation behind.

In this case, Nexus S. It was around RM2k when it was released, and now its around RM1k.

Galaxy Nexus is now around 1.6k, released 3 months ago (back then it was around 2k as well). There's still 9 months to go before a new Android flagship device is released. Price will go down to around 1k at that time.

And then you can also wait for the new device's price to go down.

Endless waiting. Welcome to the smartphone world.