Almy and Tauhid’s Blog

Compared to when we were in So Cal, we don’t travel much anymore, so most of Amira’s pics are either at home or somewhere in Houston. I’ll follow up on the comments as much as I can in the next few days. I particularly like the one where Amira sits on the JFK monument in Dallas.

Today I had a sudden urge to check my cellphone minutes. We rarely use up our minutes and had like 1000 minutes rollover from month to month, but it suddenly struck me that we had more activities in Houston compared to California, hence driving up our cellphone use. Imagine my shock when I found out that we used up all rollover minutes AND we were over by two hours!

I was prepared to just bite the bullet and pay the overage charges, but then decided to plead my case to AT&T. I was pleasantly surprised to find out they were willing to change my plan and backdate it, this way I won’t pay overages. I guess it helps when you’re on a business account

So I wondered– why this sudden jump in cellphone usage? Then I realize that we just had much, much more activities here in Houston compared to California. We had volunteer work at a masjid, we visit friends almost every week, my wife does teleconferencing to study and teach Islam. I’m thankful for these changes — hopefully for the better. It’s not like we went over our minutes due to dubious reasons.

Now the next step is.. how to offload those cellphone usage on to another communication method, like Skype, Vonage, or something similar….

Tau

There was this guy I knew a few years ago.. he was a nice guy, very helpful. So one day I was sitting with him at a table, having lunch. The topic veered towards religion and I was found out that he was an atheist. I was used to knowing people of different beliefs, so it didn’t bother me. But another person at the table — a Christian — inquired deeper.. why didn’t this guy believe in God? After being asked many times, he retorted, “a family member of mine was a really kind person, he became sick till he died, where was God there?”. The Christian dude then said, “OK, but don’t blame anybody but yourself when judgment day comes”.

Thinking back at the incident, I couldn’t help but snicker a bit. Our so called atheist isn’t really an atheist.. he’s just displeased with the Divine decree. If I meet him again, and he asks my opinion I’ll just say to him, “repeat after me : God is not a cosmic errand boy”