Selamat tinggal Ramadhan .. sedih jugak sebenarnya meninggalkan Ramadhan kali ini — mungkin sebab Ramadhan kali ini lebih bermakna dari yang dulu2– OK I have to admit I was not terawih regular before..selalu skip especially yang hujung2 tu.. Tiap2 hari kami yang dok di Apartment “Sri Wangi” Riyadh , berbuka bersama kemudian terawih pun bersama beramai2 ke surau di hadapan rumah. Imamnya al-hafiz so solat terawih kami memang lengkap 30 juzuk bacaannya sepanjang Ramadhan– terbayang2 angan2 suatu hari nanti anak2 menjadi hafiz dan hafizah walaupun perjalanan masih jauh — Imran dan Sabrina akan masuk ke sekolah Arab 11 hari lagi (Imran keluar dari Multinational School — he told his teacher that he moved because he wanted to be a good Muslim! That was exactly what I repeatedly told him — explaining about the move to the new school to get him mentally prepared for the new school) — after a year of soul searching+ fact finding we decided they better off going for “a classical education” (hey! they like watching The Smurf too!) and science + math and english can always be homeschooled .. Dah terbayang masalah yang akan kami hadapi di sekolah baru memandangkan ilmu agama kami yang cetek ditambahkan lagi dengan “arabic vocabulary” kami yang masih “limited”. Tapi kami percaya dalam perjalanan menuntut ilmu ni — yang penting usaha dan banyak berserah kepada Allah insyaallah akan ditunjukkan jalan 
Sambung cerita puasa , anak2 makin membesar — Imran , 7 tahun Oktober 18 ni buat kali pertama puasa dan cukup sebulan! Seronok agaknya bersama rakan2 sebaya walaupun liat nak bangun untuk sahur dan solat subuh. Ammar skipped few days of school because abahnya liat nak bangun 7am untuk hantar ke sekolah (Saudi working hours untuk Ramadhan pukul 10am - 4pm! ) Sabrina pun sibuk ke hulu hilir dengan 2 rakan sebaya main bersama dengan adiknya Alysha.
Aktiviti Ramadhan yang lain? Seperti biasa resipi.net hosting overloaded! Kami berpindah lagi buat ke sekian kalinya –trafik naik 4 kali ganda! Leceh sebenarnya kerja pindah hosting ni — ended up all other (at least 5!) websites have to be moved too..
Other than that I got back into old hobbies — electronics but this time its more serious — bought few books from Amazon dan other gadgets like multimeter, oscilloscopes, Arduino microcontroller and the mission– to learn building a robot! . Cisco CCIE project also still ongoing now I have 5 routers with NM-4A/S as frame relay switch + the NM16/A as the terminal server — maybe considering CCNP first to force myself get into it seriously.
Raya? Today is the first day!
Akhir kata Salam Hari Raya dari kami sekeluarga di Riyadh -Maaf Zahir dan Batin !
Some pictures here .
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I was in “hacking mood” yesterday so I pulled off some old hardware from my messy rack and follow the instructions here to produce the following graphs of my room temperature.
For those who don’t understand the picture above — it is actually the graph of temperature against time (in Celcius) of my study room at home in Riyadh.
Outside temperature is 40++ Celcius during the day (yes it is summer in Riyadh) but getting cooler as Ramadhan is approaching .Do you know that the temperature would reach below 10 Celcius during the winter here?
So to recall — the idea of starting this project goes back ages ago but was delayed due to many undisclosed reasons — you know it’s not easy being a father of 4, living in Riyadh bla bla bla .
How it works? You can build your own 1-wire temperature sensor (search for DS1820 with google and you’ll find many related projects) or you can buy a ready made kit or the one that I am using here is TAI8520 if you are too lazy to like me.
Build/assemble your own
Or just follow this easy step-by-step instruction by Instructables .
The USB interface that I am using is DS9490R and connected to my EEEPC which is running Ubuntu with Digitemp and rrdtool applications. The graph was later ftp’ed to my blog every 5 minutes via crontab. Insyaallah I will try to install another sensor outside my house so that we can see the temperature difference in and out of the house!
The blue USB on the right is the DS9490R .
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“Bonjour! Welcome to Beirut” I was greeted by a tall young man with a French accent at the Beirut airport.”Let me take your bag” he insisted and carried my bag to his car. Pancho , is my driver for a week here in Beirut — aged 22, a Germany supporter for the European Cup did this driving work as a part time (He studied Physics he said — I asked him the next day if he’s still studying after seing a PCB at the back of his car . And suggested he should read Feynman books — ” Quantum Mechanics ? “he asked . I stopped the conversation there avoiding the details — Hey! I don’t want to mess around with a student of Physics though I had a book about Tesla in my bag . 
He drove the car to Hamra Street and we were lost for 30 minutes before finding our way to the Marble Tower around 12 midnight on that Sunday. The Hamra St. a one way street like most of the road here, is a popular road in Beirut and the area around it is full with restaurants , bars , apartment and hotel. At certain area there were road blocks with military people - I told Pancho that Lebanese army are friendly and more human than .. hmm you know
[OK the day had finally come and I can’t give any valid reasons for not accepting this trip to Beirut, not that I am avoiding this place as I said before — being abroad alone without the family is not a fun thing to do–I missed my kids I left Riyadh on 15th June after got the visa (though I could get it on arrival at the Beirut– but I hate the hassle explaining to the immigration if there were problems) ]
First day, was a tough day to me — I was given a list of tasks to do completed a few but went into some problems that caused me to stayed up until 3am at customer’s place! Thank Allah problem was resolved a day later (man I told my colleague I will always remember my first day there!)
Beirut is only the 3rd Arab city that I had visited after Dubai - French is widely spoken here, indeed they greeted with “Bonjour” and said “Merci” instead of Shukran as a way of say “Thank You”. The Lebanese had French as their 2nd language and taught widely at school — I always amazed with people who can speak multi-languages. My friend Pancho, spoke fluent Arabic, English,French,Spanish and German too He asked me do I speak Arabic ? — considering that I have been living in Saudi for almost 2 years . Not much I said — though I can read Quran , conversational Arabic is not something that being practised –and the fact that we were taught classic Arabic — I bet that he would laugh if I said “Kaifa Haluka!” to him and he burst into laughter and agreed that he last heard of that phrase perhaps from his Arabic class ages ago ! People greet with Keefak here in Lebanon [ Keef Halak in Saudi!]
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