Haji's Lockdown Diary

[Haji 2003]

Day 22

Obviously 22 days too late, but as with all good activities best not to let previous poor practice inhibit the adoption of a better one. And anyway it looks as if this is going to go on for a while.

Milkman again delivered a short order. Will need to send them another email, they were pretty good about a refund last time. I don't know if it is because they have too many orders these days, the milkman is a bit useless or someone is stealing.

Early morning whatsapp with the Singaporeans. Looks as if I'll need to wait a year for the refund of the travel expense. Emirates are extending existing bookings for 2 years.

Uncle came around to pick up milk and bread that we'd ordered from the milkman. He spoke with mum through a ground floor window. His social distancing protocols slipped a bit. I haven't mentioned that the movie Life is great for learning about protocols and the importance of following them.

The breeze blocks the neighbour gave me yesterday I have now fashioned 3 steps with. Together with walking around the garden and books on audible, that got me through 2km. Have also fashioned an interesting game with the swingball, pics soon.

Work related progress with Microsoft Teams is coming along. Their wiki app within Team is the most useless wiki I have come across, looking around on their community forums it's not just me it's definitely them.

A reader in the FT recommended 'whereby' as an app for video conferencing, looks good. Markets have been doing ok recently, but I think it is a dead cat bounce before they go south again. Plan to do nothing. WW1 was supposed to be over by Xmas (of its first year), I have a suspicion that this will go on longer than generally assumed. News out of Singapore and South Korea is not fantastic.

Let's see how long I can keep this going.

[Haji 2003]

Day 23

Right knee hurting quite a bit.

It started some months ago when I resumed cycling. Wife thought it was due to vitamin D deficiency and after taking those tablets matters did improve. But a few days ago I used a skip rope in the garden, on grass and the next morning it was hell. Hmm. No more skip rope. Anyway I've worked out that if I do steps with the left leg going first it's ok. There is also a trick to having the right kind of media to listen to or watch. Earlier in the week I finished Bad Blood by John Carreyrou a book about the scam that was Theranose and today I started Ian Kershaw's Hitler. That's supposed to keep me going for 44 hours.

The neighbours were busy demolishing a structure at the bottom of their garden, so we had a chat as they took a break.

My blog post here about the virus and free will had no references which seemed a bit poor, so added those. Also managed to get something off my chest about different types of information and how they may be useful for people with different capabilities. I did notes dichotomy test and immediately felt that the wording of many of the questions was suspect, but it seemed a shame to give up after 20 questions.

The project that I am currently doing for work and for which I am using Teams got another boost when I imported material I had been working on for another project last year. Waste not want not as the English idiom goes. At the same time the way in which I intend to use the older material will have a degree of innovation attached. This could be fun.

We had a video of Abbas making a little speech on mount Huashan, but it's disappeared so looked through various memory disks for it and found lots of other material, including Maryam & Sakina doing nohas at the age of 6, but not the one with Abbas. Hmm. Still watching them was quite fun. Shared some of the videos with family on WhatsApp. 

 

[habib e najjaar]

On 4/12/2020 at 3:16 AM, Haji 2003 said:

Day 23

Right knee hurting quite a bit.

It started some months ago when I resumed cycling. Wife thought it was due to vitamin D deficiency and after taking those tablets matters did improve. But a few days ago I used a skip rope in the garden, on grass and the next morning it was hell. Hmm. No more skip rope. Anyway I've worked out that if I do steps with the left leg going first it's ok. 

Hmm.. you may want to look out for early signs of arthritis. My dad had similar symptoms but did not take action for years apart from symptom management. Recently, an alternative medicine practitioner from oman told him it is arthritis and he needs to make some dietary changes and gave him some herbal medicine to "reduce dryness between bones". Some of the dietary changes he was told were: no bananas, less red meat, no sour stuff. It seems to have helped.. 

[Haji 2003]

15 minutes ago, habib e najjaar said:

no bananas, less red meat, no sour stuff

Thanks. I don't really eat red meat because of the heart. Bananas I like, so that can be cut down. Sour stuff generally I love, but can cut down too. Thanks!

[Haji 2003]

Day 24

One of those days that you don't really know where it went.

Twitter has become a major source of information, it allows you to pick up news and perspectives that might otherwise have been overlooked or ignored. Obviously it's more opinion than anything else, but there are good nuggets and it's free flowing enough for contrary opinions to be voiced in any one conversation. And you can always choose to follow someone who speaks from expertise.

I am also spending more time on the FT's comments sections. I showed the kids something I'd posted and said, 'look 8 people liked what I wrote' (it was a bit of a harebrained idea about an economic solution to the crisis) and they fell about laughing at the fact that it was just 8. Good thing I don't show them my posts here. To save my embarrassment I pointed out a post I made in the Guardian which had 500+ likes. Maryam replied that that has many more readers than the FT. Hmm I get the feeling that with her it's a process of Skynet becoming self-aware gradually.

One of my nephews (of a first cousin) rang. We started talking about the current situation. He brought up Bill Gates. I shut him down. Anyway he spoke of another business venture he had tried to get going (property focused) which was now suspended. He's a trier, one day he'll get there inshallah. Luckily he's not lost much along the way.

Getting Abbas to do exercise is a bit of a struggle. I keep telling him, the wife and Maryam that they need to do something just for the mental health if nothing else. I'll have to be more proactive. Maryam came out and skipped and played catch with me.

I am really worried about having a family a few weeks into this who are just feeling down. I've been playing with the swing ball set my brother gave him for his last birthday but which has been unused. It's quite good if you just want to whack something, but not a lot of cardio. So I made a small change. I've put the sticks and the rule now is to move from quadrant to quadrant each time you hit the ball. This lays you open to being whacked by the ball as you are moving - which makes it more interesting...

 

[Haji 2003]

Day 25

Finally got Abbas to play swingball with me. Once he got his 'eye in' it was pretty good. We'll be doing more of this. Wife finally managed to get an online delivery slot with one of the supermarkets, we ordered everything we could think of and then we she reached the checkout it said 80 items only. So we had to go back and take stuff out.

I ordered a couple of exercise related things from Amazon. I think I may even be able to keep this under my desk and pedal while working. Cool. And it's fairly inexpensive.

 

In the evening me and the kids got to this Dua in our daily reading. I pointed out the insightful and counter-intuitive (?) perspective the Imam ((عليه السلام).) takes regarding illness and it ended up being a debate with Maryam who thought this understanding of the link between illness and sin in Islam was very well understood.

Anyway the broader issue that has occurred to me is what do Sunnis do without the insights that these duas have, about man's relationship with God (amongst other things)?

 

[habib e najjaar]

On 4/14/2020 at 2:47 AM, Haji 2003 said:

Anyway the broader issue that has occurred to me is what do Sunnis do without the insights that these duas have, about man's relationship with God (amongst other things)?

Hmm.. we should not assume Sunnis do not have beautiful duas too, after all do we forget that many of their scholars were students and disciples of our aimmah (عليه السلام). I studied under shafi'i teachers for most of my religious education and see the duas and adhkaar they use. Very many are full of excerpts from the duas we read, even though I do agree that shias have more access to a greater wealth of duas. Amongst the sunnis, the scholarly families tend to have them more than regular folks. Like one of my teachers (tariqa shafii) I was told often recites duas from sahifa from memory in the qunoot and sujoods of qiyam al layl. SubhanAllah 

[Haji 2003]

11 minutes ago, habib e najjaar said:

I was told often recites duas from sahifa from memory in the qunoot and sujoods of qiyam al layl. SubhanAllah

Interesting, Abbas was actually asking this question, as to whether we can recite the duas from the Sahifa in qunoot.

[habib e najjaar]

1 minute ago, Haji 2003 said:

Interesting, Abbas was actually asking this question, as to whether we can recite the duas from the Sahifa in qunoot.

In the "dua" or "hajaat" parts, why not? For instance in place of "Rabbana aatina fid dunya hasanatan wa fil akhirati hasanatan wa qina adhaban naar" most people add on dua for walidayn or for rizq or for a specific concern they have. Why not a dua from sahifa? This ofcourse is for private prayers as long qunoot, surahs and sujood are not recommended for congregational prayers.

[Ashvazdanghe]

23 hours ago, Haji 2003 said:

Interesting, Abbas was actually asking this question, as to whether we can recite the duas from the Sahifa in qunoot.

Salam it's highly recommended by Imam Khamenei that we recite this dua from Sahifa everyday 

Al-Sahifa Al-Sajjadiyya (7) His Dua in Worrisome Tasks ᴴᴰ  | الصحيفة السجادية - دعـاؤه في المهمات

 

[habib e najjaar]

On 4/14/2020 at 4:10 AM, habib e najjaar said:

In the "dua" or "hajaat" parts, why not? For instance in place of "Rabbana aatina fid dunya hasanatan wa fil akhirati hasanatan wa qina adhaban naar" most people add on dua for walidayn or for rizq or for a specific concern they have. Why not a dua from sahifa? This ofcourse is for private prayers as long qunoot, surahs and sujood are not recommended for congregational prayers.

Sample i heard today on Radio, didn't memorise the rest of it:

یا رب قصدتك و انت الكريم

دعوتك و انت العظيم

رجوتك و انت رب العالمين

ناديتك و انت الرحمن الرحيم

فيا ربي ارحم عبدا ناداك

و ليس له سواك

اللهم اكشف الهمّ عن الامة

[Haji 2003]

Day 26

Played a couple of sessions of swingball tennis with Abbas, between very long conference phone calls. Good way of reviving the circulation. Problem is that I don't think the iPhone does not measure the 'sawaab' in the same way that it does with exercises that mainly involve the legs (for which I just put it in the trouser pocket). Hmm, how about strapping it to my arm?

Maryam and my wife played as well which is good.

Vegetable/fruit delivery came. Not too happy about the guy not keeping the 2m distance. I can have some more veggie soups now.

One of the problems with having outlook linked to more than one email account is that it seems to use both email directories. So I ended up sending an email to someone in one organisation that should have gone somewhere else. Grrr.

Someone at work wants to join my team and I thought it was done and dusted but apparently someone higher up is making the move difficult for her. We've agreed to speak tomorrow.

[Haji 2003]

On 4/12/2020 at 11:30 AM, habib e najjaar said:

Some of the dietary changes he was told were: no bananas, less red meat, no sour stuff. It seems to have helped.. 

I've been checking online about the bananas. The rest is easy to give up, but I really like bananas. Anyway the recommendations seem to be for eating them:

Quote

Banana isn't necessarily the best food for arthritis, but it may help relieve aches and swelling. This delicious fruit abounds in antioxidants that fight inflammation. It also contains large doses of potassium, which may further help relieve joint pain and improve bone health.

https://www.livestrong.com/article/470188-bananas-for-arthritis/

[habib e najjaar]

1 hour ago, Haji 2003 said:

I've been checking online about the bananas. The rest is easy to give up, but I really like bananas. Anyway the recommendations seem to be for eating them:

https://www.livestrong.com/article/470188-bananas-for-arthritis/

Interesting. I cannot vouch for or against the person who gave us this advice. It was a very tough call for my parents to quit bananas too.. so if they are good, that would be nice. Lemme try do some research on the tibbi perspective on bananas and their impact, if any, on arthritis

[Haji 2003]

Day 28

Yesterday was tough, no entry. Spent 4 hours on a conference call. The wireless headphones seemed to give out in the end. The kids then needed the desktop for lessons and for some reason moving to another part of the house to carry on with paperwork, just killed the rhythm, so productivity fell.

The kids had the option to take the previous desktop (which I ended up giving away) when we bought this new one, but both complained about the old one being too big for their desks, so there's a laptop and an iPad, but as I guessed they prefer the desktop. No outdoor exercise on account of it being too cold.

One of my mother's friends asked us to order some milk for her and that was not delivered. Hmm hope she does not think I am making this up. She also wanted eggs but they are no longer available, luckily the company has a website so she can see I am not making that up either. Supermarkets seem to be resuming online orders/deliveries, so will likely offer her stuff from there.

Abbas feeling somewhat down, it's hard to get out of him the reason why. We really should do Ziarat Ashura to start the day. I'm also not too happy with his preference for watching power rangers and similar stuff. For entertainment, good movies can be uplifting and instructional, he happened on me watching Master & Commander (again), but unlike Maryam who'll then sit down and watch something that I am watching and have not asked her to watch, he just wandered off. I bought the Attenborough movie about Gandhi, will bully Abbas to watch that. Official Secrets (an historical drama about the illegal American actions before the start of the Iraq invasion) was as good as expected, but it has one dodgy scene right at the beginning.

[Haji 2003]

Day 29

Mr. L called. He's a local property magnate who runs nursing homes in the area. He has a couple of flats in the same block as some relatives of mine. I'd helped manage the block for 30 years since my late teens, but then the Jewish owners of properties in the  block sold up and Iranians bought in. The new owners thought they could mess me around about their payment of service charges, so I stopped managing and gave the job over to a professional realty company. But I still seem to be the first point of contact when there are issues. Anyway me and Mr. L had a chat about CV. He's of Chinese origin and obviously has been keeping an eye on things and there have been no CV cases in his care homes. He's gone for a complete lockdown. Obviously lots of others have not and that has meant so many deaths.

The weather has been a bit cold for the past few days so outside exercise has been a problem, must catch up in over the weekend. My mum told off Sakina's mum for going shopping to the supermarket and gave the example of my wife as a super online shopper. That'll help breed love and affection between the daughters-in-law. Which reminds me, I'll need to hook up Sakina, Zehra and Maryam on Skype over the weekend, it's been some time since they last spoke.

Had a pretty fruitful day digging out stuff I'd done a while back so that it could be reworked for new projects. I'll likely need to work on it over the weekend so that it's ready for a meeting on Tuesday.

I really really do not like mini-series. But I was running out of free options on Amazon Prime and thought I'd check out Tales from The Loop. Was very pleasantly surprised. As expected, it's created an air of mystery to keep people coming back for the next episode.

[Ashvazdanghe]

On 4/17/2020 at 3:16 PM, Haji 2003 said:

Abbas feeling somewhat down, it's hard to get out of him the reason why. We really should do Ziarat Ashura to start the day. I'm also not too happy with his preference for watching power rangers and similar stuff. For entertainment, good movies can be uplifting and instructional, he happened on me watching Master & Commander (again), but unlike Maryam who'll then sit down and watch something that I am watching and have not asked her to watch, he just wandered off. I bought the Attenborough movie about Gandhi, will bully Abbas to watch that. Official Secrets (an historical drama about the illegal American actions before the start of the Iraq invasion) was as good as expected, but it has one dodgy scene right at the beginning.

Salam children have different taste from parents also forcing them to doing anything good like Ziarat Ashura has negative impact on them but you can watch movies like power rangers then like a quize game you can match evil & good characters in it with evil & good people in Zyarat Ashura because all evil characters had traces of people like cursed Muawiah & Yazid (la) & good characters specially superheroes have traces of qualities like our Imams specially Imam Hussain (عليه السلام) & Imam Ali (عليه السلام) that nowadays you can find many savior superheroes that have some attributes of Imam Mahdi (عليه السلام) that media shows them like prophet Isa (عليه السلام) after his second coming.

[habib e najjaar]

6 hours ago, Ashvazdanghe said:

Salam children have different taste from parents also forcing them to doing anything good like Ziarat Ashura has negative impact on them but you can watch movies like power rangers then like a quize game you can match evil & good characters in it with evil & good people in Zyarat Ashura because all evil characters had traces of people like cursed Muawiah & Yazid (la) & good characters specially superheroes have traces of qualities like our Imams specially Imam Hussain (عليه السلام) & Imam Ali (عليه السلام) that nowadays you can find many savior superheroes that have some attributes of Imam Mahdi (عليه السلام) that media shows them like prophet Isa (عليه السلام) after his second coming.

Disagree about linking parallels in power rangers etc to the fight of good vs. evil. That is however another discussion.

Regarding "forcing" a child to engage in some form of ibadah, i do not consider it problematic. I do not mean force like in a crazy way, but setting disciplines and rules in the house is important. Children as young as 3 can be made to know that for example tuesday night is tawassul time for half an hour or so, thursday night is dua kumayl night etc. Disciplining a child and setting rules for him/her at an early age is the best way to create/prepare the necessary mental and spiritual state for him/her to become a muttaqi/pious and righteous person. The bulk of religion is about training and disciplining the soul. E.g keep eyes away from haraam gazes. Focus mind away from haram thoughts. Force/command yourself to righteous actions, charity, generosity, kindness, suppression of anger etc.

[hasanhh]

^^^ l agree with habib e najjaar as long as there are not "too many" little rules.

l am also a big believer in locked/bolted doors and drawers for child safety.

[notme]

On 4/17/2020 at 6:46 AM, Haji 2003 said:

will bully Abbas to watch that

I disagree with this, but have no problem with not allowing shows or movies that you don't like. There are some shows I don't allow only because I don't like them. 

Is he feeling down because he hasn't seen his friends? Can you arrange an internet call? Or perhaps not enough outdoor activity in this weather, or having anxiety about the future? 

[Haji 2003]

Just now, notme said:

I disagree with this,

I had to bully Maryam very hard to get her to watch Interstellar and then when she finished watching it she asked, 'when's the sequel out?'

[habib e najjaar]

5 hours ago, hasanhh said:

^^^ l agree with habib e najjaar as long as there are not "too many" little rules.

l am also a big believer in locked/bolted doors and drawers for child safety.

Agreed. I think kids can be "conditioned" to routine in ibadah as easily as they get used to pizza night, movie night, pancake day, picnic day, going to granparents day etc. 

A big part of successful parenting is being a big hype person. Hype the little minds into stuff thats good for them! 

1 hour ago, Haji 2003 said:

I had to bully Maryam very hard to get her to watch Interstellar and then when she finished watching it she asked, 'when's the sequel out?'

Worked with my team on getting them to eat turnips.

[Haji 2003]

Day 32

Rooted around the garden shed and dug out Maupassant's short stories. Maryam wants to do A level French and they are on the syllabus. Wife was having a go about Abbas's lack of interest in reading. We went through the ones on the kindle which he seems to have read. I spotted Orwell's Homage to Catalonia on the bookshelf and handed that to him, thinking he'd give it back in a few minutes, but an hour later he's still stuck into it.

As for his lack of interest in going outside I've now downloaded the app which allows you to identify plants and flowers and sent him out to make an inventory of everything in the garden, we can then take out the weeds and organise the rosebeds. There should be a delivery of plants and flowers arriving at the end of the month so we'll have to prepare the garden for them.

This is the last day of their holidays and I've told both of them I want a proper school day start tomorrow.

Listening to books while stepping is just not as good as watching a trashy movie, I have now worked out. The latter really help you forget the fact that there is exercise happening. Seems as if I should work my way through the whole Star Wars series all over again.

Had a chat with the neighbours told them I was attending way more meetings than before the lockdown, but also getting more work done while attending them, which is not really possible face-to-face.

[Ashvazdanghe]

On 4/19/2020 at 3:59 PM, habib e najjaar said:

Disagree about linking parallels in power rangers etc to the fight of good vs. evil. That is however another discussion.

Regarding "forcing" a child to engage in some form of ibadah, i do not consider it problematic. I do not mean force like in a crazy way, but setting disciplines and rules in the house is important. Children as young as 3 can be made to know that for example tuesday night is tawassul time for half an hour or so, thursday night is dua kumayl night etc. Disciplining a child and setting rules for him/her at an early age is the best way to create/prepare the necessary mental and spiritual state for him/her to become a muttaqi/pious and righteous person. The bulk of religion is about training and disciplining the soul. E.g keep eyes away from haraam gazes. Focus mind away from haram thoughts. Force/command yourself to righteous actions, charity, generosity, kindness, suppression of anger etc.

Salam anyway having solid & strict dicipline for children is boring which you must mix it with fun & reward in order to make good impact on children which later they do it because they love it not due to fear or  just do it as obliged ritual from parents & their community which as you have said about good vs. evil. it needs a seperate thread because series & movies likewise Power Rangers & Ms.marvel & etc have great affection on children in definition of savior & good vs. evil.