Ayah

It was a Friday.
Every Friday equals family day to me.
Well, I have a small family here ; my sisters and their husbands.
So I visit them weekly by bus most of the time.

That Friday, I went to Atabah to buy a fan as a housewarming gift for my sister.
As the fan box is quite sizeable, I decided to take a taxi to El-Waily.
While trapped in a jam, a peddlar selling shiny trinkets keychains pass by the taxi.
The driver bought one. There's a crowded bus beside us.
A girl had been watching from the bus window, she looked very intrigued at the sight of pretty trinkets.

She called the peddlar, and the peddlar approached the bus window.
A man seemed like her father came near the window and paid the cost to the peddlar.
While doing that, his face glows with the joy of pleasing her daughter.
And her daughter's face glowed even brighter.

Starstrucked. Well, that's my feeling seeing those joyful smiling faces with bliss beaming from their eyes.
It's just a classic proof that dads will go all out to please their daughters.
It may not seem that much, but that minuscule amount of money may be the dad's pay for a day.
He can only afford to bring his family to shopping by bus.
But the daughter, fully grasping their situation, appreciated that small gift dearly.
A dad is indeed a girl's first love.

I immediately reflected whether I had appreciated every effort my dad did to please my unthinkable desires T.T

May ALLAH bless our fathers with His jannah in the here-after inshaALLAH.
(especially my dad who brought up 5 little princess into this world.)

Kaya

Bismillah.
Selama hidup masuk 23 tahun ikut tahun hijrah ni, berapa kali dah aku puji, Bahasa Arab ni bahasa yang kaya.

Ya, betul. Tapi Bahasa Melayu yang aku dakwa miskin itu, sudahkah aku kuasai ?
T.T

Masa kat rumah dulu, terbuka balik satu ensiklopedia kanak-kanak dalam Bahasa Melayu. Masa kecik aku tengok gambar ja :p haha.
Dan dapat banyak sangat penambahan dalam perbendaharaan kata lebih-lebih lagi istilah sains lepas baca betul-betul ensiklopedia tu.

Maka, aku pun simpan kosa kata tu, harapnya jadi motivasi untuk lebih menyayangi dan mendalami bahasa.
Kat bawah ni antara contohnya.

Rakap : stapes (tulang paling kecil dalam badan manusia, satu daripada 3 osikel )
Turus vertebra : vertebral column 
Tulang tongkeng : coccyx
Otot rangka : skeletal muscle 
Sendi engsel : hinge joint 
Sendi lesung : ball and socket joint
Otot luar kawal / otot licin : involuntary /smooth muscle
Otot interkosta : intercostal muscle
Perentak jantung : pacemaker

Cellulos-y

bismillah.
mereput sikit. so let's translate our random thoughts into blog posts. hehe

Few days back I bought fresh molokhia from the greengrocer.
I used to buy the frozen one, conveniently packed, saving the lazy me from the hassles of washing and mincing them. hehe.

So while cutting the stems i noticed that the hard stems are very rich in fibers. The leaves of course lets out some kind of gooey stuff when you immerse them in soups. Upon this, I thought of something familiar. A plant which has a high fiber content, being used as raw materials for manufacturing ropes, paper pulps, hardboards, sacks, fabrics , animal feed / fodder and even biofuel. Well, amazing right?

That superplant is called Kenaf. I don't know if you ever heard of it before. I read about it in my father's agriculture magazine. hehe. The scientific name is Hibiscus Cannabinus.

Image courtesy of http://www.naturalfibersinfo.org/

You can read more about this amazing plant at these links:

http://www.lktn.gov.my/index.php/my/ 

(there is even a Lembaga Kenaf dan Tembakau Malaysia. Just wow.) 

http://kenafmalaysia.com/process.html

Okay back to molokhia. 

So i googled about molokhia's scientific name.

Well, as expected, apart from its amazing nutritional properties, its fibers are also used for manufacturing ropes and gunny sacks.

The scientific name is corchorus olitorius. 

''This Middle Eastern super-green, known as Jew's mallow or Egyptian spinach, has a high vitamin and mineral content. This “food of kings” dates back to the time of the pharaohs, when an Egyptian king drank it in soup to recover from an illness. Today, it’s one of the most widely eaten vegetables in Egypt.'' - Kitazawa Seed page

We call its fiber jute. And the leaves that we eat in soups mostly, are called mallow leaves. 

Researches have proved that molokhia is rich in potassium, iron, copper, manganese and zinc as well as high energy values essential in human and animal nutrition. 

(reference : http://www.ajol.info/index.php/apra/article/view/49827)

Well, all the more reasons to keep eating molokhia i guess :)