Salam.

After more than 5 months of releasing my first Rainmeter skin, Prayer Times now received a new update. It is Prayer Time version 1.1. This version is codenamed Waqtu, which means ‘time’ in Arabic.

In this new version, I have fixed the coding from the ground up. It has cleaner codes and is easier to manage. Everything is under one folder, and I’ve organised the configuration, fonts and images in proper directory.

I’ve also split the Hijri date and the prayer time into separate skins. Some countries have different dates than the ones shown in the Islamic Finder website. Currently I noticed the difference between Malaysia and Australia Hijri dates.

Finally, the most wanted update is the easier way to copy paste the URL from the Islamic Finder website. I’ve put the ‘Setting’ button that will auto-magically appear when you hover your mouse to the top right of the skin.

Go to official Waqtu: Rainmeter Prayer Time skin page.

Future update

I’m planning to include more features in the skin in the future. If you have any suggestions for the next update, share it with us in the comment box. All comments are much appreciated.

Draw Something was developed by OMGPOP and then was acquired by social gaming giant, Zynga. Yet it still splashes ‘OMGPOP’ at the starting of the app.

Personally, I think Draw Something is cool because you can play it with your friends and it really makes you to think visually and creatively. You can try it for free but with the paid version, (only $0.99) it is worth it. You get 2000+ extra words and a bonus of 400 coins instantly after purchasing it. Enough to buy you more colours for perfect shading and rendering!

I’m still playing this game with my wife and Facebook friends. I admire the effort that my friends put into this game.

Here is the showcase of some of the ‘Drawsome!’ drawings that I came across.

Queen Victoria Market

This is the best place to buy souvenirs in Melbourne. It is like Paddy’s Market but in Melbourne. We bought ourselves some souvenir including a fridge magnet.

DFO in South Wharf

Melbourne is relatively popular as a shopping destination in the entire Australia. It has many DFOs – Direct Factory Outlets. We ourselves went to experience one which is the DFO in South Wharf.

We bought a daily tram ticket which costed about $7.00.

At the DFO, mostly what we did was window shop. We did buy a few small things though. I found most of the brands and products at the DFO quite cheap compared to other shopping malls.

Hang out at Azizulhasni Awang and Tya’s place

In the evening, we went to visit Azizulhasni Awang, the Malaysia track cyclist who lived with his wife in Melbourne. His wife, Tya was my batchmate in IIUM.

Together with other friends who came over, we had dinner together while watching Ombak Rindu till late night.

I’d like to thank them for the great food and hospitality.

Day 4 – The last day

It was the last day of our Melbourne trip. Our ‘tour guide’, Tasnim took us for a bus ride to explore almost all of the tourist attractions in Melbourne.

The tourist shuttle bus, which is free, has 13 stops all around Melbourne city. It is like a hop-on, hop-off bus where the driver will explain about every landmark and notable building in the areas.
These are some of the places that we’ve been to.

Federation Square

This is a must visit tourist attraction in Melbourne. There are many uniquely designed buildings with mesmerizing interiors.

Hosier Lane – The Graffiti street

It’s hard to see a wall full of graffiti in Melbourne until our tour guide brought us to Hosier Lane. Along the street you can see colourful bombs and various kinds of graffiti continuing on the facade of the cafes which are on one side of the street.

Museum of Melbourne

We only had the chance to witness the museum and the awesomeness of the architectural design from outside. The admission is not free and I guess we really need to have a good 3-4 hours if we want to enjoy the exhibition. Next time, we’re sure to allocate time to visit the museum!

Lazzat – Halal Malaysian restaurant at Lygon

It is located within walking distance from the museum. Lazzat is one of the Malaysian restaurants here, providing ‘Nasi Campur’, various types of fried rice and other menus and owned by a friendly Malay. We had our Malaysian curries with white rice for lunch and got the famous no-to-be-missed gelato ice cream, from Il Dolce a few blocks away.

Docklands

This is our last destination of our trip. Docklands is one of the newest province in Melbourne and it has a shopping centre called Harbour Town. I told you Melbourne has heaps of shopping centres. But since this place is new, not many people are around and they are still trying to persuade people to come here.

We took the last shuttle bas and tram back to our place. We quickly loaded our stuff and headed to Tullamarine airport. After the one and a half hour flight, we safely arrived back in Newcastle at 10pm.

We came to Melbourne without the intention to shop around, more to visiting friends. Maybe one day, we’ll come back here. It is such an awesome shopping and dining destination compared to Sydney.

So to cut it short, I’m going to share our recent trip to Melbourne.

We went to Melbourne on 30th January 2012, the same week we moved into our new home.

DAY 1 – Off to Melbourne!

We took the early Sunday morning flight from Newcastle Airport, Williamtown. We arrived safely at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne at about half past seven.

During our trip to Melbourne, we stayed at our friend’s apartment at Lygon St. Since it was summer break, the house was not occupied at that moment.

Camberwell Sunday Market

Here in Melbourne there is a popular Sunday market, the Camberwell market which I can say is like a garage/carboot sale all in one place. Heaps of used and old items were for sale and you never know what you’ll find there. My wife really enjoyed browsing through the stalls eventhough it was scorching hot that day!

IKEA Store

Next stop we went to IKEA in Richmond. I haven’t been to any IKEA stores since I got married in 2010, let alone in Australia so this is my first one. I guess the main reason why I wanted to go to IKEA so badly is because I needed fresh ideas and inspiration as well as the free catalogue. Our new house is a little bit smaller than the previous one. I really wanted to look into the great ideas in organizing stuff in the compact space that IKEA always offer.

Es Teler Restaurant

I noticed that Melbourne is quite popular with the variety of food and there are plenty of eateries everywhere, plus many halal restaurants which is a bonus. Our friend, Tasnim brought us to Es Teler, one of the famous Indonesian restaurants in Melbourne.

Before we called it a day, we needed to stock up our food. This is after all a budget trip, so we grabbed some groceries from Woolworth and cooked dinner ourselves. Too many dining out can hurt the wallet.

DAY 2 – Visit to Geelong and Deakin University

My wife and I have friends who study architecture at Deakin University in Geelong. As our main reason to visit Melbourne was to visit our friends as well as go for sightseeing, we went to Geelong to pay them a visit. Thanks to Tasnim and Kak Maf for driving us there.

Geelong is located about an hour drive from Melbourne CBD. It is a small and lively town where to me, everything is located within walking distance.

Our first stop was Rais & Mira’s residence, with other friends joining as well. We had a great lunch while catching up with our old friends.

Then, we headed to Deakin for a campus tour. We visited the architecture studio and the main building of the campus.

Geelong is also famous for their beautiful waterfront. We had a brisk walk along the waterfront, enjoying the view. We even had fresh mussels which were sold on a boat!

One of the to do list in Geelong is to have their Panache crepes. We ordered the famous Death by Chocolate crepes. They were really delicious and the price was affordable.

We then continued our walk along the waterfront up to the ocean bath area. The deck surrounding the Promenade was donated by people where each of the timber plank had a name of the donor on it.

By dusk, we paid a visit to another friends’ house. My friend who’s going back to Malaysia soon wanted to let go a few of his items. I got his 22″ monitor and A3 printer for quite a bargain!

We called it a day and returned to Melbourne.

Gold Coast is popular with its beaches and theme parks. This is why thousands of tourists come here every year.

We bought VIP Passes to the Big 3 – Warner Bros Movie World, Sea World and Wet ‘n’ Wild a month earlier, only a day before the offer on their website ended. With these VIP passes that costed $109.99 each, we got unlimited entry to any of these three theme parks until June 2012.

Warner Bros Movie World

This is our first theme park at Gold Coast. There are plenty of rides, from family rides to the super thrill rides.

Besides going for rides, there are also performances by the movie characters here. One of the best performances was the Hell Drivers – Hollywood Stunt performance. It was really exciting and entertaining to witness the car drift, chase and explosion. Check out this video for a glimpse of the show.

I was surprised to see a musalla or prayer room in the middle of the theme park. Wash basins for ablution and the separation of prayer halls for male and female were provided.

Sea World Theme Park

This is another theme park in Gold Coast with the sea and ocean theme. We visited Sea World on our second day here. There are not many rides compared to the first one.

However, there was so much to see here and the main attractions were the animal performances. We really enjoyed the dolphin show and the sea lion show. They were brilliant! Besides that, we also got to see other marine life such as sharks, open water fishes and ray fishes.

Since Sea World is larger than Movie World, there are cable cars and monorails provided to save the visitors’ feet and provide great view of the entire park.

Sea World also provides prayer rooms for their Muslim visitors with separate entrances for both male and female.

Wet & Wild Water World

So this is the Gold Coast version of Malaysia’s Sunway Lagoon water theme park. I really enjoyed all the extreme water rides and slides. It is good to have adrenaline rush while challenging yourself with the zero gravity free fall and stuff.

In the end of the day, we all got really tanned because of the whole day being under the sun. Not many pictures were taken at Wet ‘n’ Wild as we kept our belongings - including the camera in one of the lockers provided. It was strongly advised by the staff to do so as the park was wet and people don’t have pockets to keep their stuff anyway as they were all wearing swim wear.

Well, that’s all the theme parks that we’ve been to. Our VIP passes are still available until June 2012. We might consider to come again to Gold Coast for another round of fun. But I know it won’t be as fun as going with the family.

After having a good night’s rest at our hotel, we had another 9-hour journey heading back home on the next day.

The second day of our family vacation was spent in Newcastle. Before we reached Newcastle from Sydney, my parents-in-law were already excited to see our house, the house we’ve been living in for the past 9 months.

Well, I can say that there’s nothing much to see in Newcastle, compared to Sydney. We planned to go see the beaches Newcastle offers, perform Friday prayers at the Newcastle Mosque, visit University of Newcastle and do some shopping at Glendale.

Newcastle Beach

My wife prepared Nasi Lemak with Sambal Udang in the morning. We then went to the Newcastle Beach and had our Nasi Lemak there by the beach. After that, we strolled along the beach towards the Newcastle Ocean Baths.

We also showed our family how Newcastle city looks like with most of the old buildings still existing. Here the town is small and quiet, unlike Sydney which is densely concentrated with skyscrapers in its CBD.

Newcastle Mosque

As it was Friday, all males should go to the mosque. I went to the mosque in Wallsend together with my in-laws for Friday prayer. As usual, the khutbah was in Arabic and English with multi-ethnicity of Muslims in the prayer hall.

Stockland Glendale

This is the third stop for today. My parents in-law who are a big fan of juicy fruits were really excited to go to Harris Farm Markets to buy fresh and cheap fruits and vegetables there. We got a good bargain of bananas for only 99cents perkilo which is cheaper and tastier compared to the bananas at Woolies or Coles.

Then we toured the other shops at Stockland Glendale and went to Kmart and Target and browsed through their Christmas sale.

University of Newcastle

I guess it is a must to visit the university here for some photo souvenir. This is where my wife is studying architecture at the moment, the university within the woods.

Well, that’s all for the second day. It is another great day well spent with the family. The following day was going to be a big day for us as we were going for a road trip to Gold Coast.

Day 3 – Road trip to Gold Coast

It was my first time driving for the longest distance so far. It is about 700 km from Newcastle to Gold Coast. Our destination was Currumbin, near to Gold Coast Airport.

We departed at about 9am and we arrived about 5pm. It was a 9-hour journey but to my surprise, Queensland did not observe Daylight Saving Time and that was why when we reached there, it seemed like it was only an 8-hour journey.

We checked in at Sanctuary Beach Resort and had a good rest preparing ourselves for the next fun-filled days in Gold Coast.

To be continued in the next post.

My family came to Australia last December to visit us. It was our official family vacation 2011.

Early in the morning, I went to Newcastle Car & Rental to get the rental van. My wife and I departed from Newcastle at around 8.30am and arrived at Sydney Airport at 11.00am. The weather was good and it was my first time driving from Newcastle to Sydney.

The thing I hate about the parking here in Sydney, it is very expensive. So I think we were lucky at the airport as we managed to get 15 minutes parking for free because our family just arrived and already waited for us at the arrival terminal. 15-30 minutes cost $7 and 30-60 minutes cost $15 at the Sydney Airport. After we fetched them from the airport, we went for sightseeing around Sydney.

Sydney Fish Market

Sydney Fish Market is one of the biggest marketplaces to get fresh seafood in Sydney and one of the famous tourists’ attractions as well. We decided to have lunch here as most seafood served here is halal. Besides that, we also bought some fresh prawns and snapper fish to cook for dinner at home.

We had a combination of delicious deep fried seafood at the waterfront, while enjoying the beautiful scenery of the riverside.

Darling Harbour

This is our second destination of the day. It is one of the best tourist attractions in Sydney. We had a walk along Darling Harbour straight to the jetty for our ferry ride and enjoyed the view.

We bought ferry tickets to Circular Quay and it costed $5.30 per ride. The ride took about 35 minutes to reach our destination. We sat on the upper deck to have a better view along the river.

We really enjoyed the view of the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House from the ferry.

Then we hopped off the ferry and strolled along Circular Quay to enjoy the view of Sydney Opera House from this side of the harbour. This is my second time being here, but this is a must visit tourist attraction here. We took pictures together before going back.

The parking rate in Sydney is very expensive. We parked our van at World Square for the rate of $11 per hour.

Everyone was already tired and we headed back home to Newcastle. It was a fun and enjoyable day at Sydney.

To be continued in the next post.

Salam.

It’s already the fourth of January. Time sure flies really fast for the past one year.

2011 is the first year of my married life; as a husband, a bread winner and a traveller in a foreign country.

It is one of the most challenging year in my life, struggling to make ends meet, especially living in Australia.

Throughout the way, I really thank Allah for all His blessings, bounties and mercies. Living in the land down under, it really teaches me the meaning of life besides giving me valuable experience.

I may not be able to get design projects like I used to back in Malaysia. But the thing is, I had explored the road that I might not have taken if I were in Malaysia.

This is what I call the road not taken, the road less travelled.

2011 is the year where I build my foundation, where I plant the seed and InsyaAllah, 2012 will be the year where I’m going to make the best of myself.

New year resolution?

It is always the same thing, every year. Let me say I don’t have any resolution this year, but I sure have my own goals. It is more like a long term goal which may not be attainable within this 366 days.

I’ll just keep them to myself.

Anyway, I’m wishing all of you guys, my readers and visitors a Happy New Year. May you achieve your dreams and may success be with you always.

Photo credits to Sydney New Years Eve website.