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Sad, Sad Day

Ya Allah, where should I even begin...

Last night, Tuan Guru Nik Aziz passed away at 9.45pm. Malam yang sangat mulia. Malam Jumaat. Innalillah... A loss that just gripped my heart. For as long as I can remember, TGNA has always been a political figure so strong in the country. And highly-respected and well-loved ulama. Such down-to-earth man. Small yet hard as steel.

His death touched a soft spot in my heart because he was sick just at the time when my father was sick. And one FB status of his son shared by a friend stated that a few weeks ago he got a bit better but still weak - very low sodium content in the body. Just like my father.

And while I was browsing FB and Twitter for more information, a friend who's a lecturer in UPM wrote the passing of another well-known person. My lecturer at UPM when I was taking my Masters, who also happen to be our ex-project advisor for our iBook project - Prof. Musa Abu Hassan. Innalillah...

He passed at 9.05pm last night. I was dumb-founded. That afternoon, I was just going through the list of guests to invite to our launch and he was one of them. Linda was supposed to call him next week.

Another loss... I couldn't sleep much last night. Prof Musa was a soft-spoken and humble person. He taught Statistics during my first semester of my Master's programme. I took another class of his during my second semester - something about ICT and communication - since that's a subject I know I will be good at. Well, I was working with one of the leading start-ups in the country!

I remember getting permission from my ex-boss to attend classes on Wednesday mornings. There were only about 8-10 of us in the class, so the class was pretty active. Since day one, I can never daydream or not focus in class because I became some kind of "star" student. Reason being - because I work with an Internet start-up and obviously, I "should" know everything new about the IT industry.

As much as I learn from Prof Musa's classes, he, in turn, actually was eager to learn from me and another Chinese guy who was a geek. So, every time we discuss a topic, Prof Musa would turn to me and ask my opinion. What do I think of the topic? Is there any new technology regarding it? As a result, I had to prepare before class. I had to read the syllabus - what topic will we cover on that day so that I could research and bring to class something of value. At that time Yahoo was everything, just like Google is today. And when I started to quote facts from other sources like CNet, he was so excited and asked me to supply him with good IT-related websites for him to read.

Just before we started doing proposal on our Mysa project, I approached him, asking if he was interested to become our advisor. And he gladly agreed. At that time, he just retired from UPM and was quite free. Fate has it that by the time we got the grant, he has started work at USIM and couldn't spare much time. However, I do get an email from him once in a while asking about our progress and sometimes I would just shoot an email to him telling him our status.

Our launching insyaallah next month will be a bitter sweet and sad event. Two important people for the project are no longer with us - my father whom I wanted to make happy and proud, and Prof Musa, who has been with us from the very beginning of the project.

Al Fatihah...

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