Me: Ahmad, have you registered for our Sunday school?
Ahmad: [looked at me, puzzled]
Me: [I looked back, even more puzzled] Don’t tell me you forget to register?
Ahmad: No, no, no. I mean, I have already known Arabic …
Me: [waiting him to complete the sentence, but he did not continue]
Me: I am speechless.

I was speechless, and I told him that, although I did not tell him the reason. The reason is simple: we do NOT teach Arabic in our Sunday School.

We do teach a lesson on how to read the Quran. The fact that Ahmad thinks that being able to speak Arabic means that he can read the Quran, that what made me speechless.

Of course, Quran is in Arabic and Ahmad — very likely — is very fluent in Arabic, his native language. He will be able to read newspaper in Arabic very well. The one very important fact that he missed is: we do not read the Quran the way we read the newspaper.

In Indonesian language, we use the (French?) word “courant” when we refer to a newspaper. And my Quran teacher always say, you do not read the Quran the way you will read courant.

But why I found it very difficult to convey this message to an Arab?

Some facts about memorizing the Quran

Fact 1: As a Malay saying says, “Apal kaji karena diulang”, something is memorized because you repeat it.

Fact 2: Memorizing itself is easy. To continue memorizing new materials while retaining old materials is extremely difficult.

Fact 3: Something that we have memorized will eventually be forgotten, except if we repeat the material before it is forgotten.

Fact 4: The more repetition, the stronger our memory for the material, even if we initially memorized the material years ago. The obvious example is surah Al-Fatihah, that we have memorized years ago. It will never be forgotten because we repeat it at least seventeen times a day. On the other hand, a newly memorized surah will be easily forgotten because we never repeat it.

Fact 5: because the time allocated to the tahfiz program is limited (especially for us who are doing tahfiz on a part-time basis), we need a strategic repetition, i.e. we repeat the parts that has the biggest risk to be forgotten.

Imagine a software

From those facts, I imagine a software that:

1. log our progress in memorizing the Quran. For example, this ayat is memorized at this date.
2. log which part (from those that have been memorized) that is repeated on a particular day. The software will also log my self-assessment on the repetition, i.e. whether I still remember the part perfectly, or half remember, or totally forgotten already.
3. Based on the two logs above, I imagine that the software can calculate the probability of forgetting of any particular part. And based on the calculation, the software should tell me every day which part that I should repeat.

So when I am about to do my revision, I will simply press the button, and the program will say read page 100, 105, 130, and 145. Then I revised those pages, and key in some feedback about my memory, and the software keeps it in the log. The same thing happen when I start the revision again in the following day, I will press a button, and the software will suggest another set of pages, based on the calculation of the risk of forgetting.

Note that the above calculation algorithm is not a rocket science. A decent flash card program will have that algorithm. An example for this kind of program is Mnemosyne.

When I ask Uncle Google about such software, I found none. Of course, there are a lot of programs that will claim to help you memorize, for example by providing audio example (from a famous reciter) on how to read a particular verse, or even by repeating one or more verses in many combination of repetition.

But then again, this is not  the most difficult part of memorizing the Quran (see Fact 2 above). What we need is something to help us identify which part of the Quran that we are in the verge of forgetting.

NOTE: I recently found HifzHelper, a website that has the (early) ingredients of my dream.

Why do we need a software?

Deep in my heart, I asked this question: why make it so hard, that I will need a software to memorize the Quran? The people of the past did not use any software, and they became the huffazh (the memorizers of the Quran).

Well, you do not really need a software if you do this (memorizing the Quran) full time. The people of the past did this, and many people in our time still do.

But if you do this on a part-time basis, with the full-time job lurking to take away your time for other things, the challenges are totally different. If you can only allocate so much time to memorize and revise, then you really need to focus you revision to things that really matters: the parts that are nearly forgotten.

The method I describe above is irrelevant if you have so much time dedicated for tahfizh. By “so much” I mean about four to six hours a day. But most people cannot allocate that much time for the tahfizh, and yet they still have every intention to be a hafizh one day, yours truly included. That is why I dream about this software.

Another important note is that I do not dream this to eliminate the need for a teacher. This software is a tool for revision only, to help you focus on the important parts that you need to revise. You still need a teacher, another hafizh, to listen to (and validate) your recitation. This is the tradition that has been going on since the time of the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. because this is how the Quran is preserved. The Quran is not preserved by the written text, but by writing it in the memory of the huffazh.

Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments section.

The reason I remember those cute cartoon is not because of their smurf, but simply how smurf the author was. The characters ask the reader to guess what they mean and by doing so they make the reader intimately interact with them.

Smurf becomes a legend because it asks the reader to constantly change the meaning of the word smurf according to the context. This is a very smart way to be legend.

There is another way to become a legend: be useful enough that everybody use you, and they will make up a (new) word for you. Google is one example. Nobody says “Yahoo the word for me, will you?” even if Yahoo was (already) a big search engine when Google started. As already set in history, Google has become a legend and the word “google” was accepted to be a verb.

The reason of this post is Microsoft’s attempt to legendarize their product Bing. Didn’t you hear their commercial: “bing and decide”?

Seriously: bing and decide? Are they playing smurf with us?

What Microsoft wanted to say with that byline is “go to bing website, type in your key words, and we will help you make decision”. They position their product as decision engine instead of a mere search engine. Its like they wanted to say that anybody can make a search engine, but not just anybody can help people to decide.

Nice positioning, of course, and this may (or may not) lead to a big customer base. Either way, I do not care.

What I am amazed is Microsoft’s approach to sell this product: inventing a word. Historically, new words are attached to a popular product. Think of “jeep” that has become a word to refer to the all-terrain car. What Microsoft is doing is trying to reverse the process: positioning a brand new product by introducing a new word.

Very novel, I have to admit, and very brave too. Personally, if feel that it will not take off. At least, the new word will not get used as popular as people use the word google.

The main reason is the product itself, its a new product. People will need to try the product. Even if the product is popular, it does not mean that people will start to use the word. Not to mention that Google will not do anything to counter-attack any attempt to reduce the market share: they can easily adopt the good features of Bing into their own search engine.

Furthermore, Microsoft is not known to have the wisdom of respecting its users opinion. Rather than listening, they usually choked the customers with ideas. If they can accept it, they will swallow, if they don’t they will throw it up.

This tendency is shown by this new-word-to-sell-product approach. Instead of waiting a popular wisdom to emerge into a new word, Microsoft simply reverse the process. I will not surprise if later Microsoft claims that this is not their own idea, but a Joe User from somewhere sent in his idea.

Of course you would remember the similar claim about many good features of Windows 7. No? Here is one example, if you missed it.

Having said all that, I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and wait a bit longer whether or not people will start to say “bing it will you?”. Sounds like a dirty word to me, but hey, its not my idea.

Akibatnya? Kartun di bawah ini bisa menjelaskan dengan gamblang efeknya setelah puluhan tahun. Gambar roti di situ boleh diganti dengan nasi setumpuk untuk konteks Indonesia.

Kawan-kawan yang kecanduan karbo, any comments?

credit: livinlowcarbman via livinlavidalowcarb

Bukan apa-apa, saya termasuk yang skeptis dengan media elektronik ini. Kesannya kan borju sekali, masak baca buku saja harus beli alat sampai 300 dolar. Kayak kebanyakan uang, gitu loh, masak mau baca buku saja harus keluar uang 300 dolar.

Tapi itu dulu. Sekarang saya paham kenapa banyak orang pakai Kindle untuk baca buku: mereka baca bukunya banyak sekali. Berikut apa yang saya baca dari salah satu blogger yang rutin saya kunjungi:

I’ve probably read less over the past four months than in any four month period of my life.  Instead of five or six books per week, I’m down to about two or three max.

Nggak, kok, nggak salah baca: lima atau enam buku setiap minggu. Dan itu di masa-masa sibuk. Bayangkan kalau dia harus pergi selama dua minggu, artinya dia harus bawa sepuluh sampai dua belas buku.

Untuk orang-orang seperti ini, yaah wajarlah kalau harus beli Kindle untuk baca buku. For the rest of us: back to paper.

Berapa jumlah buku yang sudah anda baca minggu ini?

Ini kejadian yang biasa-biasa saja kelihatannya, tapi ini punya makna mendalam.

Semua orang juga tahu kalau Chrome itu punya Google, dan semua orang juga tahu kalau bisnis utama Google adalah bisnis pencarian. Sekalipun begitu, Google memberi kesempatan bagi semua pemakai Chrome untuk memilih mesin pencari selain Google.

Apa arti penting dari pertanyaan sederhana ini?

Pertama, definisikan dengan jelas siapakah kompetitor anda. Dalam konteks Chrome, saingan Google adalah Firefox dan Internet Explorer, sesama penjelajah web. Dalam konteks ini, saingan Google bukanlah Yahoo ataupun Bing, sesama mesin pencari. Karenanya, Google tidak ragu-ragu dalam memberikan pilihan kepada pengguna untuk memilih mesin pencari kesukaan sang pengguna.

Kedua, jangan takut berkompetisi. Mental “bring it on” itu harus selalu ada. Hanya dengan mental seperti ini kita bisa maju. Dalam kasus ini, Google tidak takut harus diadu dengan siapapun.

Terlebih lagi, ini dengan memberikan pilihan seperti ini, Google akan mendapatkan data yang sangat berharga, yaitu berapa banyak pengguna Chrome yang memilih mesin pencari lain selain Google. Google akan punya data kenapa pengguna itu memilih saingan mereka. Ujung-ujungnya, Google akan punya peluang untuk memperbaiki produk mereka.

Pesan moral: saingan, yuk!

Pesan moral cerita ini: jangan sampai terulang lagi. Buat yang belum pernah: jangan sampai kejadian.

Sarapan: 2 telur, daging kornet, dua batang asparagus, sepotong keju lunak. Jangan lupa ditemani kopi susu (jangan pakai gula, ganti dengan pemanis buatan).

Sarapan

Makan Siang: Sarden, sayur campur, salad dressing.

Makan Siang

Makan Malam: Rendang dan jamur panggang, plus soto ayam pakai telur. Yummy.

Makan Malam

Cheat day wah kalau ini sih benar-benar carb-loaded, yaah apa boleh buat. Istriku lagi bikin Mie Ayam, yaaah, dengan senang hati maka hari ini ditetapkan sebagai cheat day. Carb-loaded Mie Ayam, nyam nyam nyam.

Mie Ayam

Lihat alas piringnya? Ternyata produk Indonesia, bisa dibeli di Wal-Mart:

Made In Indonesia

Contoh yang paling bagus adalah pedagang yang berjualan tidak pada tempatnya. Pelanggaran ini sebenarnya dilakukan oleh dua pihak, yaitu pihak pedagang dan juga pihak pembeli. Yang patut kita ingat adalah bahwa tipiring jenis ini biasanya hukumannya hanya dibebankan kepada satu pihak. Ini tentu tidak bisa dibenarkan setidaknya karena dua alasan.

Pertama karena alasan keadilan. Kenapa resikonya hanya dibebankan kepada satu pihak sedangkang pelanggarannya dilakukan secara bersama oleh dua pihak? Memang akan ada argumen akal-akalan, misalnya, bahwa yang dilarang adalah berjualan, sedangkan membeli sama sekali tidak disebutkan. Argumen ini tentunya tidak bisa dipakai. Bahkan sebenarnya kebalikannyalah yang benar: pedagang berjualan justru karena ada yang membeli. Karenanya, hukuman untuk pembeli seharusnya lebih berat.

Alasan kedua – barangkali ini yang lebih penting – adalah karena mungkin kalau dibebankan pada pihak yang satu lagi, atau setidaknya ke kedua belah pihak, maka pelanggaran tipiring itu akan sangat berkurang. Coba bayangkan kalau pembeli tidak membeli di sembarang tempat, maka pasar kaki lima akan bisa ditertibkan dengan tidak terlalu susah.

Contoh lainnya adalah kedisiplinan angkot untuk tidak menaikkan dan menurunkan penumpang di mana saja. Mana ada angkot yang tidak berhenti di setiap pengkolan, kalau penumpangnya saja maunya seperti itu. Jangankan jalan kaki ke halte, begitu keluar gang sudah langsung nyegat angkot sekalipun angkotnya harus berhenti di mulut gang.

Apakah supir angkotnya yang salah? Ya, supir angkotnya salah. Tetapi penumpangnya juga ikut bersalah.

Selama ini penegakan hukum hanya berkutat pada satu pihak saja, yaitu pada pedagang dan supir (dalam dua contoh di atas). Pembeli dan penumpang dibiarkan bebas memaksa para pedagang dan supir untuk melakukan pelanggaran.

Bagaimana solusinya? Ya kenakanlah hukuman bagi pihak kedua, baik itu pembeli ataupun penumpang, dalam contoh di atas.

Ada contohnya? Tentu saja ada. Di daerah CBD di Singapura, anda tidak boleh naik turun taksi di sembarangan tempat, melainkan hanya boleh dari taxi stand. Kalau melanggar, maka yang kena hukuman bukan hanya supirnya, tetapi juga penumpangnya.

Dengan diancamnya pihak kedua, maka penerapan hukuman jadi lebih berimbang. Tipiring akan tertekan dari dua arah, diharapkan pelanggarannya akan menurun