A Glimpse of the Arab's culture

I was told by my ustazah to post a paragraph of anything that I know of Arabs. In my struggle to produce a flawless beginner's level of Arabic essay, she came by and said, oh.. so cute.. you tried to post it in Arabic? You can just write it in English! man.... poloh tiak den nak translate tadi tau! ,(-_-)`,

Yes.. I am currently learning the Arabic language (yakni lugha Arabia), after 4 years living in one of the Arab countries, I still haven't learn a squat! That is until now.. Ish ish ish..(shame on me, I know)

I have recently set a goal to learn Arabic (actually been meaning to learn it ever since I moved here, but not until now that I felt really serious about doing it), and Alhamdulillah, god must have listened to my intention that he open up a door of opportunity to learn it without anymore of the lame excuse such as "I want to learn, but I work in shift, and none of the classes are suitable with my time table", or "What?! how much is the cost for personal coaching now?!".

My office has been kind enough to set up few set of Arabic courses designed according to level of expertise (expert ke? hikss..:P ) and scheduled to match most of the shift pattern there is. To my surprise, the Arabic language is not as hard as I always thought it was. Lots of similarity with my mother tongue language (malay yang memang sah-sah bahase pencedok). Even the way the sentences are made got many similarities of rules.. why laaa I found it too darn difficult before?

I now dare all Malays to burn up your spirit and learn Al-Lugha Al-Arabia, as we already have 50% of the language at heart; YES! Believe it or not, we've known 500 roots words with similar meaning with the Arabic, we've learn to read it since kids and we've been hearing it through Al-Qur'an yet why are we still hesitate to learn the meaning by heart? I so hope that one day, Arabic language is made compulsory in Malaysian education system and not just in Sekolah Agama, and they should enforce learning to read the Qur'an with the meaning too. No more like the blind man, reading to the deaf. I do not want to be in the dark side for too long, I pray that my spirit will continue to grow and be blessed to succeed and hope many others will take this challenge seriously too, Amin.......... (janganla I be hangat-hangat-tahi-ayam-self)

Anyway, here's the short essay that I've written on FB as per request from my ustazah (part of the entire test), which I actually had pages more to write, but considering the effect that it'll reflect on (yes, I have many  negative values to contribute to the subject), I leave it to stop at that one tiny paragraph :)

Four years of living my life in Qatar, I got to learn a glimpse of Arab's culture.  I see many Arabs who love to spend time outside and chat with friends and family, drinking coffee but often not very friendly to strangers. Their ties to friends are so close that they can even slow down while driving alongside each other’s car for a chat or even stop in the middle of the roundabouts just to say hi to one another. Although many of them look conservative, particularly women with their hijab and niqab, they are actually quite open to latest technology such as the cinema. Just last night, we enjoyed a night out to see the latest Hollywood movie, and there beside us, sat an Arab couple, with the wife fully covered revealing just her two eyes while the man looked protective of the wife, yet can still take her out for a nice date at the cinema just like the rest of us. A scenario such as this is the best example of “Don’t judge the book by its cover”. We can never know someone from the first look, but through experience and time, we’ll get to know their beauty and perhaps the common interest that we share.