I went to University Malaya for a meeting with my research group and our research assistants. We gave the RAs they electronic recorders and briefing on what to do and how to do it. Then after the excitement had died down, yeah right, I went to the national mosque for Friday prayers. I got there early, so I parked my car in the one of the parking lots behind the mosque which was a mistake. I should have parked outside because while I easily found an parking spot because the crowd had not left their offices yet, I hard to wait for the place to clear quite a bit before making my way out of the parking lot after prayers.
After parking my car, I asked a masjid (masjid is a better word because it lacks some negative connotations that mosque has – something I read in an book once) official who was immaculately dressed in a baju Melayu directions to an eating place, he pointed me to the Islamic Center cafeteria across the street. I made my way there and made a serious mistake. There were several stalls there, a couple of them were still unloading their fares from their vans, so I made my way to one that was already ready to receive customers. As I cat with my plate of rice, chilli fried catfish and some vegetables, I noticed that a number of people were willingly waiting for the people to finish unloading. When I started eating my food, I realized why they were so willing to wait, it was an experience in tastelessness.
Quickly finishing, I made my way to the masjid. The crowd was just beginning to build momentum getting there. As I waited for the sermons to begin, I took the photo above with my hand phone, it has a panorama function that stitches three pictures together into one long one. Its not so easy take the three pictures with the edges fitting each other. If you look closely you will see a blurred praying man a third of the way from the left of the picture, also a praying man in blue who makes his ghostly appearance twice one third of the way from the right of the picture.
This picture is taken from the edge of the masjid’s somewhat extensive balcony. The hall in the picture if the main prayer hall. I also got a picture of some people with a television camera but the picture turned out very small because I used the digital zoom. At least, I now know that f I use the digital zoom, it shrinks the photo. Why? I think I its because on the small screen on the phone, it looks good still.

The camera was transmitting the Friday prayers live to the entire nation as they do every Friday.
Then its back to work. Then its home.

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