Aiman Azlan's Blog

For quite some time now I have been fascinated with the idea of being minimal. Minimalism , as how I defined it, is the philosophy of wanting less in order to focus more on what one needs. This idea can be applied in many ways, not just in terms of material acquisition. Minimalism can also be applied to graphic design, for example. When you create a poster or a t-shirt or anything graphic related, you try to reduce the amount of decoration and information to its bare essentials, while still maintaining its artistic value. I find this kind of graphic designing to be more fulfilling and efficient, since you are not being bombarded with unnecessary elements. It goes straight to the point. This is especially useful when you are trying to get the message across as fast as possible, which is very relevant given that we are moving faster and that our attention span is not that long. Anyway, I wanted to talk about minimalism and how it improves the quality of my life and maybe your life ...

Last weekend I conducted a 4-hour seminar about English speaking at one of the local universities here. It was not my first time doing this, so I can safely assume how the students would participate (although I still reserve a space for the contrary to happen): students were mostly passive, didn't quite respond to my questions or requests. It is one of those common things that university students do, but I didn't want to conform to this abnormal norm. So I tried my level best to encourage them to speak up and speak out, but continuously challenging their minds and emotions with questions and requests (e.g. asking them to fill up the front seats). 3 hours into the seminar, I wanted to start our last session: the discussion session. The basic idea is that I want them to use this opportunity to practice their English speaking. In the previous 3 hours, I tried to convey the message to them that it is not about getting it right all the time, but it is simply about trying and bel...

Some might think that a healthy relationship involves no fighting, but this is far from reality. All married couples fight, but the difference between the ones who are in a healthy relationship and the ones who are not, is that the healthy ones don't fight over small things and when they do fight, they don't go over board. But that is not the intention of this blog post. Perhaps I'll save that for later. The "fighting" that I am referring to here is about healthy competition. It involves no flying plates and no ill feelings. But it does involve you trying to one up on your spouse. The spirit of this competition is based upon this verse of the Quran, "...so race to [all that is] good..." (Surah Al-Maidah, Verse 48). How does this translate into your married life? Well, you can go about this in multiple ways but the one way that I like the most is service. So race with one another to see who can serve the other better. Let the race begins! There are ...