Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.. "Oh you who believe, eat of the good things wherewith We have provided you, and render thanks to Allah, if it is indeed He who you worship" (Al-Baqarah : 172)

Friday, November 30, 2012

REFLECTIONS...

Assalamualaikum and hi,

Are you feeling better today? Did anyone close to you hurt your feelings? We feel hurt right? Well, first instinct would be to blame everyone involved that caused this hurt but.... let's reflect.

In our journey to get to where we are today...have we ever done the same thing that hurt others, the way we are being hurt today? Maybe we've forgotten, maybe we didn't realize..but that could be the very reason we are tested today. Have we asked for forgiveness? 

It's something that I always try to remind myself when something hurtful happens to me. It's a cleansing process that we go through before our journey ends. Which means that I too, on this day of Barakah, a Friday, would like to ask for your forgiveness, from the bottom of my heart, if I had ever done anything to hurt your feelings, whether intentionally or not. I blame my ignorance and stupidity during those years of growing up. Now, well into my forties, I learned so many things along the way.... but no regrets. It's all a process, both for you and for me.

On to a more cheerful note :)

We had our first ever Mooncake Class with Annis Suhaiza earlier this week. Awesome!! I've never had a Mooncake ever in my life and this is a first for me :)...delicious and so easy to make. It could well be a Bestsellers for Bakers out there.. what with demand for Halal Food Products are on the rise. 

Baked Mooncake with Blackbeans filling

Non-baked Mooncakes with Kaya filling

The class was relatively small but was attended by Hjh Umi Kalthum who is a self made successful businesswoman. She, with partnership with her daughter, supplies cookies and 3 types of paste from the Aynuf brand to Giants and soon Jusco outlets around the country. How about that? She's looking into supplying halal mooncake. I'm lucky to be able to meet all these successful entreprenuers all the time.

Let's see what we can do with this new product.

1. The only Halal and nicely packaged Mooncake I've seen are made by Mohamad Chan (Restaurant Chinese Muslim). Apart from that, I've not come across any Malay Muslim produced Mooncake. What do you think is the market share for this wonderful product? Don't you think there's a huge demand for it? For gifts by the non-muslim to their Muslim counterparts? For parties and events? For exports? How many Chinese Muslims are there in the world?

2. How many people do you know out there, a Muslim, teaching this unique food product to anyone else? Don't you think there's a huge demand for that as well?

The thing is we always think, aaahhhh...I don't eat mooncake, and no one I know eats mooncake so..why bother, right? WRONG!! It's a business opportunity!

I'll leave that for you to figure out. But before that, something I learnt from Bill Walsh during our Sunday night Dinner event 'Don't let other people's perceived Success be ours'.

I'll continue with yesterday's stories tonight, insyaallah.

Love,
Farida Ismail

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