Salam Maal Hijrah 1431

Today is 1 Muharam 1431, the beginning of a new year, Salam Maal Hijrah 1431. May Allah guides us always in the right path InsyaAllah.

The fun theory

In one of my interviews with secondary school children, the student mentioned that to encourage more students to recycle or use the recycling bins the `fun' factor must be there. That is because according to her, teenagers will often do something if it is fun. I think this is an important piece of information and a strategy to change towards pro environmental behaviour. Coincidentally, I received an email from Fostering Sustainbale Behaviour about the `Fun theory' on You Tube. check this out. http://www.thefuntheory.com/. The video shows fun ways to
1- Make more people use the stairs instead of the elevator. It works!. What they did was, they put piano sounds on the stairs when people step on it. It definitely increased 60% usage of the stairs instead of the escalator.
2-Make more people use the bins instead of littering on the ground around the bin. They put in a sound effect in the bin.They labelled the bin `The deepest bin'. And everytime a person throws something into it, an echoing sound similar to throwing something very far down appears!An added 40 kilos of waste were collected for the day.
3- Make more people throw glass bottles into the recylcing bin. They included sounds like an arcade/pinball machine and had points appeared everytime a glass bottle was thrown in. That made people beratur just to put a glass bottle in!
I love their ideas!

A concern

I’m in a dilemma as to whether to allow my kids to go to their school’s end of the year 2 nights and 3 days camping event in Living Springs. Why ? well I can foresee there will be some difficulty with the food arrangements in particular. As for solat arrangements, my son ( who is eight years old) knows that on journeys he can jamak and qasar his Zuhur in Asar and Maghrib in Isyak InsyaAllah. As for Suboh prayers, well this Summer Suboh starts at 4.22am and ends at 6.02. Hope he can wake himself up….

Back to the food arrangements, should I pack his lunch and dinner (especially as for tea he can eat fruits and biscuits, except doughnuts because most doughnuts here have animal fat in them) for the three days or should I provide the camp people with uncooked halal burgers ( the Zareena or Corbies brand). I guess I must mention to them to cook separately from the non-halal meat, i.e different pans? His teachers who are going with him will have to bear with our concernslah nampaknya….