DavidKhoirul.com

My mom taught me reading Arabic text, Quran included, when I was 3 years old. And my Indonesian tongue had no problems pronouncing Arabic as the sounds -- both vowels and consonats -- are similar to the sounds in Javanese, my native language.

While I assume that Arabic is easy, Professor Zohar Eviatar, a scientist from the University of Haifa, Israel, believes that Arabic is hard to learn to read because it requires us to use the left and right parts of our brain.

Aldi Rizal, a two-year-old Indonesian boy who used to smoke up to two packs of cigarettes per day, finally gets rid of the bad habit. His parents said that they found it difficult whenever they tried to stop him from lighting up his cigarette, ending up angering the boy and causing him to cry. But now something has changed.

Psychologist Seto Mulyadi, who took the child into his own home as part of rehabilitation efforts, said Friday the boy has stopped asking for cigarettes.

Lebaran, or Eid al-Fitr, is coming closer. In certain Southeast asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, there's a tradition where a person who works out of town will return home for Eid, and for asking apology to the elders, relatives and neighbors. This tradition is called mudik or pulang kampung, which literally means "returning home."

Indonesia's Buddhist temple Candi Borobudur, in West Java, is claimed by a group of people from an Islamic university as a temple that belongs to Islam, with a number of scientific reasons and proofs.

According to this group of researchers, led by Fahmi Basha, from Syarif Hidayatullah University, the temple was built by the "genie soldiers" of Solomon or Sulayman or Nabi Sulaiman, a prophet who had control over various elements such as the wind and transportation, and who, Bible says, was a king of Israel.

I always love Gmail, Google web mail service, particularly because of its fast access and its minimized ads display -- comparing to its rival Yahoo! which is often very slow. Many of my friends who used to be on Yahoo! has also moved to Gmail.

A few months ago, I was pleased with the release of Google Buzz in Gmail page, a twitter-like status update and social bookmark service. And now, again, I'm pleased to hear Gmail is adding another tool that helps filter emails with high priority, sorting them out and putting them at the top of the incoming email list.