Small Pilgrimage

Now, I am typing this out at Jeddah's new airport, King Abdulaziz International Airport, as we will be heading back to Singapore with a transit at Abu Dhabi.

The past few days in Mecca, I have been blessed with the opportunity to do a small pilgrimage in the Al-Haram Mosque. The place is magnificent and it has truly been a spiritual and reflective journey for me as I pray for the best in the next phase of my life with a new workplace and also a new family too live with now that I'm newly married.

Some of the tech things I observed and appreciated include the usage of a dustbin with sensors, the use of night mode after a 250 metres climb at the top of Jabal Nur and even e-book distributions through a touch screen interface with QR code. A timelapse of the Kaabah was amazing too.

Besides that, I think that the crowd management and optimisation of the pilgrims' movement could make use of sensors too. This is because there were risks of stampede at certain locations due to overcrowding and aggressive pushing and moving.

I even had the chance to catch up with some of my PRSS colleagues with a bird's eye view of the Kaabah. It was a captivating view near the top of the clock tower.

The Kaabah is also the direction in which Muslims all over the world pray and even Google has built a qibla finder.

Below are some other cool sites I found which gives interested or curious Muslims like us about the Kaabah and the room inside the Multazam.

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-kaaba-in-mecca-f01896f9218f43659d75aa8c95cdf7ed

https://www.google.com/maps/@21.4224979,39.8261965,3a,75y,45.7h,79.47t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipMHKrvqw_4tJAARD_Q5K0X19aMS2l7Vc2O-Sq8G!2e10!3e12!7i6144!8i3072

https://www.360tr.com/kaaba-al-masjid-al-haram-mecca-panorama-virtual-tour_7697b4b28_en.html
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/hajj360/phone/index.html