Perantauan 2010

My Ramadan and Raya in 2010 was a unique and memorable one. It was not at home-sweet-home KL, in fact it was actually a HOME to me back then. Not so much of bazaar Ramadan and kuih-kuih tradisi, but it was fun and interesting indeed with great companies around us.

These are my reflections of Raya and Ramadan in 2010.

  We were actually main-main hantar our picture to Berita Harian, kononnya nak salam di perantauan. Over sungguh.

Packed my bag, and off we (Sheena and I) to London during Ramadan. We arrived in London at noon, and managed to visit the British Museum before we had our Iftar.

Our new housemate of Hubert Road arrived just a day before Raya and because he had to stay at Malaysian Hall, we had Iftar with him there as well.

Malaysian Hall with Sheena.

It was also Adila's 25th birthday the same night; so right after Iftar-ing at Malaysian Hall, we had dessert at Villandry near her home.

The creme brulee was to DIE FOR.

 Adila and hommies were so sweet that they let us stayed at their house for Raya. Most of us didn't sleep and cooked for Hari Raya. Zeileen was the head cook of course, with her cute apron and all. We had lontong. I made this macam tak jadi terlebih kuning.

We also had ketupat and lemang ok. (Instant lemang pun sedap kot)

And rendang and kuah kacang by Zeileen and Adila. Ni memamg sedap la. 10 kali tambah kot.

Zeileen and her helper, Sheena.

Adila and Ammar di pagi raya . Double As. Nak kahwin dah depa. Alhamdulillah. Amin. ;)

Zeileen and moi. ;) 

Right after breakfast rendang ketupat at Chiswick, we went to the ambassador's house somewhere in.. Aiyo, I can't remember, but it would be somewhere where people like Jude Law and Leona Lewis would live kot. ;-p

Mak-mak datin sekalian.

 Chiswick hosts :)

One for the memory!

Fara and sister had Eid in London as well in conjunction of Alyaa's graduation ceremony.

During the second day of raya, Sheena and I flew to Paris for three days.

During the same week, Malaysian Culinary Association (if I'm not mistaken) hosted an event of Pasar Malam, where most restaurants in London opened up stalls selling their food. Some of the food were..ok je. But millions of Malaysian, Thai as well as British came and actually bought the tawar Teh Tarik just because.

Azizul obviously doesn't want to miss the food galoria...

Miss Marriam Bajunid and ehem. It was really good seeing her.

Sheena and her tawar Teh Tarik

Tak paham gambar ni.

Beraya with lovely housemates takkan dilupai. This was in Selly Oak, second week of Raya.

Last but not least, one picture with cousins all the way from Singapore, Kak Sasha and Naz Chia. At Nandos, Bayswater.

So what do you have in store for 2011? Bring it on!

Jump!

'Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about'

Oscar Wilde

Bringing Back the Junk(s)

Salam friends. How are you today and the day before yesterday and the day before and so forth? 

I've lots of things to write here but can't seem to do it fast because I've so many on my plate right now. The good news is that my stuff in UK that I shipped last year has finally arrived. There are 50 to 60 boxes altogether, but that is inclusive of SheenaDaliaIqa's properties. Banyak sungguh ye tak? Kami ni perghak, memang la semua nak beli. ahahha. No la, the thing is, most of the stuff in the boxes are books, clothes, shoes and bags, academic books and files, kitchenware, ice-cream maker, etc etc. This is akibat rambang mata tak boleh tido nye kind dan tak tahan nafsu serakah di carboot sale, factory outlets, massive sales because it's 10 times cheaper than what it is in Malaysia. Ok, over la tu 10 times cheaper, maybe 5 times cheaper? Still cheap kan? Especially books! I brought back 3 boxes of novels and most of the novels tu I haven't start reading yet! Heaven nye. But the question is.. I got time aahh? 

Anyway, the process of packing tu went well in Birmingham. It was quite stressful at first, but when we got the hang of it, we were ok. Beli je benda, terus amik kotak, cellotape-kan and labeled. Don't ever delay it, you will tend to forget it and there goes one point to your procrastination habit.

After the packing and labeling was done, we brought the boxes to the warehouse in Smallheath and the guys at the warehouse load the boxes in the container. Siap buat partition lagi wei, sebab tak nak the boxes jatuh hempap kereta. So efficient and fast. It took them not more than 3 hours to do everything in the container; arranged the boxes, built a proper partition so that the boxes won't fall and hit the car, built some sort of penghadang between the tyres of the car so that nanti atas laut kereta tak la gerak-gerak, reversed the car into the container (it looked so challenging!), strapped and hooked the car to the container (same reason as above) and all the necessary stuff. What did I do? Just sit there and observed like a Madame. The only thing I did was to sign some forms for security purposes and watched them shut the door of the container. Phew. 

Quite a handful isn't it? 

Ok, boring. Til the next post! 

Farewell Birmingham Part 1

Such a sad day. Today will be the last day I am in Birmingham. Fond memories, bad memories all packed in a year and 3 months time. 

Will surely missed them all.

Will update more when in London. Talk soon.

Brummies Christmas Market

After residing in England for more than a year now, I got the chance to witnessed winter for the second time. The best part is of course, snow falls and sale, but the worst part of it are the climate is freezing and snow made EVERYTHING slow and delayed. For an example, the train! I rely on my London-Midlands train everyday to go do errands and stuff but yeah, snow made me an hour late.

Anyway, one thing about Christmas that everyone loved is the Christmas market. In London, there is a Winter Wonderland but good ol' Brummies doesn't want to miss having one as well. In Birmingham, it is called Birmingham- Frankfurt Christmas Market. It is not as massive and exclusive like the ones in Hyde Park, but for me, this will do. 


You see, Christmas Market in Britain started long ago since the Victorian era which  sells Christmas related products and foodstuffs, but during that time, they were not known as Christmas market. The traditional Christmas market you could find are in Germany, Austria and Poland, but the ones in England can be considered quite similar to the traditional ones but of course, with some English identity.


Like I stated above, the one in Birmingham is called Birmingham-Frankfurt Christmas Market. It is open daily from 18th of November to 23rd December from 10 am - 9pm, it can be said that this Christmas Market is the largest authentic German market outside of Germany and Austria and is arguably one of the most popular Christmas markets in the UK. Chewah.

This is my second time here and I enjoyed every seconds of it eating fried cheese and jalapeno dip with cranberry sauce and the soft yummy garlic and cheese bun! Not forgetting their scrumptious hot chocolate as well. Without rums of course. There are other delicious meals that visitors could enjoy such as the Gluhwein (German mulled wine), German beers and traditional sausages, meats, sweets, marzipans and pastries.

Fried cheese!

 Pretzel!

 Chocolate coated banana and mashmallow

Colourful cookies

They don't just offer food, but also traditional handcrafted gifts, including jewellery, wooden toys, dolls and candles. It is so cute how they set up wooden chalets as their stalls and each chalets will be decorated as how they like, the more colourful lights, the better! It is best to see all of these decorations at night because the colourful lights will lit up the whole Christmas market as if we are in a village!

And, the whole experience will be enhanced with live music every lunchtime and evening from a traditional bandstand. Bliss!

One of the things that I will SURELY miss when I go home! 

Let's Go Dutch

During Spring break, the Hubery girls and I decided that, for our last trip (more like their last trip), we decided to indulged ourselves in a crazy vacation to Amsterdam. Yeah, you heard that..Amster-damn.

The pictures will tell the story..

The beautiful canal along the sidewalk.

Lala and I at the gift shop. Check out the cool clogs.

The architecture is funkayy.

The most famous ‘coffee shop’ (as they claimed) in Amsterdam. Many scenes in the movie Ocean’s Thirteen (Brad Pitt and George Clooney..ring a bell?) was shot here.

The interior of the ‘coffee shop’. It’s dark but there’s so much sparkly lights..it’s to make you ‘sparkleyy’.

The magic mushroom. They have it on sale! DUH!

The entrance of the infamous Red Light District. From brothels to sex shops to live porno to hash brownies and museums, the Red Light District leaves nothing to the imagination.

Condoms Galore.

This is right in front of the the gothic Oudekerk or Old Church along the Red Light District.

We certainly didn’t miss out the Sex Museum of Amsterdam.

More canals and bicycles.

The newly refurbished Anne Frank House

Us happy!

High on happy pills!

I love Amsterdam!

I will come back for round 2!