Deep in the night, last night

I'm amazed how some people can easily fall asleep the moment their heads hit the pillow. Take hubby as an example... he can immediately doze off anytime...anywhere...if he wants to that is.
Never a fuss... just instant sleep the moment he closes his eyes. He can even do this whilst I'm yakking away beside him about the day's events...much to my dismay, of course!.

I on the other hand, happen to be one of those that take hours to fall asleep. Well maybe not really hours as in hours... but surely many many minutes before I reach the very first phase of sleep. The tossing and turning and countless fluffing of pillows are just part of the usual exhausting rigmarole that I go through before finally falling asleep. It's quite exasperating actually, especially if you turn and see your sleeping partner sprinting himself away towards a good surf on his delta waves!!

Hubby says he enjoys his power naps which is a somewhat effective way of increasing productivity in the afternoon at work. He believes that a quick shut-eye can help to give a much needed recharge in the afternoon... in his case before rushing off to do his night shift at work. After a quick nap ( usually just a couple of minutes ) one will wake up feeling most refreshed and energized. So he says. I wouldn't know, since I need at least 30 minutes to an hour before finally falling asleep. There's definitely no such thing as a quick forty winks for moi.

All these talk about sleep inevitably leads me to what happend deep in the dark, last night. For the hundredth time... when the house was still and everyone's asleep.. yours trully was lying awake in bed, blinking her eyeballs out. She lay there feeling most envious of everybody who were obviously in deep slumber whilst she struggled trying to put herself to sleep. When counting sheep and everything else she could think of didn't seem to work... the insomniac walked out of her room to her children's ... and sat at the edge of their beds and kissed each one of her five children tenderly on the forehead. A calming effect was surely felt. She then returned to bed and recited a series of random zikir. How many she did not know... for sometime at 2.30am she finally fell asleep. Zzzzzzzz

DVD weekend

Yeay! The loonnggg weekend is here... Monday and Tuesday off with the Deepavali celebrations just around the corner. Since this is the last weekend before the end of Syawal, the weekend is pretty much packed (again!) with back-to-back open houses invites. Hubby and I tried to do a marathon of 6 houses last Saturday...but only managed to cover 4. By the time we got home just slightly before 7pm... we were so knackered and parents and kids unanimously agreed to forgo dinner...(there was just no room left after the satay, rendang, laksa penang etc etc).


I'm hoping for a slightly less manic weekend this time around. Do our rounds of open-houses during the day and perhaps watch a few DVDs at night. I used to do that quite a lot... a couple of years back...watch DVDs with hubby when the kids are all curled up in bed. No interruptions. Bliss...


Well, our library of DVDs have somewhat grown over the years. Must confess there are many, many, many movies that we have not seen yet. They're just lying there mostly... still in plastics.. waiting to be taken out of the DVD basket. Sometimes, hubby the official DVD hunter/seeker forgets he has made an earlier purchase of a movie... ends up buying the same movie again at the DVD shop. This of course explains why we sometimes have 2 copies of the same movie in our collection...

I finally watched Atonement the other day... just to see what the hype was all about... and happy to announce was not the least bit disappointed. The movie was great!! Immediately requested for Atonement II from hubby, if it should ever come out..haha! Wished the ending could have been somewhat different.. but then again.. it wouldn't have garnered all the awards had the ending been the way I wanted it to be.



Official verdict : Atonement - a must see and a must have!

Raya 2008

Just when you think that a week's holiday is more than enough to celebrate Eid, attending open-houses and uploading the hundreds of pictures taken over the week... think again. I found myself rushing from one open-house to another... hosting one myself...while assisting another at my in-law's a few days later... and before you know it... the holiday is over and I'm back at work...albeit unwillingly.

Happy Eid Mubarak everyone!

On My Anniversary

What did I do on my wedding anniversary?? Well... a drive to Concorde Shah Alam for a much deserved high-tea (minus the kids of course).

Bread pudding. Yummy!

...and what did hubby do on the eve of our anniversary??

1. Went for his 2-5am night patrol of our housing area

2. Came back after his rounds with stories of how a suspicious looking car (possibly robbers') rammed into the palang placed at one of the exit points at our housing area after being in hot pursuit by a radio car on patrol. In an attempt to escape, robbers rammed pole at full speed causing windscreen to be broken to smithereens... hopefully sustaining serious facial/brain damage along the way.

Though robbers were seen leaving the housing area with what's-left-of-the-car... they did leave however their road tax lying on the road...to be picked up by our night patrol on duty...which was of course handed to the police. Hurrah!

El Stupidos getaway route which backfired BIG time!!!

A big chunk of the windscreen left by the roadside

Keeping A Promise - Stories from the Holy Land Part 2

I promised I'd do this. At a family gathering about a month ago, my uncle Famy who had read my earlier entry on Stories From The Holy Land, pointed out that I had missed out two important scenes/incidents that happened during our umrah trip in May. Both were equal in hilarity and will forever be etched in our minds.



A Fetish For Chicken Mandi
When we were in Mecca, most of our meals were taken at the hotel. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were simple meals eaten within the confines of our small dining area, in the company of other umrah performers.



In was not until the third day in Mecca, that we ventured out to the more modern, swanky and upscale area of... Hilton Hotel. We had completed our second umrah just slightly after noon and instead of returning to our hotel we decided to stay close to the vicinity of Masjidil Haram and wait for Asr. Since we had not eaten lunch yet, we walked across to Hilton in search of some grub and soon found ourselves at Al Tazaj - a takeaway restaurant that specialised in Arab cuisine.

Hubby and uncle soon placed our order, guided by the colourful menu displayed behind the counter. Feeling slightly adventurous, they bought an array of delectable dishes which included pitta bread , salads and savoury rice. Since it was a takeaway restaurant, we discovered there were no tables and chairs to be seen anywhere at the establishment. What we did notice though, were several small Arab families sitting on the floor enjoying their own Al Tazaj takeaway meals...and they looked quite comfortable doing it too!

So throwing caution to the wind, we too found ourselves sitting cross-legged on the floor. Me and an aunt still garbed in our telekung whilst hubby and uncles in their ihram- oblivious to our surrounding as we dug into the delicious Chicken Mandi and Chicken Kabsa. None of the Arabs gave us a second look. But we did see some eyebrows raised from fellow Malaysians, who must have thought we were bonkers for doing so. Very unMalaysian we were I'm sure, but as the saying goes "When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do".

Chicken Mandi - my favourite!

The Golden Lounge
Another memorable incident was at Jeddah just hours before we flew home. We were at the airport and discovered that there weren't that many seats available for us while we waited for our flight. The only place vacant was the curb which eventually became the parking area for several families. Hence dubbed our Golden Lounge. And like many other Golden Lounges, it would be incomplete if it didn't have the prerequisite beverages and snacks for weary travellers like us. And ours came in the form of a very friendly Indian man who pushed a trolley laden with the necessary cold fizzy drinks, hot coffee/tea and confectionary galore. Though we didn't get our teh-tarik... there was still enough supply of drinks and tidbits to kick-off Uncle Famy's 4?th birthday at midnite.

A novel way of getting the tea to be frothy minus the "tarik"



So we may have not had the luxury of Hilton, nor received the Golden Lounge treatment, but in the company of those we love and enjoy, the experience and moments shared (even if they involved sitting on hard floors) are without a doubt priceless and meaningful to us in more ways than one. This simply justifies the old adage that It is not where you are that's important, but who you're with.... or something like that ;)

Our Petrosains Outing

Here's what we did over the weekend...to celebrate the joint birthdays of hubby and no 4 - Safia

Saturday Gone Awry

I can think of better ways to spend my Saturday mornings. Like sleeping-in, something I've not done for years since having children. Or taking the kids out to the mall as soon as the doors to the entrance open at 10.30a.m (am allergic to crowds...and usually avoid them by going early and leaving just as the midday visitors start trailing in).

Anyway, just as I thought I'd finally have a Saturday off, after having to work every Saturday for the past 2 months...word has it that me and colleagues have all got to come in...urgh!!..for an in-house training.

So there I was, yesterday... physically there but mentally and spiritually at home..all curled up in bed. I sat in the room with pen and paper (handout) and soon found myself doodling away, as I often do when bored. The talk was on ... something like..ways to make teaching and learning effective. Pretty impressive topic...very useful for the likes of me...those invloved in education. But unfortunately though, the man in my personal opinion, failed to deliver in an effective way. We (yes the victims - colleagues and I) spent endless hours listening to him go over nearly every line in the handout and oh...did I mention he had us read out the passages loudly.... only to come up with this in the end "OK...what's her/his problem?" "Yes, pronunciation, modulation, pitch" bla bla bla. Hey! we already know some of us have problems with our pronunciation, modulation, intonation etc...as you've clearly pointed out earlier at the beginning of the session. So why is there the need to tell us over and over again?

It didn't help that some of his remarks toward us were quite condenscending at times. Something like we can be at a better place than this, bla bla bla. Look Mr Consultant-Anglophile-Know-It-All...I'm proud of what I do...and my being here and not in some institution or college or university, does not make me any less of a person or educator for that matter. If there are a few things that I'm proud of... it'd be my family and the work that I do. And my being here is a conscious decision and not some last choice I can't get any other job thing.

So, this Ms No-I-Will-Not-Let-People-Talk-Down-To-Me just had to stand up and defend her vocation which she feels passionately about. And she did. Annnddd Mr Consultant-Anglophile-Know-It-All went on a tirade about him being a busy man globe-trekking and all and having to come down to our(?) level.. hah?.. gosh I can't even remember what he said and all...only that at the end he said I should go to Oxford University like him. Hah??? Go to Oxford University and turn out like him?? No thank you!! Well Ms No-I-Will-Not-Let-People-Talk-Down-To-Me could have continued with the repartee and lashed out at Mr Consultant-Anglophile-Know-It-All, but she is reminded to hold her tongue and not stoop to the level of the pompous #$#%@!*. Since earlier that morning at 4 plus she had woken up early to perform her Tahajjud prayer... and had among other things asked God for the virtue of patience, something which she feels she clearly lacks. And in that room at that time, Ms No-I-Will-Not-Let-People-Talk-Down-To-Me told herself that God wanted to test her patience. Therefore He sent her Mr Consultant-Anglophile-Know-It-All.

Yes, that's my Saturday gone awry.