What I've been up to …

While we were busy with Nafis at Taylor’s College, Nukman’s school was having an Open Day yesterday. Lucky for us, Bok had agreed to go with Aina.

They didn’t just go as visitors, but they brought with them Wii, to help Nukman and friends man a games corner.

Nukman & Aina:

Bok & Nukman giving a demo:

Aspiring band members:

They even had karaoke with the “band”:

apart from the Wii, they also had PS2 and PS3:

While the kids were enjoying indoor, Aina told me that there was also a pony-ride corner:

A final pose, before the Tai-ko takes the stuff home, I guess:

Aina even managed to take a shot of the collection of the day for the Wii:

Sorry Mae Mama could not come, but I am sure you had a wonderful day yesterday .

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Yesterday we went to register Nafis for his college studies at Taylor’s College, Subang Jaya.

The day schedules for various programmes :

The registration yesterday was for sponsored students by JPA, MARA and Bank Negara. Nafis was indeed very lucky to have managed to secure a MARA loan to take up Actuarial Science via the American Degree Transfer Programme .

The queue for the initial registration at the far end of the pic:

While waiting for Nafis, I looked down:

Some of the programmes offered at the college:

There was a briefing by the Dean of the ADP programme (no pic) followed by the briefing on accomodation.

Finally it was the briefing by a MARA representative, who’ll be in-charge of the MARA-sponsored students here:

Both DH and I managed to be early for the free lunch at the college, but Nafis had to surrender some documents, so by the time he was ready to have lunch, it was too congested. We then took him to the nearby McD for his lunch:

We left him at the entrance of his apartment and came home. Nafis later came home with Bok, who went to fetch him. Later tonight we have to send Nafis back to his apartment because his programme will start first thing tomorrow morning!

Good luck, Nafis.  Do not let us and the country down.

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At 5am this morning, I was awaken by a phone call from my brother in Kota Bharu. He called to inform me that Bapak Maskam passed away this morning at 2.30am. Bapak had some internal complication just the day before and when they hospital team operated on him yesterday they found that parts of his intestine had burst and there was already a lot of infection in him.

Who’s Bapak Maskam? To know more about him, please read here and  here. I did visit him the last time I went back to Kelantan. I also talked to him a few times in the last 2 months when he was treated for a dislocated shoulder (due to a fall).

No, I am not going back to Kota Bharu. The funeral will be done before 12 noon today. Oh, I just realised that Bapak died on a Friday – alhamdulillah.

Alfatihah to Bapak – the man who made me a Muslim! You’ll be greatly missed, Bapak!

Bapak was 79.

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As if last night’s outing was not enough, today I came home to this:

These are the belated Mother’s Day’s gifts from the kids (though I know it was Nuni who bought all these! ).

This Famous Amos tin can is cute, and the contents delicious too:

On opening the box, I found this:

It’s just what I need now, because the thermostat of the current iron that we are using is not functioning (after I dropped it on the floor once, but it was a hard drop!). This mother’s day gift will surely come handy, because I do most (if not all) of the ironing in the house!

Thank you, kids! Or should I say, thank you Nuni?

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First, last night DH took me to Ramli Sarip’s “Tafsiran Alam” concert at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas.

The last time I was there was when I went to watch Dato Khatijah Ibrahim’s concert last year with Aisyah (DH bought the tix for him and me but when the time came, he had to go to USA for some business meets).

Anyway, back to last night, it was a good show by our Papa Rock. I enjoyed the sing along parts too especially for the songs “Ku Di Halaman Rindu”, “Kamalia” and “Doa Buat Kekasih”. If for Dato Khatijah’s concert, Ramli was a guest, this time Ramli decided to have Misha Omar instead. I used to like Misha’s singing, but last night she didn’t really impress me. Her too tight for comfort dress made her look uncomfortable, and it looked like she tried too much to sing well that it looked stressful to me.

But Ramli Sarip really rocked! There were times that I was worried that he might have a heart attack, but he did very well. Man Kidal was one of the guitarists, and the repertoire of the musicians were entertaining too. Despite having the concert in such formal hall, they still maintained a rock ambience.

There was  a moment when DH pointed to the cameraman (while Misha was singing solo). DH wanted to tell me that the lens he (the cameraman) was using was very sensitive (and expensive too) that there was no need to use flash. I looked at the cameraman on duty, and saw half of his face (from nose upwards). I told DH that the cameraman looked like Bazuki, my high school junior.

True enough, at the end of the show, I met up with Bazuki, as well as another schoolmate, Hilmy. We had a great time admiring Bazuki’s hugh lenses.

Here’s a pic of DH with Bazuki and Hilmy’s eldest son, affectionately known to us as Along (his name is Hakym ):

And here’s a pic with Hilmy:

And here’s a pic of old schoolmates :

And I just had to have this pic taken :

It was a wonderful outing, despite being a week night…

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I’ve been very behind with my blogging. A few hectic weeks with occasional slow connection to the website didn’t  help. There are many things that I want to blog about but they just passed by, and by now they are no longer that great to write (or maybe I’ve fogotten about them to..).

Anyway, over a month ago, the company where I work had an outing for all the staff and their family members. We had it at Suria Cherating Beach Resort. The resort was a bit run down, but otherwise, it was very private and cosy.

Nuni blogged about it much earlier here.I thought it was well written. Nuni even put a link to her gallery of pix of the day here.

I am going to use some of Nuni’s pix in my blog here.

We had so many games for our telematch. We had to even cancel a couple of the games (much to the disappointment of many of the kids!) because we were running out of time.

Water-filled balloons:

It was about 3pm, but we lucky to have the shade:

Limbo Rock:

The ever favourite tug-o-war (ladies version):

I was one of the organising committee members and was given a hat to wear that day. Nuni happily called me Makcik Sayur (The Vegetable lady), obviously referring to the lady vegetable growers who normally wear similar hats!

But later that day Nafis enjoyed wearing it too:

Later in the night we had a BBQ dinner with some shows planned. I was in charged of the “Costume Show” by the kids who were below 9 years old – now.. that was fun!

And here’s me busy calculating (manually!!) the marks given by the judges:

We also had some lucky draws (EVERYBODY stood to win something, only the values of the gifts varied). Mine was among the last 10 and I won an Electrolux Fruit Juicer (which is still in tact in its box – no attempt to open it, since we prefer to eat the fruits than to juice them).

Kudos to us, the committee members :

The above pic was taken at almost midnight!!!

For more pix on the games, etc.. please visit Nuni’s Gallery.

I am too tired and sleepy…

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This is my latest photo with my no.4, Nafis,  who had recently finished his stint at the National Service Camp, in Beranang.

Before I could blog about the event (which occurred last Tuesday), today I received the news of his SPM results. My boy got 8A+, 2A and 1B+. That’s  more than enough for me!

I am still in Kuantan for a training session, but would like to say this to Nafis – Well done!!!

For more pix of his stints in the Kem Millennium, Beranang:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nafisnaim/PLKN

And DH’s photos on his closing ceremony:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/matny6/20100309NafisPLKNClosing

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Last Tuesday, when we went to send Fis back to his PLKN camp, we saw this new outlet:

We were not hungry, but we were certainly thirsty, so on our way back we stopped by, and ordered”Passion fruit and mango” something:

Yamy Yamy:

And something Avocado:

And today (Sunday), after sending Mae back to school, and visited Fis, we stopped by at Ice Room again. This time we were hungry, so we ordered main dishes as well as the cool smoothies/sorbet, whatever you call them!

Let’s wait for Nuni’s blog for a more comprehensive report on the place .

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As I was unpacking our stuff (still a lot more to go), I came across these duver covers and I became nostalgic:

1.

2.

and,

3.

I bought 2 0f the first one (Power Rangers) for Bok and Ayi (the ones who are now in MMU and Canada, respectively).  I bought 2 sets of the second one for Pih (The PLKN guy) and Mae Mae (who is now in Form 5 in Seremban), who were then great fans of Lion King, the disney movie.

The 3rd one was of course for Nuni.

All these were bought in Argos while I was studying for my MSc in York, UK. We do not use duvet, but the kids use them either as their bed cover, or blanket! I wanted to buy bedsheets but they (Argos) only sold those designs in duvet set.

The back of the Lion King design has lots of Baby Simba.

Close-up of the little Simbas:

Here’s a pic of the set with the matching pillow case:

The other side of the Power Rangers ones looks like this:

Well…. looking at the duvet covers made me feel so nostalgic.

All the duvet covers are in good condition, the cotton is still thick and the colour has not worn out, so I will just keep them for the future .

P/s:

I went to York in September 1995 alone. I left all 5 kids with my parents-in-laws in Kelantan  (while DH was alone in Shah Alam) for ONE year while I went to pursue my MSc. I came back for X-mas and Easter, and finally at the end of September 1996 for good.

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You won’t believe it, but honestly, for me, to be able to spend the weekend, or at least Sunday quietly at home is a real treat to me! We are most of the time on the move. Either go travelling, “balik kampung” or visiting our kid(s).

So this morning, I woke up feeling great because yesterday I didn’t go out, and today too we are not planning to go anywhere. Since I couldn’t mow the grass yesterday evening (due to the rain), I decided to do so early this morning.

The Black & Decker mower is a great help. In no time the side lawn looks much nicer (forgot to snap the pic of  “before mowing”):

Can you see the mover at the back of the house? Great machine.

I had to trim off the grass near the wall manually using the garden scissors. Now, that’s hard work. It took me much longer to do this, compared to pushing the mover back and forth.

The result:

Not bad eh? I know it was not well done, but my shoulder was aching already, and the sun came out (you can see the shadow in the pic. The previous pic doesn’t have the shadow) . It was too hot to continue. I can continue the “trimming” work later..

And here’s the bounty:

I am taking a break now by blogging. After this I need to wash my car. DH, on hearing this, asked me to wash his too, can meh? Ah well, see how lah.. But does he expect me to still cook lunch??? No way, Jose!

I want to spend the afternoon doing some sewing – that’s the other thing I love doing, but hardly get the time for it.

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