National Day Celebration - Happy 56th

Traditionally celebrating 

 The speech by outgoing Ambassador - Goodbye will be missing you and your good humor and the personal hospitality granted to me by your ever so sweet wife 

 Local delicacies on foreign land - yumms

 Vegetable fritters (cokodok sayur) by the embassy's staff

 Mee goreng by the Ambassador's chef 

 Chicken satay

The beautiful couple (he he he)

I Love Them More Than I Love me

In my situation of today, I do sometime think about how I have gone in my life, could I have done more to make it better? However, I know I’m a much happier person now, being close to the Almighty gave me all the energy to move forward. As I reminisce, I cannot help but acknowledge that I have done a good job with bringing up four kids on my own. It is now up to them to map their own destination in life. I watched them from far, happy to see those who have made excellent choices in their life, sad and appalled at those who made a nuisance of their good destination by lowering the standards that I have set for them in their life. I may not have anything in life now because all that I have was given to them. I want them to know this and not destroy all the sacrifices that I have done. I may be poor because I love them more than I love me, I was not selfish, I may not have been the best mother in the world, but I do not want to live to see any of them destroying their life because of a certain stupidity call love.

Alone Time Is Like Refueling

I love to have my alone time, it is very refreshing. I can do just anything I want without being careful not to annoy anyone else. It is not often that I will have such moment; being alone in my house is like refueling and rejuvenating. I can’t remember but I got my alone time for a couple of days last week. As hubby is still away and my little angel decided to spend whatever is left of her summer holiday at the river with friends.

As soon as the house was empty, I started to day dream, yeah since we have moved to a smaller place, my mind started venturing and visualizing into turning my little home to be the coziest ever. Anyways, too much of day dreaming I ended up only decorating my little angel’s room, but I did cook myself a meal that I love, which includes fried bitter gourd.  No one else in the house would eat the bitter gourd. It is one of my favorite dishes, and it is so random to get the one that I like here, but I can get lucky some days and found the bitter gourd just smiling at me.

Counting my blessings as I sit alone and enjoy my meal………….. Alhamdulillah.

Pictures, the meal that I had.

 Aubergine with fresh chillies

 Fried bitter gourd with dried shrimp

 Plain rice porridge

Prawn crackers (courtesy from my dearest sister)

Avocados - The Most Perfect Food In The World

I love my avocados raw with sugar

Some of the reasons why I'm hook on avocados.

Healthy brain: Avocados - one of the top brain-healthy foods that can help prevent Alzheimer's disease. The folate in avocado contributes to preventing the formation of brain tangles that are considered a factor for Alzheimer's.

Healthy heart: Avocados are rich in monounsaturated fats that boost heart health and help lower blood pressure. The monounsaturated fats contain the phytonutrient beta-sitosterol, which was clinically proven to lower LDL and triglyceride blood levels while raising HDL.

Eye health: Avocado contains the carotenoid leutein, an antioxidant that specializes with protecting the eyes from oxidative stress damage leading to poor vision, cataracts, and macular degeneration.

Blood pressure: The combination of avocado's high potassium content with omega-3 and oleic acid are beneficial toward reducing blood pressure.

Blood sugar: Avocado's monounsaturated fats can prevent or reverse insulin resistance, a source of type 2 diabetes. The high soluble fiber of avocado helps prevent blood sugar spikes.

Anti-aging: The master antioxidant glutathione supports the liver and the nervous system. It is responsible for replenishing and recycling other antioxidants in the body. It is vital for a strong immune system, and avocado is one of the few foods that contain a considerable amount of glutathione.

Digestion: Nutrients and enzymes in avocado reduce inflammation in the stomach and small intestine's mucous lining. This also improves the body's ability to absorb carotenoids and nutrients.

Cancer: Avocados can help protect against prostate and breast cancers.

Linz, No Regrets

Our trip to Linz was not planned, it was an impromptu decision based on the information that someone was carrying a lot of stuff for us from back home. In order not to burden the person who was travelling, we made the trip to collect the said stuff. Boy…………….. Were we surprised? Yes very surprised indeed. All that was needed to be collected was half a repacked ‘muruku’, two rolls of dried jelly, 2 scarfs and some fruit cake. Well, I honestly should stop believing but it’s just me when come to not wanting to burden anyone doing favors for me, I’m hopeless. Anyways, besides the surprised, we had fun, we love Linz, we love the shops there, we love the people (totally different from those in Vienna), and most of all it is super clean (which reminded me of Singapore, during the clean time).

Away From Home

Celebrating Eid away from home for the 4th time. We were invited for an open house at the Ambassador's residence on the second day of Eid.  It was just a small crowd but it was fun nevertheless.

H.E the Ambassador and His sweet wife (they will be leaving at the end of August 2013)

 Some friends that I have made along the way from the mosque

The chicken curry was very nice, and that was my second helping (not shy at all)

Moral Of The Story, Will I Ever Learn?

Once I wrote about good guest and bad guest. Now I will write about the combination of both and an added character of a guest who also needs to be babysat. It is amazing or maybe I have forgotten some of the odd behaviors of people from there. I know travelling to Europe is very expensive, the cheapest decent hotel that you can get would cost at least 100 euros per day, therefore, despite all the bad experiences that I have had with some guests, I will still open my doors to welcome people in need to stay.

Yes, it is not a big deal being nice, but being assumed that I will also need to take you around and tell you what you should do while you are here is a bit too much. Recently, that’s what happened. I was told that this particular person who’s coming to stay had travelled many parts of the world and will not be a bother to me, boy……….. was I wrong? Yeah, I must also learn that the information I got was normally more exaggeration than the truth.

The guest chose not to fast (because of reasons known to the guest only), and sitting in the house everyday looking like a lost dog with the tongue sticking out was more than pathetic. Yeah, of course despite my fasting, I even have to serve food to the guest to eat. Can someone be that inconsiderate?

Moral of the story, will I ever learn?

Oopsss……………… I forgot, yes……. When come to paying at the counter in a supermarket or for train tickets, the trick of the game was for the guest to immediately stand as far as possible or to quickly opened the wallet and announced that they have no change.

Selamat Hari Raya (Eid Al Fitr)

To all my Muslim friends and readers, I hope it is not too late to take this opportunity to wish you and your family a very happy and Blessed Eid Al Fitr. I had planned to be nearer hope during the celebration of this Eid, but as usual I can only plan but it is the Almighty that will allow things to happen, and as you can see it is not happening the way I wanted it. Therefore, Eid was celebrated here with my little unit of family and a guest (the son of my sister in law’s friend) from back home. Like many years of Eid celebration, I have been taught to cook some special meal for the family (which is a must), and no matter where I will be in any part of the world, come Eid celebration, I will make the effort to serve these for at least two days.

Selamat Hari Raya all and ‘mohon maaf zahir dan batin’.

I'm Back

I came here today and saw how much dust there was, and also realized that cobweb are beginning to be so thick that if I don’t do anything, I might lose the direction of focus totally in my own blog. Therefore, from today I will start dusting, vacuuming and mopping and writing again. Do drop by as usual and till we meet again, I’m back.