Winter Break

Assalamualaikum

Hi

I just got back from my winter break vacation, and right now feel a lil bit chilly, probably runny nose in few seconds, oh God forbids!

Overall my holiday was great, I went to Amsterdam with my sister and we went together to her second hometown; Edinburgh.

I departed from Cairo Int. Airport ALONE and for me it's an achievement unlocked! Because God knows how inconvenient the airport is and how grumpy the ground staffs are. But Thank God for all the easiness as suddenly everyone seemed to concern about to where should I  head to and was really helpful. Thank God!

Transferred through Rome Fiumicino Int. Airport of Italy as I traveled with Alitalia and then departed to Amsterdam to finally meet my sister.
Amsterdam had been really nice, the weather, the people, the place itself.

We had promised to meet at Schiphol Airport, and after 4 hours of waiting, she finally showed up!

We straight away went to our reserved hotel which was Hampton by Hilton Bijlmer Arena.

What a nice stay! With 50% off from booking.com , of course the total cost was just the same as budget hotel despite the label.

We stayed there for about 2 lovely nights, the highlight about this hotel is its generous and hearty complimentary breakfast.

Morning view from our hotel

how our 2 nights-room looks like

Night view

That night we just strolled around the central city and had fun. Btw we used train and metro rides throughout our stay in Amsterdam, using GVB unlimited pass which is only valid for GVB metro, tram and ferry and is available from different length of days. We chose 2 days pass. From airport to the hotel, we have ridden the NS train which costed us around 5euros per person per ride. 

The next day, we went to Zaanse Schans, using NS Sprinter train which costed us around 7euros pp for return ticket. Zaanse Schans is definitely such a great view, so beautiful I caught myself stopped breathing, (what a hyperbole), there're six windmills altogether and it was quite breezy there that day.

#art 

my sister and I

me from a bridge, holding the railing for dear life, I don't know why but I suddenly became a height fright!

beautiful Zaanse Schans!

We went for a canal cruise on the next day which I didn't actually take any photo because I was enjoying the view and indulged myself into Amsterdam history.

except that there's one photo I took from my sister God bless her!

We again strolled around the central city and decided to go to the Museumplein where the gigantic I Amsterdam alphabets are at. It was quite a lengthy journey  from where we were actually at that time, but my sister really wanted a photo there, and we still got time before our flight to Edinburgh, so there we went.

how a part of Amsterdam central city looks like

of what building I don't know

Canal

my lovely sister. She's so naturally adorably beautiful in every photo!

We finally made it to those massive alphabets but as expected, there're bunch of humans there, barely any clear spot to have a photo.

my sister be like, " where am I?" "There you are! Among the group of ants"

whereas I could be mistaken as a live weather reporter with hoodie on, the weather well described there, no need a word!

We returned back on a GVB tram to the hotel to collect our luggage and went straight to Schipol Airport.

After checking in and the passport control procedure, we found this!

We finally departed to Edinburgh from Amsterdam, so happy to be on board with my sister!

It was about one hour and half, and it felt so ages.

And when we reached Farah's house, it's about 12 am and we're so exhausted to do anything else that we both straight away went bed.

This is how Edinburgh view looks like from Farah's room window

What's interesting about Edinburgh's architecture is that you won't find any skyscraper there, only around 3-4 storeys buildings maximally 5 storeys, which I think is environmental friendly.

I basically will jump into more eventful days I had in Edinburgh as I was there for 11 days; too much energy needed to make each single day lively, which I didn't.

We went shopping on the next day at Princes Street which I enjoyed a lot!

I bought things I wanted and to my surprise, a lot of those things were cheaper than I actually had budgeted, which is great and Thank God for that!

Collectively, we've gone to Royal Mile.

 I actually haven't captured myself anywhere near the Royal Mile itself, these photos were taken around the area.

Always not a camera-ready!

 Sisterhood!

We also have gone to the Portobello Beach! We're so blessed with the great weather!

So in love with the paddle pop bright sky!

In between the pet dog and the owner.

Here the dog owners spent free time with their dogs and let they go running in freedom! The only not free creatures in the Portobello that time were my sister and I, for being so scared by the dog coming toward us!

Here's on the way to Livingston Designer Outlet, and was taken from the double coaster bus.

We're so busy looking for stuff and didn't even bother to have picture, anyway who else wants a photo when all in front of you is great things to buy?!

Edinburgh Castle, I had a period cramp attack at this time that we had to rush home in no time!

My make up was totally went wrong this day! This was at Carlton Hill. Here's where you can enjoy Edinburgh overall view. Nice!

What food did I eat in Edinburgh?

Here's the Korean and Japanese Cuisine Restaurant.

We've eaten tteokbokki, jjamppong and sushi. Among all, my least fav is tteokbokki.

My sister celebrated my belated birthday. Gosh just thinking about how adult I am as I'm freaking 24 years old lady this year made me freak out! I don't know why, time was passing by before, my age number kept changing but this year..... I honestly don't know what feeling is this!

My sister wanted popia

So here they are

and Zuhus peri-peri chicken! We had eaten this twice.

And there were fried chicken, some pizza, some nasi lemak etc etc

And after 11 days, I went back to Egypt, the journey back was nice except that I had to surrender some of my liquid stuff to the Edinburgh Airport security, it's not that I didn't obey the less than 100ml rules, it's because I thought I need to present all those <100ml quantity of each container in 20cm x 20cm clear bags regardless how many clear bags I had so I brought like....three......

And suddenly during the checkpoint the officer told me that each passenger can only carry ONE clear bag otherwise I needed to check in the luggage. I was like WHAT KIND OF RULE IS THAT?? I THOUGHT MOST COUNTRIES ALLOW <100ML CABIN LIQUID IN NO MATTER HOW LARGE THE CLEAR BAG IS AS LONG AS THE TOTAL LIQUID DOESN'T EXCEED 1 LITRE???

But yeah it's their country and I'm the foreigner I have to obey, hence goodbye to some amount of moisturizer, a jar-full mask, my holy grail foundation, my face mist, two Zoella's hand creams and a Tiger Balm ointment jar. 

What a chaos during emptying all three clear bags into just ONE which was absolutely impossible and I really hoped I've made wise selection!

But do you know which things I surrendered that I regretted the most?

THE TIGER BALM OINTMENT !! (yeah I'm like the old nenek who loves ointment) 

So yeah that's all about this year winter vacation.

Till then

Assalamualaikum!

Another handbag story~

Assalamualaikum..

Hi.

This is another story about another handbag.

That day when I accompanied my sister for her stock-ups to Edinburgh, I was looking for stuff I could buy. Basically I needed a handbag because I purposely didn't bring any handbag home.
A good reason for another new handbag!

We're strolling around in the sunway carnival women department, and I straight away made my way to the handbags department. This time I wanted something black, because obviously I didn't own any black handbag. Suddenly there's this handbag caught my eyes.

mini eyes printing satchel! It's cute and cool and it's black. The dome shape I like, the mini size besides of being light, it's easy to carry, no extra wasted burden on shoulder ( God knows how I'm actually very aware of the remaining wasted space of my handbag which I don't usually use, and the extra weight aches my shoulder )

I asked Mummy how did it look on me, and Mummy replied,
"Awat handbag penuh dengan mata mata tu? Tak comellah! Pilih yang lain." LOL Mummy!
Of course, I explained to Mummy why I thought I like this handbag, and Mummy still said no.
I didn't say anything after that because maybe Mummy's right and I thought this bag might not be evergreen, another 2 years it's not that cool anymore, just a handbag with pairs of eyes.
So yeah no maybe in the next life! Leuls

Then Mummy and I strolled around the mall and went to the groceries to buy Life Chili Sauce in the plastic packaging because we don't travel with glass bottle and there's no other chili sauce can beat Life's, and also we rarely find Life Chili Sauce in other mall, so yeah grabbed A LOT of them while Farah was still in the women department.

On the way returning to Farah, we passed by GUESS store, oh I've never known that there's GUESS here, I straight away entered the store and looked around at the stuff there. Came this nice sweet SA welcoming and entertaining me. As what I wanted, I looked around for black handbag.

this is Rhoda Frame Shoulder Bag. Black; checked. Texture; great. Shape; good. Size; great. With additional red pompom key-chain accessory on it. This bag is great, the only thing here is the handle, shoulder? No madam, it's for my late 20's to 30's. For now, I'm good with long strap. 

Korry Dome Satchel in Black; black here means ALL black, including the hardware; the zipper, the tendons and joints connecting the limb (strap) and the trunk ( bag), the studs including the key-chain.

Everything's great about this one here, except that I might looked like carrying 'batu belah batu bertangkup' all my way and it's slightly large. So black! So, yeah no. I think the handbag manufacturer should maintain the usual black handbag with silvery or golden or the latest one; rose golden hardware. This doesn't make the bag looks like a freaking rock~

The same Korry Dome Satchel but in khaki green. This bag's so marvelous, the color is not black and it's slightly large. So, I put it back on the shelf.

Shea Cali Dome Satchel in black. What should I say about this love here; everything's perfect!

Then, I went out from that store, because I didn't want to rush for decision. And I didn't want the persuading face of the SA affected my decision.

Minutes later, I went back into the GUESS. And finally picked one of the handbag I've seen just now.

I made the payment while the SA packed the bag. And yeah love, let's go home.

New love! But you're no alone baby, your family isn't here but no worries you'll see your family soon!

What good about this bag?

It's black, the dome shape, the body pattern, the good moderate size, nice padlock accessory, long  adjustable strap, mobile hand strap, it has three compartments; two zipped compartments one contains mini zipped-less pockets for phones, cards etc, the other one contains zipped mini pocket. The middle zipped-less large compartment, closed by magnetic strap, is for easily-accessible stuff which you always need most of the time, as for me like my headphone or maybe notebooks we don't know.

So, that's the story of my new love. That's all.

Till then.

Bye!

Going home!

Assalamualaikum

Hi!

Finally, I'm home!

It's the best feeling to be home.

It has been 7 amazing days since the touchdown.

The journey home this time is adventurous to be honest but it's okay as long as the destination is home, every obstacles are acceptable!

So this time I traveled home with Etihad, was my very first time traveling with this national UAE airlines. 

Departed from Cairo, it was a 3 anxious hour of car ride from Alexandria. It took me half an hour to finally get off from the traffic congestion in Alexandria. I was so nervous that I might missed the flight, no that can't be happened! I prayed A LOTT so that I get home safe and sound, but firstly let me reach Cairo Airport safely and on time.

Finally I reached Cairo Airport and was so clueless about where to go which entrance to enter, as different terminals for different groups of airlines and each entrance for each terminals takes you to different airlines counter, oceans of people and lack of signs, it was so rare that I didn't have idea what to do haha

Luckily together with me, there's this group of my batchmates traveling together, so I didn't have to think a lot and just followed them.

We had to wait for so long for check in, due to the reason we ourselves didn't even understand. They said the we still didn't get to check in the next flight from Abu Dhabi to Kuala Lumpur, like how come?? I've checked in through mobile phone and already have gotten the mobile boarding pass. And I thought it's not the AUH-KUL flight, it was the CAI-AUH flight, maybe it's overbooked or what I didn't know. However at last we all finally boarded the flight. All of us.

I was so famished during the journey that I ate everything served to me. I barely remember what happened during the flight from Cairo to Abu Dhabi maybe because I snoozed a lot. Oh ya and the food was only served to us after about hour and half after the departure, which was so long thank God I didn't die from hunger.

Landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport without having much time for butt to have rest from the long walk before we again hopped on other shuttle bus to catch our next flight to Kuala Lumpur. So long before we finally takeoff, and Abu Dhabi's so hot, that we drenched in sweat. Even in the freaking plane.

Having good time onboard, I have to admit it, Etihad serves nice inflight meal! I finished almost everything on the tray. The movie selection is not that various, but there's still stuff you can watch to kill the time. After 7 hours, we finally landed, and I was so annoyed that we're quite delayed but felt grateful at the same time that we're safely arrived, and I had to catch another flight to Penang. Had so limited time, that I sometimes had the feeling that I might missed it. And yeah I missed the freaking flight! I rushed like no one business and only made it to the bag drop counter 20 minutes before departure, and only to be rejected by the counter staff. What a sad night, that my tears finally dropped after few minutes pooled inside my inner canthi. I just wanted to be with my family that night, that's all I asked for. After several minutes of calming myself, I booked the earliest ticket on the next day, and dropped the bag at the counter, and joined my other friends who took flight the next day, and had good time talking and gossiping. Thank God for these people for cheering me up.

The next day after waiting for like 9 hours, I finally boarded and an hour later, landed at Penang International Airport, only Farah and Abah fetched me, as Mummy went to work and Boboy went to his school.

God knows how blessed it feels to be home, hugged by family and talked a lot and a lot, laughed a lot and a lot. So good only those who are away from their family for a long time could understand.

Till then.
Assalamualaikum.

Raya 2016

Assalamualaikum

Hi

Selamat Hari Raya everybody!

Maaf zahir batin 

Remember when I said I didn't want to prepare anything for Raya?

I didn't do that for real, because at the Raya Eve last night I made myself some Raya cookies.

It's so terrible if I didn't prepare anything for Raya huhu

I made the cookies at Yana's house because I don't have oven at home, and it's always better to carry home some lighter containers full with Raya cookies rather than carrying a huge heavy oven to borrow, then to return it again will be another laziness. Last year we borrowed someone's oven from our neighborhood, what a chaos along the way haha!

So for that, I went to the Fathalla, a supermarket near my neighborhood, with Yana to buy the ingredients.

It's so tiring guys, it was like oceans of humans there in Fathalla, especially at the cashier area.

And of course we reached Yana's house, drenching in sweat!

The first thing to do was to make the jem nanas (pineapple jam sounds so specifically for the bread spread) for the tart.

So this time, I decided to make my long time craving tart nanas and cornflakes madu (which is easy to make and always delicious at the same time)

And yeah we had to make the jem nanas out of the whole uncut pineapple, which was wow, I have never cut one! So we slaughtered off the crown, then peeled of the weird skin of the pineapple, and finally, carefully took out the pineapple eyes, Yana said that we looked like dissecting some human muscles haha 

I was so amazed at how we successfully cleaned out the pineapple but forgot to snap some pictures.

Then we cut it into smaller dices. I thought that we had to blend the pineapple, but Yana's housemate's Mom said that blended pineapple will have lot of juice. Hence, the dice.

After that, we fried the pineapple dices without oil, waiting for like 10 minutes for the pineapple solid dices to transform into something semi-solid and it felt like forever~

Urgh why so stubborn these dices!!

I felt like blending them! Less than a minute later, I found myself transferring those hot stubborn pineapple babies from the pan into the blender, and less than two minutes later, we got the semi-solid form of pineapple! But still we had to fry to dry it before leaving the jem nanas inside the fridge to cool off!

After breaking the last fast of this Ramadan, we started to prepare for the Raya cookies. 

While waiting for the jem nanas to cool off, I prepared the madu for the cornflakes, by using the 'main taram' method, I melted some amount of butter which I didn't know how much exactly, together with the honey and sugar. Clearly, I'm not the type of cook you wanna refer to for the recipe~

After the destined couple had successfully mixed together, I left it for a while to let it cool off, and while that I went crushing the cornflakes, after some time I took the pan out from the kitchen, I put the crushed cornflakes, some raisins, some bijan, and colourful hearts and stars into the lovely couple mixture of butter and honey. Mix them carefully till all the cornflakes coated with the lovely sweet couple.

Came this annoying phase of most of the Raya cookies, to make all of them into bite-sized! 

For cornflakes madu, we put it into colourful paper cups, well all my Raya cookies were in cups =.=

So yeah, Yana and I super-patiently put the stuff into the cups, after that, baked them in oven for like 10 minutes, don't remember the temperature, Yana managed that out. The cornflakes madu had finally done! 

Now the more difficult part; tart nanas,

I've never made tart nanas before, I was just Mummy's helper, so my knowledge about making tart nanas is basically observational not experiences!

But worries no more, we have the internet and stuff to sort this tart nanas problem out!

So the ingredients are, wheat flour, corn flour, butter, sugar, egg, powder milk, vanilla essence, and yellow artificial colour so that the dough didn't look pale.

If you really wanna know how to make the dough, feel free to search on your own, because the procedures are basically the same.

Mixing the butter, egg and sugar!

After the flour family joined the team!

After my hand joined the team haha

Firstly, we made the trial of three pieces to improvise everything in case these trials have gone bad.

The result after the second longest 15 minutes of my life ( well the first is always OSCE exam man don't you ever dare to seize the throne) was the crust went well, but the jem nanas was a mess!

So SOUR, after all the three scoopfuls of sugar! I've tasted it seconds after I broke my fast and it was good! Maybe it was the post-fasting tongue, so low threshold~

I was so frustrated and decided to improvise the jem nanas, who wants to eat sour tart nanas tell me? Even me the tart nanas all time lover would reject weird-taste tart nanas!

I literally threw LOTS of sugar into the pan and started the frying process all over again!

After thorough tasting and LOTS and LOTS of sugar had been poured into the pan, we decided to cool it off inside the fridge.

While waiting, we made the dough-later-crust and put them into the cups, after finishing the whole dough, we took out the jem nenas and again did the trials, this time two pieces, couldn't waste more of the innocent dough.

After 20 minutes this time, we took out the trials from the oven and cool them off before tasting them.

The result was.........it went WELL! SO WELL !!

Excitedly, Yana and I stuffed the jem nenas onto the crust!

Weren't they beautiful? kikiki~

So that was the story behind the tart nanas! 

And today was the first Raya, I woke up for Subuh and couldn't sleep anymore, it's so weird we didn't have to makan sahur anymore, my stomach rumbled so much, but Yana refused to wake up.........

No Yana, no cook, no food :(

Oh ya btw I slept at Yana's house last night, because those tart nanas only done after 12 freaking am!

Soon after that, Yana finally woke up and realized that it's Raya today haha~

She cooked me some fried rice, we didn't cook the rendang ketupat and all, we could have it at the Mara Raya Feast later.

Went home along with the Raya cookies, prepared the baju raya, took bath and got ready to attend the Mara Raya Feast!

I don't have any decent photo of myself alone huhu

the food, so lazy man to turn this picture, took it raw from phone

Me, Eila the housemate, Yana the cookies partner, and Dina

Me with Siti the classmate

me with Jen and Syaza the classmates

Me and Eila

me and Eila outside

the wrap for the Mara Raya Feast. Alhamdulillah for the laughters and happiness!

So Annoyed

Assalamualaikum

Hi

So, it's approaching Syawal now, about 2 days more.

I'm sad as this is my second time of not celebrating Hari Raya with my family.

So, I refuse to prepare anything for Hari Raya as it's so saddening.

What is the meaning of Hari Raya without my family? *sigh

And next year will be the third year of no Raya, again huh

Eila barged into my room just now to ask for some paracetamol; she's having the girl monthly-thing, the cramp seems so real this time, she had never asked paracetamol from me before.

We had some small talk for a while, her boyfriend had gone back to Malaysia to celebrate raya and apparently, her boyfriend's family already had their Raya family photo thingy, probably because her boyfriend's brother which is now a doctor, doesn't get Raya break and has to celebrate it at the hospital.

I cringed because I thought it's impossible for Moslem government staff to not have Raya break.
Apparently, I'm wrong.

This has made me sad and annoyed even more.
Three Raya-less years and suddenly God forbids that I don't have Raya break during my housemanship (if Allah wills).
How painful and torturing it is to me?
I don't care if I don't get enough rest, I don't care if I have to work for 33 hours, I don't care if I don't get enough time to eat or drink ( it's okay I can get slimmer ) but I freaking care if I don't have the freaking Raya break.
Please Allah, please give me Raya break *wailing*

And tell you what, we almost don't have Raya break this year, the schedule so packed that we still have class on first day of Raya and the consecutive days.
That's so terrible I got no mood for the whole day, until the SR (my last two years job haha) told us that he had our department rescheduled the time table, and finally we have like four-days off.
Alhamdulillah.
Although it doesn't change the fact that I'm not going to celebrate Raya with my family, still the tense has reduced a bit, because having class on Raya Aidilfitri sounds so terrible guys. So terrible.

Thanks for reading my whines.
Selamat Hari Raya guys.
Till then.
Assalamualaikum.

Turkish Airlines review

Assalamualaikum

Hi

Well that day I traveled to Turkey with my sister, I chose Turkish Airlines, as well as travelling back to Malaysia during last winter break.

I always love planes, airliners, stewards, stewardess, pilots, seats, IFE, planes windows, the wings, the rolls royce engines, everything about planes. I always watch the Air Crash Investigation, the youtube videos of landing planes, taking-off planes, plane reviews etc. I always feel happy and excited when it comes to planes. I feel free and my homesickness somehow cured after I watched some planes videos. Haha weird right. If only I live near airport, I probably always find myself at the runway gate wearing ear-muff watching planes land and takeoff. 

I admire pilots, a lot! 

At how they manage to land and to takeoff the plane and everything, maybe all they need is just to activate the auto-pilot mode to cruise, but it  always triggers the excitement in me to see them, the pilots sit at the most front, in the cockpit, leading the whole fleet.

Okay enough about my enthusiasm. 

Back to the topic, it was the first time I traveled on Turkish Airlines, and within a month gap between travelling to Turkey and going back to Malaysia. Overall it's good and nice experience.

Bound for Istanbul on this fleet Airbus A321 with 3-3 seats configuration, people often misunderstands that Airbus is always a big plane when they actually produce smaller plane like above. No matter Boeing or Airbus company, they both produce small and big planes. Malaysia Airlines uses Boeing 737 a lot as smaller fleet, and that maybe explains why Malaysians always misunderstand the Airbus. You guys may actually look at Air Asia fleets, they use a lot of Airbus A320 as their smaller carrier. Don't misunderstand. Get the concept right haha

It was an early morning flight, were there a lot of passengers onboard? I barely remember, I just wanna see my sister badly huhu
As for an Airbus A321, I didn't expect it to run as rapidly as a Boeing 737, but it did!
Speed is something I really enjoy when riding on a plane, the faster it speeds to takeoff the better.
But nothing is comparable to MAS Boeing 737, it always speeds and it's freaking enjoyable!
The sound of rolls royce engines grinding is so exciting, rushing your adrenaline!
And that's what fun about riding a plane.

On such a short one hour plus flight, they served full course breakfast meal and it's good. Bad thing is my stomach was so bloated, I couldn't eat.
So, it was a short flight, nothing much to say.
Reaching Ataturk Airport at 6 something.

On our way back to Alexandria, we traveled on an A319, more or less same like A321.
Again it was a nice flight, and as I said before nothing much could be said for an hour flight.
But Ataturk Airport is a very busy airport indeed, not because a lot of humans roaming around in the airport, maybe the airport is not big enough to accommodate that huge numbers of passengers, but it's because there're so much planes queuing up to land and to takeoff, in the dark you can see the plane's white strobe lights, there were like three planes queuing up to land, the most front landed, then came another one to complete the set of three! Like non-stop, and it amazed me how the ATC works on that, the planes don't collide mid-air, just don't God forbid. Same goes during takeoff, as I observed, there were two runways for take off and they make full use of it. And in mid-air as we takeoff, we could see other plane landing and it's near we can see what type of plane it is. where it's supposed to have 1 km distance at least between planes mid-air and maybe it was already 1 km, it was my first time encountered such experience huhu

22 days later...
Travelling from Alexandria again to Istanbul on same fleet and Istanbul to Kuala Lumpur on an Airbus A330-300. We had like 12 hours layover at Istanbul and for that, we got to stay at the hotel, Four Points Sheraton somewhere in Istanbul, got there by Turkish Airlines shuttle bus.
If you have 7 hours layover for business class and 10hours for economy, you should get either hotel stay or Istanbul tour, choose one. Under ONE condition, there's no alternative flight within shorter time, for example, there're two flights operating to your next destination, first one within 5 hours and second one within 10hours, if you book the second flight although it's 10hours layover, you don't get the accommodation as it's not a forced layover, instead it's for pleasure.
And to get the accommodation, it's not like someone will call you straight away once you get out from the plane. You have to get out as if Istanbul is your destination, passing through passport control, obtain the entry stamp. For those countries who need visa to enter Turkey, please obtain it before, may do it through online as well.  You don't have to collect your luggage at the belt, it won't be there~ Your luggage will be transported directly to your next flight. And don't follow the transit lines before passing the passport control as it'll bring you straight away to the gate to your next destination, and do enjoy the 10 freaking hours of layover staring at the occupied gate for about 10 flights before your turn.

And after you get out from the arrival hall, turn right and go to the Starbucks area, both the hotel stay counter and the tour manager are there. We chose hotel stay that day, I don't care if there's none of my friends chose hotel. I'd still be with my choice. I felt so tired as I spent the whole night at the Alexandria Borg El Arab Airport and some hours onboard, so I needed rest. Miraculously with me, there were Zaidah, Maya, and his boyfriend-now-fiance Amir, last winter trip travelmates, and they forced me to join them touring around Istanbul. And they succeeded. =__=
We had breakfast then we went out.
It was snowing that time, and I froze! I think I'm not a winter-person. I can be so grumpy in cold weather and so tired too.
We snapped pictures, I was almost not interested, like the hell I just took pictures here three weeks ago! And I'm not a photo-kind of person anyway, just take it for the sake of future reminiscing tools leuls~
We strolled around at Sultanahmet area, at the Grand Bazaar, directing them way as I still had my recent memory.
And on our way back to the hotel, we've been cheated by the cab driver, and it took us more than 2 hours to reach the hotel, and missed the shuttle bus as well, as we're scheduled to take the 3pm shuttle bus and our flight was at 6pm.
We asked the receptionist politely has the shuttle gone, and there he blamed us for returning back late. It wasn't our mistake for god sake! And the predicament continued, Amir then suggested that we went to the airport by cab. I was like we've been cheated by cab driver then we took another cab to reach here and again another cab to the airport?! How many bucks more we need to waste on this?
Then I've gone mental, almost yelling at the receptionist to check for the next shuttle bus, and there'd be another trip at 4pm. OMG IT DOESN'T KILL YOU TO TELL US THAT THERE'S ANOTHER TRIP  WE CAN CATCH! instead of lecturing us like a grandmother~

And we managed to arrive at the airport and got on the plane. I think Turkish Airlines has to improve their ground service, some of the staff members were quite rude, they're so pissed off when we asked them more questions or to repeat what they've said as if you asked them for their kidneys. Some of them speak bad english too, maybe because of the Turkish tongue you barely understand what they say.
Working for long hours is not an excuse for you to treat your customers badly, should've known better before you decided to take the customer service job.

A330-300 or often written as A333. They always make everything simpler, eg Boeing 737-800 becomes B738.

I got to sit on 7K, It's always good to sit at the front, got food earlier, got to disembark earlier, with lavatory only 5 steps away. What's not so good is when you embark a bit later than the rest, you'll find out that you don't have space to keep your suitcase in the over-head compartment near your seat and you have to keep it a bit further at the back, so do embark earlier for the sake of your suitcase.
I always choose window seats, because as they say, we can enjoy the sky view, mehh don't simply believe it, you'd enjoy the view for like good five minutes and then you'd just shut the window because you want to sleep the whole flight~
Departed a bit late because as I said before, Ataturk is a damn busy airport. The pilots have to fight for the runway hehe hell no, they queue up to takeoff and obediently follow the ATC's instruction. There was this one deadliest accident ever in aviation history involved two giant B747s, between the KLM and Pan Am at Tenerife Airport runway; due to heavy fog and miscommunication between the cockpit and ATC. So, as passenger we have to understand the situation before getting mad at the delay.
Once the aircraft stable, we're given the refreshment; Turkish delight and amenity kit which is quite great for economy class. We got some socks, sleep mask, mini toothbrush and toothpaste, ear plugs and lip balm in the reusable pouch. Before the meal served, we're given beverages and a pack of legumes; hazelnut I think. And if you ask for soft drinks, the stewardess will give you the whole 350ml can unlike other airliners, they give you a glass of it and spare the remaining for other passengers or sometimes give the mini can of 150ml, it's Qatar I think.

The meal was good, I barely remember what they served us, just they used the whole wheat bread for bun which I didn't like huhu
I really love in-flight hot buns, if I happened to not get meal onboard which is likely impossible, at least they should have one option in case they ran out the other option, I'd be alive with like 5 buns and butter!
And Turkish Airlines also fly their chefs out together with the passengers onboard. and I think it's awesomely-rare!
We got two full course meals for 11 hours flight, and if it's not enough, you may go to the galley to grab some food.

Most of the time I just snoozed and watch movies. I didn't read unless it's really important to read.
People always think that medical students always read medical stuff whenever and wherever.
No, I don't. I read when exams are approaching. And when the finals actually come, I live in my cave, being antisocial for like one month huhu

And dear hijabis ladies, for your comfort, you may take your scarf off and cover your head with a comfy shawl, you don't have to use pins, just flip it to your shoulder as long as it covers, maybe it's quite difficult to change in that limited and opened space, but it's not an excuse, I could even change the thick sweatshirt into some cotton shirt on my seat without my skin being seen, Malaysia's hot and I was from winter area. And refreshed my face and applied some make up *wink*
Amir and Maya were like 4 rows back and once we arrived, Maya was so surprised looking at me like I just got out from house.

So that was the journey going back to Malaysia with Turkish Airlines.

Everything's almost the same when returning back to Alexandria, except that I sobbed a lot because I left my family and I actually revised paediatics stuff onboard as finals were coming that time.
Praise the Lord, I did quite well  and my wish granted during last finals. The layover was around 6 hours and we spent the whole time talking about how we miss our family badly and how short the break was and how we wish everything's gonna be over really quick and how the finals were actually around the corner. I was like so demotivated but still have to swallow everything up to focus for the finals.

Till then
Ramadhan Kareem.
Assalamualaikum.