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.