Poor birdy

Another surprise find but this time it was sad news, we found a dead bird in our front  porch :(  These birds were flying everywhere, especially in our neighbourhood.  But we didnt know why one day we found this bird hiding in the exhaust pipe of our car!  I think this bird is called swallow bird. These birds love to hide and build their nests in caves or corner of houses.  And maybe for this particular one, it didnt realise it was a dangerous place to be, when hubby started the engine and it was caught inside.  Poor poor birdy.

Happy Birthday!

Special greetings to my youngest brother on the ocassion of his birthday on 25th November 2011.  May Allah bless you and may all your dreams come true.  Stay well and healthy.

My brother with wife.

Our surprise find

At our backyard.

Life is so full of surprises and unexpected encounter.  No matter how small or big, its always a welcoming thing.  Look what we found at the back side of our house.  A fully grown chilli plant.  Ok I know  its nothing special about it but let me explain.  Our back yard is made up of concrete, nothing grows there.  We seldom venture out there, its like the least favourite place in the whole house.  But one day we were surprise to see the plant and its grown in the drain!  Its really fertile and bears red and plump chillis.  So funny. 

It must came from the chilli seeds I threw while cooking and ended up in the drain.  And with the moisture and the sunlight made it thrive.  Its really a welcoming sight.

Another wedding

..... of another niece.  I didnt realise I have so many nieces, although not directly, most of them are my cousins' kids who are all grown up right now.  This was one of them.  And I am sure there were going to be lots more weddings in the future!

The wedding was held at their home, very seldom people doing that these days.  The trend is now to have weddings in hotels or multipurpose hall.  But its no problem at all, except yesterday it was really really hot.  Luckily fans were provided otherwise we would be drenched in sweat.

Anyhow, congratulations to Rina and hubby.  May your marriage life filled with happiness and bliss, Insya Allah.

Traditional Food Festival for SSEAYP

Last night I accompanied hubby to meet his photography gang then we went to the residence of Hj Zainal Hj Safar, the owner of Soto Rindu Restaurant for Brunei Traditional Food Festival in conjunction with the arrival of Fuji Maru which carries 300 participants of the 38th Ship Southeast Asia Youth Programme or SSEAYP.

We arrived at the residence at around 8pm and I was really impressed with the huge house with lots of bling-bling and all. This guy really does well with his restaurants and catering businesses. The house was awesome from the ourside and since we sat outside we didnt know how it looked inside but I guess it would be grand as well.  Although... not to my liking since I don’t really fancy big and impressive houses lol.. . I much prefer small cute and cozy houses, if you must know... We were lead to the white tents at the front of the house and waited for the guest of honour for the night. While waiting the guests were entertained by traditional music which was really nice and refreshing. A good initiative to promote the local music. The night was graced by the attendance of the Japanese Ambassador Mr Noriki Hirosi and his wife who looked rather elegant in her kimono.

Then the food testing began. There were arrays of traditional Brunei food and the most popular one is the Ambuyat of course. We didn’t know what the Ambassador thought of it though lol.

It was a busy, colourful and loud night. So many people around and difficult to see who were the SSEAYP participants and who were the the locals. It would be nice though if the participants wore their traditional attire for the night so that we knew who they were and where they were from.

When its time to eat, it was rather chaotic, very long queue and most food ran out. I think the host didn’t expect to see so many people turned up lol. I felt so uncomfortable during the queue and we just ended up eating a lone sphagetti, not so Bruneian at all hehehe.

After dinner, there were songs and dance by the participants but we didn’t stay long since our daughter was at home by herself and hasn’t had dinner yet. It was a good night although I didnt know anyone there!

The residence from the distant where we parked.

Arriving at the tent.

Some of the guests.

Lining up to meet and greet the Japanese Ambassador

Arrival of the Ambassador

The host showing the Japanese Ambassador the the array of traditional food.

The wives.

Showing and explaining the food.

More explanations

Maybe by now the Ambassador and his wife didnt know what to eat anymore...

Some of the participants of the SSEAYP

More guests...

Hubby amongst the crowds.

Hubby with his friends

Us

Look at all these people, its Makan time.

Our queue

Traditional Music

Blissful

Sometimes its just felt good to be driven around hehe.  I was acting like the "Mak Datin" today being driven around, sent to work and brought to lunch.  I was even sat at the back and played with my Galaxy.  Look at them, I was truly being pampered lol.

VIBER on smartphones

I just came to know about the apps.  Maybe its been around for a while already but I was just being introduced to it by hubby.  This apps is really cool.  I have been using it on my tab for a few days and I am excited to use it.  This apps can be used on any smartphone of course and for Samsung, it can be downloaded for free. 

Very very handy and whats most important the calls and messages are FREE.  We can make calls and send messages for free!  It can act as text service or as MSN and get a response immediately.  I think its great.  Can really cut cost on handphone spending.  Although as any other internet phone, the talking time could be delayed for a second or so, so you have to get the timing right between you and the caller otherwise you end up talking at the same time or pause at the same time, hehe.  A bit more reading of this apps is here.

11.11.11



What a nice date today huh.

Nice and easy to remember right?  There might not be any significant implications to it but its just so unique that we wont be seeing such number in our life time again.  I am sure there are people who wanted to do something big on this date, like giving birth or getting married.  Why not.  After all it wont come any time soon anyway.  I agree it is very special date and there were some  history behind the similar date too.

For us, yes.. something happened today too.  Something significant and big although I dont feel like sharing it here just yet.  But I am hoping this is the beginning of a better and bright future for us as a family.  Insya Allah.

Our first time at Le Taj Restaurant

Another first time!

We know about Indian food, not like them not hate them.  We tried a few eateries whether in town or in Malaysia, we even tried one in Christchurch New Zealand.  For me, they are ok, some are yummy depending on the menu.

Then its all started.  Quite recently, hubby, me and a few friends, went for a North Indian food in Seria and all the nostalgic of eating and enjoying them came rushing back! 

So the next day while we both were in Bandar,  we wanted to have another dose of Indian food, so we went to Le' Taj in Kiulap.  Its our first time there, I knew this restaurant existed for a long time already, but we didnt have the urge to go and eat there.  So this was the day!

And we were not dissapointed, there were variety of dishes to choose from, but as usual, we only selected the dishes we were more familiar with, lol.  Well.. as I said before, I am not that adventurous when it came to food.

But the food was ok, fulfilled our needs although they were abit pricey as opposed to other restaurants, but we only live once, so what the heck.  We might consider of coming back too...

The interior of the restaurant, we both actually like the set up, quiet cozy.

The menu, quite extensive, so many variety to choose from.

Hubby choice of Lamb Tikka Masala, this bowl cost B$7.00

My choice of Chicken Butter Masala, it costs B$7.00 although the chicken were shredded to small pieces only

Garlic Nan, cost B$1.70 per piece.

Our lunch spread, with Tandoori Chicken.  Although I didnt quite like the tandoori chicken, it was a bit hard and dry.

Hubby enjoying his lunch, swith ray of sunlight behind him, dramatic, hehe....

Salam Aidil Adha

Syukur to Allah SWT, its time for the Eid Al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice.  In Mecca, Muslims who performed the Hajj have concluded their pilgrimage and they are now Haji or Hajjah, congratulations.

For the rest of the Muslims around the world, we celebrate the day by going to the morning prayers and perform the sacrifice.  We all remember Nabi Ibrahim's decision to sacrifice his son, spared only at the very last moment. Therefore, in honor of that moment, an animal is sacrificed to Allah and its meat is shared with those close and those in need. What a beautiful story, how someone could do such sacrifice!  His own son.  How it taught us to do the same.  For the love of Allah, we could just do the same, we could sacrifice our time, energy, money, anything for our faith and Allah will recognise all our deeds.

Insya Allah, one day its going to be our turn.

The one soursop

This is the soursop fruit we bought from the Tamu Kianggeh and it cost us B$10.  The auntie who sold us this fruit, told us it cost B$5 per kg and this fruit was 2kg, therefore it was B$10.  Hubby balanced it on his hands and told me discreetly it didnt weight that much but hey how did we know, we trusted the auntie of course.  Rather than going home dissapointed, we dedicted to buy it.

When we reached home, we really wanted to know the weight so I took out my baking scale and weighed the fruit and it was true that the fruit only weighed 1.5kg.  Not 2kg... not even closed so we were dumbfounded how come people could cheat just like that.  Why did the auntie convinced us that it was 2kg?  She even mentioned it a few times it was really 2kg.  Well.. for us, the morale of doing business is to be honest, and try to earn the money the right way, to get the Barakah and Hidayah from the Al-Mighty.  Not to be decietful and lie to people just to get a few extra dollars.  No wonder some people just never get rich because the money was wrongly earned, Masya Allah.

Anyway, since the fruit tasted so nice (although I think its so ripe already and if we didnt consume it right away it may turned out bad), we decided to forget about it and move on. 

The 2kg soursop fruit (not)

The fruit at home with the soursop fruit juice we bought from Hua Ho

Time to know the truth!

See!  It didnt come close to 2kg!

But the fruit was yummy....

A visit to Tamu kianggeh

Since we know all the benefits of soursop fruit, we have been looking for the fruit for a while now but its not easy to find one.  So we decided to drop by at Tamu Kianggeh and search for it.  Well, we did find one, the ONLY one and with some twist to it.  I am going to blog about it on the next post because I want to dedicate this post to our visit to this place. 

It was a saturday so we didnt find so many people and not so many vendors.   But the weather was breezy and not so hot so its an ideal time to go.  The best time to go is Friday when this tamu is buzzing.  We prefer less people of course, it so hard to menauver around when there are too many people around.

The sign board at the entrance of the tamu

The river splitting the mainland from the tamu area.

There are people selling fresh fish here.

Local vegetables

We could find every kind of vegetables.

Dried fish and shrimps

Me among the crowd

Some cooked food also sold here

At first I didnt know what this is but then I remember they were called "Barut", for kids and for women to use after giving birth.  They are used and wrapped with some herbs around the tummy area to warm up the tummy of mothers and babies.  You dont find these at the supermarkets!

I definitely didnt know what these were then hubby told me they were cigarettes, home made ones.

We are acting like tourists that day, hehe