Living with Sarah

Salam Merdeka. Selamat Hari Kebangsaan. Samalah tu. It's already end of August. Cepatnya masa berlalu. Pagi tadi sempat tengok perarakan. By then the performance has ended. Every year mesti teringat pengalaman tahun 1987. I guess once you participated in Hari Kebangsaan parade/performance, you are forever in this group of people who feel so proud being the selected few to perform. For us dulu as school kids mestilah lagi meriah and fun. Pagi merdeka ni I made a simple yet delicious breakfast. Asalnya semalam seharian di IOI City Mall, and before we went back, singgah kat Bread Talk. Aliyah wanted this bread with egg in the middle. I told her I was not so confident of the freshness. The egg yolk must be runny, so mesti kena freshly baked. Harga pun agak mahal ie RM4.50 per piece. So, pagi ni, dengan berbekalkan memory nampak someone shared how to make it on FB, I pun buat. 5 minutes siap. Cost tak sampai RM1. Butter the bread, then using a cup tekap bahagian tengah. Penyek-pen

I am a fan of Syed Azmi. Yup, the "touch the dog" guy. Personally, I don't see any harm in touching a dog. Masa belajar tak pernah jumpa yang touch a dog tu haram. Kalau touch tangan basah, bulu dia kering or vice versa pun masih tak jatuh hukum haram pun. Kena sucikan najis berat dengan sertu. That's it. Kena kejar dengan dog is a totally different story. That's why I have pepper spray in my bike bag. Despite all the negative comments about him by keyboard warriors yang percaya diri mereka adalah makhluk Allah yang paling mulia dan ada chop "confirm masuk syurga" kat dahi masing-masing, Syed Azmi has inspired thousands of people to do good. In the simplest little ways. Buat baik bukan berat. Maklumlah, nak derma 2.6 billion akak memang tak mampu. Tapi, kalau buat yang mudah-mudah tu, insyallah boleh. Tapi nak start buat something totally different, in ways yang diri sendiri tak pernah terfikir nak buat, is seriously not easy. Thus the reason why I h

Minggu yang agak "fit" sebenarnya. Hari Selasa dan Khamis Hubby guna kereta pagi. Jadi, I telah menjadi "Cik Salmah" nurse. Pegi my mother's place naik basikal. Ever since my SIL Kak Ros operate thyroid, I take over the task of bathing my mother in the morning. Suka je kayuh, cuma bila sampai kat corner half-way between my house and my mother's, selalu ada segerombolan anjing yang agak garang. Sekarang dah beranak-pinak pun. Sebelum sampai tempat tu, memang siap-siap baca ayat Kursi, segala ayat Nabi Sulaiman (rasanya my late father yang ajar dulu), selawat, zikir... Alhamdulillah, setakat ni lalu OK saja. Pagi ni kayuh ke route Batang Benar yang dah lama sangat tak pergi dengan Hubby dan 2 anak sedara yang kaki basikal ie Along and Ijjul. Total +- 30kms. Wahh... sekali kayuh terus berpuluh km kan? Sekarang duduk kat kedai dengan mata yang agak berat... Penat kayuh dengan budak bujang umur 20an ni...  Tiga Bujang Lapok... Sempat naik laluan sikal k

Minggu yang agak busy. We have one confirmed training. Since my batuk tak baik-baik dah dekat 6 bulan, I am in no position to conduct a training. Nanti participants semua lari dengar akak batuk kokol. Ok, I tak lah batuk sentiasa. Tapi once triggered... not a pretty sight :). So, dalam proses mengupdate training materials dan slides yang dah lama tak sentuh. Banyak benda baru nak include especially current issues and technologies. Hubby jugak kena conduct nanti... Sambil buat slides, that consulting work yang Hubby buat full-time dan I buat part-time tu dah memerlukan deliverable. Meeting dengan "boss" project, being briefed on previous project and now I have to come up with report on current business assessment. Maka bertimbunlah report yang berkaitan dan tidak berkaitan yang perlu dibaca. Baru bukak satu terus mengantuk! Anyway, I posted one of my felt craft kat Carousell and I got my first customer! Yeay! Ok la, not really first customer. First customer was Hubby yang

My experience with Carousell has been excellent. Managed to sell my niece's Guess handbag in just under 3 hours after posting. And, yang paling best, managed to buy Haruki Murakami books below market price from this seller called "Goodxltd". Highly recommended. While Colourless was 2nd hand, and bitten by the seller's pet bunny, "The Strange Library" is brand new. Still wrapped in plastic. And I bought it for RM47 including postage. Retail is RM66.80. That's what I do with my money. Buy books. I don't shop for clothes or tudungs or shoes or handbags. I need new clothes and my tudungs are out of fashion. Shoes? Not really. Handbag? The one I'm using now has started to peel at the strap. But still usable. Books? Anytime! I have not finished reading Colourless. Not even 1/4 through. This book is so much thinner. I think I'll keep it at the shop so that I can read when I'm free. Reading at bedtime is no longer a pastime. Mainly because th

Something unexpected happened on our way to Kuantan. I'm still puzzled. Hubby and I have traveled to Kuantan numerous times. I, myself, have driven there alone at least a couple of times. Usually, it takes about 3.5 hours from Bangi to Kuantan town. Kalau drive biasa-biasa, no rush, stop for breaks at R&R, maybe 4 hours. Here's what happened. After being stuck at traffic jam from Puchong to Bandar Utama for almost 1.5 hours, the road finally cleared. We stopped at Lancang for toilet break and then Temerloh for breakfast. That's the routine with Hubby selalunya. I estimated we would reach Kuantan latest 11.30am.  Bila drive dengan Linda di sebelah, mestilah borak-borak kan. But then, we never missed any signboards. I remember clearly the last landmark I saw before that "incident" was Hentian Kuantan, then that place yang timbang lori tu. Lepas tu I remembered just driving, not very long, and then saw the signboard "Pelabuhan Kuantan / Cherating&

Alhamdulillah we are back. Safe and sound. What an eventful time we had. Full of fun, stress, tension, panic, "redha", mind-boggling incidents, all rolled out into one. We started our journey very early ie 6.15am on Friday. However, some smart-ass decided KL is the best place to organise a Grand Prix despite our country having the Sepang Circuit and ruined other people's plans. It took us only 15 minutes to reach LDP at Puchong but ended up almost 1.5 hours in a jam until the road finally cleared after Kota Damansara. After that this still mind-boggling thing happened, which I will tell later. As a result, we submitted our sebutharga at 12.07pm. Seven minutes late! Ours is still accepted despite getting a note stamped on the envelop saying "late". I pray the client has this 10-15 minutes buffer and hope ours is being considered. After that, lunch at McD Teluk Cempedak and then we checked-in at Hyatt Kuantan. The hotel will close for a year starting 1 Sept

Insyaallah akan ke East Coast this Friday. Ada sebutharga yang perlu dihantar. Alhamdulillah ada rezeki sikit ni ingat nak stay one night. Hubby tak boleh ikut pulak. Jadinya, bawak Aliyah dan Aunty Linda. Kalau orang tua tu sihat la :). Doakan semoga rezeki kami di sana. Insyaallah, client tu memang baik-baik orangnya. Lepas hantar sebutharga, harap-harap dapat rehat kat tepi beach sambil baca buku Murakami yang dah berhabuk.

These 2 days life is a bit hectic selepas letak advertisement. Itu pun conceal phone number. Communicate via email sahaja. Kalau betul-betul berminat baru discuss di Whatsapp. I'm not going into that topic yet, but one discussion I had with Hubby this morning made me ponder. Hard. Macam ada split personality. Dua personality agak berbeza sedang conflict dalam kepala. I asked for advise during breakfast and this is what I got. In essence: ini masanya awak kena dahulukan diri sendiri daripada orang lain. Awak selalu kesian kat orang tapi awak kena kesian pada diri awak sendiri . Don't get him wrong. He's trying to put sense into my brain. So I sat at my desk the whole afternoon. Thinking. Of the times I do things foolishly (I'd like to call it nobly) by putting other people first instead of myself. Dan teringat terbaca somewhere pasal rezeki. Bila dapat rezeki, mesti dahulukan keperluan diri sendiri, kemudian keluarga, lepas tu orang lain. I'm not saying I ni ba

We finally meet up with the Melaka clan yesterday. Almost all. As usual, gather at Nor's house yang sangat beautiful. Perut memang sedia dikosongkan untuk membelasah beberapa round makanan. Awesome spread of dishes - beryani Johor (kambing dan ayam), satay, laksa... I was supposed to bring carrot cake, tapi last minute bila nak beli barang, kedai jual barang buat kek pulak tutup. Nak ke Giant atau Tesco dah tak sempatlah pulak. Nak tukar ke trifle, pun barang tak cukup. Akhirnya beli swiss roll saja as contribution. It was great meeting my SILs and BILs. Banyak lah yang dapat catch up as we don't get to meet much. Normal stuff - about the kids, job, family, etc. Mental note - must try to catch up with Angah Mas for lunch one day. So much to talk about, so little time. Sesi mandi kolam pun ada. Aliyah refused to bring her swimsuit. Dah jadi anak dara ni malu sikit. Tapi bila dah petang, orang pun dah kurang, cousinnya Najeehah ajak, terus nak. Mulanya pinjam swimsuit Mak Lan