Being so far away from family, it doesn't really matter u're Malaysian, or Egyptian or Indonesian, as long as you're Muslim, u're practically family. Saudara sesama agama. After all, semua merantau mencarik rezeki so those guys in below picture are basicaly my closest knits apart from other Malaysian families. They're all En Muddy's shift mate. The two guys in white robes are Egyptian, En Muddy's un-official Arabic teacher and the rest were Indonesian. All comes with single packages. Single package doesn't necessarily meant they're single. It means that their families are not inside the expat-package, unlike Malaysian whom all were offered family package.

For those who doesn't have the opportunity to experience being far away, having to sacrifice the comfort of living under same roof with your family and loved one, just for the sake to earn a living, you wouldn't have the slightest idea how tough it is especially for men to live on their own, specially when it comes to food. En Muddy have pretty hefty experiences in this field, hence he understood. Occasionally he will asked me to packed extra food when he's working nite shift, meant to be shared with other shift mate coz there's no meal subsidized after office hours and Public Holiday.

He also planned to make it monthly event for us, to organize makan makan for his shift-mate. So as a started, last Friday, we invited them to our humble home for lunch. At first it's only intended to be a close affair involving all three Indonesian friends coz I'll be cooking Malay food, but one of the guy accidentally invited the other 2 Egyptian friends which I dun even mind at all.

My only worries are, would they be able to accept Malay food? My food? When I cook Malay food, I'll cook it my way. When talking about my way, the spicier the better, athough I will still downgrade few notches on the spicy level simply coz my husband can't stand spicy food. Same like my husband, Arabian was also well known for their non-spicy food. Their spiciest, doesn't even equivalent to my level 1 of spicy-ness.. Hmmmmm...One more thing, Egyptian's staple food are Qubs ( Arab bread) and I'm serving rice to my guests that day.. Double triple hmmmmmm. Well, just hoping that my nawaitu utk menjamu tetamu was counted by Allah s.w.t and he made it easy for us and our guests.

This thing about gado gado, traditionally, it is supposed to have fried tofu and fried tempe but somehow, I can't find any. Actually tofu are pretty easy to find here, it is just that it was nowhere to be found that day. Did it ever happened to you " kalau tak cari, melambak2, tapi kalau carik, mmg tak jumpa" ?? It happened to me that day. 3 supermarket pegi, no signs of tofu. I had kirim tempe from one of my friend, Ema but she will be going to buy it only on Saturday, a day after my majlis. I guess I had to live with tofu-less and tempe-less gado gado it seems. Gotta settled down with whatever substitute I can find. As creative as I can be, I replaced tempe with kentang rebus, and tauhu with steamed brocolli. Dah macam rojak Singapore lak ekk.. Aci ke tak? Aci la ekk...Effort that count! Well, it turned out that with or without tempe, it looks like my guests doesn't seem to mind, coz balik modal makcik meniaga gado gado that day.


{ Gado gado tak aci, there's one more ingredient missing in the picture which is taugeh,added soon after the pic was snapped }

There's silver line anyway behind series of incident that day ( un-planned guests and also tofu & tempe less). My Egyptian guest have no choice but to eat rice and tried Malay food for once and I think they kinda like it coz I saw they helped themselves with second and third helping of sambal udang, with gallon of ice water of course ! kah kah kah... sambal makcik pedas meletup jubo u all...After I received my tempe from Ema a day after that, I made it into sambal ikan bilis with kentang and have my hubby tapau-ed it for dinner during one of night shift, and guess what, Jalal the Egyptian was the one who finished all the tempe till it's last piece :)

They stayed after lunch till around 4 pm, having a chat, few Arabic lesson, keeping my girls busy and then they bid farewell.

All in all.. I pray that my deed was counted as good deed since I am considered committed sin if any of my guests went back with diarrhea am I ?? May I be spare from committing un-intentional sin.

Hungry man is an angry man, so my only wish was that all my guests went back happy dude. I am pretty positive they all are.