Pejam celik pejam celik, it's been a week in Ramadhan. Hopefully all of you out there, wherever you are , enjoying your Ramadhan with your loved one as much as I am enjoying myself. The biggest difference from last year and this year Ramadhan by far is, I dun get to waste my money on Pasar Ramadhan and it feels good. Good is just not the correct word, great it is actually. Lookin' back as far as last 2-3 years, how much many went to waste as I normally spent at least RM 15, during my each visit to PR, even though normally my 1st and foremost intention I set on my mind was only to buy a pack of laksa or 2 murtabaks. There will always something looked very tempting, mouth watering with inviting smells everyday, I can't help it.

Morphed back to present...

Let start with sahur then. If you must know, it's been practice here that Imam will adzan twice for Fajr ( Subuh). 1st adzan will be announced around 3.15 am, say about 1/2 hour before actual Fajr time, my guess, served as a reminder and a wake up call to all Muslims. The second yet the actual adzan will took place around 3.50 am ( depends on current Fajr time). So to us whom not familiar with this practice, it's kinda a culture shock.

What happened is, I will normally wake up around 2.30 am to prepare our sahur. We'll start eating by 3.00 -3.15 am. There we are, sitting on our dining table, with groggy look, messy hair, facing foods on table.... scoop our 1st feed, and when the food was about to reach our mouth........

Dengan aku aku skali Allahu akbar....Dah Subuh ker ???? Erkkkkk !!!

Almost synchronized, we looked on our clock. It was showing 3.15 am, and I am pretty sure I've checked Subuh time for that day. So, what to do. Continue eating or stop right there and then and say good bye to our un-touched food.

Lucky En Muddy noticed something, that adzan was performed without "Assala tu khairun minan naum" so he suspected that there will be aother Adzan later announcing the actual Subuh time. Therefor, as he said so, we continued our sahur, drank our water, took my calcium pills and true enough, there's another adzan after that, which served as a clue that sahur period just ended.

Still about sahur.. below are sample of meals I managed to prepare for our sahur.. So far , we manage to say NO to rice..

{Roti telur+bawang+ Sos ( cili sos+tomato sos+kicap+water=yummeh)}

{ Pancake with maple syrup}

There's also grilled salmon, beef burger and some light meals, but I didn't snap any photo. Blamed on the mood swing.

Then after a series of perut berbunyik.. and omigod I'm so thirsty.. and Ehh it's weird how I smelled sambal Udang right in the middle of afternoon... and last but not least, the oldest trick... me, feeding the kids, the food so hot I had to blow to cool it down, and suddenly.. Ehh terkena bibir lak kuah ayam percik ni ... Ngeeeee..tak sengaja tak batal poser.. heheheh..

Finally, the long awaited time, Maghrib time has arrived. Owhh there's a private joke among us here, that our pahala will get tripled as we fast 4 hours longer than u guys in malaysia as Q8 day time was longer by 4 hours than nite time. Hihihihihi it's not true of course, but who knows ehh...May our good deeds and nawaitu be realized by Allah.

For berbuke, I'll make sure we had rice. Any type of rice will do. Be it chicken rice, Nasik lemak, plain rice.. anything lahh as long as rice.

{ This is actually for kids lunch. I had leftover percik gravy from berbuke puasa a day before and so happened Alis still asking for Ayam percik the next afternoon, so I made another version for her. Cincai cincai one}

{ Sambal Udang with Telur rebus. Divine! }

{ Kobis bunga goreng. Hiiii garlicc, I heart u very very strong :) }

{ Gulai Ikan Masin with Pineaple chunk }

{ Mutton soup.. nak abiskan kambing aritu, Alis's favourite}

{ Broccoli soup with button mushroom}

{ Chilli gravy for chicken rice}

{ Oven-baked chicken for Chicken Rice}

{ Allahumma laka sumtu, wa bika amantu, wa' ala rizkika aftartu, birahmatikaya arhamar rahimin. Aaminn}

{ Our daily drinks. Teh O panas, mango juice for me and Vimto for En Muddy}

Vimto is a staple drinks here in Q8 during Ramadhan, beside Barbican. It can be found everywhere. It's actually a non-alcoholic rasberry and blackcurrant juice for those who didn't know. There's one story related to how popular Vimto here when Ramadhan arrived. It was actually became police case.

I remembered during last weeks before Ramadhan, all Kuwaitis and expat was flooding shopping malls and market, to get their groceries stock up for Ramadhan, it's simply chaos. It's not really a good idea going out during fasting time, in summer to get groceries, hence they doing it week before. Everyone wanted to grab everything, in last minute, it's kinda reminds me of Malaysian every time government announced petrol price raised. This is also the time where almost all market and mall selling their item in bulk. If flour was normally packed in kilogram, during these time it was packed guni-like. Same goes to butter, cheese, nuts, olives, pickles and VIMTO, it looks like and feels like everyone was shopping goods to cater a big grand wedding.

Back to VIMTO bit, one fine day, there's one expat ( shall not name the race) went to one market, trying to get his Vimto stock. It's so happened that Vimto at that market was selling fast and they about to run out of stock. This gentleman, wanted to buy the whole carton of Vimto but his request was rejected by the shop assistant, as according to him, it's not fair for other customer. This gentlemen settled in with few bottles of Vimto then and proceed to pay. This is where suddenly one local guy came in, with same request to buy a whole carton of Vimto. However, unlike the previous gentleman whom his request was rejected, the shop assistant never say no to the local guys request, and just gave the local man a full carton, no question asked. That expat was there, witnessing everything and somewhat very pissed of, frustrated and bad, ugly judgement was made out of anger. He decided to punch the shop assistant right to his face. Well, of course there's police involved.

It makes me ponder actually. What was so good about this drink, for a slight glimpse of not having it causing such a commotion. Oh come on, let's face it, there must be something extra ordinary about this Vimto baby, that makes it deserved such high demand, so what do we do???? U got it right.... We bought one. Hubby bancuh one glass, and I had a sip. Hmmmmmmmmmm........ as sincere as I can be, it tasted not much different from Ribena, maybe slightly richer and smelled fruity or shall I put as blackcurranty, just like Ribena. Not worth to punch a guy for it and definitely not worth spending a nite in prison over it. However, to be fair, the comment above came from a person that doesn't even like Ribena in the 1st place, and start drinks Coca Cola at the age of 15, so she can be in crowd.. It's so not cool to drink sky juice at the age of 15 when everyone is sipping Coke for supper. So yeah, I may not be much challenging in drinks area and my opinion is just not do justice. To make it even, my husband likes it so much, and so did Erin. There you go !

{ Erin budak montel}

{ Let's try black and white ! Ummm not working. Still montel.. hahaha}

{ Big girl just woke up from her nap, explained her day dreaming pose. I think she's not really looking at the camera but stare right thru the lens, constantly dazed. Something she picked up from me. I can be this blur sometimes kah kah kah}

Moving right along.....

Done with our berbuka, we would normally take a rest for a while. U know, let the stomach rest a bit after such hard labor. Then we will take shower and prepare ourselves for maghrib berjemaah at home, including the 2 cinonets. Me and husband was having this dream, or shall I put as ambition of being able to perform pilgrim and Umrah at least once, when we're still here in Q8. U know, it's nearer on map, we can opt to travel by land and it's such a big kerugian if we're here but miss the opportunity to visit our creator's house. Our Holy Kaabah, Masjidil Haram and such.

So we start early, by a lot of practice and prep of course. By letting the girls get used to berjemaah's environment, we hope that, if and when we got the invitation from Allah later to visit Kaabah, the girls are familiar enough with solat and it's rules, do's and don'ts, well prepared, behave ecpectedly which hopefully resulted our visit to become easy and smooth for all. May Allah made it easy for us. Insya Allah.

{ A must do after solat. Kiss Papa and Mummy's hand and in reply, we kissed their cheeks. However, lately Erin decided to make new rule, that Papa and Mummy have to kiss her hand also. Whatever la dik, asal bahagia}

After few attempts, it is very hard to concentrate and focus on your prayer while having 2 silly head giggling by your side, commenting each other and making funny comments. Trust me, 1st time we all 4 people pray together, my Imam can't hold any longer and burst in into laughter before 2nd rakaat, we had to redo our prayer.

Among few funny comments they made, I remember ( ehhh nmpk sangat solat x khusyuk haha) this comment the most as I had toughest time keeping my grin to be less obvious. U know there's part after your rukuk and before your sujud, we need to utter " Sami allah hu liman Hamidah" ... Alis goes like.. "Ehhh Papa sebut Hamidah! nama acu lah " ....outloud.. kakaakkakakak ini budak ahhhh...

{ Ini budak mmg slalu over. Jgn pelawa suruh posing}

{ Wajah kesayangan hamba}

{ Please excuse the mess aite :) }

{ Happy Ramadhan semua}

After Maghrib, En Muddy normally will headed to mosque for terawih, while us, do what we do best.... eating again and again.. till he's back....hahahhahaa.....

Till next post, see you when I see you.