In my opinion, there's no better way to embrace arrival of Ramadhan other than sadaqah to which we were gladly hosted a small majlis meyambut Ramadhan yesterday. We decided to invite my husband's colleagues and friends from "bujang" group. Owhhh they're definitely married. It just that some of them came work here under single packages while others were temporarily wife-less due to long summer break. Due to my hopelessly lacking in culinary skills, no assistant and limited space, I can only afford to invite small amount of people this time. Hmmmmm naahhhhh ..I think it's more on my culinary skills kah kah kah...Insya allah in the near future, jika di izinkan Allah and di murahkan rezeki, I would really glad to invite another batch of guests for another majlis, berbuka puasa maybe. This time for family pulak. As the old saying goes, "Quantity does not equal quality "


Since the majlis adelah kecil kecilan, maka menu pun kecil kecilan lah yer.. One thing for sure, when hosting an event like this, I would definitely chose a list of menu that I am comfortable and confident with. Simply put, I will always chose to be in a safe side. Biarlah orang kata menu tak exclusive kaaa, lauk kampung kaaaa.. kata lahhhh... There's no point being adventurous if my guests doesn't like my food. One more thing, the menus decided must complimented each other. Kena masuk "gu" orang ganu kata... For examples, if you already have ayam goreng, then it won't be suitable to be making ayam kari pulak, unless you had junior guests that day. Asam pedas and tomyam doesn't get along well. It's one or another. You sure wouldn't want to confuse your guests. Biar sederhana janji the dish completed each other. Owh one more thing, always be considerate by extend some efforts and offered some varieties. Some guests likes spicy stuff while some guests can't handle it, hence always have courtesy by preparing both type. Beverages also play crucial roles. If you're serving some hearty heavy meals, then always try to go for light drinks like syrup. And always prepare both hot drinks and cold drinks, just in case as some people doesn't drink ice or cold water. Always get to know and study your list of guests. A little extra efforts won't harm you. These is something I learned from experiences. Well, just take it as humble 2 cents from The Real Housewife of Mangaf Season 1 ! Ecehcehcehceh...

Anyhoo, this is what we had that nite...

This is sequel from THIS...

We received a call from Mustaza informing that our civil id is ready for collection. Anyhow, you can just check online from Public Authority of Civil Information's (PACI ) official website about your current application status. If your civil id ready then you'll also be provided with number of machine where you need to obtain your civil id. The website is very well maintained, pretty straight forward, got English and Arabic version and very easy to navigate too. They even uploaded Utube clip on how to use the vending machine. It got all features I ever needed in a website. What's there not to like ?


By far, this is the most hi-tech system I've ever experienced in Q8. Not only it is hi-tech, it was very user friendly and very accommodating. The whole process took less than 5 minutes and that's what I called convenient !

Since there's guard everywhere watching and monitoring us ( okkkayyy statement perasan, actually they had to monitor everybody, not only us. That's what they were paid to do what so no offense yea Mr Security ) with their hawk-eye's attitude, I knew that I couldn't get to take any picture in PACI too. However, my hubby understood that his blogger wannabe wife always find a post without picture least attractive, so he took his chances by taking below spy pictures. Arghhhh life is so much more easier with him around. You can never count on me for taking spy pics okayy. Tak kira la dekat government offices ke, kat boutique ker, kat pasar ker and whatnot. I'll have guilty looks plastered all over my face even before taking any picture, just imagine my expression after taken one. I remembered attempted to take mixer photo for my mom at local supermarket here and my oh my I sweat profusely like marathoner who just done her 10 km run and kept looking around hence, I passed. I could easily get caught just because of my silly suspicious expression.

As this is our first time here, we need to go inside the office. The security officer by the main door there will give you ticket with number once you showed him your passport. You just need to wait until your number being called. At the counter, you will be given a temporary card to be insert inside the vending machine outside. In my case, since we're paying Mandouk aka Mustaza for our civil ID process, he did almost everything for us. All I need just show my face, collect my ticket number and seated. He said "Okay U wait here madame" and so I waited. When my number was called, he got up and collected our card, while I am still seating comfortably. Once settled, he came to me and said, " Madame come follow me madame " and being a good madame, I obeyed. As I said, I just needed to show my face. Heheheh life is so much more fun when Mustaza is around. Well not so much fun for my hubby's pocket though. Anyway, if you're just doing renewal for you civil id, you can skip this process, instead just go straight to the machine and insert your old civil id to get your renewed one, of course after your paperwork is done. If you forget to check online for your machine number, do not worry because the officer by the counter can provide you with the info.

My civil id and hubby's was in machine number 21, Alis's in machine number 3 while Erin's in machine number 9. Although hubby's already got his civil ID earlier, the address used was not entirely correct hence he need to get it change to match with our rental lease.

It's very simple process even 5 year old can do. Just insert the little temp card, wait for the machine to read, process and allocate your civil id. You will be asked to insert KD 2 so make sure you have sufficient small change. Once you paid, your civil id will be dropped inside the box for you to retrieved. As easy as ABC, you know exactly the same process when you're buying pepsi or paying parking ticket at shopping complex.




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Lately I noticed that my fb mail was flooded with weird suspicious mail from unknown people. It didn't bother me at first simply because my only way of handling spam mail like this was delete button. However, it kept coming up to certain time, I'll received this kind of mail almost everyday and some sender we quite persistent by keep resending it when I didn't reply.

Below are some of the messages sent to me.. 5 cukup lah kang bubuh semua ade yang muntah ijau lak bahahahahah...


































Oh come on, like seriously ! They don't expect me to believe whatever point they have in their message don't they? From strangers somemore.. Bahhhh.. In fact, first thing came to mind when received all those messages was..

DID MY FB ACCOUNT'S SECURITY IN JEOPARDY? WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT? TIGHTEN THE SECURITY? BUT HOW LAR ?

Of course my husband read all those messages. In fact, he saw some of the messages earlier than me cause I don't check my fb frequently but he did heheheh... Rest assured, he did took some security measurement on my fb account. Locked all my albums, restricted it to only friends can view it, update latest security features and all those recommended blah.

What was his conclusion out of this scenario ?

NI SUMER NAK JADIKKAN MUMMY KELDAI DADAH ( DRUG TRAFFICKER) LA NIH...

Well, as ridiculous as it may sound, it might be true you know.. It is just not logical when 10 strangers adult man showing interrest in being your fb friends, almost at the same time, out of sudden. Rightt?

I am making sense here right?

I believed I am not the only one facing this, it just that I didn't know anyone in my circle of friends receiving this kind of mail as none of them ever mentioned it to me...

So should any of you have ever experienced things like this, do share with me what did you do. Delete? Report? Blocked? Ignore?

For now, I didn't reach the point of reporting all those sender to fb administrator because me myself can't be sure of genuinity of those messages. I dun even know if their picture was real. Buat nye betul2 nak tambah kenalan, sendiri termalu paranoid bukan bukan. Even so, I don't think I would accept their friend requests though as I don't even know them. The reason I opened fb was to keep in touch and exchange updates with friends, relatives and acquaintances in my life, those whom I know personally, and I positively would like to keep it that way.




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THIS IS A VERY LONG AND POTENTIALLY TO BE BORING POST. CONSIDERED YOURSELF WARNED.

As promised, here comes the visa post. Beside documenting this exhausting, time consuming process for my personal diary and reference, I hope this post at least could help, if not many, other Malaysian out there whom about to go through the same journey as mine. At least my note, in other way could give them a bit of clue of what needed to be prepared and the processes involved. Insya allah.

The process was divided into 3 main phases I must say.

1) Staff's civil ID application

2) Process in Malaysia after staff/husband obtained the civil ID

3) Process in Kuwait for family residency


::Staff's civil ID application::

Mostly the work visa process and civil ID will be done by staff ( in my case-husband) alongside with company's Manduk as in the process will be slightly different and the place involved also vary. The length of the process depends on the company's background, whether they abide to ministry rules or do they have the any pending issue. It could be longer or shorter, depends on individual and I must say, luck :). Like my husband case, due to the "exceptional issue" of being found under criminal list, his took almost a year and a half before officially hold permanent resident of Kuwait.

Once paperwork settled, the go ahead will be given to go for medical checkup. As I said in my few post away, for my husband's company, they will be sent to do their medical checkup at Bahrain. Again, due to "exceptional issue" of chaos in Bahrain, we were en-route to Malaysia. Lagi bagus dowhhh... ! You can opted to do at private hospital or government. We chosed the earlier option since we're kinda rushing. In the list, there are some test required the sample to be sent to lab in Australia which will took approximately 7 days going and coming which we just couldn't afford to wait. Filariasis ( if I'm not mistaken, dah lupa lahh ). Well if speaking non medical jargon, this filariasis test was for Untut Gajah ( elephantiasis). Based on previous staff's experiences, the Kuwait Embassy would want to see result for typical contagious disease only like Malaria, TB, and whatnot hence we decided to skip the filaria test. After all, we will need to go another session of medical checkup later on at Q8, so as to speak, medical checkup in Malaysia only acted as supporting document to proceed to next stage.

While waiting for medical checkup's result, you can start applying for Letter of Conduct. The new procedure was you need to fill the form online ( u can get the online form MoFA's website) and bring the printed copies to Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Putrajaya to get your Letter of Conduct. Do expect heavy crowd and long queue so recommended to go as early as you can. But come to think of it, no matter how early you went, there'll be always heavy crowd. If you don't have access to computer and printer, don't worry. MoFA had prepared 2 computers there for public use. Anyhow, as expected the queue was absurdly long. There's also one kiosk at that area which offered this service for you, of course with certain amount of fees. Once submitted your application, now you wait until your number be called, paid ( If my mind served me correctly, around RM 20 )and you'll be handed your LoC.

Once you received your Letter of Conduct, you can then proceed to Kuwait Embassy and make sure all documentation, photos are ready as per requested. Also, keep in mind, you need to arrange your time wisely because MoFA located at Putrajaya, outside KL while Kuwait Embassy was in the middle of KL, Jalan Tun Razak to be exact. To make things worst, embassy only open from 10:30 am till 12:00 noon where they'll go for lunch break. Then they open again from 1:00 pm to 2.00 pm only and that's about it for the day. Missed this time frame could only means, another long trip the next day. In short, we made MEX tokey one happy chap that week. One more thing, there's no parking available at the embassy. N A D A ! Y I L E K ! What you can do is parked your car by the busy-never sleeps Jalan Tun Razak roadside before the embassy because you definitely can't park infront the embassy. It is rather an advantage if you can bring someone who can drive so that someone can wait in the car and move the car or make one round should any traffic officer come knocking your window.

At Embassy, you will need to surrender your passport too so do not plan for oversea holiday during this period. In my case, this process resulted for me to drive on my own to Singapore, left my husband at KL when my grandfather passed away. You also will need to pay process fee, around Rm 160 +/-. The "wonderful" news is you need to make the payment at Kuwait Finance House and bring the receipt back to Embassy. The nearest KFH was at Etiqa Tower, Jalan Pinang, also among another busiest road in KL and definitely no roadside parking allowed. You have no choice but to park at their basement parking and pay for 1 hour parking fee although you just take no longer than 10 minutes to make payment. For KL-lites, you should be able to relate to this nerve-breaking, hair pulling scenario. For non-KL lites, welcome to our life.

Then , go back again to Embassy and endure another no parking situation. All in all, the process will took around 3-4 days depends on what day u submitted your application. However it is safe to say that you can follow up with embassy after 3 days. Given no other issue, your temporary visa should be ready.

You may then returned to Q8. At Q8, staff or husband need to go through another medical checkup with Q8's appointed medical department and also get your finger prints taken. If in Malaysia, only both thumb prints were needed, in here, they'll take all prints for all 10 fingers, plus both palm prints. Scaryyyyyyyy. Once you got your medical result, manduk will submit your application for civil ID and within 2 week or less, you could collect your civil ID. All ready civil ID can be collected from vending machine at the immigration office so you may do so even after office hour.

Next, apply your family calling visa. Application need to be made at Ahmadi Immigration Office. The calling visa should be ready within the same day. Before this process, you need to make sure your family is not in Q8, in other word, your family visiting visa need to be cancel first in order to apply for calling visa.


:: Process in Malaysia after staff/husband obtained the civil ID ::

Repeat the same process all over again, this time for your family. Medical checkup, Letter of Conduct and all. There's no medical checkup needed for kids, however you must present your child's immunisation records. Owhh one more thing, if your medical checkup and your children's immunisation record book was from private hospital, you need to get each of it verified and stamped by government medical officer (MO). Just go to any Klinik Kesihatan nearby, pay RM 1 and get MO on duty to verify, signed and stamped.

Again, once every documentation ready, submit all those to Q8 Embassy and pay RM 160 +/- each application. 3 applications means just times three. After 3 days, you can collect your passports with sticker and temporary visa in it. Validity is 2 months. You do not need to apply for Visa On Arrival anymore while entering Q8 after that. Those stickers and paper is sufficient enough. From now on, you'll have 2 months to get every thing ready for your civil ID.

Anyway, selingan sikit. As I'm preparing all the documentation, I can't help but digging our old file to which I found old photo of Alis and Erin. It was just like yesterday when we first took Alis's photo for her international passport. Below photos are the evidence of how fast they grew and how fast time flew. Sighhhhh... Can't they stay 3 years old forever ?? Looking at these photos, I can't help but reminiscing and most importantly, I had a good laugh too :)



:: Process in Kuwait for family residency ::

Once you returned to Q8 with your family, this is the sequences you need to follow... Owh before that, since the place was quite secluded, all the documentation was in Arabic, and the process was quite tricky, we used free lance Manduk ( runner ) service. This time we hired guy called Mustaza to help us for his wide experiences dealing with this matters and his connection. We knew him for quite sometimes but this is the 1st time we ever use his service. Owhh you definitely got to have connection here in order to get things moving.

1) Send all documentation for document typing. Mustaza handle this part for us. We just need to prepare all the documentation needed. Since the paperworks and forms was all in Arabic, this is something you just can't do by yourself. Once your paper ready, family need to go for another medical checkup. This time at Kuwait Expatriate Medical Centre, Mangaf. I do not dare to take photo here eventhough there's no signage of photography not allowed anywhere. But there's guard everywhere plus I certainly trying to potray good citizen to-be image, hence no photo at all.

The building and facilities was kinda old, very very old. Their MO room where my blood sample were taken ( for contagious disease check) was poorly equipped. No proper waiting area. You won't feel like you're in some medical centre, unlike if you were in Malaysia. There's definitely no hospital smell nor hospital feeling. Signage mostly in Arabic and there's no proper instruction of where to go first and what to do next. I am totally clueless. This is exactly the moments where I am just glad we hired Mustaza. He quickly shoved me to one room and kinda pushed me inside while there's a long line outside. I was taken aback at first because, well I may not be following rules all the time, but one thing I hate the most is when people cutting Q. However, being a stranger, I just followed what he asked me to. There's 2 MO on duty and both occupied with other applicants, so by theory, my turn should be the next. The moments the current applicant done, and I was ready to make a move, someone from behind pushed me and cut my Q. She's a maid and she came with her Kuwaiti boss. Served me right kannnn hahaha. Since me myself did some cutting que earlier and out of guilt, I decided to play nice. I wait for her to finished and ready to barge in after she's done but my oh my I was wrong. As I 'm taking my 1st step ahead , suddenly another Kuwaiti came with his maid and cut my Q again eventhough I was already passing my document to the MO halfway. By this moment, it hit me ! Everything became clear to me now. I suddenly understand why Mustaza did what he did earlier because there's no where you will get your things done by play nice here. Sometimes, you just have to bring the evil side in you and after that sila cepat cepat mintak ampun yer dari Allah :). I have no intention of spreading bad influences here please do not get me wrong. I'm just explaining how things work here because it is exactly how things get done here.

Next, taking kids for one jap each, ermmmm hepatitis could be. I just forgot what it is. If earlier I didn't really like the culture of who cut Q 1st wins, in this section I kinda like it though. In Q8, they loves kids too much and kids were priority almost everywhere. When I arrived at this room with the girls, there's another patient, male adult was getting ready for a jap. The MO was even ready with needle in her hand. Anyhow, the moments she saw Alis and Erin, she paused and sign us to move forward to her. She then request for our paperworks and informed the guy earlier to step aside for a while to give way to kids. Within 10 seconds, both Alis and Erin done with their jab, and surprisingly they didn't cry at all. Their expression doesn't show that their in pain or anything. I guess they were too sleepy to even realised what was going on around them.

Next, Mustaza escort me to X-ray lab, located opposite the earlier building, around 2 minutes walking where I need to get my chest X-ray. Once arrived, he showed me the X-ray room and asked me to wait at the row of benches at the corner of the room once I'm done with mine. While I'm taking my X-ray, he'll bring my hubby and the girls to Fahaheel Government clinic, by car because the doctor need to see the kids and do certain checkups just for formality.

At the Xray lab, I was ushered by the crowd to one room. Once I entered, I saw on my left a row of partition with curtain acted as door while on my right there's a table. On that table, lay a stack of orangey-sand colour robe, to be used in the Xray room. Their practise here was so different from Malaysia and worth to be mentioned. Once you entered, there's this lady attendant who'd instruct you to go get change. If in Malaysia, privacy is guaranteed since you'll needed to take everything off so you'll be given some time to change comfortably and even a place, locker or a room to keep your belonging. You can take your own sweet time as normally, the will do the Xray one patient at a time. In here, as I mentioned earlier, it was far cry from what I used to face and as confident as I can ever be, I was stunned and clueless.

Once I took one of the robe, the attendant asked me to enter any empty changing partition. I think there's around 7-8 of them. I took my peek and enter one that un-occupied. However, there's other people belonging hanging in there and there's no more empy hook for me to hang my stuffs so I had to personally transfer some of her stuffs and kinda gathered it to make some space for mine, else I would have to put my clothes and tudung on the floor. When I said "stuffs" this means including the under garments and owhhhh it's not pleasant at all. Somemore, when I was changing, my curtain door was opened without permission, by the owner of the under garment. Apparently she's done and she wanted to change and signalling me to step out. Can arrrrr?

Outside there's a long line of ladies with orange robe waiting for turn to get our film taken. No chair whatsoever. While waiting, the lady attendant will do a random check on us. Those with buns or ponytail will be instructed to let their hair down for which I couldn't understand why. For all I know, we'll be doing chest X-ray, so I couldn't see the significant of this instruction. Whatever lah. There's only one technician on duty despite the long que, so the technician was kinda rushing and a bit tense.

Settled with Xray, I waited at the place I was asked to by Mustaza around 20 minutes when he appeared before me. We then were taken to another office, around 10 minutes driving for finger printing. The office was located in a flat located in the middle smack of housing area, surrounded by resident apartments. In my very own opinion, not a very strategic and suitable place for a government office. Again, like the previous building, this building also have poor signage system, no proper instruction of where to headed and without Mustaza, we could easily got lost to nowhere. After waited around 20 minutes, one Kuwaiti lady came out and asked me to follow her to a counter nearby so she can get my finger prints recorded. There's something different about the ink they use here. I think it was way stronger and thicker from those in Malaysia.

Important note : Bring wet tissue or tissue or handkerchief because they didn't provide any. I used up the whole box of wet tissue but it doesn't really help lessen the damages. Suddenly post office in Malaysia occured luxury to me coz at least they provided tissue. There's toilet provided to wash your hand afterward but seriously, you better don't. Washing it will only make things worst. The ink became oily and sticky upon contacts with water and once you try to rub it off, it will spread to your whole hand, your finger nails and almost anything you touched after that. I guess I wasn't the only one with the problem by looking at those ink stained on almost every wall there. Poor wall ! I was hiding my hand behind my back the whole time because it's sooo freaking ugly looking with the smudges of black ink covering both my hand and palms blearghhhhhh.... Can't wait to go home and have a good scrub.

After finger printing, I was told by Mustaza to submit the paperworks at lady officer there and we're done for that day. Now, we need to wait for medical checkup result to be released, estimately around 2 weeks.


2 WEEKS LATER......

Mustaza called and informed that we're now ready for next step. This time he will take Mr Hubby 1st to settle insurance and medical card matters. Once then, he'll pick the rest of us up for blood grouping. However, the insurance and medical card matter took the whole day to finished hence we need to schedule another day for blood grouping. All in all, for insurance and medical card thingy we need to pay 600 KD ( sila kali 11 for Malaysian currency ). This is excluded upah for Mustaza and we still need to pay amount while collecting the civil ID I think.The insurance receipt then need to be submitted to Ahmadi Immigration Office to apply for Civil ID.

As we speak, we're still waiting for our civil ID to ready. We should get it anytime soon and I am so relieved. My shoulder definitely feeling a bit lighter.

As a closing...

During my last holiday, I don't remember doing any cooking, at all. My culinary skills ( if they do existed bahahah ) was put to a good long rest. When I have my mom around, who needs my cooking anyway. Therefore, after returned to Q8, I need to start all over again. I noticed, during summer, meals based on santan was not a hit so I've decided to go for more grilled stuff, and simpler menu.

Another thing about summer, we just don't go out often due to extreme temperature hence mommies at my building came out with a few indoor activities to fill our pastime. Among many, below are two activities I've had opportunity to join and it was sooooo much fun. At times like this, when doing it together, even boring, un-attractive activity like making your own noodle turned out to be a memorable moments. 5 kilos yellow mee was ready in no time and felt effortless.

Enough rambling, lets photos do the selling..





Even though I already prepared Chicken Rice beforehand, still some of my friends were thoughtful enough by bringing their own potluck. Below are among those foods we had that day....




For the better part of the week, there's another mommies's activity I took part which is Projek Membuat Keropok Lekor. Before experiencing it myself, I just can't imagined keropok lekor as something that can be home-made. Turned out, I was wrong.





Apart of those 2 "mega" project I'm involved in, there's also few of my own made meals I prepared for my lil family. It may not looked feasty or tempting enough for some of you, but there is so much efforts poured in creating below meals, and gladly my family enjoyed it too Alhamdullilah.









During summer here in Q8 ( or maybe some other places with 4 seasons too ), I noticed there'll be water melon almost everywhere and their watermelon wasn't anything like the one in Malaysia, no offense. In my opinion, Q8 water melon was like the juiciest and sweetest I've ever tasted. The colour was sooo shocking red which is to me very important factor, since the visual plays important role. No one would wanna buy pink watermelon eh? Unfortunately, "they" have tad too much seeds for my liking I found it a bit inconvinient especially when eating with minor. A friend of mine gave us this melon and since it was so juicy, I've decided to made watermelon juice.