Happy Moments Back Home

Good morning everyone :) Hope you are doing good. My favourite time of the day will always be the morning. If I wake up late I will always feel that I lost the best part of the day. When I wake up early, I enjoy doing something productive like chores, studying or simply spending my time outdoors before it gets really sunny, even if it means just walking and smelling flowers ;) I love flowers and that is why maybe my parents named me after a flower hehe and around my house the jasmine flowers just started blooming last weekend! They smell lovely <3

This morning I set my alarm clock super early at 515am because this very day I started my Day 1 for Puasa 6, insyaAllah sempat I'll do as much as I can because there seems to be so many events lately, people coming to my new house or me visiting other people. The thing I like best about going to other people's house for raya is to see what raya cookies they have and try different ones, funny reason i know >.< Speaking of which my <3 gave me this Rainbow cookies during Ramadan and it was the first time I tried them. I'm so thankful because it is a coincidence this year's Summer holiday fits really good so that I have the chance to celebrate fasting month and eid back home.

During sahur, I had nasi lemak, some meehoon, dates and tea and after that I thought I wanted to sleep but I couldn't. I remained awake and just took a nap till 730 then I woke up, dressed in a tracksuit and tshirt and followed my brother to school. After sending him, I jogged a few rounds in my housing area. This is the first time I jogged that early at about 9am. Since I returned to Malaysia for summer break, I really enjoy not setting my alarm clock and allowing myself to wake up at any time. I dont mind doing that if I dont have anywhere to go that morning because I would naturally wake up by 10. So after my jog, I opened my little diary ( I have many by the way- one to record what I do everyday/ anything important that happened, 1 to write reminders/ what I need to do, 1 for university purposes). This is a hobby- I just like to write and prefer writing anytime than putting it in my hand phone.

The food I ate for sahur was from yesterday's event. I would not call it an open house but basically we invited close relatives and family friends to our house for lunch. My mum made lontong in a super big pot, ketupat, meehoon and we bought our favourite nasi lemak. There was also tauhu rojak, kuah kacang, melon and jelly for dessert as well as our different types of kuih raya- my favourite kuih raya are pineapple tarts, cornflakes and kuih samprit! By the way, kuih samprit (butter cookies) taste almost the same as the rainbow cookies but without colouring. We planned this at the last minute last Friday hehe it was so random, my mum was like I want to make lontong and I responded sure ' How about Sunday?' then that lontong lunch turned out to be 'Let's invite whoever is free to have lunch with us, yaay' I like people coming to my house, its so fun. I used to live quite far, near the hilly ends of the city I live in so we did not have too many people coming because at first my housing area was so new they did not even have it on GPS and Pizza Hut would not even deliver to that area *sweat*

Oooh let me tell you about last Saturday! Oh dear I am telling the story backwards, recent ones first and later ones last. On Saturday my <3 and I took my brother to the zoo it was so fun I don't remember the last time going there. Since it is his birthday month, he gets to choose where he would like to go and since we were both free that day, one wish was granted :) People think I pamper him too much but no, of course not, he's my only little brother. And well well guess what. When we reached the zoo, I thought of getting the normal tickets but he insisted on getting the one that included the Panda.

One was RM30 and the other RM50, RM20 difference for the panda alone which was a new thing in the zoo. We always go with majority and since it was 2: 1, he won :) Then in the zoo, he requested for face painting. Basically the adults would have to donate whatever amount they wish and the kids get free face painting. He chose all the scary designs which both of us did not agree until he suggested one decent one, Batman! Since we walked at a good speed, we managed to cover almost everything in the zoo, watched the animal show at 3pm and even paid  extra for the tram ride. Lunch at the Panda Place was expensive but expected ;) We had fizzy drinks afterwards and then orange ice cream during the animal show, his favourite ^^ I remember volunteering at the zoo when I was 16 and clearly remembered that I got the animal show section *goodmemories althought the zookeeper was a little fierce* Imagine last Saturday we spent 6 hours at the zoo 1045am-5pm and reached home at 6pm.

A few minutes after I reached home, my mum told me that a few relatives were on their way to our house. Yaay, so I quickly prepared and got ready, helped my mum prepare the food and tidied the house a bit. 30 minutes later, they were at my house with a little baby. Took the baby to the playground and later ate roti boom, nasi impit and rojak. By the time the guests left at 1030pm, I was super exhausted. Swept the floor and cleared the tables, read a bedtime story for my brother and that summed up a very productive day.

Last Wednesday, we went to play badminton at Sports Planet. It was the 7 of us and we only had 6 rackets so we took turns. We rented 2 courts so one had 4 people and the other had 2. My sister held this baby monkey that belonged to a lady who came there as well. The little monkey kept hugging her, it was so cute. Playing badminton for one and a half hour was so fun and I felt so fit :) On Friday, we had lunch at Paddington Pancakes once I picked up my brother from school at 1pm with my grandmother as well. The picture taken below was for breakfast. This time I did not take a picture of my food ;)

That day I bought a Chicken Soup book after so long. I forgot my Popular card and the cashier was nice. He told me if I had my card I would save a few ringgits on the quite expensive book so he asked my sister and I to borrow a card from a regular customer. This was so funny! I was reluctant and shy to approach her but he was persistant that we should ask the lady and save some money so I tried. OMG The lady was with her daughter and surprised when I asked her but kindly said yes. Unfortunately she searched for the card so long and realised she forgot to bring it too. I said thank you and returned and this time the cashier pointed to another 2 girls in the next counter. He asked me to ask them *oh dear blush, I'll try one last time I guess* They laughed and gave me their card. Yaay, and when I got my discount he told us ' So you both learned something new today' Hahaha it was such a funny experience but at least I saved some money :) After that, we visited 2 relatives that lived nearby and reached home by 10pm.

Raya in Melaka was superb, we spent 6 days 5  nights :) We had BBQ on the first night of raya, basically ikan bakar. There was a pingpong table so the kids and I played that. We also had UNO cards so we played bluff and checkers too. My mum, sister and I took 9 kids to play laser tag on the second day of raya it was so fun and my initial plan to not join and just watch turned into me and my sister playing 2 games! The kids were quite persuasive and it was pretty fun laser-shooting people in the dark. We also watched 22 Jumpstreet with 2 of our teenage cousins, the movie was really nice and had a good plot, minus the excessive use of foul language. Our journey to Melaka was 2 hours this time and on our way back we stopped by Burger King for dinner. My father even plucked mangoes on the tree in front of the Melaka house. Everyone was slightly reluctant to return because there was never-ending yummy food ( you never have a chance to feel hungry in Melaka) there but we knew we had to. Oh in Melaka there was this cute cousin of mine, Salsabiella 6 months old and she is soo cute, chubby, fair and she likes me carrying her. She even slept on my shoulders twice while I carried her.

Thankfully had a chance to visit her house the previous Saturday before last weekend. That same Saturday, we watched Hercules, I like the story too it just ended so soon! After that, my brother and <3 played football. That night, I met my friend Gomi at a coffee shop. It was fun catching up with her because the last time we saw each other was 9- 10 months ago.  I had my favourite assam laksa for dinner and she had chicken chop. *i like sour things*. The Sunday of that weekend, (not yesterday) my family took our relatives from the UK for dinner at an Iranian restaurant yummms

Oh I just remembered that I haven't written a post mentioning about me wearing the hijab. Its been a really nice experience and even today it was the first time jogging in the hijab since I wore it. Before you wear it, you get paranoid that people will look at you but when you think of it, people look either because it looks bad or it looks good. Depends on how you perceive it because when people look, you never know what they are really thinking about. If you wear something nice and someone looks, then in your mind you are thinking ooo they are looking because they think its pretty too. But if you wear a shirt you don't like and people look, you will immediately feel insecure. I realised that and said to myself I am happy with what I am wearing because I know it is for a good purpose and I will feel confident about that, whether people like it or not. The fact that family, my <3 and some of my friends think that it looks pretty on me is a plus point, alhamdulillah and thank you :) That day (last Monday) I was wearing palazzo pants, a grey top and a black tudung sarung while watching my sis, bro and 2 of my cousins swim at my place after we had late lunch. They were playing ball and shark in the pool as well as monkey in the middle. Then after a few minutes, my sis and bro got out of the pool and suddenly removed my glasses and watch. I'm sure you can guess what happened next! They carried me and dropped me into the pool!!!!!!! *no hope of dry survival, they were a good team* I was soaking wet so I just stayed in the pool and played with them until Maghrib. Once we got inside my house, all of us had a hot drink after changing into dry clothes. Nescafe so yummy *ahh 7 hours to berbuka now.

Because its been awhile since I updated, I have written in as much detail as I can remember, hope you enjoy reading and I have included pictures to beautify this post. Have a nice week ahead and till my next post :*