Work and watching movies

As you all know (well I'm hoping people read this blog of mine), I've been working part time since the end of October so everyday when I get home from work I'm too tired to put in any entries in this blog. Therefore, I'll only be writing in the weekends and I'll try to recap everything that's been happening throughout the week.

This week I didn't do or didn't experience anything interesting. So I guess I'll just detail my daily routine. In the morning I try and wake up earlier but usually it's roughly around 7:45am (ni case tidur balik lepas subuh) so we get out of the house and head for the Uni at around 8:45am. I'll do my PhD work from 9:15am after checking my emails and reading the Msian papers. At around 11:45 I'll start getting ready to go to work at the School of Pharmacy. It's not really hard work cause I mainly do office type work i.e. filing, checking claims and expenses forms, writing letter and emails plus preparing Excel spreadsheets. After finishing work at 4pm, I head back to my research office to run more simulations and analyse whatever results I had from simulations running while I was at work. We, as in Shah and I, or, if Shah has gone home earlier, just me alone head home at around 5:30pm. That's why after dinner I usually can't keep my eyes open and need at least an hours sleep before starting to do more work. I know this is boring but I just wanted to write this down so that in a year or two from now I can remember this. Anyway, the weekend was much more interesting.

Yesterday Shah and I went out to the city to shop around for deals on suits. Shah needs to get one for his upcoming office meeting in December and his viva in January. We've found a shop in Victoria Centre which does a great deal, buy one and get 2nd at half price. So we'll go there probably next week to get them. Later the same day we went over to Byn's place for their raya open house. They cooked many different dishes mainly bihun sup, roti canai and rendang which was quite impressive indeed. Even so Shah and I didn't stay for long coz we were knackered from going out the whole day. Today we went out again with the sole purpose of buying an electric heater. It's damn cold these past few days and we can't stand it. We managed to get an affordable one and I think it's quite a good one coz it can also become a fan and it oscillates so it's much more effective. It's been said in the news that this winter might be the coldest one since we've been here in the UK. So the electric heater will be used extensively. Just need to bear in mind that it's costly so we can't keep it switched on all the time.

This weekend I watched some great movies. On Friday nite we watched 2 dvd's which Shah rented in Beeston. We watched Dawn of the Dead first and then 50 First Dates. Both were interesting films and I especially liked the 2nd one coz it was so sweet and romantic. How Adam Sandler's character makes Drew Berrymore's character fall in love with him again everyday was just so sweet and touching. I hope Shah and I are like that. Sometimes we tend to forget why we fell in love and every now and again it's important to refresh our memories and go through it again. I also watched another love story last night...Moulin Rouge. I loved the movie coz it's very theatrical and vibrant with nice songs. However, I fell asleep towards the end but it wasn't my first time watching it so I didn't miss much. Tonite though I have to get some work done plus there's nothing interestiing on tele so all the more reason for me to get down to work.

So I guess that's it. I'll end this entry with a saying from Moulin Rouge...

'the greatest thing you'll ever learn

is just to love and be loved in return...'

Eid celebration weekend

The past weekend was an eventful weekend as we celebrated Eid on Saturday. On Friday nite we stayed up till 4am cooking for Eid. Shah and I, helped by Anin and Sharina, cooked chicken rendang and made around 200 pieces if roti jala. Luckily Shahrein and co cooked the nasi impit, kuah kacang and chicken curry. With us all sleeping late luckily we didn't miss Eid prayer. We got up at around 6:30am and got ready in record time to reach the sport centre where the Eid paryer was held. As usual we didn't quite hear the Eid sermon coz of the playful noise of children. But all in all the mood was joyous and happy indeed. After Eid prayer, we all gathered at Shahrein's place to eat what we've all cooked and took lots of pictures. However, we didn't get to snap the pics coz we didn't bring our camera. So not much Eid pictures this year. Probably I'll get some from Didi's and other people's digital camera.

At around lunch time we headed of to Kak Zah and Abg Juazer's place where we feasted on lemang and lontong. The next house we went to was Kak Ana and Dr. Jamal's where I ate curry noodles..yum yum. Finally we went to Didi's place before heading home. I ate lontang again at Didi's house and ate a delicious piece of chocolate cake made by Sya. Probably I'll be able to get the recipe from her and make one. By the time we got home it was dark and both Shah and I were knackered. We slept early that nite to make up for lack of sleep the previous nite.

On Sunday after a late lie in we got up and started cooking again. This time coz we invited Aryss, Izaty, Lisa, Laila, Kamal, Sakinah and Khairi, our MRSM schoolmate who came from MSia to spend raya with Kamal,their mum, Laila and Sakinah. Shah and I cooked nasi minyak with chicken kurma and chilli chicken. It was a new recipe that we tried and I have to say it came out quite nice and tasty. So next time we can cook it again. In Msia people celebrate Eid throughout the month of Syawal but here we only celebrate for a couple of days before resuming our usual daily routine of uni, work and more work. So today, we're all back at the Uni. Even so, we got an invitation from Noriza and Kamal to go 'beraya' at their place tonite. It's been a while since we've visited them so we had a nice time catching up plus we met some other couples and families. By the time we got home it was 10:30pm and so I watched the second half of The OC before heading up to bed.

All in all we had a lovely and memorable Eid. We called our family back home in Msia too. Hope next year we can celebrate Eid with them...

Iftar invitations all weekend

Didn't do much this weekend other than going to 3 houses for iftar (2 on Saturday and 1 today). Next week insyaAllah it'll be Eid. This time will be my 7th Eid away from Malaysia. ven so the celebration is always as exciting and eventful as in Msia partly coz of the Malaysian community here. Most of the postgrad will conform to the Msian tradition of having their 'open house' where everyone is invited to drop by and eat and most importantly celebrate Eid with the hosts. We won't be officially having an 'open house' but we're more or less having a pot luck 'open house' which will be held at Shahrein's house on the morning of Eid. Then we'll all make a move to the postgrad houses.

Anyway for iftar today I cooked 'pengat pisang' coz both Shah and I love it. It was my 2nd time cooking it and I have to say this time the result was better. The first time I made it, which was yesterday, it was too thick so it wasn't that nice but edible. Today's 'pengat pisang' was rather spot on. Hehehe...excuse me while I give myself a pat on the back. I also made 'bubur kacang hijau' coz I felt like eating it. It turned out fine but I prefer the 'pengat pisang' coz it's much nicer and sweeter.

I'm actually surfing the net to find Eid e cards coz I'm thinking of sending them to some of my friends. But I can't seem to find any nice ones. Shah suggested I create my own Eid e card and send it off to them but I can;t find the time. Wish I'd thought of that much earlier coz it would have been cool. As usual Sunday nite is kinda boring coz tomorrow will be Monday. Back to work. I've got to run some more simulations to show my supervisors on Tuesday. So after iftar tomorrow I'll be heading back to the office to get my work done. What else is new eh!

I guess I'll stop now. Got to have some rest. Maybe have a look at one of my thesis chapters in preparation to write it out soe time this week.

So nite nite guys!...

I'm waiting for 4pm to come

I'm at the office and my boss wasn't in today cause she's sick. So one of the ladies here whom I have helped before gave me some other work which was not too difficult. I enjoyed doing it. Didn't have to use my brain too much..just looking up stuff from the catalogue and putting in the prices.

The weekend will be starting soon (even though I have to go back to work after iftar) and this will be a busy weekend as it has been ever since Ramadhan started. We've had friends over for iftar since the 1st week of Ramadhan (Didi & housemates plus Aryss & housemates on the first weekend and 1st yrs from Rayleigh park and Broadgate last weekend). This weekend, on Sunday, it'll be the turn of Shahrein and housemates. Next weekend will be Eid already. So to those who we couldn't invite for iftar...do come to our house on Eid weekend. We'll certainly be cooking for Eid so just come. Hopefully we'll cook nough for everyone. Tomorrow we've got 2 invitations for iftar. One at Azreena's place and the other at Aryss's place. We'll go to Azreena's first coz we promised her to go there before Izat told us about their iftar plans. So I won't have to cook on Saturday. I'm thinking of baking some chocolate chip cookies tomorrow (Saturday) to serve when people come over for Eid. I hope I can make some pineapple tarts too but we'll see how it goes. Tomorrow morning when we go grocery shopping I'll certainly get all the ingredients for the choc chipcookies and buy a pineapple or two to make the jam for the tarts. If I have time I'll make the jam tomorrow. Ooooo..I've certainly got lots of things to do.

I know I haven't been putting in entries to this blog. Everyday when I get home from school I have to do more work especially writing me thesis. I've made some progress on the thesis though. I've handed in 2 chapters (chapter 3 and 4) to my supervisor. Hopefully, when I meet him next week he'll have some feed back for me. I've also started on chapter 2 which I have to complete by next week. Now I work part time from 12-4pm and then go to iftar at the Uni straight away. After iftar, at approx. 6pm, I usually go back to my office and run some more simulations. So I usually reach home with Shah at around 7:30pm. Shah has to accompany me to the office coz it's dark by then and I'm afraid to stay at the office alone ever since the building has been a hot spot for people to commit suicide (well, only 2 people have actually jumped off the building so it's not really a 'hot spot'). I don't want to get in to the details of the 2 incidents so if you wanna know more come and find me and I'll tell you face 2 face.

Anyway, it's like 4 mins to 4pm and I should stop now. I've got to find someone to lock the door to this office and then go back to my school to see if my simulations gave any good results. So far most of my results have been a dissapointment.

Bye people..will write again soon!