Air Naik....

A normal scenery behind the house at this time of the year...

 Before going off to work this morning, a calm morning..

Air tak sampai ke pagar rumah lagi..

6.45 pm..the wind was blowing hard and the water has risen...

When I heard voices...

It was these 2 boys riding horses in the water..

Mana nak bawa kuda tu???

Makan Makan

Ada kedai makan baru dibuka dekat dengan ofis, tiap hari ke pejabat tengok boleh tahan ramai jugak orang masuk makan di situ.  Lagipun lokasi kedai makan ni agak strategik, banyak pejabat dan supermarket di sekeliling dan ramai budak-budak supermarket makan di situ.  Taukenya  chinese muslim dan pekerja-pekerjanya pastilah kesemuanya budak-budak melayu.   So last week after office hours dan kebetulan lunch pun tak makan, singgah di restoran ini dengan hubby dan anak sebelum pulang ke rumah.

Ada pelbagai variety nasi ayam dalam menunya. Bila tanya waitressnya nasi ayam mana yang biasa diorder oleh pelanggan dia kata Nasi Ayam Panggang (Roast Chicken Rice)....patutlah pun sebab nasi ayam itu yang paling murah dalam menu.  Tak ingatlah apa variety yang lain (macam2 ada) dan yang diorder sepertimana gambar-gambar di bawah...

Menu 

Yang ni diorder oleh anak - Ayam Madu BBQ

 Chicken Chop Rice with Thousand Island Sauce

Tofu dalam Menu

The real Tofu Thai Style

I ate the Chicken Chop Rice topped  with Thousand Island Sauce and coleslaw.  Gelenya sangat nak order nasi ayam ini....makan pun tak habis, mujur ada orang yang habiskan ... huhu.  Nasi agak lembik....ini memang dah sah guna beras wangi dan ada bau minyak bijan dalam nasi but the chicken chop is crunchy and freshly made.  Ayam Madu BBQ tu is a bit sweet (anak yang cakap cos she ate this dish). The tofu tu boleh recommend..sedap.  

Tragedi @ Tragedy

It befalls all of us and Allah knows best...

The first tragedy befalls my cousin sister last Sunday morning (13 Nov 2011) when she was not at home...her house caught fire and the 1st floor was all burnt out.  When asked what caused the fire, she told me the bomba said it started from the gas stove but she hardly cook at home and often eats at her mother's (my aunt) house which is attached to her house.   The upper floor housed the kitchen and bedrooms.  Nothing could be saved except for a copy of an al-quran which miraculously did not catch fire...  things such as this do happen!  The smell of charred wood still lingers when I visited her yesterday.  My cousin lives alone while her two children work in KL.

Her mum's house attached to her house luckily escaped the fire...

Front view of the destroyed upper floor..

The second tragedy befalls my son just a couple of days after the fire above ...

Kereta dirempuh motorsikal berkuasa tinggi (entah berapa tinggi tak taulah!)   dan inilah kesudahannya.  Si empunya motor tak mahu bayar kerugian walaupun dia di pihak yang bersalah (mungkin dia tengok budak muda yang bawa kereta so boleh kelentong). Disebabkan panik orang tua di kampung hanya tau perkara ini pada keesokan harinya.  Yang ni sedih sangat sebab kita yang sponsor kereta bagi pada dia untuk pergi balik kolej dan hanya dua hari berada di Shah Alam dah kena musibah ini ...huk huk!  Hutang pun tak start bayar lagi..uwaaah...  Abah dia tak bagi blog pasal ni takut anak tension, jadi mak dia ada tak tension?  But who cares its my blog!

Walau apa pun semua musibah yang berlaku ada hikmahnya..redha aje lah.

A Friday Morning On 11.11.11

The day started early in the morning when her father sent her off to school...later

To be here for a special ceremony....

To stand at attention from 7.30 am - 9.30 am ....

While standing and waiting in attention....one of them was struck by heatstroke (kesian!) but it's still morning and the morning sun is supposed to be good for you (the sun shone quite fiercely that morning), these school kids were well trained not to be perturbed at all when one of them was led away in a daze, there were a few fainting spells from the other contingents...

The Arrival of ...

KDYMM Sultan Muhammad V...

Yup...its the official birthday of our beloved new Sultan...

The theme this year.. 'Islam Dijunjung, Raja Disanjung, Rakyat Dipayung' ... Semoga Allah Melindungi Tuanku Dunia Akhirat..

The awaited march begins...

Ceremony ends....

Smart Soldiers...

sedapnya aiskrim...hehe (entah anak siapa nih!)

Her school's contingent....

With the Commandants...

All ends well and below with her close friends.. (walaupun hanya dapat saguhati

untuk perbarisan...masih happy!)

The whole ceremony lasted two hours (7.30 am - 9.30 am)...its not a torture to the rakyat like before ..wink wink. 

Kita Share Fatwa Ini....

Cuticura Sepanjang Zaman

Cuticura dalam bekas tin (Vintage) - from Google Images

Cuticura dalam bekas plastik sekarang (sis punya ni)

Sis punya cerita ni...

Ingat lagi bedak talkum cuticura? Masa kecil dulu semua orang kenal bau bedak cuticura. Ingat masa line up ambil nasi kat Uitm tahun 70-an, ada budak perempuan di depan pakai bedak cuticura, orang hok bubuh nasi tegur, hai bau  bedak cuticura.

Dah mula balik beli bedak cuticura lo ni, boleh hilang gatal, bedak talkum baru walaupun bedak talkum baby tak sebagus bedak cuticura. Harum baunya lain dari bedak cuticura. Tapi lo ni tak dok ore cam bau bedak cuticura daa. 

Tgk kat internet, dah 135 tahun produk ni kat USA dan ada banyak jenis, sabun, minyak ointment tapi tak dok napok kat supermarket, mungkin tak perasan.

This Old Wooden Door..

This wooden door has stood here still strong and sturdy for over a 100 years and had withstood numerous number of big floods and small floods.  Upon's great grandfather's  (Haji Muhamad Doboh) insistence all his children had this door built at their own houses (it served as the main gate in those days) and this is the door at my maternal grandmother's house built at the end of the 19th century and it still stand in the compound of my family's house.  It is a simple wooden door made out of 'cengal' wood (maybe?), there is not much intricate design on the door and with steel bars supporting the roof. There was a pair of  round ringed door knocker on the outer side of the door made of copper and these have been stolen (kita jumpa di akhirat ya....wahai si pencuri!).  The door is barred from the inside using a piece of iron rod 3 inches thick (I remember it as being very rusty when I was a kid).  All the doors of Muhamad Doboh's family has a roof over it, maybe the original roof was made of tiles later changed to zinc and now being upgraded to tiles again in 1995 with the supporting brick pillars.

We still hold on to this door upon the advice of great grandfather to maintain it as a mark or rather a symbol for who knows in the future our far flung relatives might one day come back and be reunited with us.  For practical reasons, this door block the  driveway for cars to drive out to the main road.  As of many years ago another bigger gate was built at the other end of the compound and we had to reverse the car every time we want to go out on to the busy main road.   

There were several doors similar to ours that were still around in the 60s but were later pulled down for various reasons.  It was common to find this type of door in front of other family houses but with different designs because it was a trend back in the 19th century.

When we were kids we used sit on the bar across the door to watch the traffic goes by but then in those days there were not many cars on the road but a lot of bicycles and the pushcarts that was filled with tree barks (kulit kayu) used for cooking on wood stoves.  As seen in the picture above the bar seems to be at ground level now when in those days it was higher up by a foot or more.

Indeed great grandfather's prophecy that this door would someday bring together his descendants was proven when two incidents occurred to my sister Teh and in her own words...

When we were small children, we often used the Jalan Sultan Ibrahim to visit our paternal grandparents, and Jalan Sultan Ibrahim was where the police headquarters was located.  We noticed a similar wooden door at a traditional house along the street identical to ours.  We were told that the owner was our maternal grandaunt, Tok Ngoh Som who was then deceased.  Much later, my foster's sister's cousin married one of Tok Ngoh Som great granddaughter.  We realized that she was our cousin when her husband told me that his wife's family was negotiating sale for a piece of land at that particular place.  I made an effort to meet his wife's mother to see whether we are related.  Definitely we are related, the mother Kak Yoh or Safiah recalled that as a child she accompanied her grandmother, Tok Ngoh Som to visit my grandmother whom she called Mak Teh Jah.  She even recalled and remembered my own mother and my aunts.  She told me that my late grandmother loved to organize feasts for her relatives, friends and neighbours.  Exactly what my mother used to tell me!

The second incident occurred when I was working with Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.  I met a new colleague, who just started to work there.  To me she seemed familiar and once we started to know each other, I found comradeship in her.  Later she, who happened to hail from Perak, told me that she had relatives in Kelantan and used to visit a house on my street.  She recalled that the house had a wooden door with a roof.  It clicked that she might be a relative because all of my maternal grandmother's siblings had that type of door.  I called my mother and she confirmed that her cousin, Pak Teh Daud's wife's sister had moved to Perak in the 50's.  Guessed what, I paid her family a visit, to visit her grandparents and her own mother in Parit, Perak.  Her grandmother had a fine time recalling and getting informations of relatives she had left behind.

Discovering long forgotten relatives is wonderful and this wooden door did play an important role.  Isn't it?

'SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL ADHA' to all muslims readers who happened to peek into this blog :)