RAMADHAN KAREEM!

kareem means noble, distinguish, generous."ramadhan kareem" is a phrase used to wish someone a good and hopefully rewarding ramadhan.

10 days into the holy month, i'm starting to get used to ramadhan here. at first, i thought that i would be miserable, not being able to do the usual things that i used to do back home. but i realised that it has not been that bad. i mean, i still miss the pasar ramadhan back home (they don't have anything like that here. in fact all food outlets are closed until maghrib. but they will open from maghrib until about 1.30 a.m. oh, and the shopping malls observe similar operating hours too.). but on the bright side, due to the lack of good malaysian food, i have been able to prevent myself from eating a lot. and the scale has consistently delivered me quite good news in the past few days :)

on a normal day, my berbuka meal would consist of buah kurma, my milo ais (3-in-1 from malaysia) and some self-cooked food. there were days when i only had slices of bread with chicken nuggets or chicken sheesh tawook (some boneless chicken grill thingy that you can buy frozen). yesterday, i actually made rendang daging using the perencah rendang adabi that i bought 8 months ago (there were some santan involved.. so i was a bit hesitant to try it out because it looked complicated. but it turned out ok. it actually TASTED and LOOKED like rendang ..yay!). of course, there were also days where i ate out.. so far i had japanese, mexican and thai for my berbuka. and i just realised that japanese food is super duper expensive here! an average looking california roll costs around rm22. kalau kat carrefour midvalley dah boleh beli 10. i guess it wil be a long time before i'll have japanese food again i guess. but whenever i have a decent meal for berbuka (they call it iftar here) , i tend to not eat anything for sahur (they call it sohuur here). and this routine has worked out ok for me so far.

for some reason, i have been going out a lot in the past few days. all by invitation (no.. my circle of friends here has not really been expanding.. but i guess we just got closer nowadays, nd my friends has started to realise that i make a good company.. :P). and because of that, i have been missing some nights of terawih. but i like terawih here more than back home. maybe it's mostly because of the convenience. my apartment is 90-seconds walk away from the mosque and that is just convenient. and all the masjids here are air conditioned. so comfy. i remember back in malaysia if we wanted to go to an air conditioned masjid we would go to masjid wilayah for our terawih. but finding a good parking spot there would be a nightmare. i can safely say that my apartment here is even closer to the masjid than some of the parking spots we landed on back in masjid wilayah... heheh. and sine the imam is an arab, i just find his bacaan more ...sedap. more character. with more emotions (seriously). and this is good. but of course, my journey to the masjid (or even when i'm inside the masjid) will not be complete without having a few pairs of eyes stare at me (i think they are bewildered at a sight of a filipin*-looking guy entering the masjid). but i don't mind. because i do my share of staring at other people in the masjid too (if you know what i mean.. ).

and what is ramadhan without the usual routine of shopping, splurging and over-spending? initially, i was afraid that i couldn't continue this routine of mine here because there won't be any motivation for me to buy new clothes (i've counted and confirmed that i will visit a maximum of 3 houses during hari raya. don't think that i'll need new clothes for raya this time around). but fortunatelly, i was mistaken. the ramadhan sale here is so crazy that you don't even need a reason to buy new clothes. the sale was a VALID ENOUGH enough reason to buy new clothes.. heheh. and i also realised that i can shop for other things apart from new clothes. so, as an effort to withhold the tradition, i decided to splurge on some designer hair care products :). and now, i have fabulous rehydrated, stong, elastic hair! (at least that's what it says on the bottle :P)



oh yeah, and i bought a pair of dumbells too. they're yellow. but as always, it's taking me some time to face my fears and actually start using them. same case like my (also yellow) pair of running shoes. it's like a new pet, i think. i need to give it space. and i need to bond with it first. and not rush into things. or maybe i'm just plain lazy (which i think is the case).

that pretty much sums up my ramadhan here so far. in a nutshell, it's not as bad as i expected them to be. and what a relief that is. but there's another hurdle - raya. can't believe that i actually need to brace myself for raya this time. hope things won't be as bad as i think it would be. i have actually downloaded some raya mp3's from the internet. but i haven't had the courage to play them yet. takut sebak. camana tu?