Tag Archives: hosting

Be my guest

Posted in Everyday Life, Parenting, Family and Relationships by

Hosting comes naturally for some people. Someone could give a heads up within 15 minutes and the house is ready to welcome them. I do not have the confidence to do that yet. I need at least a week’s notice.

Anyway, my sister came for a short visit recently. So I called her over for lunch. I prepared nasi lemak with sambal bunga kantan, shepherd’s pie and a mini fruit tower. She brought doughnut brownies over. Her family was planning to check into Amverton Heritage at Ayer Keroh. There’s a waterpark in the resort.

I used bunga kantan from my garden for the sambal. I really liked its tangy taste and basically cooked up a sambal based on what I read from recipes online. I had no time to fry chicken so I prepared some nuggets and hard-boiled eggs as protein for the nasi lemak. I lack the nuts and ikan bilis though.

My fruit tower was made up of baby pineapples and strawberries. I wanted to indulge my nephew and niece with nice fruits. If only I had durian.

As for the shepherd pie, I used minced meat from the brand Saudi, ready-made sauce from Leggo and chopped in some carrots for texture. I think I did the mash on top pretty well this time. Placed it in the oven for 20 minutes at 200 degrees just before my sister came.

This is what my sister brought. A cute doughnut brownie box. The brownie was a bit hard but the sprinkles made it edible.

They only spent about 90 minutes at my place as they had to get going. I did realize that there are certain mannerisms that I need to teach my children when it comes to receiving guests at home.

  • when a visitor comes, regardless if you know them or not, they must come out of their rooms and pay respect. meaning salam. Do not wait for me to scream and beckon them out of their rooms.
  • if these guests have children, they should not stay in their room. Instead, to try and entertain these children, pique their interest and go along with it.

I cannot manage adult behaviour but at least I can teach the kids.

Hosting Eidul Adha 2023

Posted in Everyday Life by

I was excited to host because it seems a while since I had people over to the house for a meal. What’s the point of having a dining table if you don’t plan on using it kan? Perhaps later I can invite some people over for lunch on a Friday when I am on leave or something.

Setting the house

Cleaning a home is not something I can do in just one weekend. It takes at least a few weekends to get it into order as I don’t have any helper at home nor do I enlist the services of professional cleaners. I feel that when it comes to Malaysians, privacy is easily invaded as the people like to ask personal questions and I’d have to evade it like a bullet. They’d be asking what you do as a living, the this and the that.. so unless I feel like sharing about it one day, we’d just do it ourselves.

One of the major cleanups I did was the gym and storage area. Previously it was full of bags of plastic bags filled with old curtains, clothes and recyclables that I wanted to get rid of. Now that I know where to bring this stuff for donations, it makes decluttering easier. There is a Kloth care bin at Peringgit but it looks uncared for and messy. I chose to send mine to the Lotus donation bin instead. It also helps that the disposable trucks from SWM come here every Monday to collect our recyclable items which makes these environmentally friendly efforts easier.

I charged and put up my solar lights for an aesthetic night setup. It felt like a cafe outside. I bought a lot of lights from a seller on Shopee as I plan to paint the walls and drill more of them later – after my exams in August.

Menu List

The menu I wanted to prepare started the day before Eid, which was on Wednesday as my dad has already reached my home. I decided to make Lamb Briyani using Adabi’s instant lamb curry. I ordered Sate. Boiled some instant lemang and chopped up my chickens for the Ayam Masak Merah dish.

I went to Mydin for my shopping trip as the items are cheap and there’s a lot of variety to choose from. I spent nearly RM400 on everything as I also needed to get some items for Matin’s goodie bags, a BBQ stand, charcoal and other miscellaneous things. I bought my marinated drummers and ikan tenggiri papan from here as well for our BBQ and umai.

Our BBQ was on a Saturday morning because my sister needed to leave by lunch. We did not have one the night before because there were mosquitoes in the yard. I don’t want anyone to get dengue fever. So I prepared a normal home-cooked meal for her which consisted of ikan bawal, stir-fried vegetables, my umai and telur dadar.

I also bought some rolled cakes from an online Shopee vendor. The visuals were great but the taste was mediocre. I am thinking of sharing some of these cakes with my daughters’ friends at kindergarten. Our Eid mornings were in fact very simple and cosy.

Parcel kasih sayang

I just realized that I have no photos of my PKS. These are bags filled with food and gifts for my dad and my siblings. This time I gave them a packet of Instant Coffee from Arifcafe, Cadbury’s Chocolate Drink, Indomie, cookies, chocolates and snacks for my nephew and nieces. I also gave 3 bags of daging korban to my siblings as sedekah.

There will be more celebrations to come towards the end of the year. There will be loads of birthdays and parties to go to. I look forward to more mini-staycation as well.

Eid and anxiety

Posted in Everyday Life by

Last year we had this teaching session on mental health disorders. We did an assessment of ourselves using the PHQ9 and the GAD7. Somehow my score came to a ‘moderate anxiety’. I knew I had some form of anxiety when it came to certain things, but categorising it as moderate clicked for me. However, it is still manageable. It does disrupt my sleep patterns and affects my stress levels from time to time. But I can still function. I just need longer time to execute a task or do something that some people find easy peasy to do. Sometimes I’d subconsciously allay my anxiety by engaging in ‘absurd’ behaviour such as taking a long way back home instead of a shorter route. Simply because I could not cross to the other side of the road because of the heavy traffic.

This year we are celebrating Eid Adha at my place. You have no idea how long it took me to prepare for this bit by bit. I believe the preparation to this day took me at least 2 months. It’s for things like thinking of a menu, washing up old linens, decluttering the house, making the plants presentable, setting up the family’s place to sleep etc.

Speaking of prep, I encountered 3 unpleasant incidents.

  • Car service – since I am on leave, I requested for the service to be carried out on my own porch. It was after all the type of service offered by the mechanic, not something that I mengada-ngada mintak. Plus, that was supposed to be the app’s special feature. That is you can have the service done at home. Lo and behold, on the day that the service was due, I received a phone call saying that they are unable to go ahead with the task. They were short of manpower. I laid out two options: either give me a refund or reschedule for another date. I even gave out my dates for them to choose from. It came down to a reschedule. There must be a reason why they couldn’t refund the money. Incompetence, maybe?
  • I ordered lemang periuk kera and rendang from a vendor I found on Facebook. At first, I made an enquiry if they were taking any orders in the first place. They responded with a confident ‘yes’ but have not made a formal announcement yet. That was my first red flag because my enquiry was made a week before Eid and for the vendor not to post their services prior to such an important festival is just suss. Secondly, the seller commented that he will re-notify me of the price in the near time. That is the second red flag. If you are an experienced seller and are taking orders, you wouldn’t hesitate to reveal the price in an instant. My gut was saying, they will cancel this order next week. So, I bought instant lemang for my ‘just in case occasion. Indeed, when I sent a message to request the price and reconfirm the purchase, the answer was predictable. The seller was unable to proceed with the order. To me, it’s straightforward. Should a customer like myself make a courtesy call to enquire first-hand about your service, should you anticipate that you will be unable to fulfil it, just say, I am sorry – we are not taking orders for Hari Raya Haji. May I suggest this vendor who makes an equally delicious serving of lemang instead?
  • Sate delivery. I am an anxious person. Meaning, until a task is completed and ticked off my list – I would be worrying about it till wit’s end. So for other people, when they are waiting for their delivery or waiting for someone to arrive at their house – they may be able to still do other things peacefully. I can’t. I am unable to do that. I will end up being restless throughout the wait. So if you haven’t actually dispatched my order via Lalamove, don’t say that you have. just say I will start my delivery at 5pm and it will reach you in 1 hour. At least I know for the next 30 minutes I am good.

Now that the Eid celebration is over, I can focus my anxiety on new things. Meaning my assignments and my attachment at Klinik Desa. Will share what happened on Eid later.