BIG Thing - Part 3

Ni saja yand dapat di upload. Lain kali cerita lagi ye :D

Courtesy of Lagu-rakyat blogspot

BIG THING - Part 2

Lama benar nak sambung bahagian ke 2 "Big Thing" ni..., rasanya semua orang pun dah lupa kut. Jom kita tengok "clue" yang seterusnya....

What do you think ??

:D

Semakin Mekar

Even in the "buzyness" of our Big Thingy, I feel compelled to update on my tulips. Afterall they are my inspirations at the moment. I look at them in the morning when I wake up and go into the kitchen for breakfast preparation. I look at them when I cook dinner, I look at them when I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. I look at them practically everytime I pass the kitchen window !!!! Since I see them so much, I have noticed a certain traits of them by now... :D They are definitely bigger and more and more have bloomed !!!

Taken at around 9 am on 6th April

Those that have bloomed are shades of pink, peach and yellow.... The petals open up when it is sunny and close again in the evening when there is no sunlight. On a gloomy day, the petals would remain close. When the petals refuse to close again even though it is already evening, then you know that they will soon drop to the ground. That means their glory days are almost over.

Taken around 3 pm on 6th April

Each are the same and yet they are different too.... They are unique in their own individuality.

This one has opened up and become like....

This - all yellow inside.

And this one, even though it looks the same as the first one....

Have opened up and become like this - with red colour inside.....

This tulip is so vibrant- bright yellow and red, outside and....

Inside.

These pink tulips...

Look darker in the sun, almost red....

ALL PRETTY IN PINK !!

:D

BIG Thing - Part 1

Just to write that we are going to have a BIG thing happening at the house on Friday. I have mentioned about this thing in one or two of my comments since last week. It's kind of sudden, that's why right now, I'm super duper buzy.... BZ buat apa ya ?? Mostly on the phone..... yes, talking to this person, talking to that person, the actual works have yet to be settled !!! *sigh*

So, what's the BIG thingy ??? Well, I can't write about it yet. But, I'm quite excited about it :D Since we have set the ball rolling, I pray that things will work out and the BIG thingy will happen smoothly and successfully, InsyaAllah.

To give you an idea of the BIG thing, I will post here a photo to give the readers out there a clue.

Bought all this from IKEA on Monday....

Anybody interested in guessing games ???

:D

Zoetermeer In Spring

It had been a wonderful weekend recently, the temperature was 25 celcius on Saturday !! Why... it's not spring, it's summer !!! I went out that Saturday wearing a jumper, a shirt and a light wool jacket. In our haste, I did not check the temperature... I know it was sunny but I did not expect it to be so warm. Halfway through to the train station, we had to take off our jackets. By the time we came back from the swimming, it became even warmer. Ilham had taken off his spring jacket and his sweatshirt, leaving only a T-shirt and I was sweating inside, wishing I could take of my jumper as well !!! But by today, the temperature has gone back down to 13 celcius. Alhamdulillah... I'm worried you see. If it's too hot, my tulips will not last that long..... :D

So, before it gets too warm, I better post here this beautiful narcissus.....

Narcissus are everywhere now. This picture above was taken outside the swimming pool in Zoetermeer on the 19th March. I couldn't help it, I just had to ask Ilham to be my victim...

Mat bunga...

We took a walk from the pool towards Dorpstraat, the medieval village. I wanted to see whether there were any crocusus left....

Crocus with the old church at the background.

The crocusus were still there but they are not in their prime anymore. I was a bit dissappointed not to find any narcissus though....

Then, we walked to the Centrum West station using another route. Here, we found more old Dutch houses.

We also found this big bird....

Tried to get a closer and better picture, but off it flew away.........

See it's reflection in the canal.

This kind of bird is very common here in the Netherlands. Once, when we were in Amsterdam, while walking to school, I saw this bird. It was standing so still I thought it was a statue... but I was sure I had not seen any statue before at that place. The wonderful thing is they are wild birds.....

Spring Flowers

There are a few flowers that have bloomed around our house. Since I do not recognise the plants, I have been watching what type of flowers they will bloom. They turn out to be hyacinths, narcissus and a few that I still do not know the names.

This unique blue flower plants (above) catch my attention. They are low and small plants. I must find out the name... So, the minute I have free time, I quickly downloaded the picture. Once I enlarged the photo, it looks like this....



It turns out to be grape hyacinths !!! No wonder I like it !!! I love hyacinths very much, their fragrance is very much soothing to me... The enlarged photo looks very much familiar though... No wonder, I have seen it in Komichan's blog !!! Further checks on the internet reveals that it is also called muscari and baby's-breath.

I wonder what this is....

It turns out to be blue hyacinths

I have a feeling this is white hyacinth

There are many colours of hyacinths, you can go olalaa... looking at them, unfortunately I do not have them. And then, there are narcissuss.....

Narcissus

I learned a lot yesterday.... I was sure that the yellow flowers that I have in the garden were mostly narcissus, and maybe one or two daffodils. It turns out that narcissus and daffodils are the same !!! Narcissus is the Latin/botanical name, whereas daffodil is the common English name!! All the while I thought they were two different flowers, the smaller ones (above) being narcissus and the bigger ones (below) being daffodils.



It seems that there are many versions of narcissus/daffodils. Some are pale yellow, others have orange "trumpets", some are white with yellow "trumpets" etc...

Pale yellow

Smaller flowers

The ones outside the house, by the canal are pale yellow with orange trumpet...

By the canal

And then, there those that I do not know the names...

Unnamed blue flower

Another blue flower

Rose like flowers....

Up close

Funny looking tree...

And the flowers up close...

Such lovely flowers..... Subhanallah

Makan-makan Lagi

One of the things that I had to get used to when staying here in Holland is the "kehadiran" a lot of visitors. It is wonderful to have families and friends visiting us, unfortunately none of our close friends and family have yet to come here. Most of the visitors (like 95%) of them I never met or heard of in my life. Some were colleagues and friends of DH, while others were complete strangers to us !!!

To be honest, having strangers in the house makes me very uncomfortable. I feel so stressed sometimes and yet I could not unwind or put up my legs at night because the house is no longer mine. There are times when I feel that our lives here is such like a roller coaster, always eventful. Private moments at home during weekends are few and far between.

Recently, we had 9 visitors arriving from Malaysia. A family of five, a husband and wife and a mother and son. They arrived on 20th March and went back on the 26th. On the 24th March we had 3 more visitors joining us. Two were staying at a hotel (they preferred it that way :D), while the other one, we squeezed him in the small computer/solat room. Normally we never had that many visitors at any one time. We try to avoid overlapping of visitors, but this time the group of 9 had made last minute changes. Luckily they went back on Saturday and not Sunday as one of them had claimed, otherwise they had to find other alternatives because we had already planned on going for an overnight stay at Antwerp on the 26th.

No of bags... belum campur kotak2 yang dibawa lagi !!

Upon arrival.... the group of 9

A simple lunch of fried rice and omelette.

Since there were so many of them, we decided to have barbecue and satay on Friday night. We also invited DH's colleague and her family and another friend. It must be the earliest barbecue event in the area since it's not yet summer, where people normally have barbecues !!!

Barbecue - chicken and lamb

Chicken and beef satay...

Since I did not have to prepare and cook them, I totally supported the barbecue idea !!! The chicken was marinated by DH's colleague, the lamb was marinated by DH, the satay was ordered from the well known Malaysian lady here in The Hague. I did not have to do anything.... :D But I did contribute by making the fried rice....

Laden with food....

Another angle - just to show my fried rice :D

Since I was feeling generous, I made the deserts too - puding kastad (corn custard pudding), serimuka and apam gula hangus.

Apam gula hangus - steamed caramelised cake

Serimuka - traditional Malaysian sweet cake, the bottom part is made from glutinous rice.

This was my second attempt at serimuka in two weeks. I still couldn't get the right combination for the upper green layer. My late grandmother used to make it with very soft top layer. When you cut them, they sometimes did not look tidy but it was so delicious !!!

And last, we made ikan bakar specially to the Acik visitor who had high blood pressure !!! Poor Acik had to spend 2 days at the house so that she recovered from her headache. It seemed that her blood pressure had risen !!!

Ikan bakar...

I'm looking forward to April visitors.... because for the first time I have my own friends coming over.... HOOORAAAY !!!!