visiting the family

on saturday (while i was attending a boring and unnecessary course at school, and it was the first day of the Chinese New Year hols for god's sake!) inas called me to say that zek was holding a tahlil at his new house in denai alam. i was excited, and promised her to go.

i called kak sham to ask if she's going, because i'd be lost if i went alone (i've never been to denai alam, and though it's not as jin bertendang as ijok jaya, i know i'll just cry if i'm stuck there on guthrie highway). kak sham wasn't keen on going, and only after she heard that kak dah was going that she changed her mind. i was to come to her house at kelana jaya at 9am, and from there we would proceed to denai alam.

well, we got lost. the names there are all scientific terms like elektron and neutron and metafasa. don't have any aesthetic value, do they?

but finally we found the house, like my brother in-law said with a straight face, "look for the house with many mercedeses parked outside."

my brothers were there, except for my favourite brother who's currently in madinah, and also my eldest sister in-law's family and her mother, who reminded me so much of my late mother. the mc for the tahlil was my nephew didi, who abang mi dubbed as "the gentle bear".

the food was superb, of course, and i enjoyed the food tremendously (don't i always). there's nasi tomato with the works and also daging dendeng, and of all the food that i had, i was impressed with the cake sandwich i had. it's just a simple cake, 2 layer-cake with strawberry jam. i like it so much that i went on my fav recipe sites to find the recipe. it's not a dense cake, therefore it's not a butter cake, so it can't be the usual victoria sponge sandwich, so i think it's a sponge cake made with sponge mix. and i intend to try it one of these days.

kak sham wanted me to tag along to a wedding, but she went too soon, and i found myself in kak dah's car going to abang halim's house at sg buloh. abang halim loves the rustic life, so he has a house in a kampung, with fruit trees all around. he loves doing the DIY projects and at the moment he is tiling his house himself. i knew he does it himself because i could see the smudges on the black tiles at the gate, and he told us that as he was tiling the house he found out that his house isn't perfectly horizontal. it was noon and very hot, and so we had a mat spread outside and lounged on it while sipping iced cold ribena and eating sweet mangoes.

it was later in the afternoon that i made my way back to ampang, feeling too full with all the rich spread. the gym was closed, so i had to do my own workout without the help of any machines *sigh*