tribute

He was supposed to have his engagement ceremony today..
Rest in peace dear cousin...We all miss you dearly....

Al - Fatihah to  

Alif Abu Bakar Abdul Wahab

6 Sept 1982 - 13 Jan 2011

real social network

I am now in level B1,1. It has been 3 days and I can feel the heat, even in the cold winter weather. Yes, it's still cold here. The wind is excruciatingly stark even though it is sunny. I can feel it blowing angrily in my face and sometimes I put my shawl on my face and people can only see my eyes.

If you know me personally, you would know that I hate changes. Or, it might take me a while to adapt to change. Since I am now in another group of classmates, naturally I would compare them with my old classmates. I can't help it. Biasalah, belum biasa lagi, everything is foreign and new. However, after more than a month being with this group of youngsters, yesterday was finally the day that we went out for lunch together. 

Florian from Syria asked each and everyone of the classmates to go to lunch after class. Even though it was last minute but we managed to gather some 8 people together. We had problems choosing a place to eat, Döner was the first choice but Florian suggested to eat Döner yang berdiri. See Europeans like to eat berdiri, they would have many2 tall tables but no chairs. Which I find it weird at first tapi now dah terbiasa. However, the weather was too cold to eat berdiri and our Döners might be flying around in the streets. Ilias from France then suggested Istanbul and we all agreed. So it was me from Malaysia, Analuz (Mexico), Ximera (Columbia), Khalid (Isreal), Alexander (Ukraine), Florian (Syria), Thomas (Croatia) and Ilias (France). He brought his cousin along, Ryadh, who is from Morocco. Throught all of this, we were all conversing in Deutsch. It was an amazing experience for me. I learned a lot of new things and new cultures from these bunch of people. After lunch, we headed to an Egyptian coffee shop where they guys had Shisha. And then the guessing age game came up. They wrongly guessed my age and when they finally knew they unanimously said, 'sheißer!' means, $hit! Haha! Funny2. 


And so we went on talking about the cliche´ of other nationalities. Is it true that all Asians are smart? Do the French sing when they speak? Do all Russians drink Vodca? Why do Arabs speak loud? Are all Mexican food spicy? It was a new experience for me. My husband think its good that I hang out more with my classmates, lagi bagus with the ones who don't speak English because the only common thing we have is Deutsch. And we are kinda forced to speak Deutsch.


Unfortunately, unlike other socialnetworkers, I don't take pictures of my gatherings and hangouts here. Therefore, I have no pictures to share.
 
Au revoir people! Good bye in French :)

Athene's Theory of Everything

Plan to watch this when I have the time.. sblm terlupa

B1

Morgen fange ich mit B1 Kurs an.

It means, 'Tomorrow I start with B1 course'. 

I am kinda excited plus nervous though. It's getting tougher everyday. I have 2 more months left before my exams and so far have completed 400 hours of Deutsch course. Yup, 400 hours. Alhamdulillah. We have no homework today so I am abit relieved. I can ulangkaji semula my previous classes yang mana tak faham,, perlulah difahamkan, yang kabur perlu diterangkan, etc. You get the drill. Learning is always fun. I bought buku latihan extra or like we used to call it in school days, Buku Kerja. 

For the ending of today's course, we had to write a Poem in Deutsch. It was so hard! But I managed to composed a romantic short poem. :)

Ich bin glücklich. Du bist hier / I am lucky. You are here.

Du betrachtest das Meer mit mir / You look at the sea with me

Ich halte deine Hand / I hold your hand

Und wir laufen durch dem Sand / And we walk through the sand

What do you think? Hehehehe.. 

I apologize if I blog lesser nowadays or lesser online activities since I need to focus. And pardon my English and BM cause it's so confusing nowadays. My brains are working with 3 different languages. Till next time.. Take care y'all ! :)

thoughts

To those January born babies have most probably celebrated their 30th birthday by now or will be celebrating it soon. 30. The big 3-0. InshaAllah kalau umur panjang, I will be celebrating my 30th birthday this May. I don't want anything. Just prayers and well wishes is more than enough for me. I would usually fear or panic or dread the thought of me reaching an older age. Looking at those socialnetwork sites would sometimes make me think about my own life.. While other people flash their family, their newborns, documenting their newborns' milestone, their wealth, their success, their 5 figure bonuses, their stateof the art gadgets.. I flash nothing interesting of myself whatsoever. Not comparing with the others but viewing it will sometimes make you think (I know you agree with me on this). But alhamdulillah I have my health, my husband, my family, good friends and Allah has been generous and making my life easier here as I would imagined. Allah has granted me strength and health which money can never buy and something that I am thankful for every single day. I don't have those other things to post but it's okay.

Winter is slowly ending. It stopped snowing when 2011 began. I would like to share with you a song. This song will always remind me of Winter 2010.. when the days were shorter and colder.. when the ray of sunlight brought smiles to everyone.. when the coffee tasted warmer.. when the hot shower felt nicer.. when the weather brought everybody and everything closer.. when everything was dark and bright at the same time.. my first Winter was a memorable experience.. I hope and pray that 2011 will be a good year for all of us.



This is Xavier Naidoo. He is a Mannheimer and used to work at my houseowner's restaurant as a tukang cuci pinggan last time. Now a multimillionaire singer. Life is funny when you think about it. How your life can change within a moment, a day, a week, a month, or a year.. you get the idea..

I was messaging with my very good old friend, also my schoolmate. He is now a father of 3 and lives in Ohio. Once in a while we would keep in contact. He asked if I had a recipe for Kuah Dal or Nasi Briyani. I told him that I don't know but my husband can cook Nasi Briyani very well and I will ask him. Then I said, its funny that I am berbalasing msgs about recipes with him. It was also a very rare occasion that his profile picture is himself with his three kids. If you had known him back then in school, you would never imagined that. He replied that sometimes he feels that moments like these seems surreal. If only he had said during school, 'Hey, in 13 years time, when I have 3 kids, I will message you in FB asking for nasi briyani resipi' and I would reply, 'Gee, I dunno la. That's my husband's specialty who is --- from class ---. I have to ask him laa'

We never thought that life would turn out to be like this. But I'm glad it did. It's the surprises in life that makes it more interesting. Every single thing that we own is from Allah, He can give and take anytime He wants to. Even our lives. Embrace life people..

Al- Fatihah for Alif Abu Bakar. Thoughts and prayers are always with you couz..

Al Fatihah

Do not be sad of his passing, but be happy that he had a good and meaningful life... 

Before I start writing this blog, I request for you readers to recite Al - Fatihah for my cousin, Alif Abu Bakar bin Abdul Wahab who has left us on 13th January 2011 at the age of 28.
I have been wanting to dedicate this entry for a long time. But I needed time to compose myself and I wanted to be ready to write this.

My dear cousin, he was only a year younger than me. As children, we would meet during hari raya, weddings and kenduris, sometimes funerals and sometimes during the weekly visit to Arwah Opah's house in Subang Jaya. As we grew older, our relatives became more mobile and sometimes would just meet up. Before I flew off, I had organized a Bowling Tournament for all our relatives. Little that I know that it was his first and last bowling tournament with our cousins.. The last that I met him was 2 weeks after the tournament, they had a kenduri for his mother who was going for Umrah. And I still remember what I said to him, 'Girlfriend kamu tak datang ke?' and he laughed and said, 'Girlfriend yang mana satu?' That was Alif. Always joking and laughing.

For my wedding, he offered to be my photographer and 'sedara punya pasal' he gave me a very good price for it. And because he was my cousin, he knew the right people to snap. He did his job very well and many complimented of my pictures. He bought a special lense just before my wedding to take pictures. 'sedara punya pasal' he said and I quote.

I remember clearly when I was 4 and he was 3. We took a picture at Opah's house and he suap me a piece of cake and I hugged him. I still have that picture at home. A lot of memories we had with my dear cousin. It's really hard to believe that he is no longer with us. He would update his facebook status with comments about politics, traffic jam in KL and football. Sedih pulak rasa that I couldn't buy for him a jersey from Germany as he had requested.

His passing was a big shock for all of us. How did I find out? My husband suddenly came to the kitchen in the morning and said that he was gone. We knew that he was in the ICU for a week but I was confident that he would recover. I felt my whole body numb when I heard the news. I can't believe that my cousin was gone. He was so young. He was so full of life. He was supposed to be engaged this 30th January 2011. Jodoh, ajal dan rezeki di tangan Allah.. Ajal telah menjemput arwah sebelum dia bersatu dengan jodohnya.. Till now, I still feel his presence. It won't be the same without him around.. He was always the one to make the gatherings more ceria with his jokes and laughters.. He was loved by everyone.. but Allah loves him more..


'Dear Alip bata (I always call him that), you are loved by everyone.. you will be missed dearly.. but you will not be forgotten.. your passing has made us all closer.. I still can't believe that you are no longer with us.. But we will always pray for you.. I pray that you will be with the placed with the ones who are pious.. together with all our other relatives... We love you and we miss you very much.. But you are in a better place now... Al Fatihah...'

 During Cucu Opah'S bowling Tournament.. January 2010

 Alif with my sister and my other cousin, Kak Mimi

Alif who didn't get a strike for a I don't know how many times..

Rest In Peace my dear cousin... rest in peace...

my first 2011 post

Hello! I hope its not too late to wish you all happy new year 2011! How was your new year's celebration? We had a great time. Since me and my husband will be turning 30 this year, we decided to have some makan² and hanging out at our house. Our New Year's eve was celebrated with a theme. I came up with the idea, A Black and White Affair. Everyone wore something either black or white or both. Which looked fabulous and turned out great in pictures.We had finger food. I prepared tuna sandwiches and hotdogs and everyone brought something. In the end, we had too much food and had to tapaukan for everyone. The party was supposed to commence at 2000. Tapi dunno they all ni dah germanise kot.. 1830 dah sampai dah.. But it's okay for me :) Activies were rock banding in the livingroom, karaoke-ing in our room, poker in the kitchen and borak² di satu sudut di hujung living room. Memang agak happening jugak la I might say. The topics that we talked about covered almost everything. We talked about games played masa kecik². Main getah, main tiang, main rubber, main pen, ting ting, main bola pakai kertas, macam² lah lagi.. Borak citer hantu la, politics, economy, social.. Movies, theorems, weather, life, life in the past, life in the future. It was just chilling and hanging out. A laid back party. Towards midnight, we headed downstairs to play with fireworks. In Deutschland, fireworks diharamkan, kecuali on New Year's eve. They call it the Sylvesterfeirn. New Year's eve depa memang kaw kaw jual. What's cool in Mannheim is that banyak lelaki so diorang ni rajin main mercun. I think we had almost more than 100euros worth of fireworks bila dah dicombine kan. So main la mercun sampai almost 1am. Bila mercun dah habis, we played snowfight pulak. Someone threw a big snowball at me sampai tertelan sedikit snow. So apa lagi, kejar la siapa yang baling tu.. Hahaha.. I forgot for a moment that I am turning 30 this year. But we had fun being kids and letting go of everything and just being happy. I knew that that moment would probably not come again or if it did, it wouldn't be as much fun. We felt somewhat close to each other. Walaupun some I just came to know their names that night. Bila tangan dah sejuk and semua mengigil, we headed upstairs and continued with the Rockbanding, Pokering and Karaoke-ing. The guests stayed till almost 0300am. We finally slept at 430am.. and had to wake up again at 0530 to catch our morning flight to Ireland. Gila. I had fun. :)
 Here are some pictures... Enjoy :) 

Rocking it

 New Year!

The pokerdealer

 Our fireworks

 Semua yang hadir

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