A very random post

I know its been a while since the last post but with it being a very long term (8 weeks) and no holidays, we haven't really gone anywhere. That isn't to say we haven't done a lot- just not stuff that I think would be worth blogging about.

We've been going to Bukhit a lot to keep fit (Zaheer is a machine- soooo not fun trying to keep up with him on 9 bloody hills!), swimming at school, having dinners with friends, eating out loads at the Indian restaurant Lotus (its just so tasty!) so its all been good.

(My mouth waters everytime I see this picture- stir fried prawns in chilli sauce- drooooool)

We are also getting very excited about going back to the UK soon- 7 weeks to go!! To be honest we don't know where the time has gone. When we first arrived it was so scary to think we weren't going to be seeing our family and friends from the UK for a whole year and it is very hard to cope with but Christmas seems like the biggest hurdle- once you're over that time just seems to fly and before you know it you're in May!

So since the last update:

Yusuf (you can always rely on him to fill up the blogging pages!) took part in Athletics day.

It was a really fun day (although very long) and they did four different activities- running, sack race, throwing and relay. Yusuf tried very hard and did well in all of them. Red house and (Ithink- I'm really not sure!!) Yellow house came joint first so Yusuf was happy and so was Zaheer who is head of Red house.

Yusuf had his school pictures taken.

School pictures are school pictures- none of the kids smile like they do normally and the parents are thinking 'W.T.F- but its not me and we'll buy it anyway and display them around the house to embarrass the living daylights out of them when they're teenagers and bring their 'cool' friends around' but we've all been there! Here's me with my brother:

(the concentration in trying to smile- its too much!)

I blame (1) my mum for the clothes (the waistcoat! My brother had some cool denim thing going on! WHY mum, why???) and the hair and (2) the photographer. If you inspect the picture closely you will see my brother (though not as seriously as me) trying to do the exact same smile/grin/scary face/lady gaga show me your teeth look, as me therefore the photographer MUST have told us to do that and us being Pakistanis who didn't know how to smile because god forbid we did in pictures (if your a Pakistani, from my family, you will know what I am talking about!), blindly followed him. And no I didn't show Zaheer this before we got married because I think he wanted ok looking children so I showed him one of me as a baby with rosy cheeks but then my evil sister showed one of the dreaded teenage years (evil evil sister!) and I think there was some serious thinking going on in Zaheers head (after the initial 'gah! who/what the hell is this!?)

We bought a mini tree.

No gardens as we live in an apartment and I always wanted a tree (in the garden) so we bought this. I love it. Even the birds get confused with it and try to sit on it and build little nests. Its cute watching them fail.

And finally, I'm going to leave you with this comic from my favourite website ever- Explosm.net. These guys are so incredibly funny and I aspire to be like them one day......and fail miserably

Hope you have a random HAPPY day!!

Yusuf's 5th Birthday Part 2

This was the big day for Yusuf. It was his party at the land of all parties- JUNGLE GYMS!!

This was the highlight of the year as far as Yusuf was concerned. We had called all of his friends from school and had to go pick up the (transformers) cake in the morning.

They did a good job (no where near as good as mine obviously!) and the cake was a very nice chocolate sponge. For the next 2 1/2 hours its leave the kids to themselves and parents just relax.

Its a win-win situation. The staff take care of the food and cake so you don't really have to do anything.

(Yusuf and Elinor)

(Yusuf and Oscar)

Then they bought the cake out:

There was so much cake that even after feeding all the kids and all the adults we had a third of it left over! We had fun trying to finish that off. I was officially chocolated out (yes I know that is not a real word!)

Yusuf loved every minute of it and had a brilliant time which was the main thing. He got so many presents in the end. He had a lot of fun opening them all.

By the end of Saturday we were glad it was over! Next year will not be as big as this- he's only turning 6!

Yusuf's 5th Birthday Part 1 (Don't worry there's only two parts)

It was my gorgeous monkeys 5th birthday on the 30th April.

He was very very excited and had been asking about this day for a good three months so he wanted EVERYTHING! He knew that he was going to be having a party on the saturday with all of his school friends but he wanted a 'little party' on his actual birthday and I was more than happy to make that little wish come true. So I put up a few ballons around the living room,

and started on his cake.

(A Victoria sponge! How I missed thee.........)

He has been Transformers obsessed for a little while now so I knew what theme the cake was going to be but I had to find something easy to do as I am not that good at decorating cakes. Luckily for me, the Transformers logo is all straight lines and very easy and something I could deal with. I was immensely proud of myself with the final product and I think Yusuf was too.

(How fricking cool is that cake!!??)

Then it was the opening of the presents. He wasn't dissapointed! Zaheer got him a Bumblebee Transformer (his favourite) and a friend of his from school gave him 2 Transformer models (One autobot and one deceptacon- I was excited to see them!) They were very cool presents!

And we also got him a huge Special Lego Kit with all the extra little pieces that you can't find with normal Lego. I think this picture says it all:

The finished product (which he put 90% of it together all by himself):

I asked Yusuf he could have whatever he wanted for his birthday meal. His answer- 'a fish finger sandwich with chips in front of the TV watching my favourite film, Ice Age 3'. We couldn't say no to that! He literally was in heaven!

(Simple pleasures....)

Simi and Salome came after that bearing huge presents and singing Happy Birthday at the door to Yusuf. He was quite embarrassed but very happy with his presents!

We bought the birthday cake out after that, sang happy birthday again and had it with tea.

It was a delicious cake- probably the softest I have ever made. Yusuf was happy, I was happy and everyone loved the cake! It was a good day and I'm incredibly grateful and thankful for having Yusuf in my life. He brightens up everyday and like Zaheer said, 'He's like Sid from Ice Age- the sticky gooey thing that holds everyone together!'

The time we went to a rap/reggae concert and nobody was allowed to dance.......(I couldn't make this stuff up!)

So we'd heard about this rapper/reggae artist that was over in Brunei (for what reason I don't know) and he was playing a FREE gig at Jerudong Park (they like their free gigs here- Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston have played here and the public didn't have to pay a penny (cent). Their sultan really does love them). As you can imagine we were very excited. Stuff like this just does not happen in this country and we went along for a good night out.

Well we got there and there and sat down and waited. There weren't that many people there to start with and the opening act was this rock band called Karacoma (?) and they were OK.

Then King Lhota comes out and everyone goes wild cus he's got some good music!

and everyone's outta their seats and dancing cus it was just awesome and surreal and awesome......

(Now you see em.............)

then we see this dude running as fast he could and then thing you know a woman is coming out on stage saying 'we know you are all have a great time but..........you can't dance so can you all please sit down and DANCE FROM YOUR CHAIRS'!!! She actually said that! and we're all just gob smacked and the know-it-all expats then say 'oh yeah public dancing is banned in this country' like duh???

(now you don't- he looked very lonely)

Needless to say a LOT of people just left after that but the hard core rockers that we are (lol) we stayed right till the end and did enjoy the concert mostly because he was very good and his music was brilliant and there's nothing quite like listening to a reggae concert in a hot country. But we also knew we weren't going to see another one like this for a veeeeeeeery long time! (Maybe they could ask Whitney back? She would probably do a free concert now that she's kinda struggling.......) I think we need to book some festival tickets for when we get to the UK (if the ash cloud allows us!)

My Quarter Century Birthday!!

On the 17th of April 1985, the angels started singing, the world stopped turning and an amazing soul came into being- ME!!

Everyone rejoiced (apart from my 1 year old brother) and bought exotic presents from far, far away. Well they didn't really but you get the gist.

Anyways it was my birthday!!! I was sooooooooo excited (I still get disappointed if nobody does anything for my birthday and sulk) and Zaheer knew this so pulled out all the stops and totally spoilt me. I've gotta say it was the best birthday EVER! (Even beat the time me and my brother got them ultra cool sunglasses and thought we were the bomb on our 7th and 8th joint birthday party- his is on the 10th April).

So the day started with my darling husband cooking me breakfast. It was the traditional family special-Zaheer's home made toast, fried eggs, cheesy beans and Earl Grey tea! It was delicious! I did take pictures but it isn't a very pleasant looking breakfast so I'll just describe it instead!

I knew I was in for a very special day because Zaheer washed up! I couldn't believe it! In all our marriage life (8 years in December!) he has never washed up- well maybe once when I was pregnant but still this was amazing (he did forget to wipe down one counter but that was all the work I did on the day).

Yusuf was being ultra cute and announced since it was my birthday it was going to be my day and then proceeded to tell us he was bored and wanted to watch the Princess and the Frog! Since we weren't doing anything and nothing else was on in the cinemas (and we were told the prince looked like Zaheer) we decided to watch it. The Prince totally looked like a younger version of Zaheer- the reason I say this is because the Prince's hair was exactly how Zaheer used to grow his- v funny!

After that we went out to lunch. I wanted sushi but the damn place was closed (on my birthday as well- how dare they!) so we went to another place nearby and had pasta instead.

(can you spot Yusuf's thumb?)

(This milkshake was to die for)

Zaheer needed to get some ingredients for his Prawn Thai Curry that he was going to cook for me tonight so we went shopping. He also wanted to buy a cake for me so we went to the bakery where the Royal Family get their cakes from. The cakes they make are just stunning. They will literally make anyhting you ask them to. We bought a ready made chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. It was very pretty!

Zaheer then took me to my favourite shop ever- the Rainforest Gallery. I love everything they sell in this shop and Zaheer just said 'You have a $100 budget- buy whatever you want'. I nearly died! I actually asked him twice if he said $100?? So I bought these earrings,

this bracelet,

(how it sparkles!!)

and another bracelet. I was soooooooo happy!

We then went home where Zaheer started cooking and I watched the latest episode (episode 14!!) of Glee. A couple of my friends, Simi and Salome came round and gave me a huge box labelled 'Survival kit for Brunei'.

(PRESENTS!!!!)

There was a lot of funny stuff in there and it was so nice of them to have thought of everything and put it together. Got a lot of giggles out of me! Amongst other things, they bought me this necklace that I had seen in the Rainforest Gallery and had just told Simi how pretty it was and she bought it! That is what you call a good friend! (and no I didn't do it on purpose and I wasn't dropping hints!)

(PRESENTS!!! LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURVE IT)

And then it was cake time!

The cake was heavenly! The presents were beautiful and the company was brilliant! It really was a very special birthday! I was missing my family so so much (especially my mums brown rice that she always cooked on our birthdays!).

Thank you so much to my darling husband for making my day perfect, my little monkey Yusuf for just generally being a monkey and to all my friends (for their presents- joking!) for being there to celebrate with me.

Now I've gotta start planning Yusuf's 5th birthday (on the 30th April) and Zaheer's 30th (on 21st June)! Fun times ahead!