school holidays till today - i

The last school holiday was a hectic one.

Right at the beginning, when I wanted to settle all my kebun stuffs: membaja, meracun, menebas; got the news that nazam had a stroke @ angin ahmar. Heard it was quite bad. I had to go and see it for myself. Thought of taking the ets from bt gajah that first Sunday but when I got to the station, the tickets were sold out. I had no choice but to go home. A few days later, I did go to kl general hospital. Yes, he was in a terrible condition. His right sides were paralysed. His mind @ emotion was unstable. Felt real sorry for him. After three hours there, left for home, wondering of what could have been.

The next couple of weeks spent time at the kebun. Put time aside to be back with nature. Really enjoyed it albeit the tiredness. I went twice to mandah, jawang and pulau juar but selabak and sg tiram I had only an opportunity. Ok la tu, kan.. it was musim melawas, which meant the trees were not producing their fruits.

Early December, went back to pj for a couple of nights. Took the children to Big Bad Wolf book sales. It was our first time there. Books were abundance, too many till I just couldn’t decide what to buy. In the end I bought a novel by Jodi Picoult. And I have yet to start reading it. So much for buying novels, kan, you might want to say. But I got good reason for not reading it yet. Indulge into it later2..

Big Bad Wolf time

I went to school twice too, to clear up my room and the storeroom. It was a routine for me coz that was what I would do during this long break. Luckily mawi had cleared up part of the store when he occupied it for a while recently. So it was not too much work left for me.

beautiful tasek raban

When lisa was called for an interview at mrsm kuala besut sometime in the mid of December, I booked rooms for us to stay there, as well as in kuala Terengganu. The night before we left, I saw on tv that the east coast was expecting heavy rain in the coming days. I prayed that we would be able to enjoy the trip to Terengganu. The drive to Terengganu was a picturesque one. We stopped a number of times to snap pictures and to ease ourselves. Before reaching grik, it started to rain, and it rained all the way to kuala besut. Can you imagine that? Nevertheless, we reached bukit keluang resort safely at half past five. That night it continued raining again.

The next morning, after sending lisa to her interview, we went to kompleks perikanan at seberang kastam to savor the unforgettable ikan bakar. Unforgettable to me, lah.. I spent precious moments here in kuala besut way back in the early 90’s with rock and his friends, naga-naga. At that time, some mornings we would be at the kompleks to get fresh fish from friends and took them to a café nearby. We would then clean the fish and had it barbequed @ roasted @ grilled @ bakar. The café owner would prepare the rice and sambal + kicap for us to dip the fish in. pehh! It was really appetizing. Thus the reason for taking my family there.

 my loved ones

We used some time to visit rock’s mum, who was very kind to me back during those days. Then at noon left for kuala Terengganu. The wind was so strong. When we stopped at a café by the sea in setiu to eat sotong celup, we had to hold our plates so that the wind wouldn’t blow them away. The waves were crashing onto the beach. It was awesome but a lil scarry also. 

nia & arief trishaw ride

Reaching kuala Terengganu Grand Putri, we quickly settled down and went for a walk nearby. That night layan bola where Malaysia lost to Thailand in the first league final. The next morning we went to pasar payang which was just a stone’s throw away. Everybody got something for themselves. Before leaving, we even bought keropok lekor and budu and few other tidbits.

I wanted to go to limau kasturi but the weather was not permitting. The rain was pouring non-stop and the shortcut through kenyir to aring was already flooded and closed to all vehicles. After contemplating for a while, I decided it was best for us to go home. Taking the LPT from kuala Terengganu, we thought it would be ok. We even stopped at Ajil for lunch and solat. Then, when we continued our journey using the LPT, we were surprised because we had to exit at Bandar muktafibillah interchange, thus forcing us to continue the journey along trunk roads, under the torrential rain, squeezed by the flooded palm oil estate throughout the distance, with no kampongs on sight, before getting into the LPT again at Jabor. It  was quite terrifying. The ominously dark skies made things worse. At times, I even felt like I was one of moses’ disciples crossing the divided red sea. Syukur when we finally made it to the LPT again, to be honest.

We stopped at Genting Sempah for a breather before continuing the distance through batang kali. By 1030 pm we stopped again for dinner at Teluk Intan, right after taking a few pictures in front of the famous leaning tower there. It was midnite on the dot when we finally arrived home. Phew! All in all, it took me 11 hours of travelling that day.