Nasi Katok in Britain??

Moshi moshi!! I feel so relieved right now coz IM FREE!! Haha.. No more annoying assignments, no more lectures and the best part is: Easter holidays!! Hunting talur tah ku ni nda lama lagi.. Heheh.. Oh, I finally added a tagboard for my blog, try scrolling somewhere lower in the page, ada ia tu palak-palak.. I think i might go to london this weekend, insya allah, and hopefully i'll get back in time for the delivery of my shoes, or trainers as they call it here, from America. Anyways, its been six months since ive arrived in UK and naturally, i miss some of the Bruneian foods that i love to eat (and god knows, I just love to eat!) Last week when we were on the way back from Brunotts, our journey got held up coz some genius thought "Hold on a minnit, ive go' me an excellent oy-dea. Why dont we close a major highway and should save it from wear and tear!! Briliant, innit?" and that caused our journey to be extended from 3 hours to six and a half bloody hours!! The driver had to find a small road that could lead us back to the highway, balik balik he had to as kfor directions. I dont know much about biology of the ass but my bum was almost made flat that day, duduk for almost 6 hours.. Atu kan bisai voluptuous udah.. (Haha! Perasan..) Anyways, all that time gave us the chance to reflect the food we (by "we" i mean Zul, Wafi, Sofi and myself) missed and nasi katok came up. Nasi katok Mata-Mata lah, nasi katok Jangsak lah, nasi katok Restoran Alma lah.. "eeh, awu nyaman tu sana, tapi berminyak", "awu , berminyak, tapi nyaman", "awu, tapi berminyak..". Macam macam perbincangan kami ari atu. So the next morning, i asked Jirin, "apa baik di masak ah?" and his initial answer (as usual) would be "antah ah.." And i smiled a bit and suggested (with repeated raising of the eyebrows) "Mun nasi katok?" and he agreed. So we woke Melo up and and we went grocery shopping. Mula mula kami aga this small greengrocer arah westgate, then we went to the oriental shop nearby. "Bah, apa kan ko bali di sini?" nya si Jirin. "Eh, kau jua bawa aku ke mari!" i said. "Kau jua kata ko kan me mari!!" he blurted. To be honest, i still dont know who bawa who there that day.. (although it did suspiciously feel like Jirin yang bawa..) Once we got all the stuff we need, we went home and I prepared the marinade for the fried chicken. At first, the flour and the eggs dont seem to want to mix and i thought i had done something wrong. Since no one was looking, id figured if i had chucked the whole thing out and start again, no one would know. But i tried mixing them again (kuat kuat!) and they finally did mix.. Hmm, macam arranged marriage.. Mula-mula malu-malu but mun lama-lama udah atu, ok lah dorang.. Next came the question of frying the chicken, baked or deep fried? Since Melo and Jirin knew aku ani health conscious and nda suka minyak, we decided to have a compromise and shallow fry. Then, while we were cooking, datang tia si Erman and Faizah and not long after that, Sofi. Takut ku ayam atu nda cukup so membali tah some chicken di Munchies and everyone was happy. The sambal was very very hot. (Nando's Peri Peri sauce atu cam ayeng mun compare dengan power sambal ku..) Well, nda sengaja lah buat padas cematu coz the chilli extract i used atu cam industrial strength.. Nauzubillah padas nya nyanta! For a while it felt like summer with me sweating buckets. But the main thing was, taisliur kami semua kan makan nasi katok dapat jua di sampaikan walaupun jauh di negara orang pew-tey (and kana puji masakan ku. Yeah, mesti mention.. :p) bak kata pepatah: "perut kenyang, hati pun senang".


Sekian blog saya/peramba/kaola, Wassalam.

Makan dengan tangan beramai-ramai. Itulah cara Brunei. Macam niniku udah style Sofi ah (far right.)
Mun batah udah nda liat atu, yang simple pun buat air liur menitis.. I miss u, nasi katok~!!

Build you up to knock you down..

I was at Jirin's house last weekend (as usual) and this time I was with Sofi, (who had never been to Jirin's house before). We were waiting for dinner to be cooked and we talked about various things. One subject that came up was A level results. Jirin's maths breakdown was AS Pure maths (A), AS Stats (E), A2 Mechanics (A) and A2 pure maths (E). Mr Goo congratulated Jirin on his result for mechanics, "Wah Khairul! So good lah your mechanics. I feel like ive passed something on to you!" Basically, Mr Goo was impressed that Jirin got an 'A' for his mechanics (and considering he used to skip lessons, an 'A' was an excellent result!). Actually, according to Jirin, Mr Goo was complimenting himself to be able to get a student an 'A' even when student didnt attend classes regularly (or sumthing like that). Anyways, right after complimenting Jirin for his achievement in mechanics, he mentioned that he did horriblly in his A2 pure maths.. To make things worse, he mentioned that he actually expected Jirin to get a 'U' for it! Iatah, Jirin so didnt see that coming. Baik jua nda jauh hatinya.. Anyways, i have an analogy for what happened with Jirin and Mr Goo:

First, Mr Goo can be sed to lift Jirin up. All is well, and Jirin is happy.


And then, with his negative comment, things suddenly changed tone.. Cam kana bagi "powerbomb"..

Ibarat kana "powerbomb".

And with his final remark, macam kana bagi elbow drop..


Anyways, the moral of the story is: please try to use the sandwich approach when possible untuk jaga hati the person. Si Jirin kata he didnt feel too bad pulang , coz ia biasa dah teacher's looking down on him. Haha. The sandwich approach: one good comment, then the criticism and another good comment. Kira untuk sugar coat the bitter comment lah kirakan. Anyways, udah practice dua tiga kali, u guys should be biasa udah with this method. Bah, till next time on Adib's courtesy 101, bye! (haha, si tayi..)

Making good use of your looks.

Assalamualaikum! Funny thing happened to me last month. I was on the way to the train station to go to Canterbury one evening when this bald, stocky looking dude who was wearing a leather jacket came up to me. I realised he had a big can of Stella Artois in his jacket pocket as well. So he sez to me "Hey, can u help me out?". This dude wasnt being specific and in addition to having to catch a train, I really didnt want to get involved with this bloke. Well, people have always though i looked oriental (so far, ive been mistaken as: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Bangladeshi, Qatari and Bahraini). So after some hesitation, these words came out of my mouth. "Shorry, no inggerish." The guy seemed slightly dejected but continued to talk, "No english? Cantonese?". IT WORKED!! However, i started to feel uneasy and wanted to get back on my journey as fast as possible. SO I sed for a 2nd time: "No inggerish! No inggerish!" and walked off (at quite a fast pace, might i add). Well, I was lucky the dude didnt realise that my hoody clearly read "University of Kent, Centre for Sports Studies". Ive never been more thankful for having sepet eyes passed on to me from my parents!

Pretty in Pink~

Ooh! Look at this picture! It was take quite a while ago in Nottingham. We were there for the Malaysian Notts games. The photo was taken while we were waiting for our coaches to arrive. Cant wait to go there again for BruNotts games this Saturday..

Piyang!! (pink!!)

Dinner at 82, St Peter's Grove..

Hey dudes and dudettes! Hope u guys are having a good weekend. I am currently spending mine in Canterbury at Jirin's place. In fact, i think i spend every other weekend here! Its 9.39 in the morning right now and this is such an early bird post, i know. Im having such a good time here (as usual). Yesterday, we got a frisbee and tossed it around at Dane John park. Funny thing happened. When we went too Woolworths to get the frisbee, the price was not listed anywhere on the frisbee packing nor on the shelf, so we took the first one off the hook and asked a sales assistant. She took the frisbee away and after a minute or two she came back with the price. "Its a pound." she said. We were quite surprised at the price and took the frisbee to the check out counter. After that, we walked to the park and as we got through the gates, Jirin opened the wrapping and threw it away. Then I said to him "Why the hell did we get an obnoxiously pink frisbee?". "Awu ah!! Nda ku realise!!". The fact that the frisbee was sOoO pink and bright yet we didnt realise it was so funny, considering the wrapping was a tranparent plastic bag.. Neither me, Jirin or Melo sadar wah! Haha.. Unfortunately, the day was so very windy and we learnt that frisbee throwing is not as easy as we thought it would be.. After a while, we went home to have lunch. After lunch I said it would be nice just to sit around at the city centre since the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Jirin suggested we go to the park instead, so we did (we went to this beautiful park that we found by chance or dare i say, serendipitously.. heheh) Here are some pics..

On the way to city centre
Haha, lagi gambar Jirin and Melo.. Bulih start rumours ni.. :p

Anyways, the main event of the day was (yup, you guessed it) dinner at 82, St Peter's Grove. Rabz needed to release tension after finishing her essay (plus she was PMSing) so she came over at 7pm to have dinner with us. Earlier we said we were full, yet we still managed to stuff a plate of food each (Rabz makan dua piring and 3 drumsticks, kudos..) Jirin cooked ayam masak merah and we helped to keep him company while he cooked (and that was all the help we gave him.. sori Jirin!). We had Bruneian style meal, as requested by the PMSing Rabz, who in my opinion didnt seem like PMSing, she seemed calm and wasnt irritable. Which makes me wonder, has PMS gone soft? Will this be a trend with all women now? ANYWAYS, we all ate with our hands ala ala kampung. The only thing missing was washing our hands into a bowl from water poured from a small kettle and eating on a mat on the floor.. Maybe next time.. Lets see, we had ayam masak miyah (merah), talor dadar and sambal ikan bilis. I had lotsa fun and the food was excellent, kalah nasi katok di pasar IMO. Well done Jirin! Girls, what u lot waitin' for??

Bak kata pepatah, Perut kenyang, hati pun senang. After sending Rabz to the bus station, we went home and i think i went to sleep soon after, satisfied on how my day had gone..

Till next time,

Thank you and goodbye..

Jenny~!!

This post is dedicated to Jennifer Colidge. An actress i admire so so much due to her unquestionable ability to push my buttons. U may know her from the tv shows "Friends" and "Joey", as well her ever so annoying performance in the movie "Click". Not many will argue when i say that she is probably the most irritating lady (or even person) on the screens right now. Yet, here i am writing about her. Fret not my friends, this post is not to bad mouth the bad mouthed Jenny Coolidge, but merely an expression of admiration for how effective she conveys her message "I am annoying." to viewers. As a Bruneian would say, "Banci tapi suka". Here's a clip from Joey, enjoy!

New home!

Woah, a new home for Serendipitious chronicles of a boy! Well Rabz, i hope you're happy. Anyways, I havent got anything proper to blog about right now, but insya allah there shud be one on the way. :)