sakura for you~!

I really, really want to blog, but I don't have enough time nowadays. That's so weird.

I couldn't even catch up with people's blogs anymore, but once all these works are over, I'll blog properly.

For the time being, I present to you the song that I've often sang to myself during orientation week when I was sixteen because sitting in the hall doing nothing was boring. Kind of. Oh, and I'm an obsessed fangirl. Can't you tell? :D



This is one of the prettiest songs in the whole wide world, in my absolutely honest opinion.

Okay now I'm going to resume my work, have a good day~ :D

ah sakura mankai~ nee sakura mankai~ *sigh*

should I cry?

I’ve been quite busy these last few days, thinking of worldly matters.

And by worldly matters, I actually mean the world in my head.

Definitely hard work, that, and my head’s began to hurt a little bit. I’ve had it all planned out but to see it in action is another thing to consider.

But I’ll do my best. It is my hobby after all, fiddling with the world in my head. :)

I’ll write about it if my head’s world actually goes somewhere. lol

On another note, my heart’s kind of aching as well.

See, my heart wasn’t broken by a person or anything, but I was watching a drama, and I thought, “Oh that’s so sad.”

I’m not the type who’ll cry while watching a sad movie either, in fact, I don’t understand those who prepare boxes of tissues prior to watching a movie and actually finished every single sheet of them.

But I guess I was too absorbed in this particular story and characters, and I found myself continuously wondering, “Oh he is…oh she is…oh that is just so sad. Why is it so sad?”

It’s like there’s a huge lump in my throat, and I always feel sad for some reason, and my heart aches terribly, and the soundtrack keeps playing in my head, and I can’t take the characters off my mind.

What, should I cry or something?

Oh wai argh gah I NEVER CRY WATCHING A FICTION STORY. D: JUST BECAUSE IT’S NOT REAL. D:

if only...everyday...is a happy day.

A picture tells a thousand words, and I figure I shouldn’t write more than a couple words.

This picture affected me greatly, and watching the news has never been so unpleasant.

Not that news in general is usually pleasant but what’s with the situation in Libya, Bahrain and Japan to name a few, don’t you feel like basking in some sunshine and happiness?

But even if we’re not being haunted with traumatizing dilemma in our lives, none of us are excluded from minor problems here and there.

And if we’re not careful, the problem could ruin our lives, like the wreckage you saw in that picture above, the difference being that it’s invisible and could only be felt by the bearer of the problem.

No one can see the shattered pieces in your heart as clearly as the wrecked buildings above. No one will lend you any help because they didn’t know, they wouldn’t know unless you tell them so, but then what?

I just think that, even if the invisible wreckage is too much for us to bear, we still have everything necessary to keep on living. Our land is still peaceful, our food and water is still easily available and safe to be consumed, the air is still clean from dangerous particles, our shelters are always here whenever we crave for it desperately.

To me, even if we’re dying inside a little day by day, physically we are far from that. And I am highly grateful for that.

To them, even if everything seems to have flown away from their grasp, at least they still have their lives. But you know, I’ve never experienced anything similar to what they’ve been through, and I can’t comment on that. I don’t know how they really feel at this moment, to see gunshots in front of their eyes, the remains of their houses scattering on earth, corpses lying on the road…I really don’t. And that’s what makes it more depressing.

I’ll just say this – cherish whatever you have before they slip away from your hands. If earthquake and hurricane victims could rebuild their lives from scratch, what does that say about us?

Let’s look forward and find the solution to our problems. No matter how long it’ll take, let’s keep on trying. No matter how sad or dull a day is, let's find something that'll improve the day, making it become better. Let’s untangle the knots in our head. Let’s be frank to each other, so that we can have a bit of peace in our mind, no misunderstanding anymore, okay? Okay.

I’ll do that Insya Allah.

P/S: Seems like I did write more than necessary. But I’ve always been a fan of words, even though my words are not that beautiful most of the time. :D

And to be honest this post doesn't make any sense. I'm not even sure anymore, but. Umm. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

Scents of the Middle East #2

(Previous rambling can be found here)

I love to lurk/stalk people’s blogs/forums/other places.

In fact, I’ve been lurking this particular forum for the past six years, every single day without fail, and I’ve only regularly commented there a few months ago.

I wonder how it’ll be six years later. Will I continue my six year streak of continuous lurking, or will I forget about it altogether? Hmm.

I lurked the forum again just now. I JUST LOVE THE FORUM.

(I shall not tell you what that forum is because then you’ll know which member is me)

(I’m not creative enough in the art of nickname creations six years ago GAH x.x)

Anyway...MIDDLE EAST’S SCENTS!

I like to lurk Hawaa World for that purpose. From there, I've learned that,

1. They like to burn incense for their houses.
2. They have their own special blends.
3. They have their own special methods of applying perfume.
4. They like perfumes. They probably couldn’t live without perfumes. And they have all kinds of perfume. Perfumes in super duper pretty lovely gorgeous beautiful bottles.

Yes they are THAT pretty. :D

I’d often find myself, gawking at the perfume bottles in this store…





But then I’d hop to Centerpoint and look at these empty bottles instead.







Cute things weaken my knees.

You can definitely buy a whole lot of perfumes and incenses from stores such as Arabian Oud, but surprisingly, most of the people in Hawaa World prefer to use the cheap yet reliable incense from their local market instead. You can get all of those in all kind of brands for under SR20 in markets, whereas in nice stores like above, the average price for their incenses is SR200 (or so I’ve been told. Or maybe they showed me the most expensive ones, I wouldn’t know).

Anyhow, I was at Medina’s market, pestered by merchants, like always, when they sprayed tons of cheap perfumes on me that I thought I was going to pass out right there right then. So I tried to divert their attentions by pointing at a bowl of coals, and that was then they introduced me to bokhoor/bo5or/بخور aka incense.

They then began to smear a whole lot of mukhallat/mu5ala6/مخلط aka mixtures on my hands. Mu5ala6 are those that you should keep an eye on if you wanted to buy nice perfumes in gorgeous bottles as souvenirs.

Here's how they look like in the pamphlet.







They are prettier in real life, though.

Unfortunately, those people must’ve sprayed me with tons of perfume already, and those smeared fragrant oils made my hands sticky, and not to mention my nose was kind of stuffy, so when I tried to smell the mu5ala6, those mu5ala6 in gorgeous bottles…

I can’t smell a thing.

*pissed pissed*

I only smelt something icky and that was me.

*annoyed annoyed*

In the end, I didn’t buy any of those mixtures, but truthfully, I’m lemming for it. Seriously lemming for it.

The average prices for those mixtures are SR50. Keep that in mind, and if you’re highly skilled in the art of haggling I’m sure you can get it at a much lower price.

But now let’s talk about bo5oor.


I use bo5oor efra7. It's REALLY nice.

I encourage you to watch this first! In this video, he demonstrated how to wear the fragrance. I'll supply the minutes below, and you just have to fast-forward the clip according to the time. :D



Here’s Ustath Tareq, explaining about the magical world of perfume and incense. Apparently (and PLEASE correct me if I’m wrong) if you want to make sure your fragrance smells the best and lasts all day, you can;

Mix it with dehen oud. Dehen oud (oud oil?) is an extract from the oud’s branch. There are all kinds of dehen ouds, if it’s from an Indian store then its extract is from the Indian’s oud. If it’s from a Malaysian store then it is extracted from Malaysia’s oud. You can mix it with mu5ala6 or your Parisian perfumes. It’ll smell special, and nothing will smell like it.

…we have oud in Malaysia? I thought those are imported from the middle east lololol :P

And in Malaysia, people associate incense with witches, no? :P

1:40 How they’d wear the dehen oud (and mu5alla6 too I suppose). Aside from putting it on your pulse and behind your ears, you can also put a small amount of water on your palms, mix it with the dehen oud and apply it on your hair. Or for guys, on your 3’etra/shma3’.

Would it stain? It wouldn’t, he said, because we’ve mixed it with water. It’s fine for shma3’ but for clothes, that’s a different story.

2:38 Now he’s spraying the perfume. He might’ve used half of the bottle for all I know. o.O

5:16 Now he’s burning the incense and letting it seep into his clothes. His advice; you should put on your perfume first, after showering and wearing your clothes, then burn the bo5oor. Some people wear their perfume before wearing their clothes, or the clothes themselves aren’t clean, and those are some of the reasons why the fragrance doesn't smell as lovely. Clean clothes are important to make sure that the perfume smells good, and it shouldn’t be applied on the clothes that you’ve worn this morning either. And remember, apply perfume first, then burn the incense.

But according to a novel I read, the character burned the incense, put it under her clothes, while perfuming at the same time.

And another person in the forum said that to make sure that the clothes will smell great all day, you need to;

1. Smoke out the clothes
2. Spray some perfume on it
3. Hang it in the closet
4. Let the burner rests under it
5. Put a fresh batch of oud/bo5oor on the burner
6. Close the closet, and poof! Foolproof clothes that will certain to tickle people’s nostrils all day.

All kinds of method, to each of their own, I suppose. I didn't follow their methods, though.



This is my burner! I use the electric one so you only need to plug it in and you wouldn’t need candles or matches or stuff like that.



Put some of the incense in, and wait for it to burn.



Tada! Whoa. And no, it doesn’t smell as pretty yet. It smells like regular smoke. Can you see me coughing?



Come on, scents! Get into my shaila! lol No I don't think you're supposed to do it like this.

What I did is, I hung my clothes in the room, let the incense burned for a couple of minutes, took of the plug, closed the door…

And after a while, the smoky smell will magically transform into something so earthly sweet.

And your clothes will smell exactly like it. It wouldn’t be as strong if you follow my method though. In fact, you can barely smell it unless you put your nose close to it, but that’s good enough for me. After all, I just did that for a hint of scent, for a bit of freshness, and this is exactly what I wanted.

The incense – if you’re using it solely to fragrance the house – will only last for one day. Then again, I use the cheap one from the market, and from what I heard, if you buy the more expensive one, the Arabian Oud for example, it’ll last for days.

You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. That's probably true.

But it’s okay. The effect on the clothes lasts for weeks so I’m greatly satisfied by it.

*sniff my shaila* Aaaah…

*sniff sniff* Aaaah…

Thank you for reading, now let me hug myself. :D

Scents of the Middle East #1

(photo courtesy from here)

I live in an apartment.

Sometimes, I'll sit in the living room watching TV, and then my neighbor would pass by my house and his PERFUME WILL FILL IN THE ROOM. O.O

And then another neighbor will leave his house and again my house will be intoxicated by his perfume.

The strange thing is that, I might not know for sure how my neighbors look like (I'M SORRY but it's hard to recognize people when they're wearing the same thing ;__; Not to mention they cover their head too so it's hard to see their faces), but I recognize their perfumes anywhere.

(caution: this post is leaning towards creepiness…you’ve been warned)

It happened! I saw this person and said, “Hey he smells like this neighbor.”

And then my father will say, “He is that neighbor.”

See what I mean by ‘recognizing the smell’? (creepy alert)

But it does seem as if Arab people in general like to drench themselves, their families, and even their homes, in perfume.

Whenever I go to their houses, there’ll be this certain fragrance wafting around the air, relaxing my senses. It wasn’t cloying, nor was it headache-inducing – it was far from that, it was simply, refreshing and uplifting. And plain awesome if I may add.

Though I don’t think I need to fragrance my house anyway, since my neighbors with their ultra strong perfume have already done such a great job at it already.

But the odd thing is, even if they’ve been working outside for hours, they'll still smell fresh and clean. No matter the time, broad daylight or the darkest hour of the night, the perfume still stays strong. Even when they were buying fish, they’d still smell as if they’ve just returned from a wedding reception.

Or maybe they did. But every single night? And every single one of them? Orz

My father would go to the mosque and came back smelling as if he’d gone to the perfume store instead. And then the entire house will smell like a perfume factory, and we’ll be like, “What is that smell?!”

Okay maybe I was exaggerating a bit. Maybe not the entire house, just the places that my father has graced his presence with.

But there was this time, when a student of my father gave him a shmagh/shma3’/ghetra/3’etra, this thing by the way,


(picture stolen from here)

which smelt like OH MY GOD YA ALLAH MASHA2 ALLAH WHAT IS THIS SMELL??!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the 3’etra was drenched in perfume oil for 100 days. It just smelt too strong. TOO strong. TOO STRONG!

I’m not kidding, the fragrance even found its way towards my room, seeping into my furniture and we were all like, “Okay the head’s kind of aching right now.”

Insane. We kept the 3’etra inside our closet and the rest of our clothes smelt like it. It was really phenomenal.

Because I’d spray some Parisian perfume on myself and it didn’t last as long as that at all.

Weird, weird, weird. And I’ve only talked about the men’s side of perfume, how about the women?

Generally women – though there are a few who don’t follow the rules, and they usually wear Parisian perfume if my nose’s not mistaken, and Parisian perfumes are kind of cloying if applied too much – don’t wear perfume as loud as the men. They might occasionally smell just as lovely as their other half, but in public, where you’ll be meeting tons of strangers and have to mix with men, they’ll make sure their fragrance wouldn’t stand out as much. Just a tiny bit to freshen up, and that’s it.

Of course you’d know that if you wear a strong perfume, it’ll attract unnecessary attention, and unnecessary attention is not something we’d terribly need in our lives.

That, and women aren’t allowed to wear such strong perfume outdoors anyway.

Indoors, now that’s a different story. I’d meet my Arab friends and they’d give me a greeting hug and pecks on the cheeks and all I’d think of is, “Aaaaah. Oooooh. Ah please keep on embracing me.”

CREEPY ALERT CREEPY ALERT!

I was almost tempted to ask about their fragrance but I just can’t bring myself to do that. Maybe I don’t think it’s appropriate? Maybe I’m too shy? Malu bertanya sesat jalan? Too shy to ask? Then prepare to be lost! Muahahaha yeah that’s the meaning of that sentence. Minus the laughing part of course.

Perhaps the reason that the question never seems to be able to see the light of the day is because I’ve asked a gazillion questions to them before, like where did you buy your abaya oh and what eyeliner are you using and how to bake these cookies and how do you wrap your shaila and where’s your favorite coffee shop and OH NO YOUR HUSBAND’S GIVING YOU THE EYE HE WANTS TO GO NOW ok then BYE BYE. ;___;

People and their early marriage. /rant

Anyhow, in the end, I did find the answer. I'll talk about it in another post. :D

(read the continuation here)

When Spring Comes

When Spring Comes is one of the Korean dramas that my father strangely adores. If he likes something, he will extremely like it, and when he completely likes it, he likes to annoy me with it, and when he annoys me like that, I’ll be extremely annoyed, because he completely likes it. I don’t know.

“What are you watching? When Spring Comes?”

“No…”

“Is that the actor in When Spring Comes?!”

“No.”

“He looks like that actor in When Spring Comes.”

“…no.”

“When Spring Comes is better than this thing.”

*refrain from saying no*

Do you know what comes when spring comes?

The wind. And in a way, my father was acting like a wind. The wind won’t go easy on you, and won’t let you watch walk in peace.

I will try my best to walk towards the wind but it will always push me back. No matter, I won’t let this pesky wind blow me away HAIYAAAACK!!!

Most of the time, I OWNED THE CRUEL WIND. OH YEAH.

But there were times when the wind couldn’t handle my cockiness and decided to overthrow me with its power. I’d walk and I couldn’t. I’d walk and if I’m not careful, I will be blown away for real. The only solution is to walk backwards.

Dear wind, you are so cruel to me the humankind.

And the wind was not particularly cooperative yesterday.

We were in the car when the wind pushed it so hard I was momentarily scared. Any stronger and it’ll topple the car over, I’m sure of that.

But first, let’s look at these cute goats!



Okay forget the cute white and black goats. Look at the road!



This moment made me realize how lucky/blessed I am to be riding a car and not a camel. Can you imagine people back then journeying with their camels, across the mountains while struggling with the sandy wind?



I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Well I suppose I was. You won’t see anything but sand and mountains and random animals and a whole lot of sun throughout the way, and you’ll only see a bit of technology when you’ve arrived at the city. But it is an interesting view to be honest; the nothingness certainly calms the mind. And to see people stopping their cars and praying on the sandy ground since there are no buildings whatsoever (there’s an occasional mosque or two, but most of the time, you won’t find any, let alone a toilet) is an amusing sight to be held.



Lonely trees, how depressing. If you’re wondering why the picture is so blurry, well don’t point your fingers at my camera, it’s because there was a sandstorm occurring right at that moment!



Exactly. Sandstorm, and for some reason, the blown sands resemble ocean’s waves.



The sandstorm wouldn’t be as extreme whenever the mountains were on its path. Probably because their role as the earth’s defense team intimidated those sands a bit.

“We won’t let you through, wind,” said the mountains. *cue in evil laughter*



It was a bizarre experience to be sitting in your car and watching the sand coming at you like wild snakes ocean’s wave. It almost felt as if I was in a ferry and looking at the deep sea. The only difference is that there were no jellyfish.

Jellyfish, jellyfish! I saw them a lot whenever I rode a ferry so I kind of got sick of them. And kind of scared. What if I were to fall into the sea and those jellyfish-



The camera failed to capture the waves properly but if you squint really hard then you’ll see a trace of sand snake creepily slithering towards you.



Long story short, sandstorm is kind of scary. So let’s cleanse your sandy eyes with a photo of the beach!



Don’t let this serene view of nature fool you, though. The scenery might look peaceful and all but I was currently battling with the wind in order to capture just one picture.

*ran towards the wind*

*wind pushed me back*

*yaaaaah!!!*

*pushed me back easily*

I’m a weak human being.



And no, the wind wasn’t being unfair to just the human beings. Even the birds, who worked hard to go across the sea, failed to fly anywhere beyond this point. Poor bird, they’ll fly towards the sun, and the wind will push them over. Fly again, and push them over.

I can relate to them, because the wind did exactly the same thing to me! lol



But the thing that worries most of the people here isn’t the wind, it’s the cloud. Look how thick it is? Yeah, you’ll rarely see such a cloudy sky like this here. Everyone is preparing now, preparing for the rain, for the flood, for their houses to be drowned. Everything’s been postponed. Fieldtrips, any trips, trips to the park. You better stay at home than being lost in the rain and stuck in a place and can’t go home because of the flood like many people did months ago.

So yes, rain, more or less, is a sensitive issue over here. A desert that never experiences rain more than once a year is faced with constant raining every few weeks. There’s definitely something weird going on with the world right now, isn’t it? Being patient is the only thing we could do right now, and it’s not as if waving a white flag will prove useful to us or anything.

The weather looks nice today though, so I’ll be going out now. Until next time, bye bye :)

Food in KSA - Mahalabiya

Have you ever been to a store, saw a weird-looking/sounding food and thought, “I MUST TRY THIS! WHOA!”

Only to come back home and realize that it was just a simple vanilla pudding.

Or, you went to Saudi Arabia, specifically Mecca and Medina, and saw a pair of elderly looking at the food while muttering, “Ape kejadahnye mahalabiya ni?”

I’m almost tempted to translate that to “What the hell is mahalabiya?” Oh wait I just did.

“Haram jadah!” And then they’ll laugh. “Orang ingat kita sebut haram jadah nak gi Haram Jeddah.”

Haram jadah – some sort of playful curse words, usually used by the elderly. Maybe. The direct meaning of that is, hmm…bastard?

7aram and Jeddah – Mecca and Jeddah (cities in KSA)

I used to see a lot of taxis in the cities back then (not so much nowadays), yelling the places they’ll drive you to, for example, “El-7aram! Jeddah! El-7aram! Jeddah!”

(I just have to write the ‘h’ in 7aram as 7 because Haram actually means pyramid, and I don’t want other people to be confused, you see)

And those elders will snicker and say, “Haram jadah. Haha haram jadah.”

It was weird, indeed it was. 8D

Where was I? Oh yeah food! Why did I talk about taxis all of a sudden?

Anyway, usually I would pop in and say, “Tu dadih je kot makcik…”

Oh yeah, that’s just a normal pudding, auntie.

“Dadih? Haram jadah betullah.”

:D

It's great to actually know what to eat and what you probably don't want to eat, isn't it? Oh and don't thank me, just remember me in your prayer, I'm sure you will.

(HARHARHAR)

Mahalabiya – مهلبية – pudding


(I can’t find a photo of a store-made mahalabiya (!!!) so I nicked the photo from here)
(I’ll update this if I bought another one of these, of course)

How does it taste like?

It’s a milk and rice pudding. You can expect it to be quite tasteless (strictly my opinion) but the one that I ate was vanilla flavored so it wasn’t too bad. There are tons of better puddings on the market, though. And it won’t fill your stomach. Of course, it’s just a dessert after all. Don’t expect it to be something awesome and will completely satisfy your stomach though because it really won’t. You’ll be extremely disappointed like this certain person. You’re looking at one. Yeah the one who types this yeah there she is.

“JUST A PUDDING WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…” wailed endlessly.

Should you try it?

Depends on you really but it’s not that special to be honest.

I don’t know what to say anymore. This thing is really plain.

But give it a go, sometimes your mouth would crave something soft and fresh after constantly being shoved with sugary and spicy stuff. I’d rather think it’ll be nice on a hot day. And it’s hot in this part of the world every single day (okay it might rain once in a while but that’s rare.)

The next food might be a bit more interesting, so look forward to that. :)

The Adventure of an Abaya-tripping Kid in a Supermarket

You know how odd of a day it'll be if your mother suddenly decided to treat you to an ice cream;

(this reminds me…I HAVEN’T TAKEN THE ICE CREAM PIC FROM MY DAD YET! I’ll update this when I’ve got the pic haha :P)

TADA~!








Please tilt your screen 360 degrees if you want to discover the name of the ice-cream shop. Ooh exciting!

Okay fine I'll save you trouble of troubling yourself due to me not wanting to trouble myself by fixing the photo properly by telling you the name myself.

Mini Melts! Honestly I’ve never eaten this before. Then again I haven’t eaten a lot of things in my life.

Yup not even the meat of a camel. Although that could sound a tad disturbing to some people, I suppose. But the only question that people often ask me when I returned to Malaysia was, "Have you eaten camel's meat?" Too bad the answer always sounded like this, "...hey I've drank camel's milk!"

Anyhow, the mini melts must’ve cracked/frozen my brain or something, or perhaps triggered the weird side of me, because out of a sudden, I felt like dancing and overreacting and jumping and speaking Malay without restrictions in a shopping mall, in true Malaysian fashion. Yup.

Not that I know any Malaysian who acts like me. Not that I know a lot of Malaysians either. Have you perhaps, acted like me before? No? Okay.

It’s just my luck though that that day, that particular day, out of all the days in the calendar, that day is the day where I almost always consistently nearly (sorry for the extreme excessiveness, but feel my pain!) tripped on my new-too-long abaya and accidentally clicked the low resolution on my camera phone.



Boo at least I have the pictures.

So indeed, the pictures are small. Indeed, the pictures are awful. But still, better than nothing!

(My digital camera kinda sucks and attracts too many unwanted attention due to its attractive icy blue color *seductive isn’t it?* so I resorted to using the camera phone instead)

(But I do love my camera phone better than the digital camera anyway)

The victim for that day was;



(Look the trolley is made in France! I’m excited already.)

Al-Danube Supermarket, located in Red Sea Mall – which, in my opinion, is one of the most high-class malls in Jeddah – is an unbelievably large supermarket that sells loads of stuff, ranging from beautiful jewelry (too bad I don’t have a picture of the jewelry section, but this is how one of the jewelries looks like;



Pretty. It's a bangle by the way. I could have taken this picture with my digicam but it probably was mad at my blunt confession that I love camphone than 'it', so it wouldn't switch on for me. In short, the battery's flat. Oh! I haven’t closed the bracket yet! Okay wait) to scrumptious breads, hot from their bakery, filled completely with foreigners and Arabs who look like they’re loaded with cash.

But meh…I don’t know.



I don’t know. You see, this mirror is perhaps a couple inches shorter than me. But the mirror is TINY. Ironic how I capitalized that word. But the mirror is TINY I can barely see my pores. (lies) Okay I can barely see the edges of my hijab.





But these are cute, don’t you think? I kind of wish I was actually in a Willy Wonka store and you can actually eat these cups/plates/thingies.



And I love these Arabic cups! Whenever I went to my Arab friends’ house I’ll study their cups and they’ll give me weird looks (mostly their younger sisters/brothers) which makes me want to give them an equally weird look but I digress.



I said to my mother, “WE NEED TO BUY THIS. AT LEAST ONCE. I MEAN ONE. MUST. LAAZEM. MESTI. MUST.”

And then I think we went to the second hand shop and saw a lot of these but they all smelt so strongly of qahwa – Arabic coffee.

I love qahwa. My family don’t. Okay my father kind of does.



I get giddy just by staring at the smooth, glossy surface. Yeah I don’t get this fascination either.



I went to this store with an aunt’s son once, he’s four, and he was eating cotton candy, and I said, “LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE! I’VE TOLD YOU NOT TO BE MESSY!” And then he was like, “THAT’S NOT ME!!!”

Umm…lol?



They have an entire aisle of shampoos, it’s insane! But they didn’t have Asience nor Ba-Wang, unfortunately. :P



A whole section dedicated to tissues! Okay not that surprising fine.



Toothpastessssssssssssss! Surprised now? :P



Rice…I love rice. Don’t we all? You don’t? Okay I don’t like basmati rice either. Jasmine rice all the way.



BUT I LOVE ME SOME OLIVE OIL! It’s my staple in life.



All kind of cooking oils too, but none of those are palm oils. Compare it to Malaysia…excuse me I need to giggle.

Things that you need to know about shopping in Saudi Arabia – the stores will close whenever it’s prayer time. If it’s a normal store, you’ll be chased out from the store like a cat. If you’re in the midst of paying, yeah you’ll need to continue your paying AFTER praying.

If you’re in a supermarket?



YOU’LL BE LOCKED IN FOREVER MUAHAHAHA. Yeah. If you feel the need to use the ladies room, well, you can’t.

I was there in another supermarket that one day (Panda is Hyper Market, no I mean HyperPanda Market, you know, the one with the apple logo. Where’s the panda anyway?), waiting for the door to open, and when it did, do you know what happened?

Tons of people were at the other side, waiting to ambush into the store. Felt like I was in an airport, and a whole lot of people were waiting for people’s arrival.

And I can’t get out because all of them wanted to get it! Wah lau need to use the toilet some more. (grumbling in Manglish)

Okay, enough reminiscing.

Who am I kidding? This entire post consists of reminiscing! :P Anyway, back to the supermarket.



Healthy drinks for a healthy you. Can’t say it’s THAT healthy for your pocket.



All kinds of teas yet the only type that we drink are…



These yellow Lipton teas. Why can’t we drink Twinning for a change? x.x



An entire section dedicated to pasta…but it tastes just the same, anywhere, everywhere, anytime.



But I must say their frankfurters (as well as burgers and nuggets) taste a whole lot better than the ones we have in Malaysia. You can actually taste the meat, it’s more satisfying, and how come Malaysia got the short end of the stick in everything? I CAN’T EVEN-



CHOCOLATES! Even their chocolates taste better than ours. You can ACTUALLY taste the chocolate, ours tasted like sugar and some artificial flavor, how is that even possible I CAN’T EVEN-



This is their bakery! Isn’t it pretty? Yeah bad camera phone, it doesn’t capture the beauty of the bakery properly. *smacks phone*



One of the great things about this country. The juices. The thirst-quenching juices. Endless supply of juices. Fresh, all kind of fruits juices. Juices, I’ll miss you a lot FOR SURE.



Oh hello there, fruits.



WHOA! What are you? This is – if I’m not mistaken – the fruit of the cactus. I’ve never eaten that before but some of my friends had. Apparently it’s good.



And these are…these. What are these again? Oh yeah, packed vegetables. I think.



All kind of CEREALS. I’m going insane. Can I take all of them? No? Okay.

Can I just take a box? Yes? Yay!

What? You want to pay NOW? I need to be fast? Okay, I’ll choose one, FAST!

…

Do you know what cereal I took back home in the end?

Frosties. FREAKING FROSTIES.

…

At least I still have food. Think of those who don’t even know how cereals tasted like. Okay, okay, I’m very grateful that I can even eat Frosties.

Still…

I like rice better.



I really do, okay? :D