Wednesday, March 5, 2014

A time off....


Being away from your daily routine once in a while is a must. Please try not to wake up every morning and doing the same job over and over again until the day you get shut off. Be fair to yourself. Appreciate yourself. Forget about your routines once in a while. Go out and have tea or a get  together with your close friends. and go travel together!!!

 
 
 
I have a set of friends whom I can call BEST BUDDIES. We meet, we eat and we go trips together. Most of us are neighbours and we really can get along very well. Alhamdulillah. In Islam, the way to know if  that person is reliable of becoming a good friend is by going for a three days trip together. That is when the true color comes out. The real her or him will be known! I experienced with some and I accepted the outcome. I will move on becoming friends and buddies or I just simply leave them be!

 
Right now 2 of my great buddies, neighbours, and friends whom I regarded as my younger sisters are having a five days trip to Hong Kong and Macau. Coincidently, Nora has a friend Anita living here with her husband Shaikh and their three children Ashraf, Sabrina and Jasmin. Of cause they are Malaysian and they have  already been living in this city for five years. Before, they were in Japan. This is an amazing family. Very humble and generous and lively. We were given Sabrina's room and we appreciate it very much. Anita and Nora were Johoreans and classmates! They even worked at the same office and shared clothings! They shared their yesterdays together and when they told us of their past we cannot help but laugh until tears! Best fiends forever!

The place where Anita and family are staying is called Monmouth Villa at Kennedy Road. A nice place indeed. 3 bedrooms for the family. A room for the maid Sofia ( an Indonesian ) plus three toilets, a kitchen and a living room. That unit itself cost them monthly HKD 40K! Maintenance is HKD6K and HKD 4K for the maid! Not cheap isn't it!  The  cost of living here in Hong Kong is one of the highest in the world. A small apartment unit can easily cost HKD Millions! But this city is very clean and safe. You can walk anywhere at anytime without worrying of anything.

Hong Kong is developing rapidly. But surprising, only 30% of the land were developed. They made sure that trees and mountains or hills were spared.  They only developed the land at the foot and should they build buildings in the hills, they will not tear the place apart. They leave the greens alone! That is why to own a property  in this city is not cheap because it is limited!

We have been here since last three days and Anita has taken us to shop where the locals do. Cheaper and better. We even visited Ammar As Siddiq Mosque to have Dim Sum Breakfast . The food is delicious and we planned to hand carry some home for our family to taste. Insyallah. The mosque is a high rise building  with the ladies on the fifth floor and the men in the 4th  floor. The Dim Sum is served in the restaurant on the 6th floor and runs by the mosque. Whatever income from the sales goes back to the mosque. I think the Malaysian mosques should think along this way. Beside a cafĂ© we can include car wash for the mosques to earn their own income! I must tell my Ustaz regarding this matter. Hopefully he will buy it. When I visited Sabah last year,  one of the mosques did the same and with the money they earned, they can do wonders to upgrade the look of the mosque and so on.

Since the first day we arrived, the weather has been very nice to us. It was 17C in the day time and dropped to 13C in the evening. Lucky we brought along our jackets. Phew. It will be colder when the wind blew. We are not use to this kind of weather but will definitely enjoy while we are here. Back home is very hot and humid. Even with the air condition on, we still sweat!  But  we were told that for the last two days, since we were here, it rained heavily in Kelang Valley. Alhamdulillah. May the water in the dams rise again and ends the water shortage! Not a pretty picture to see you know!



As for today, all three of us, Nora, Yan and I are taking a one hour ferry ride to Macau and will be staying there for a night.  Macau is a place for gamblers but we are not doing that. We just want to visit and see places. Hopefully we still have enough HKD to spend!