Brussels

I had a day trip to Brussels today but due to the tight schedule, did not get to see much. Departure was from Terminal 5, London Heathrow which is only 30 mins from home.

In Brussels, the main place I saw, was only the airport unfortunately. One interesting point is the availability of prayer rooms; and separate ones for the different religions. The airport is not that big and it can be easily found on the 2nd floor.

British Airways is a disappointment though. The return flight was 50 mins late when I arrived at the airport. AFTER we've boarded the aircraft though, after a longer than usual wait, suddenly an announcement was made by the pilot that we will be further delayed by another 2 hours 30 minutes. The taxi driver who had agreed to pick me up at Heathrow then called and I took the call from inside the aircraft at about the same time. He had already arrived at Terminal 5 - pity him.

In any case, after leaving home at 4.30am this morning, I finally arrived home at 10.45pm. Very tiring day indeed.

Special Day

While everyone else celebrated Father's Day last week, our household celebrated a different day named Abah & Ummi's Day. We were surprised with the breakfast table full of meals prepared by the kids and to the sound of, "Happy Abah & Ummi's Day!!!!!!" when we came down on Sunday. As it turned out, the kids missed Mother's Day (must be when we were moving) and therefore decided to make this a shared day for us.

On the table for breakfast were 2 cups of coffee, roti canai with kuah kari, profiteroles (a dessert similar to eclairs but rounder), 2 toast with cheese and 2 bowl of ice-cream complete with Twix bars.

It was a pleasant surprise indeed. Thank you Sayang.........

Pizza anyone?

The kids miss having pizza for dinner. We used to have pizzas from Domino's and their Classified Chicken and Pepperoni pizzas are simply perfect for our family. Coming here, we expected not to be able to enjoy pizza anymore; at least not as much and not as good.

To our pleasant surprise, there are a lot of halal pizza outlets in London now. Within the first week of us moving to our house, we've received more than 3 halal pizza pamphlets dropped into our mailbox; and numerous others, of course. There are some weird offerings though; one of them has pork and ham pizza too and you can order halal choices. Another one will do halal by request etc.

We decided to give one of them a try (Zaiqa Pizza) - 100% and the guy who picked up the phone when we ordered was clearly a Muslim who proudly said, "Alhamdulillah, everthing we have is halal". We ordered 2 extra large pizzas (15 inch - bigger than the large one in Malaysia) with one of them with stuffed-crust - total cost of 15 pounds. The kids enjoyed them and of course, we did too. Our verdict, we will order again, insya-Allah.

Road to Wembley

Today we made a trip to the historic stadium...Wembley. With its iconic design, Wembley Stadium is visible from far and it's a great sight indeed.


















However, as there's no football match today, we ended up in the quite famous Wembley Sunday Market. We had been there years ago and the new market at the new Wembley Stadium is quite different. For a start, our entry there was greeted by a mobile van selling halal food. It used to be that there's no halal food available at any market here. However, now there are a lot of them. In fact easily out-numbered the non-halal outlet, from Chinese, Pakistani, Indian to Thai food, you can get them halal here.







Wembley Market generally sells new goods but at low prices. We did not buy much but with such a fine weather, enjoyed the stroll along the wide paths with stalls on both sides.

The kids are excited about watching a football match there and we sort of agreed that we will do that one of these days. Maybe an England friendly.

I like this car...

Chessington World of Adventures

We spent Saturday morning at Chessington World of Adventures. It's less than an hour's drive away and a good destination for families with small children (not too small though less they cannot get on any of the rides). As usual, we picked and chose those that seems interesting but with relatively short queues.

Having been here and the Legoland, there's a concensus within the family that the Chessington WoA is a better destination. Generally, a lot more attractions including a small zoo and Sealife where apart from theme-park style rides, there are also animal shows for the kids. It was also less crowded compared to the Legoland and we attribute this to the fact the Legoland seems to be better known. Distance-wise, this is also closer from London.



As with Legoland, no problem of bringing in food and drinks and having had the experience before, we were better prepared. For lunch, we had a picnic with packed home-made Nasi Lemak. That must have been one of the highlights of the trip.

There's a climbing wall that's about 20 feet tall invinting people to climb to the top and press the buzzer a-la X-Game event. Our son tried it and he got to the top.

They seems to like water a lot and most of their rides have water featured in them. The flying chairs above have sudden jets of water sprayed upwards and depending on the timing, you may get wet. Similarly, in the Rameses Nemesis (video below), they really splash your face with water. And the way it's done where you are slowly brought to the water spray was really neat. Not to mention that your whole body was basically facing the ground and the only thing keeping you from falling is the harness.



An interesting (and quite terrifying ride) that's new to us is the Rameses' Revenge. Check out the video. Can you spot us? As the ride is only for those taller than 1.4M, the boys couldn't join and of course their Ummi have to be their chaperone (and therefore operates the camera). If you listen carefully you can surely hear the ear-piercing scream of our daughter. This is actually the second part of the ride. After the first round, the operator asked if anyone would like to step down before they continue. It was a polite gesture, but nobody takes the offer, of course.





And we came across an interesting Sign as well. For a change, it's not from non-English speaking countries especially in the Far East that usually appear on the Net but from England itself.

Squirrel in the garden

We seems to always have little visitors in our garden. While I failed to get the green birds captured on camera, today's visitor lingered around longer and ventured closer to the house. In fact, there were three of them but by the time I fetched the camera, the other two were gone.

We used to have the same species visiting us at our place back in KL but these are bigger and the fur seems to be fuller too. Of course, nothing beat 'Tupai-Tupai' for steamboat especially the coconut soup....but that's for a different entry.

It's interesting for the kids to be meeting so many such animals. In fact when we were at another house during the house hunting a few weeks back, there was a fox....yup, are real-life fox in the garden amongst the long grass.



While I wait to get a good shot of the green bird, see the fruits that they have been feasting on. They look like grapes but with a hard outer shell. Must be great-tasting though I did not try them out.













While we are talking about the garden, there's also a nice bed of roses that have just started to bloom.

Creatures in the garden

Today we discovered a lot of birds (parrot-like, green in colour) in our garden. Actually at the border with the house behind ours. It seems like they are feeding on the fruits of a tree there. There could have easily been around 15 of them happily jumping around on the tree.

The attempt to photograph them ended up being the photography session for the garden instead. Well, if you look very carefully, at the tree at the end of the garden, right behind the fence after the wooden platform.....you still cannot see them....sorry.




Anyhow, some views of the garden, from the kitchen, the living room and the 1st floor bedroom.
Basically, the kitchen and the living room on the ground floor open out to the patio area that leads to the garden.










The structure on the right is part of the garage (small 1 car garage) and a study. I still fail to understand why there's a study 'in' the garden. Effectively to access the 'study' you would need to go out of the house, down the patio steps and walk about 30 feet. I can't imagine doing that especially in winter.


I wish I have an SLR camera.....

Moving house

We finally moved to our rented house on Tuesday, 2/6, alhamdulillah. The whole moving activities started on Monday when we received the key to the house. Our tenancy officially begins on the 1st as well. Prior to receiving the key, the standard inventory check was conducted. Basically, this is the ascertain the 'before' condition of the house to be compared with the 'after' condition when we leave later.

Our things from Malaysia was then delivered on the 2nd. Close to 200 boxes altogether....the whole day was spent unpacking, arranging and rearranging things. The 3 workers from the moving company definitely did most of the hard works. Whereas our role was more of pointing to where things should be moved. Of course, the major ordeal is moving our books, which ended up in the study on the top floor.


Generally everything went well and there were even a couple of unwanted stowaways - cockroaches that had always been declared as Public Enemy No 1 in our household. Only to be found and exterminated in London. That's life.

Tiring day is was and the workers left at around 5PM leaving us to continue unpacking. They would have unpacked everything but due to some of the furniture we are purchasing over here not yet been delivered therefore we are short of storage space, some of the boxes remained sealed.

Since then we have been tidying things up and there's a lot of loose ends to sort out. One big thing is our curtains are not yet fixed and according to the landlord it will take about 10 days as they are being custom-made. So, since Tuesday, we have been having temporary blinds on the windows. Quite unsightly to be honest but serve the purpose.


House is nice with fully wired broadband points in all the rooms, fully connected speaker system on the ground floor (speakers on the ceiling) which seems to be the trend here in London now as a few of the houses we looked at have the same feature. Of course, the brand-new kitchen makes someone VERY HAPPY. Actually more than one person.....that someone being very happy with the kitchen means everyone is very happy at meal-time...or even other time. We've been enjoying nasi lemak, mi goreng, briyani, pizza, cekodok etc.

We are still discovering the house and generally the best feature would have to be the back-garden. Great space for the kids (and their parents) to run around and with summer approaching, we can see how our centre of activities will start to shift outside.

London Eye

A lot of big cities now have gigantic ferris-wheel as tourist attraction. In 2000, at the turn of the Millennium, the aptly named Millennium Wheel was constructed in London to mark the event. Have since been more popularly know as London Eye, the London Eye features a 30 mins ferris-wheel ride taking you up to 135M high on it's peak. The exciting thing about the ride is the ability to see London from new perspectives high up in the sky.

Expect some queues but don't be disheartened by a potentially long wait. A queue that started twice over outside the covered area took us less than 15 mins and once you are 'on the flight' it's all worth it. London Eye is right next to the Jubilee Garden at the southern bank of river Thames.


One of the most memorable view to me is actually the shadow of the London Eye on the Jubilee Garden. It looks like the eyes itself and the small whitish specks on the green background are actually people enjoying the sun on grass.

















One of must visit attraction in London in our view. Some of the photos we took.....

This week....

The week went by very swiftly....a busy week it was.

Avis Car Rental - THE WORST - DON'T USE THEM

As I am typing this, I have been waiting for 21 minutes to speak to someone in Avis. And this is for this particular call. In actual fact, I have been trying to speak to someone at Avis Earls Court since more than an hour and without fail, I ended up waiting for a very long time without anyone picking up the call.

My rental car is supposed to be picked-up by Avis on Friday 29th May at 6:30PM. Luckily, I called them last Friday (and that's the only time I managed to speak to someone) and I was told that, "most likely we will not pick it up tonight, we'll pick it up tomorrow" and I was like, "You should have called me to inform me so I don't end up waiting". Finally, we agreed on 10:00AM Saturday 30th pick up time. Having had the experience earlier, I called them at 9:30AM on Saturday but nobody picked up the call after more than 10 minutes. And

I had been waiting for 25 minutes as I had decided not to terminate the call in case they are simply busy when I just got a message on the line saying, they are too busy to pick up the call and returned me to the Main Menu......TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE. I started the call as the 4th in the queue and after 23 minutes I was the next to be answered when they returned me to the Main Menu. What do I do there? Start over again? In fact, I am guessing that the move from the 4th to the next to be called simply happened because those in front of me got returned to the Main Menu as well. Great queue management system. The terrible thing about this so-called "We Try Harder" company is they simply couldn't be bothered about customer service.

I called their Breakdown line as I guess that should be answered and the guy there said he will connect me to a direct line for Earls Court and after a while.....the dreaded voice "You are 4th in the queue".......What the........

Officially, AVIS IS THE WORST CAR RENTAL COMPANY I've dealt with, globally.