Marina's Bloggariffic

A bunga telur is a decorative container for eggs meant to be given away as gifts to guests in a Malay wedding.

When mum brought home a huge box of bunga telur and an ornate copper display stand, I started to have my mini panic attacks. Cartcart and I havent even planned our wedding yet and already mum has been talking and advicing me about our future wedding. I wonder who was more excited – Me or her? :P

She’s been giving me advice like :

1. To set the date in the registar of marriages at least 6 months in advance.
2. To have a double ceremony
3. Drinking jamu to make me more fertile

And the more she talked, the more I am in realisastion that there are so much preparations to do! Not to mention the costs of the ceremony like, catering, invitations, dowry et all. And the more I think about it, the more I am starting to feel overwhelmed.

Why do weddings have to be so much work?

So what if the rain poured and there was a heavy traffic jam. It was still a beautiful day spent, together with the charming kids from Darul Ihsan.

About three weeks ago, Shaz and Aidil advertised a bloggers outing with the kids from the Darul Ihsan Orphanage and I thought that it was such a beautiful gesture and something that has never been done before in the Singapore blogosphere.

Even though I was not familliar with most of the cliques, curiosity got the better of me. I emailed Shaz and Aidil and in time, the event was finalised.

On the morning itself, I reached the orphanage about half an hour late due to my being unfamilliar with the area. Eventually I managed to stumble in the correct building. The first person that I recognized was Shaz, as she called out to the girls to form up to enter the bus. I quickly parked my scooter and walked briskly, entered the bus and plonked on a seat.

I said hello to the other bloggers that was sitting next to me – Dyllah, Fai and Aidil. There was such lively chatter by the kids who were already inside. They are most adorable. I watched amusedly as one of the boy, decided to stick 4 name tags on his shirt.

me : Wow! You have 4 name tags! (peers) So which one is your real name?

boy : My name is Fernando Torres!

me : Hahaha! (Who’s that?)

Fai was chatting animatedly to the kids and I was impressed at how the kids opened up so quickly. That was really heartening to me.

Eventually, I realised that the bus wasnt even moving an inch. We were stuck in a jam! Rayyan explained that there was an Iron Man Triathlon going on and that certain roads were closed, causing the jam. With time running out, we decided to exit the bus and walk the remaining way to the cinema.

When we reached the theater, we had to literally grope our way to our designated seats. But we couldnt see a thing in the dark theater. In the end, we just grabbed a random seat and just enjoyed ratatouille. I do hope that we didnt disturbed the other patrons too much though!

After the very enjoyable movie, we headed off to have lunch over at Cafe le Caire to have a sumptious arabic fare. It was really yummy! Moreover, I think eating together communally really enhanced the experience. Suddenly Murni appeared and handed us a box. Its a surprise!

We opened the box and we did have a pleasant surprise! Such beautiful cupcakes! And they taste really yummy!

After lunch, I relaxed and sat next to a young lady and I started to ask her

me : Are you a volunteer?

she : No …

me : Oh! (embarassed)

After talking for a while, I found out that her name was Mahmooda and that she was 18 years old. She’s currently studying in a local institution. She was such a sweet, gentle and soft spoken girl. We talked about school choices and then she talked about her aspirations to be an accountant and her interest in beauty therapy.

Its refreshing to meet a teenager who has aspirations. As compared to some of the teenagers that I meet who are disinterested in school, talking to Mahmooda was like a breath of fresh air.

Here is the only picture I have of Mahmooda and me with a bit of Deen’s head.

Suddenly a most adorable tiny little boy approached me and asked

boy : Whats your name?

me : Marina

boy : Really? My mum was called Tity Marina

me : (heart melts) Whats your name?

boy : Deen. Thats my sister there, in the pink shirt.

Deen started to play with my camera and I showed him how to snap pictures. Thats when the kids started to go crazy with picture taking! Looking at the images in the SD card, I’ve absolutely no idea what they are snapping at. Hahaha! But it makes for pretty good experimental pictures I think :)

Later on Iza came up and asked everyone to write their hobbies and interest on a piece of paper and promised to try the best to source for these interest.

Time seemed to pass by so quickly, in no time at all, we were back in the bus, and back at the orphanage. The volunteers passed gifts boxes to the kids and I cant help but to gush at the extremely cute personalised picture frames that the kids had. How does Eja does it?

I cant help but to smile at all those happy faces. Thanks for organizing it Shazdil and gang :)

Today was such a beautiful, beautiful day.

This clip pretty much sums everything :)

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Watch in youtube

By the way, most of the pictures that you see here are snapped by the kids since the camera was constantly being kidnapped by them! Hahaha! We have potential photographers in our mist :)

I love this shot that one of the kids took of me! :D

Links

• Shaz and Aidil
• Kecique
• Aqi
• Faddy
• Murni