Mr H was our neighbour in Amstelveen, he lived alone right in front of our house, whereas Ms J lived not far away. H was a very good neighbour, even though he didn't speak English and my Dutch was nonexistence, it did not prevent us from communicating to each other. We must have sounded like "ayam dan itik" when we talked to each other :D
H and J
I do miss him when I move to Den Haag. Why do I miss him?? For one thing he would take my rubbish bin from the collection place and bring it to the house, every week. And sometimes, when I forgot that it was Thursday (collection day) he would bring the bin to the collection place for me. And another thing, he would scrap the snow from my front door, everytime it snowed and last winter, it snowed all the time until February or was it early March!! So wasn't that sweet of him?? He..he..he.. I suppose one would think that I miss his services he..he..he.. No, truly I miss seeing his cheerful face, and anyway I happen to have a neighbour now in Den Haag coincidently with the same name H and he would also bring back my rubbish bin!!! Aren't I lucky!!! Anyway back to H in Amstelveen, H must be lonely, I hardly saw any relatives drop by, in fact I had never seen his children (he has 2) and grandchildren came, not even on Christmas!!! And being a "nosy" neighbour that I was, I would know if anybody came !!! He was good to my son too, during world cup time, the nearby supermarkets would give out free world cup Gogos (little cute creatures) whenever you purchased a certain amount. Every time he went grocery shopping, he would drop the colourful Gogos through our post box. Ilham had a bagful of Gogos and most of them were from him.
J was a lovely lady from Indonesia. She's been staying in Holland for almost 30 years. She enjoyed talking to me because it gave her the chance to practice her bahasa Indonesia :D
We must have shown good example of Malaysian hospitality, because H decided to go for a holiday in Malaysia recently. DH recommended a few places for them to visit (based on their likes and dislikes) and they celebrated their 10th anniversary(I think) as a couple at the KL Tower.
We invited them for lunch one day, DH earlier promised to serve nasi lemak daun pisang and that's what we cooked that day.
Nasi lemak and sambal udang
Since J said that H could eat spicy food, I decided to cook the sambal the normal way, with only little adjustment to the amount of chillies. I think, the sambal must have been a wee bit hot for H, because he seemed to be "concentrating" on the prawns. Or maybe he found it difficult to eat because it was unshelled prawns!!! I should have bought the shelled ones!!! My initial thought was H couldn't eat it, but he had 3rd helping of the prawns!! so that means he had no problem with it :D
Look at H's flushed face he..he.. too hot for you?
We served them with lempeng pisang as well and sagu gula melaka
Lempeng pisang
We have yet to invite them over to Den Haag since we moved here. Must do it one of these days.
6 comments:
It's great to have visitor especially from non-malaysian.. Nice to know people like to visit malaysia based on the hospitality given ;)
Hi iina,
Well to be honest, I'm not that 100% sure it was because of us he..he.. but we are glad that he finally decided to go..
Oww, nice neighbours you have there! I miss having good neighbours. When you can chit chat, exchange kuih muih and all. Here in Japan, people usually mind their own businesses. They seldom communicate with each other. So, we are not so close with our neighbours. Oh yeah, when were first moved to this apartment, there was an ugly incident with our neighbour downstairs. That was when Sya was 1 1/2 years old. He was excited, jumping and running around in the living room. Not for too long though. Then we heard knocks on the door. It was the person who stays under us. He told us that he heard someone running and he said he could not take it. We apologized to him of course. But isn't it absurd? small kids, getting excited? And it was in the middle of the day. Not that it was midnight or something. Japanese can be too rigid sometimes. One point that I don't like about them. But after than, we put sponge mat on our living room and bed room so that Sya could be himself and not interrupting our neighbour. :)
Dear Nana,
Dutch can be fussy too. It really depends on where u stay. We lived in a neighbourhood where there were more older people then, so I suppose they were more tolerant. We have a M'sian friend who had same experience as you. She had 3 kids, so u can imagine the noise!! She moved away after 3 months he..he..
But I would say, the Dutch are basically good and polite neighbours. They are private people but they can be nosy too.. I heard :D
I.A dear,
u nosy? unbelievable..hehe
so good of you to your neighbours..keep it up girl!
:-)
Cheqna,
We must try to be good since they are good to us :D
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