H and J

 

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.

Our House - Amstelveen, Amsterdam

 

When we came to Amsterdam back in 2008, I was prepared to dislike the place, it must be the same as London and I hated London. London is nice to visit, but it's not a place to stay. I should know, afterall I spent almost 7 years in the United Kingdom, most of it in London. It was congested, dirty and cold. I hated cold then and I hate it now.

It was winter, so everything was so dull, cold and gloomy. Everywhere I looked, it was dark, grey and colourless, even the sky was grey. How I miss my hot and green country. Then, spring came and I started to see flowers and bright green young leaves along the way to school. I realised then, that there were actually lots of trees along the way and everywhere. I never really realised their presence before because they didn't have any leaves !!! How wonderful !!! Funny how a little bit of green and colours make you change your outlook of a place. I started to see how nice the place was. Everywhere there were canals and there were wild ducks and swans happily paddling in the water. Only then I realised that there were actually lots of little parks in my neighbourhood !!! And just a stone's throw away, there was a large grazing field, you could see cows, sheep and horses happily eating grass. On your lucky day, the cows would be grazing on our side of the field, only a little canal separated us. It was beautiful and peaceful, we hardly heard any traffic.... I loved the area, I love it still :)

 

Cows grazing happily in the fields

Ducks everywhere

The grazing field and the canal are only 3 minute walk from the house. Whenever we had visitors, we would take them around the house, to the field and canal, to feed the ducks. They all agreed that it was a nice and quiet place.



Sunrise - walking distance from home

Within a few minutes drive from the house, there was Amstel River.

Amstel River

In winter, the area was so beautiful... but that deserves another entry on its own.