Best Italian restaurant in Tokushima - Sugattiii Pizzaria Trattoria

I may not actively updating the blog. It was just a state where I can't think of anything to write. Nevertheless, life is as active as usual. Many things happened for the last weeks, sad, bad and happy and lucky.

Just yesterday the lab's members and a number of undergrad students had a party celebrating the end of international symposium that we held last July. I like that Italian restaurant and Akamatsu sensei went a great length to change two dishes so that I can had mine while they had chicken and beef (the restaurant especially replace my menu with ika and hotate). The crab spaghetti is the best, I think and so the pizzas. The pizzas were fresh out from oven, hot and just nice. Much better than Pizza *ut! ;)

Though Yao san, Chen san and me took almost 40 minutes by bicycles to go to that place, it worth the journey. I had the good time chatting with Kekko san, my Professor's wife. She was as sporty as her usual self. Bright and cheerful though her age is coming to 64 soon. The truth is she look younger and healtier then most Malaysian women at her age.

Anyhow, I did not take any picture last night. I prefer to keep the memory alive in my imaginative mind. (Though the truth was I did not bring my camera). Sigh!

My bosses are coming to town

My bosses of USM are coming down for a visit. Thus, I am involved in the planning to greet them here tomorrow morning and also was asked to take them around for a day, this coming Saturday.

Thanks a lot for my friends here who voluteerily agreed to help me organized a day trip around Tokushima and also having dinner with some of Malaysian students, especially Isma and hubby. Actually there are many of them who has agreed to help me and too many to mention everybodies name. You know who you are and I pray that God will repay all your good deeds.

Aidilfitri 2009

I love Raya. It is one of the best days for the whole year. Having the family and friends over will eventually make my Raya day happier. It is a day when we, the whole big family meet and forgive each other. We eat, make jokes, keep up with each other lifes and parted feeling happier with a promise that we will meet again. Those are my Raya days.

Since 2006, I had missed a few Raya days. It did make me sad, felt lonely and longing to be home. But, having friends around did made up to a great length. Thanks for being there, friends!

Wish everyone, happy hari raya aidilfitri and maaf zahir dan batin.

Missing the blogging activities

Blogging and blog hoping are now one of my favourite activities beside reading books. But then the current life as a student took most of my time and mind away from my usual self. Hence, I was not able to indulge much of my time doing those two. I missed both dearly.

Since I came back from Niigata, there are two important things in my mind; the data that need to be prepared for paper publication and the coming Hari Raya program. Short discussion over my project in Niigata led the Prof. to agree that I can published soon and started writing now. However, as usual there are a couple of experiments that need to be done. One of them is western blotting for LAMP-2 protein. As the antibody will only reached here the earliest end of next week, then nothing much to do at the moment but wait. In the mean time, I was asked to start writing and putting up figures for a proceeding paper. The dateline for my beloved Prof is end of October 1st week. Not long considering next week there will be three days of holiday starting from Monday.

The holiday remind me of end of Ramadhan and our plan to organize a get together at my house after Hari Raya prayer at the mosque. The recent statistics showed that there will be around 30 guests will be attending the Hari Raya party. Butterflies have been flying in my stomach thinking about the party. I plan to cook Mee Rebus Utara but not sure how it will turn out. Like my mother always do, pray for the best.

I feel happy because the Hari Raya fall (most probably) on Sunday. Then we will have makan-makan. Every year for the last two years, it was on weekday. Nothing much can be arranged then.

But, there is something like a small stone in my shoe keep irritating my thought beside the happiness of celebrating Hari Raya. A person, not a significant one but because we live here in small Malaysian community the effect is still relevant. I will pray that God will show some mercy on our community here and let the cold war end or just vanish. I can't say that I am 100% right all the time. People make mistakes. We look into ourselves and try to correct our handling in the future to not repeat the same mistakes. Fail to understand and always blaming others will only alienated us from other people. This happened to a person here. Wish that this person will understand reasons people are avoiding themselves from her.

Anyhow, I will try my best to spend time writing about Niigata and also the coming Hari Raya plan. I miss lemang. (^-^)

Niigata, here I come...

Tomorrow morning, I will be taking bus and flight to Niigata. The 6 of us including my dearest Prof. are taking the same journey and will reach there in the evening.

Going out of lab is good but have to be together with the gang plus 'him' is like free but with no freedom. Anyhow, as the lab is taking care of all the expenses besides meals, I will follow the crowd. It is just that I can't be myself being around him. He likes to judge people and I don't like to be judge. He will linked most of the things that are out of ordinary to him of me either to Malaysian as a whole or to Islam. Simple thing as Malaysian love bright colors compared to Indonesian was also a point for him. Yes, I noticed that Japanese love natural colors, to the extend it is either black or white. Some questions sometimes are best not to be asked.

And this journey to Niigata is also a working trip. I will be presenting a poster and oral presentation of my works for the past three years. Having a job to be done means there will be butterfly in my stomach till the day the job is perform. My mother gave me a few 'doa's to be recited to calm me down and I pray hard that I will be able to do it rightly. Wish me the best!

Plan for my chilie plants

Out of the 16 plants, only one had been transferred to a bigger pot. Actually two of them in a pot. They have grow rather well and today I can see the small buds coming out from the stem. I just pray that the buds will eventually turn themselves into some lovely chilies. I have a good plan for them, the timing is just chodo-ii (just nice).

The Hari Raya is coming soon. As not many of us is around for the Eid (many undergraduate students went back to Malaysia as now is the semester holidays), so I have volunteered to have the celebration at my place. It is not big place but enough for about 10 to 15 people at one time. Just comfortable. Back to the plan, I think I want to serve Mee Rebus Utara for them and usually it is garnished with the red chillies. I can used my hard labour chilies from the garden in the balcony.

Cheers to the good life!