Berbuka at Latest Recipe

Last week, I confirmed an invitation for iftar from a Pharmaceutical company. The problem was, the iftar would be on a post call evening. And that particular call happened to be a busy one. But being Ramadan, I didn't really mind the extra hours I was awake. I was munching away most of the time I was up.

When it was finally time for iftar, I was already very tired and grumpy. All I wanted was to be in bed. At home.

It turned out to be great, with great company. And the food was good.

Clever way to present the fruits

The iftar was at Latest Recipe, one of my favourite hotel cafe. It was at Le Meridien, KL Sentral. It had local, Indian, Japanese and a bit of fusion food. But what was great was despite the number of people, there were food aplenty, and the crowd control was good. The cafe itself was relatively small and we were seated by the lift.

What did I have? I started out with some sashimi. If you think that was bad, there were some on my table who opened with oysters. Next, I had some chicken rice - which was nog great. The Indian selection was good, so was the teppanyaki and pasta.

But the highlight was definitely the afters. There was plenty of local fruits - I had a feast of rambutan. Puddings, ice cream, ais kacang. You get the picture.

Those are not test tubes! They contain the dressing for the salad.A surprise birthday cakeWe also had a surprise birthday for one of the Pharmaceutical Rep. Cakes and all. Plus the hearthy singing from my Boss.

This wasn't the first time I had iftar at Latest Recipe. The standard was still up there as far as food was concerned. Crowd was always a challenge and reserving a seat can be difficult. If somebody were to offer me iftar in town, Latest Recipe would definitely be high on my list.

Private School Fair

Private school is big business in Lembah Kelang. Increasingly parents could afford private school, and some do so due to be coming disillusioned with the Ministry's actions over the years when it comes to medium of instruction. It was in English for Math and Sciences until recently. Then came the scrapping of UPSR. One never could guess what would they come up next.

The decision for me was straight forward. I feel that getting them proficient in English from an early age is important, and the local public school our kids were assigned to was well below par. We could do what other parents do, appeal, use some connections to get into better school or even resort to using an alternative home address in areas where good schools were available. In the end, we decided to enrol into private education, and with Sri Utama round the corner from our place in Gombak, it was the easy option.

Last weekend, we went to a School Fair at Mid Valley to look at other options. Irfan was upset however as he was not keen to switch school. But the reason why we went was to look at secondary schools later. There were a few schools which now offer boarding. They actually looked tempting, as I don't think our boys would be able to secure places at government public boarding school coming from private primary.

List of participating schoolWe spent more than an hour looking around the fair. Spoke to a few schools. And then the boys got excited when they saw their headmistress at their school's booth. She must be wondering what we were doing there. She might be suspicious that we were thinking about switching school.

On the whole it was a good outing. At the very end, we came across a booth by an afterschool agency called The School. It is located at Jaya One and will be opened later this year. Children can go there an enrol into music lessons among other things. And Idlan was excited to join.

The Fair was scheduled to be done yearly. This time, it was doing Ramadhan which curbed our enthusiasm somewhat.

Fitting In

So, it had been close to a week since we stayed at the apartment. The place had turned into a mess, especially in Irfan's room cum play room. He had his game console there plus Idlan had his Lego bits all over the place. Luckily our maid came along with us. She had to do all the tidying up.

The boys seemed to be enjoying their rooms, and from tomorrow, their school holidays would officially start. They would be off for a month, and I was expecting more mayhem to follow.

Since the boys have their Quran class this afternoon, I would be heading back to Gombak this afternoon for Berbuka. Since I would be off tomorrow until Sunday, I might just leave a bit early this afternoon after the rounds were done.

Early Start

Attending a meeting this morning, I had to leave for work extra early. But that didn't stop me from having a nap just after sahur. I ended up leaving the apartment at 6.45, starting my rounds just after 7 in the morning.

A quick look outside, little did I realise that the crawl on the roads leading to and from Persiaran Kewajipan had already started. It was already busy with the honking and all. No wonder the patients complaining that sometimes they couldn't get enough rest.

And the queue didn't last until about 10 in the morning. And would start again just after three. Madness!

Interesting Read

Last weekend, we went to a bookstore as the boys wanted to read books during the coming holidays. I thought the book that Idlan picked was rather interesting.

Maybe that was what it saw in me. I never knew ......