Friday, August 9, 2013

It's Raya in Perantauan weh!

Assalamualaykum,

Finally I can get my grip at this keyboard to write something on my blog, FINALLY! Ah, wouldn't it be sweeter that if I can make a video out of every raya moment in here. Well, this is the whole purpose of not coming back to Malaysia; solely to feel how exactly the differences of enjoying your Ramadan, and Raya in overseas. Plus, what exactly you can get by just staying back in Russia, a non-islamic country (obviously) with totally different cultures.

In total, I have to say, my raya in here was awesome really, while for Ramadan, it had its up and its down tbh. Let's start off with Ramadan:

                     Ramadan in a nutshell was pretty much awesome, eventhough I couldn't finish the whole al-Quran (i don't know why -.-'') but still, i managed to read more than i read last year when i was in Malaysia. Ramadan in here taught me whatever that my father trained me so far, of how much 'ikhlas' that I really put into my ibadah, since in here, there's no exact culture or habitual act like in Malaysia, like "Ouh, after Maghrib we should open our fast, and then go to Isya' prayer and Terawikh in mosque" because in here, no one asks you to do terawikh, there's no like 'peer pressure' since you see others go to terawikh, and it would be 'wrong' if you don't go terawikh too. Well thats how this 'culture' works sometimes.

                    Ouh, talking about terawikh, I was pretty much dissapointed that I couldn't make myself go to terawikh in local masjid due to (1) the masjid is situated really far from my home (2) isya was at 11:40, usually no public transport at this time (3) I was really unsure that if the masjid holds terawikh prayer every single night or not, it turned out that, yes, every single night. Yes, one of my target missed. Sigh. Another thing about Ramadan was that, even though the spirit of Ramadan wasn't like in Malaysia, I tried to make the best of it: giving some tamar to others, tried to tadarus alquran, terawikh prayer 8 or 20 rakaat, cooked some Malaysian delicacies like nasi lemak etc, so it was quite a fun when you actually feel how your mother cooks and works all these while during Ramadan, and yes it was damn tiring, plus cooking without tasting requires a lot of courage, Alhamdulillah, maybe I am genetically inherited cooking talent (lol) so, everything that I cooked, turned out well. K, kill yourself now.

While for Raya, there were some drama back then. This was my first time having such situation. Funny it was, since we already thought by logical thinking that our raya supposely to be 1 day before  raya in Malaysia, since we had our Ramadan started also 1 day before Malaysians started their Ramadan. And all of sudden, we had to again fasting (we even already started our takbir raya with all the mixed emotions lol), so to make it in total, we actually fasted for 31 days. Pure awesomeness of my Ramadan, indeed. Ouh, even though Volgograd is not a city where we can just visit Malaysian embassy in front of our home door (Malaysian embassy holds this Eid celebration every single year), let's not make the Raya itself such a failure (though my housemate already gave up with this self Raya celebration). Im not letting this Raya gone just like that. So, I decided to make my own kuih raya! And plus, this kuih raya is actually my favourite kuih raya! I don't know what its name, but it tasted so good that by today (3rd daya of raya) only 3-4 cookies had left, hehe. Fasting or not, I realized that if I really want something, I will do anything eventhough I have to stand for 4-6 hours long to make this kuih raya. It didn't feel like 4 hours really.

Well, the night before Hari Raya, I didn't even sleep. Well, like what people say 'Malam Raya baru tangkap feeling Raya!'. Well, that's true weh. Well from 12 a.m till 5 a.m I was in the kitchen, again standing here and there, to cook my own Nasi Kerabu Kelantan (it was green nasi kerabu erk -.-") plus my Chicken Masala ala Melayu (I altered the recipe a bit to make it more malay by adding kerisik and serai). Though the irony is that I didn't even cook once Nasi Kerabu and I barely can cook nasi reciple as simple as Nasi Ayam, this turned out really well. Im not exaggerating it to make me a 'suami mithali' candidate or what, but it really turned out well. Even my friend said so (just for the record) haha. So, like 7 in the morning we got ourself to the local central mosque by bus, and sat there reminiscing those happy moments back there in Malaysia during this morning. Yes, I really did miss all those moments. By that, I think I began to appreciate all those dull moment in Raya. Before this, my rayas were being with friends, families, cousins, but this time I think I got it, that raya is for all. The difference? Well you see I might be enjoying entertaining some kids when I'll come for raya next year, which before this, I don't really give a look at those 'Assamekommm! Assamekom!!! Kami mai nak ghaya!' kids haha.

Nevertheless, when I was thinking of those great raya moments in Malaysia, but my families there wasn't quite enjoying theirs, well, so was I. Why? 2 a.m my grandfather/tokwan was hospitalized of getting frequent seizures and nystagmus series, to make it worse, there was no doctor around to treat my tokwan since it was neurological problem, so it needs specialist. I am really worried of his condition since he's the only tokwan that I have right now, and I really really love him. I am not ready for anything bad to happen to him. So I also get my close monitoring by asking my father about his recent condition and his analysis. Please make a prayer for him to recover :'(

Happy Eid Mubarak everyone! :)

Here some of the pics that I took using my phone during my eid:


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