<h3>Guests Galore</h3>

That's the secret of entertaining. You make your guests feel welcome and at home. If you do that honestly, the rest takes care of itself. - Barbara Hall

The Don and I have been having a continuos stream of visitors since Wednesday. First was my 5 uncles from Pahang, Malaysia, who are here on special invitation from Habib Hassan to attend the Hol @ Ba'alwie mosque. (a day to commemorate the passing of an important religious figure)They were supposed to arrive by 10pm on Wednesday but a minor glitch and the heavy jam at the causeway caused them to arrive at 3am. And as always happens whenever family members congregate, we yakked the night (morning) away till Subuh. The Don and I had only 2 hours sleep before we got up to leave for work the next morning. 4 of my uncles left that same night while one stayed behind to accompany the Habibs from Indonesia on their trip to Malaysia, for 2 other hols.

We were very glad they decided to spend the night at our house. Usually, whenever they come to Singapore, they will accept Habib Syed Ahmad Semait's invitation to sleep at his sprawling place in the East. This time, however, our they bit our bait and slept at ours. This is certainly one advantage of The Don and I having our own place.

Then, my cousin Kak Ida n Abg Wan arrived on Friday night. Again the horrible jam caused them to arrive at 5am, instead of the midnight hour as planned. They spent the weekend here and left on Monday morning. We brought the kids for swimming on Saturday and my cousin and I dragged our husbands to Robinsons for shopping on Sunday. My cousin spent a bundle on her children's clothes while I made the Don spend a lil' on more household stuff (you can never have enough!) and toys for the kids.


As expected, The Don and I havn't had much sleep since Wednesday, especially since our guests seems to arrive at noturnal hours. And as a habit, everytime my relatives meet, we will chat into the wee hours of the morning. Sleep is such a time-consuming activity since we have so much to talk about and so little time. Still, despite the lack of sleep and the yawn-a-minute marathon, The Don and I were happy to receive so many guests at our place and we look forward to more guests in future. After all, as they say "tetamu itu pembawa rezeki" (dun ask me for the translation)