ASMA HAMID

I was about to write a whole blog post on an instagram caption about my sister’s wedding but realised, hey, I actually have a blog to write on. It's been a week and a bit since I've gotten back from my very long holiday which I wish had been longer. But now I’m back, I’m just very desperate to be able to start working from the office again - which will start this upcoming Thursday! Going back to the wedding, it was actually the main reason why I had gone to Malaysia within this unpredictable period. I had bought my flight ticket a week before I was due to go back, but then on that week itself, a new directive came out which meant that I had to immediately fly out in order to be able to quarantine at home. Which lead me to buying a very last minute flight 5 hours before take off - on a working day. Felt very blessed that my line manager was ok with it as I was only able to tell him while I was at the gate.  I digress - now, back to the wedding. I was pretty much not involved in ...

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram (and can see my instastories), you’d probably know that I’m currently in Bulgaria. But I’m not just in Bulgaria, I’m in Bulgaria while it’s at a state of emergency due to the virus Bulgaria. Funny enough, the reason why I was okay with Bulgaria was because at the time I planned the trip, there were zero cases and I thought, not a lot of people visit Bulgaria so I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. I guess I took that for granted and didn’t check right before I left because today is the first day of the emergency! Bare in mind - Bulgaria only has 0.4% cases in comparison to the UK. I arrived into the airport at 3AM this morning with the intention of waiting at the airport until the first public transport but hey hey hey, the airport closes after our flight lands. Therefore, I didn’t have a choice but to find my way into the centre which is pretty straight forward tbf. I took a taxi and told the driver that I’d like to go to a 24/7 McDo...

Christmas holiday planning went from Scotland to Wales to Paris to just Thorpe Park but ended up with spending time together in Maidenhead. As a summary, we spent 3 full days together talking, cooking, eating, playing games, dancing, eating, eating and more eating. You can see where I'm going with this. I would've thought that my holiday would be boring if someone had told me that all we're going to do is stay at home but it was such an amazing holiday; I'm actually having withdrawals from it. So here I am, writing about what we did and how we celebrated our days off while I wait for a potential housemate to come over to view the house. Right, so I got distracted because someone came over, three weeks later, here I am trying to pick up where I left off. We had Zariq and Yen over throughout Christmas and Roaa and Adham came for Christmas dinner. With a lot more hands to cook and knowing what to eat just made everything so nice. My holiday started after lunch on ...

It's Saturday evening and I'm on the couch with Vagabond playing on the tv. I have spring rolls in the oven to be eaten with the sambal Aisyah made a batch of before she left. I'm deciding whether to steam some buns but I think I've over eaten during lunch. Aisyah's gone home and Laura's moved to her mum's. There were a lot of boxes around the house for a while; it was clear that people were moving out. There are actually still a lot of boxes in the house waiting to be shipped to Malaysia just that the shipping company hasn't texted to come yet. It had been a while since I had a roommate before Aisyah moved in. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be just that there were a lot of things in the room. We had to buy a bedside table and a clothing rack just to keep everything neat. While she was around, the house was sparkling clean because she vacuumed and polished the whole house nearly every day! In addition to that, the plants in the b...

Spending my Sunday at home, I thought it was about time that I start writing about my summer holiday. I took 3 weeks off this year, it got people at work jealous; shocked that I was allowed such a long holiday, bless Gary for approving that. I had an amazing holiday in Croatia, Bosnia and around Southern England with my family. Thanks to Aisyah for being our travel agent, it was a smoother holiday than the one I planned last year.  Our holiday was based on the cheapest flight in and out and so we decided to do Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Konjic, Mostar and lastly Split. We flew into Croatia via Norwegian Air and out on Scandinavian Airlines. Hakim came a few days before we were due to fly off and he went around  Berkshire with Aisyah while I was at work preparing for my long leave.  Our holiday started with a train into London, meeting up with Zariq for CocoCurry and of course - Yolkin. We then took the train to the airport where we waited for a while until security open...

Expecting Eid this year to be very hambar, I'm surprised it wasn't! The scale of everything was much smaller than last year and though I decided to not take the day off on Eid itself, I did do very Eid things on the weekends that followed. I can't say if it's bad or good but Ramadhan as a whole just felt like a normal month to me just that I was on a diet. Friends and colleagues were astounded with how I was actually able to do it and some was even worried about my health. I had iftar twice at my colleague, Roaa's place. I was so happy to just have been invited over for iftar and she was the sweetest to have invited knowing that I was doing Ramadhan on my own here. I also went to Aisyah's place a few times and went for an iftar-do at her friend's house. Malaysian food would always bring you back home for awhile. The day of Eid itself was uneventful except that I had my braces done on the day! Rest assured, I had Eid food the day before courtesy of my new...

It's been 7 months since I started working but it feels like I just started yesterday. Minus the nervousness of going to work, anxiety of being around people and not knowing anything at all, of course. The first few months had been a journey for me and now that I've gotten through it, I don't really hold back on telling everyone I meet about it! It's very interesting to remember about how just a few months ago, I wouldn't go a single week without crying in the shower. And how I'd think ten thousand times before and after talking to anyone. How I would always be in this bubble of insecurities where I'm always thinking that everything I did was wrong. I wish I knew what had changed so I can tell all of you going through difficult times what it was but I really couldn't pin point it. But for all that matters, I love my life right now. I love the days when I'm able to sleep in for a bit longer in the morning but I also enjoy the days when I...