STILL

He's was so still when I left him with grandparents one fine summer afternoon for the first time.

My heart is far away from still.

Mommy-hood did make me weak at heart. I used to be that "woman on a mission" to make a difference at work and in our family life.

Leaving the kids for the summer would make me concentrate on work more. Not worrying about their whereabouts under the hot desert sun.

They are far away from me. Home is very still. I should be accomplishing a lot of things. But never did I feel my body more still than ever. I don't move. I am not motivated to move.

The reasons for my motivated life is not with me anymore. Everything is still but my heart.



Keep exploring!

Linked to the Gypsy Mama and her Five Minute Friday which is being hosted at (in)courage today!

Doha Summer: Mermaid Window Mosaic and Science Car!

Doha Summer is off to a great start because the kids are going to Istanbul to enjoy less heat and humidity. But before mixed emotions, we have spent the last night of the Turknoys having fun with the Dad!

Off course, we love Messy Play Mosaic! And we're so excited to do these extra meticulous activity once again.

another easy way out: mosaic kit! haha

excited to start and give Mommy quiet time haha

to make sure Little Kerim will not disturb, he got his Cosmic Car. Teaching science in a very early age - GOOD! 

ready, set, go!

busy bees!

oh yeah!

finished product! hahha - not for the tummy but for our window!

It was a fun, quiet night! Well, at least, quieter than usual.

Keep exploring!

Linking this here:

Turkish Evil Eye For Sale in Doha

Updates regarding Turkish Evil Eye For Sale in Doha.

This one is SOLD OUT!

SOLD OUT! 

This particular design below is our best seller - TWO PIECES LEFT! Please contact us ASAP if you want to reserve. This one is a great interior design accessory! 

closer view 

Keep exploring!

Doha Summer: Home made Pizza and Orange Juice

Home made Pizza during Doha Summer? Awesome!

Okay, admittedly, Doha Summer entails staying indoors 100%. Kids enjoyed mall, eating out and kids activities but it would be very hard on the budget. Hence, the home made pizza activity. with fresh orange juice!

As much as we had enjoyed the Pizza Express activity, we had to stay home sometimes and get the kids occupied. It is a perfect combination of cooking with kids, learning through play and messy play plus we could eat the output!

Here's the step-by-step (almost) illustration of what we enjoyed doing one fine Doha summer dinner!

of course we took the very quick way to make pizza! we got semi-baked pizza dough already.

mushroom and pepperoni flavored pizza! Available in all supermarkets in Doha! 

all set for some quick cooking! 

ingredient cost less than 50QR all in all! a delicious dinner already.

spreading the pizza sauce

little hands at work!

spearding some more...hoopsie... 

almost done!

the big kid almost done with the cheese 

Kylie's work

mushroom pizza

someone really liked pepperoni - yeah, I think pepperonis are a bit big for the pizza dough

pepperoni and mushroom

mommy had to go with pan de pizza since we had leftover pandesal 

orange juice prepared by Kylie also

yummy fresh orange juice while waiting for pizza to bake 

ding ding! done! 

YUMMY

pan de pizza 

halfway done eating 

I can imagine ourselves doing this over and over again especially when teaching the kids about fractions. Ha!


Keep exploring!

Evil Eye For Sale in Doha

EVIL EYE FOR SALE IN DOHA!

Oh Yeah! we have described what Evil Eye is in our previous post! Well, if you want to shoo away bad luck and welcome good luck, these decorative evil eyes are perfect for houses and cars. At the very least, these are good to look at and good complement to your houses' interior designs.

Feel free to contact us through this website's contact form, or Facebook or Twitter.

Here are the items we have sold so far and currently in stock. Hurry - these are limited offer only in Doha!

seriously, we make sure that our car has evil eye every time we travel. With increasing accidents in Doha road, it is better to believe in superstitions - this evil eye is handy for all types of cars!

evil eyes are known to shooo away bad luck and evil curses due to "envy"

Turkish people hang all sorts of evil eye designs in their houses, cars, offices, bags - basically everywhere!

shooing away bad luck PLUS welcoming good luck!! - IT REALLY WORKS!

another one believed to bring luck is horse shoe! add on the evil eye, you are sure to get whatever you want in life! (the rest of action is up to you of course!)

If you think that is BS, then at the very least, this is a perfect house decor!

It really won't hurt to get one of these evil eyes!

Keep exploring!

Qatar Airways Inflight Customer Service

Istanbul to Doha QR 481, 23 July 2011, 1930 – 2330


In this particular flight, Qatar Airways sucked balls! THE LOUSIEST FLIGHT EVER! The crew was so terrible – a perfect mixture of NOT five-star service: snob and lazy!

Okay, my sister unluckily booked the worst seat ever – that seat where crew smartly divides their service? Yeah, we were assigned to be the last row of seats to be served despite being in the middle of the economy class seats.

First , during distribution of warm towels, we were not given any towels – we were by passed!
Second, we were the last (sooooo last!) to be served with food! Hunger pains.
Third, we again were neglected to be served tea or coffee.

I could have let it go. Whining to two attendants about these three instances so that they would serve us tea, they finally did serve us tea after ten minutes of waiting. I was happy with a sip of tea, after all, tea supposedly relaxes the body.

BUT, the attendant, who was supposed to give us tea (yeah, that one who forgot to serve us tea) had the nerve to argue with us.

Lousy attendant: Are you that ones who were not served tea? I asked you and you said no.

Me: NO, you didn’t.

Lousy attendant: Yes, I did.

Me: NO, you didn’t.

Lousy attendant: Yes, I did.

Me: NO, you didn’t. (OMG, was she actually trained to suck at customer service?!)

Me again: No, you didn’t. You even left the help light (or whatever, you lousy attendant call it) so I thought you ran out of tea and the light would remind you to serve us tea.

Okay, at this point, my tea got cold already, so much for relaxation!

My sister: You were busy with the kid, remember.

Lousy attendant: OH, that one, I was busy with the kid.

At that point, the other attendant, the lazy one got a cue to “defend” herself:

Lazy attendant: And as for that towel, you were sleeping that’s why we didn’t give you.

(For the record, we were not sleeping and I even asked her again to give me the warm towel – which of course she never did!)

At this point, I am not relaxed anymore.

So I blurted out:

“Okay, you guys are giving perfect service and we are the non-important customers. “

No word from them – as if they said to me, “ you are so right, non-important customer!” And they ran off, smirking to each other. And of course, they give us a funny look every time they pass by our row.

Not even fake apologies whatsoever. Maybe this is an SOP in five-star service.

And I used to be a Gold Privilege Card Holder of Qatar Airways.

Nice job, attendants, for reminding me why I don’t fly with Qatar Airways as often.



Keep exploring!

Doha Summer: Pizza Express Fun!

Off we went to have some Pizza Express fun and bonding with friends.

Doha summer vacation is never dull for the Turnoy kids. There is always things to do if we brave the heat and ride to mall and walk from parking space to inside the mall!

After enjoying Cafe Ceramique Summer Camp , we scheduled bonding with our Pinoy best friends and enjoyed making pizza at Pizza Express. It's not really a summer camp but it offers kids activity of making pizza all year round. This activity plus good friends make it a great learning experience to make a pizza! We had made pizza and eat it too! Awesome!

Anyone who orders pizza kids meal at Pizza Express gets to prepare the pizza. For a prize of QR25, this activity is worth a try for Doha kids stuck in summer heat. Mommys (and Dads too, of course!) can relax and catch up on stories while kids are busy. Plus the Tiramisu and Pizza Sauce are to die for. Of course the pizza of different flavors are fabulous as well.

Even our almost two-year old Kerim had his share of fun, too!

As far as I know, Pizza Express branches are Villagio (our favorite - right in front of the food court)l, City Centre ( 3rd floor across the Cinema) and Landmark (close to Marks and Spencer.)

Plus plus points: Awesome Pinoy staff!

kids preparing the pizza dough

Our Kylie enjoying pizza toppings!

Our Kerim enjoying his first experience in pizza dough!

 

Keep exploring!

Evil Eye

Have you ever heard of evil eye? Wikipedia defines evil eye as the look that is believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike. In the Pinoy culture, the closest I could think of that is similar to evil eye is "bati" or maybe "kulam" but the latter is closer to witchcraft which is not evil eye.

Cihangir's example is a great illustration of what evil eye is: When he was young, almost everyone complemented  his oh-so-gorgeous eyes! Whenever people see him, they would say "you have such a beautiful eye" or "I wish I have angelic eyes like you!" As a consequence, his eyes got a bad vision at such an early age. So you see, those people who gave complement, doesn't particularly mean harm to him, it just came naturally to be envious of good thing or good fortune.

If it is "bati" in Pinoy, to repel that is to swipe a sliver (!) of saliva to the target of evil eye - okay, say it with me with disgust -- EEEOOWWWW!!! I must confess, however, that it comes naturally to me that every time the kids get so much complement from Filipino friends, I would automatically request for them for the salivation (for lack of better words!) ritual. HAHAHA!

Turkish and majority of Middle Eastern culture believe in repelling the evil eye but EVIL EYE! In Turkey they call this "NAZAR." These are usually ornaments which can be hang to protect people or object from bad luck  or evil eye.

Nazar could also be bracelets, beads and lots of accessories for protection.

DOES IT WORK? Well, like any other superstition, it depends on your belief system. For us, Turknoys, we do believe it works. See our blog badge? The first photo is that of evil eye so that our blog is not susceptible to evil eyes online.

Our first car already running on almost 70,000 kilometers only for 3 years but we never had an accident with our lucky car. We always hang evil eye in this car! Who knows!

If you are prone to bad luck, who knows, the evil eye is causing this and could be repelled by simply bringing  Nazar everywhere you go.

evil eye most of the times are combined with elephant and horse shoe design for MORE good luck!

this is evil eye also but religious in nature 

Here comes the marketing part - if you want to get good quality, authentic evil eye - stay tuned in our FACEBOOK Page. We aim to make this world bad-luck free by providing cheap evil eyes from Turkey. 


Who knows, this is all you need. 

Keep the faith!