The Little Trip and A Wedding Banquet

Yesterday I attended a wedding. My uncle's son got married. As usual if we were to travel outside the island we had to leave by the earliest boat possible. So, we took a 07.30am boat. Only three of us went, Sara, my husband and I.
Once reached the mainland, we rented a car from the usual operator for half a day. We planned to return later in the evening. Since December is Malaysia's longest school holidays, I can see heavy crowd waiting for their boat to the island. Thus, to be on the safe side, I decided to get our ferry tickets endorsed at 18:00hrs for the return trip.

The traffic was quite heavy, so we decided to use the expressway. My husband took the wheel the first leg of the trip. As usual, my M.C, Sara was bright as the sunshine entertaining me with her non-stop chatter about her Korean favourite group, about her friends and endless info about Korean music. She switched off the radio and turn on her Korean music from her i_Pad.  Does she bore me? Let's put it this way. I have to listen since I am her only friend during this long school break.
The trip took us about two hours.

Once we were about to reach my uncle's house, I rang my cousin, Yang, who lived about a kilometer away from my uncle's house and asked for directions. If I am not mistaken, the last time I went to his house was about fifteen years ago, it could be more.
We reached his house at about 12:45pm. My uncle and his wife, Aunt Zakiah was at the porch receiving all their invited guests. My uncle looked moved when he saw me coming. I gave him a tight hug and then his wife. His son, the bridegroom was standing next to his parents welcoming us with his newly wed wife.
The best part was when I saw all my favourite cousins and aunts standing behind my uncle smiling broadly the moment they saw us. We started squealing, laughing, joking and exchanging remarks on how each and everyone of us looked. My aunt, remember my blog  The Men In My Life Part 2? She was there too sitting on a chair. She looked so frail and yet she wanted to be apart of the welcoming team. The moment I hugged her, her tears rolled down her cheek. She is a lovely creature and will  always be close to my heart. Yang's mom was one of my favourite aunt too. I was close to tears when I saw both of them looked so small and fragile. We sat and talked and reminisce about the good ol time.

My main intention of writing this article was to share about how wedding reception and the banquet was done at this neighbourhood. I was both amazed and in awe by something so pure and unpretentious still exists in today's community. I was told that all the menus for the wedding reception was cooked by my uncle's neighbours and friends. There were white rice and ghee rice, black sauce beef , lamb curry, fried chicken, lentils curry and pineapple salsa. All these were cooked at the back of my uncle's house with the help from all within that neighbourhood. No charge at all. You too find that amazing? Wait till you hear this. All the chickens, the rice, the vegetables, and other items for the feast were chipped in by their neighbours. I would estimate an invitation was sent out to about one thousand people. They close the lane in front of my uncle's house till the end of the lane and erected a makeshift tent to hold the reception. I dare say my uncle paid next to nothing for his son's wedding. Ain't that something? I still find it hard to believe.

Now lets see the dessert. As if not enough with what they had done, the neighbours, again, took the initiative by cooking some mouth watering delicacies and sweet dessert for the guests and placed it in front of their houses. We can walk from one house to another and select whatever dessert we wish to take after that delicious lunch. I should have taken some pictures and upload here for all to see. I totally forgot about it once I saw all the endearing faces there.
There were also the tropical fruits, the all time Malaysian favourite, roti canai,the sweet and yummy red beans in coconut cream, and they even provided about five hundred burgers to be consumed especially for the children.
As for drinks, there were lime juice, corn juice, iced tea and hot milk tea.
All these were done in the spirit of goodwill and an act of benevolence.

To cook and prepare food for that amount of people is no joke. I would say for chicken meal itself will require at least about 60 ~ 80 pieces of chickens which had to be cut, cleaned and skinned. Then, there's beef  which had to be cut too in small pieces (taken from one whole cow!). The vegetables (carrots/onions/ginger/pineapple, etc..) had to be peeled and chopped accordingly which I am sure came from stacked of boxes which contained all sorts of vegetables. All these man power required long labour and hours if not days.
Thus, all in all the preparation for the banquet will at least take 2 days to complete. And that means, some of the neighbours who willingly participated in the process of preparation and cooking will need to take a day off from their working place just to be certain everything worked out well on the day the wedding took place. How noble!

I have never seen this being practiced anywhere else and I would say that was an act of nobility and a true neighbourhood spirit. To hold a wedding reception like that could easily cost us about thirty thousand Malaysian Ringgit. What the community in that area did was highly commendable as this kind of close knit togetherness saved us a lot of time, headache and money if we were to organize it on our own. What with today's high cost of living, this is one way to plan a  wedding effectively and affordable by all.

With a heavy heart we left at 2.30pm as we had to catch our 6 o'clock boat. After saying our goodbyes and countless cheek touching, we were finally on our way to go home. Right after we eased our way into the expressway, the traffic crawled. At one time, it didn't move at all. Normally it would take between 2 ~ 2  1/2 hours drive from where we were to the ferry terminal. But that day, we were so behind schedule. When we finally reached the R & R in Gurun, we stopped for about 15 minutes to perform our 'Asar prayer. Sara asked me if we have enough time to reach the terminal . I glanced at my watch and realised we most probably couldn't make it. It was ten to five and it's going to be heavy with traffic as office hours finished by five.
I took the wheel and drove like crazy trying to beat the time. Half way before the end of the expressway, the traffic crawled again, another accident. This time I know for sure, we will miss the boat. We tried calling the ticket counter but nobody picked up the phone.

We finally reached the terminal at 6.35pm and our boat was long gone. I tried to initiate for some refund or a discounted rate for our  un-utilized tickets but to no avail. We wasted fifty four bucks for that tickets and had to purchase new tickets and paid again another fifty four bucks. I was fuming but nobody was to be blamed except for the traffic.

We got on the 7 o'clock boat and the bloody boat didn't depart until after 7.30pm. We finally reached home at 9.45pm.
I was too tired to do anything else except get ready for bed.

And so there goes another day of my life. It was always good to see the old familiar faces once in a while.

I enjoyed my brief meeting with my relatives and look forward to seeing them again.

Have a nice evening people wherever you may be!

Rose 9th.Dec '13