Bulan Raya again

Yeah... it's that time of the year again. I purposely say bulan & not hari raya, because we in Malaysia celebrate it for the full month, not just on the first day. But of course by the first week, we have gotten tired of listening to the raya songs, while we continue visiting open houses all throughout the neighbourhood.

It's the same routine for me this year. Went to my wife's kampung in Melaka on the last days of Ramadhan & celebrated the all-important hari raya pertama there. Actually it feels more like in Negeri Seremban, since everybody speaks the negeri slang & they still follow adat perpatih in some ways. This year was a bit special in 2 ways : We cooked our own lemang right behind the house & we did a kenduri on malam raya where we invited the imam to do doa selamat & maghrib prayers followed by the takbir right in our living room. As usual, the food leftover was so huge even though many kampung folks turned up. When will they ever learn to make just enough food which is not so hot, I wonder? But I do love my sister-in-law's black rendang, although it's still too much on the hot side. For the raya prayer, it was full house again at the kampung mosque. People prayed on the tarred surface while I managed to squeeze to get to the main hall. Next year I'll remember to bring a big roll of house mat for the whole family to pray outside. My family's theme this year was green. I got myself & my boys a nice hijau pucuk pisang baju melayu while my wife & the girls got matching, darker green baju kurung. We visited my wife's many uncles & aunties with plenty of nice food on offer. & normally I'd take just a small portion, thinking that there were more food to come. On the second day morning we travelled north to my kampung in Kuala Kangsar. Thankfully the traffic wasn't so bad. On the way there we were told to make a transit at Chepor where my eldest sister was having an open house for the whole family. So off we went. We decided to take the Sungai Siput way, where our former Works Minister has kindly widened the whole federal road to KK. I don't know why but we just visited one house for the whole 3 days in KK, & that was my aunt's. May be we were too tired & also we only have 2-night stay & on the last day it was Saturday & we must start our journey early to avoid the dreaded jam. Thankfully my mother managed to order our favorite laksa kuala & we brought some home to Bangi.

Getting home again, it was time to visit our relatives' houses around the Klang Valley & we took turn to visit each other. Being close relatives, we just went on an adhoc basis by simply call & say "kita nak datang..". Then, there are our friends' raya gathering to go to & this is normally more of a planned arrangement, with fixed date & time. We just had our ex-schoolmates' raya gathering last Sunday where one of our mates has kindly offered his restaurant as the place to meet up & we brought our food pot luck style. It was also the most tiring day because we also went up to Serendah & Batu Caves on the same day.

For next year, I want to make rule that we would only go to maximum 2 open houses for the day... we'll see whether we can follow that rule, yeah?