festive fever

quicker than a ray of light, it's already end of october, and it'll be festival week very soon. or what the media says, deeparaya holiday. in fact, quite a number of my colleagues already started their holiday, and they're neither malay nor indians.

i visited geylang serai for the last time yesterday. it was very crowded, i guess other ppl got emotional too as geylang serai would never be the same again from next year onwards. while browsing through the foods in the bazaar, i even took out my digicam and snapped some photos. i know i'd look like a foreigner but forgive me for being sentimental.who knows whether there'll ever be geylangs serai in the future?

well at least i've got lapis cake monica moschovitz that my mum asked me to buy from malay village bazaar. 2 boxes. they came in normal favours, raisins, spices and chocolate. my mum likes the raisin flavour. it's delicious and cheap too. 10 dollars only when in malaysia lapis cake always costs at least 45 ringgit. even cheaper then the one sold in batam.

as usual, the gelang serai was a nightmare if u tried to find a decent place to break fast. ppl would book tables as early as before 6. so me and my friends bought our foods (crab okonomiyaki and chicken satay for me, i've been craving satay for days) and ate squatting down by the road shoulders. there were other ppl along the road shoulders too, it really added up to the atmosphere.

i think i've had enough of the place. for now. now it's time to think of what to bring back when i go back kl for the deeparaya holiday tomorrow. there's this alcom line phone complete with its child unit that i plan to bring back home. my parents have the current line phone in middle of the stairs landing and my mum always came breathless from climbing the stairs everytime she answered calls. plus, that phone area is a bit dark and batalions of mosquitoes reside there, and in this dengue epidemic sweeping the country, that isn't what u call a preferable condition. now at least she can put the phone child unit downstairs so it will no longer be necessary to climb the stair to accept calls.

add that with 2 boxes of lapis cakes, my clothes including new samuel and kelvin jeans, my digicam and handycam, books (blink by malcolm gladwell and the shining by stephen king), my walkman (playing new compilation mp3 cd i just made this afternoon consists of ashlee simpson i am me, destiny's child #1, kelly clarkson breakaway), my vitamins etc my GAP backpack which i bought in Paris looks like a fully diluted pregnant woman.

i'm just somewhat concern of the m'sian side customs. last time i beautifully wrapped (ok it was not me but the customer service chap in robinson) this cake mixer because i wanted to give my mum for mother's day and ended up being taxed for it. the other year, i brought back my unused sony vcd player, which i carefully wrapped with old newspaper, because i wanted to give it my grandfather but of course the custom scanning machine caught it and i was taxed for it too.

whatever happen to flexibility and leniency? it's not that i brought those stuff for me for whatever selfish reasons, but they were for other ppl that i care. it's not like i'm trafficking cake mixer in a whole underground secret cake mixer inter-continental exportation or something, so those taxes were just plain ridiculous. i mean, instead of imagining the joyful face of those presents, now i'm worrying over the customs 'verdict. i suspect if i cursed them who taxed me, it might even came true.

anyway, i'm not gonna let that spoil my festive holidays. the event is almost possibly ruined already when my father (again) apparently insisted on celebrating the season at our home in kl instead of my mus side grandfather's home in a village in negri sembilan, which we went every year recently. i like celebrating in the village, where the traditional tradition still goes on. plus, other relatives will be there too, so it's not like we're gonna celebrate all by ourselves surrounded by our usual 4 concrete walls with neighbours mostly back in their own hometowns.

but knowing my father, he always has the final say. well almost all the times anyway, partly because we were too afraid to argue. unless my mum starts to prison herself in the bedroom and refused to cook. this happened once or twice before when i was around. this time, as my father already retired from work last september, it maybe changed the whole situation.

not much that i can do so i'll just hope for the best. hey, i got the lapis cake as requested, so at least things seem to be going the good way.

happy diwali and selamat hari raya aidilfitri!


...ed