izadnhana & aniqizhan hope you had a meaningful and blessed eid with your loved ones…
i can tell you that THIS boy has been enjoying himself tremendously! 
can’t you tell??
some thoughts over raya:
- matching bajus serve a purpose. they are a kind of tool of identification, especially useful when you have children. rarely-met makciks would inevitably ask, “ni anak siapa?” or “yang mana anaknya?”, and all you need to do is point out “yang sama baju dengan bapaknya/maknya tu…” (depending on gender of child). ps: it is also useful when you are newlyweds.
- you’re filled to the brim from eating at EVERY SINGLE HOUSE which invariably serves the same fare of lontong/ketupat, lodeh, rendang, sambal goreng, ayam masak merah, etc. inevitably, the host of the last house you visit will be the one who FORCES YOU THE MOST to eat, even though you decline politely at least ten times while clutching your stomach and giving your best grimace. and inevitably, you give in and eat yet another plate of lontong/ketupat, lodeh, rendang, sambal goreng, ayam masak merah, etc.
- some of us ‘adults’ discussed that “duit collection” in general has become lesser (judging from the amount our kids get) over time. we remembered “during our time”, when we could “collect” at least $400-$500 a day, giving “kaya raya” a whole meaning by itself! we came up with a few theories on this. i) “during our time”, our parents brought us to visit a lot more houses. we visit fewer houses now, because many of the elderly we used to visit has passed on. ii) people were more generous back then, for some reason. iii) because we were old enough to remember how much we’d “collected”, it meant that our aunts and uncles had been working for a long time and had established their jobs/careers, so they could afford to give us more. most of our (currently very young) kids’ aunts and uncles are likely to have just started working or are just a few years into their jobs, so are perhaps more prudent with money, more so if they have very young kids themselves.
- i wish i could put up my hand when someone asks “is there a doctor in the house?” coz there literally was a doctor in the house during raya, being all useful. my doctor cousin (who’s freaking younger than me!) from KL was in town with her family, and she proceeded to clean my dad’s wound on his foot at home, which was rotting something bad, as in, white flesh exposed and all. this small little girl who used to play barbie dolls with me, all grown up now, steadily picking on bits of flesh with a pair of scissors in her plastic-gloved hands. now why didn’t i go and take up something useful like medicine when i was in school?? much help i am now, with my boring english degree, good for nothing much except to blog. sigh. (PLUS she’s getting engaged to a fellow doctor. how enviably grey’s anatomy!)
- i just realised i forgot to do the seek-forgiveness-and-green-packet from-husband thing on raya morning, in all the mad rush getting ready to leave the house. err, got late penalty or not?
- i came up with my own theory about why we SHOULD make an effort to tidy up and decorate the house for raya. ok, maybe some may say it’s to keep up with appearances or impress the joneses (or jenabs), but i think it’s a kind of respect to your visitors, to welcome them into a nice and clean house so that they would feel comfortable. well, at least i *hope* our house is nice and clean (and comfortable) enough for our ‘pendatangs’…
- when we were young and followed our parents to visit old people, we were always seen but not heard. we were rarely spoken to, except for the perfunctory “sekolah darjah/menengah berapa sekarang?” and pretty much stayed in our parents’ shadows or minded our own business, hardly asked for our opinions or invited to join in their conversations. now we’re thirty years old and it looks like not much has changed – we visit old people with the parents and it’s still them who do the talking and not us! our parents were our age when they brought us to visit all these elders, even distantly related ones, so who do we visit when we’re their age…? i certainly can’t think of that many, except immediate aunts and uncles. *scratch head*
- i still cannot get used to relatives saying that they read this blog. urm. i never know how to respond except, *gulp*.
- totally un-raya-related, but we discovered earlier today that aniq had climbed his way INTO his cot without any assistance, the monkey that he is, and instead of taking that as a warning sign that we MUST IMMEDIATELY LOWER HIS COT, we procrastinated and within minutes, he’d attempted to climb OUT of it, with a great big “GEDEBUK”, but of course. the bed is officially lowered now. as in, on the floor kind of low, lol! with no railings or whatever, so i expect that he will be greeting us at our bed in the morning instead of the other way round. we WILL get him a proper toddler bed. right after we figure out the logistic headache of where to place it.
so anyway, two days of syawal have passed. i expect i’ll have more (rubbish) to mull over for the rest of the month.
meanwhile, whoever’s working on monday – HAH!
(oops, selamat hari raya, maaf zahir batin. heh.)
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