ode to the soapbox

...imported from ~unsent



1) hari raya is such a family day
we prepare for the big day together (clean and decorate the house, prepare the foods etc), then we spend the big day together (have the same sumptuous meals, go to the mosque in the same car, visits relatives) and then spend the after raya effect together (getting sick of the same food) too. in short, for that few days, we always see the same face, and we like it.

2) duit raya giving should be abolished
i mean, that money in green packets all working people is expected to hand out to non-working people during hari raya. as if we don't already spend a lot preparing for the day. at least, make it to be given only by married people. it's not fair for non-married people you know, who's already miserable answering question about marriage plan by relatives, and then have to part with our only money soulmates. ok it's not like i'm miserable, but still... hey, teach our youngs the pain of earning money, shall we?

3) forgiveness is such a sad gesture
really. everytime me and my siblings asked for forgiveness from our parents on the morning of hari raya day, we cried. almost, for me anyway. my sister is the worst, she could barely speak and her mascara and eye liner all went down the drain.

4) it's a drive-cow-towards-extinction day
because that's all that we eat for that few days. beef. eat lemang (that glutinuous rice wrapped with banana leaves cooked inside bamboo pieces) with beef rendang, eat ketupat (that compressed rice cooked inside coconut leaves) with peanut sauce added with beef serunding. these dishes were in almost every house we visited too.

5) i have 1001 living relatives
i may not meet them for the rest of the year and most i don't even know their names or remember their faces or how we are related, but man, do i have lots of blood relatives. when i was in my grandpa's village, people kept coming in visiting and i was like, who the hell are these people? it's almost a wonder why siti nurhaliza wasn't one of them.

6) teenagers do the craziest (stupidest) things
like sleeping on the train track. i heard that during the fasting month, 5 teenage students from nearby hostel escaped from nightime hostel curfew, somehow ended up sleeping on nearby railway track. in the middle of the night, the train came and 2 of them didn't manage to wake up on time. stupid? well, my auntie said they were sniffing glue that night, which would make more sense...

7) ghosts do exist. or do they?
i heard story about this black furry without-head figure that likes to pin people down on the bed from a neighbour's house. that house has an old grave underneath the stairs. plus, the old abandoned houses in the village has many 'mysterious beings. last time the villagers like to rare these, well, paranormal beings to help them in their everyday's work. when these villagers die, these 'things were left unattended in the emptied house. have you ever wonder why some abandoned house become bad so fast, but when people stay there without doing any house fix it won't become bad at all?

8) the government is evil
they want to add in a new railway track in addition to the existing one that runs across my grandpa's village but i heard they are going to take the villagers' land that could make 20 railway tracks. the notice is up but the villagers were not told of any compensation deal yet. this looks like a losing battle. if this is true, i'm left without a village by next year.

9) everybody looks for chicken after hari raya
call it post hari raya effect. after we returned to the city, we decided that we were sick of hari raya food. so we went out to buy some kfc. the take-out line was long. apparently everybody was sick of hari raya food too. alternative? chickens. everybody was buying in buckets until they ran out of fried chickens. so we drove to mc donalds but there we have to wait 30 minutes for them to prepare another batch of sold-out fried chickens. it was a night of fried chicken hunting and we failed. we ate pizza hut instead.

10) ermmm.. i thought of writing this haha...
ok no more thoughts. i'm sleepy. it has been a busy day so i want to sleep now.


..till next year hari raya!




...adie