Kampung Wedding,Bhangra Clubbing and a Chinese Girlfriend

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a traditional Malay wedding in Kampung Perigi Nenas, Pulau Indah. It was by far the best Malay wedding I've attended by far.The togetherness and unity and brotherhood of the kampung folk really impressed me.I guess that would be the Islam expounded by Mahaguru58 and other pro Islam bloggers, save MENJ.

It was amazing to find out that the entire wedding cost was really very reasonable.And the cause of this was, according to Syer, the whole kampung would turun padang and provide their manpower to cook, in fact in Kedah where he hails from, the villagers would also donate rice and sugar, and only the cow, goats or chickens need to be provided by the family of the dude getting married.And here I am calculating the cost of my someday imminent wedding and my figure was somewhere around 70k onwards!I was aware of the concept of this kind of gotong royong in villages but not to this extent la.

And I was more amazed when Syer explained the concept of qariah....all along the only qariah/qari I knew was a title given to people who read the Al Quran (something I got from a textbook somewhere)

Apparently a qariah is a collection of faithful among a few villages where they organize weddings and other kenduri and stuff like that.Each qariah have their own tents, their own chairs, tables, cutlery and plates and glasses.CooL.....

So Group D Execs and Managers headed by my big boss dropped by and was served mihun, nasi lemak and a chicken dish I could not identify, plus a myriad of kuih.And that was only breakfast...apparently lunch and tea was to be served and it was to be heftier.Phew.

Come to think of it, only the Malays and Punjabis are the only two races I know in Malaysia that stil maintains this sense of culture.As I told Syer, the Chinese used to have this dish for weddings where it was many dishes cooked and placed in one layered pail-like dish and that was the traditional wedding feast.Look today and you have many new funky dishes like oatmeal prawn and marmite chicken served at Chinese weddings.Drag out any terracotta soldier from the Ming dynasty and put him in Tai Thong or Four Seasons and chances are he will be lost as to what and how to eat this dishes!

As for Punjabi weddings or Indian weddings held in temples, I usually don't go there as for one, its almost 99.9% Hindus or Sikhs only, respectively.Not only will I be one of the two or three people not wearing a turban or a dhoti there, but the food is vegetarian usually and I am not really used to that kind of vegetarian dishes as they are unusually hot or sour from my experience.I only usually go if I am really close to the bridegroom or bride.Or we are related.

Buddhist wedding ceremonies ( not the traditional Chinese ones with tea ceremony...the Buddhist ones with chanting monks) are kinda cool.I've been to my cousin's wedding in Penang at the Reclining Buddha temple by some Buddhist monks from Burma.Having grown up reading quite a dose of Buddhist teachings, I actually recognized some of the prayers being said, like the Panchasila (Vinaya) or the Three Refuge (Buddham Saranam Gachami) or the Buddha Vandana so it was kinda like I related more to what was being said.

My takes on Buddhism was heavily influenced by a book I read when I was in Standard Two (when I should have been reading Enid Blyton or Agatha Christie...or by Malaysian Standards Peter and Jane :P) called Two Masters- One message by Roy C. Amore realy hit me hard.In fact this book was the one that spilt my interest in religion, going on to read Lives of Saints and later on, towards the end of Primary school, Utopia by Thomas More,Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquainas, and In Defense of The Faith... by Alphonsus Ligouri (who are all by the way, canonized Catholic saints)

Though the other great religions, monotheistic or deistic in nature had their messages, I always saw Siddharta's and Jesus' message to be really identical- self sacrifice, peace and love.

OK....enough about religion.We then went over to sleep (the Group D kakis) and fast forward few hours later were at Absolute Chemistry Bangsar to celebrate 3 birthdays in January.It turned out to be Bhangra nite and no one was dancing or enjoying themselves ......only one old Chinese auntie and a fat Punjabi uncle.The rest of us were generally feeling like this.".................................................................................................!!!WTF!!................................." The final straw was when we , easily the highest spending group in the whole damn club, requested Guns and Roses and were declined and the Birthday song played was in Hindi!...The only closest to an English song was Usher's Yeah Yeah followed by Bhangra...Users Yeah Yeah followed by Bhangra....grrr...geramnya.




Then we finally moved on to Lockup next door where the music was definitely more English, waitresses were wearing this SM like costume with handcuffs and Mathan finally got a chick...

As for me, I am where I am happily attached with a Chinese girlfriend.(The reason I brought her up was I thought it would be a nice way to end the post...something Malay, something Indian and something Chinese la.... :P)

Oh ya, and I swear I thought I saw Jojo Struys outside La Bodega that night, but the rest of the gang either did not believe me, did not know who she was or did not really give a f*ck.Or in Mathan's case, was way too drunk to remember where he was.Happy birthday dude.