lagi lagi raya

Finally, we managed to gather everyone for our own family photo session. It's been a long time since everyone gathers just for the sake of taking picture.

It was a 'sue' day for me yesterday. As I arrived from kampung, we realized that there was a problem with our Astro. So there went whole day yesterday without Astro, and specifically without TV . And it became worst during the night as my Internet connection broke down. That really completed my day yesterday. It's not that I always want to compare things with the one in France, but, seriously, I never had any problem with my internet connection there. Well I guess we have to wait till the telecommunication engineer from France to come back and change our internet's condition in Malaysia..

Enough of my complaints, since I am still in my raya mood, a little brag about my celebration in kampung will fill up this entry. Well for those of you that miss kampung so much, miss celebrating hari raya in Malaysia, sorry to say but it was not as groovy as you expected, for me, it was just OK. Nothing was extravagant, it's just a normal hari raya celebration for me.



Things have changed a lot for the past years. There is no more visiting relatives celebration around kampung, no more playing with mercun and bunga api with my cousins ( duh.. I was form 5 during my last raya in Malaysia ), no more routines of going to kedai apeq depan simpang to spend my duit raya buying ice creams for cousins ( who obviously have grown up and hardly remembered who I am).

But we now have our new schedule and routine. And it was hard to acquaint myself with the changes that have been practiced for the past years. I had to attend this Mr and Mrs majlis takbir malam raya, then going to majis iskandariah to perform my solat raya (which I doted on the most) due to the reason that Sultan Perak performed his solat there, then had to pretend smiling for about 3 hours during my father's open house in kampung, attended by a bunch of thousands total strangers to me. Few unknown came to me, telling me how long they had't seen me and how I had changed and at the same time, the only thing I had on my mind was, who the hell is you.. I felt quite ashamed with myself but please, i hadn't gone back for hari raya celebration in Kampung for three years, shouldn't that be a good excuse?

Hari Raya kedua was better than the first one. Apart of having to stay on a two hours these mr and mrs somebody's open house, and again smiling and pretending as if we really had a memorable time there, we had a really great evening there. And for me, that is why this hari raya is so meaningful to me. It was just a typical activity that we used to have when we were young, the evening, most of my cousins arrived in kampung (one family from kl, one uncle from kl and one family from kelantan). It was so nice to have everyone back and to see how everyone had grown after 3 years (and surely that it was me who have grown the most). We had our own ziarah-menziarahi event, going to our aunty's house next door, an ice breaking session updating on what was going on with each other, i played with my new nieces and nephews which I just discovered their existence and our activity "wajib" during hari raya, gossiping about our cousins, uncles, aunties, and parents (which literally means reminiscing those days where we had our anak this pakcik clan vs anak another pakcik clan..) It was droll and a meaningful time for me of course.

And the next day, everyone started to pack their things, and heading to our own ways. Though those short moment passed briefly, so short not even I managed to captured it in my video recorder, but it's not what in the recorder that's matter, the one that I'd captured inside my heart is the one that I will always remember forever... Thanks for having those short get-to-know activities that will obviously make me think twice if I want to spend my hari raya in France.. I end my entry with my new nephews and nieces that I've just discovered during the day..