Cuti Cuti Malaysia 3: To The North Again, Melaka-Kulim-Alor Setar-Penang-Ipoh-Tapah Road, Dec 22 – 30, 2005

Dec 24, 2005 (Saturday), Kulim

We were awakened by my sis’s neighbor returning home just after azan Suboh. Immediately I felt uncomfortable and could not go back to sleep. Thus, I took my bath, say my prayer and left the house soon after.

The wedding was a wedding of, what they joked, of Pak Da and Mak Da, that’s duda and janda for you, but the ceremony and the crowd that turned out were just like any other weddings. I was truly amazed and glad for the couple. The bride, my sis’s sister in law, was widowed by death and her new husband was a divorcee with three grown up kids. So, the rest of the day we were busy either helping out or eating. The well wishers kept on coming in even as late in the evening. It is a new experience for me and the reason I was told later that most them, rightly so, consider fulfilling the invitation as ‘wajib’ – religious obligation. I fully agree with his unless we have some other pressing mater and even that should not stop us from coming. The only issue with most weddings is that we fixed the time for the invitation. In big cities people would not even think to come when they were already late. Here in the north they still practice the right way of being a guest and a host respectively. Being a host to wedding here you are expected to receive guest even at odd hours and guests are expected to come even if it meant to just come to pay a courtesy visits without expecting to eat.

In the end there were two extreme of behaviors for the people in the house. Those that were so tired would just create themselves a space and went to sleep and the other extreme are those who stayed awake to chit chat until late hours. Me, I just dozed off early as usual