Saturday’s Rambling Log 060812

Woke up late, started reading “The Last of the Wilds” and savoured the contentment of a holiday, no matter how short. There was a birthday dinner scheduled for the evening, and there was food galore! Saw my sisters making sushi, so I helped cut up the rolled up sushis and nibbled the ends after cutting. Helped arranged the sushis on two separate plates for ease of access to the food by expected hungry hordes that evening. Over 70 people expected, mostly relatives and a few close family friends.

Won’t go into details regarding the food, but suffice to say that there was a lot of variety, and some had their favourites somehow or rather. There was also enough to ta-pau.

Helped to tidy up the place, cleared certain areas of the compound of fallen leaves, and noticed that there is actually quite a variety of plants in the garden! One I particularly note is a yellow plant (no, don’t know name of the flower), it opens its petals in the morning and afternoon, but closes the petals towards the evening. Cool! Brought back thoughts of sciences studied in class before. Unfortunately, my knowledge does not extent much to gardening (well, I can tell whether it is a yellow flower, red flower, purple flower, or other coloured flowers, but don’t know names except for the more common ones). Snapped quite a few pictures of the flowers, but there are many more plant varieties which I didn’t managed to take. Never realised my parents grew quite a variety of plants in the garden. Think my dad is trying out vegetables next, and have already sampled some of the home produce.



Before I knew it, relatives started arriving. If you don’t know already, Hakka families are very loud. Normal conversations are in raised voices, probably because the past family size tended to be large (my dad had 13 brothers and sisters), and to be heard amongst everyone else, one needed to be loud. And that’s not even when the uncles and aunties get excited over certain conversational topic, and the decibels rise. At times, I needed some quiet moment, so moved around a bit. Whilst waiting for others to arrive, some played a variation of mahjong, but with cards. Was told it is similar, but don’t know how to play because can’t read Chinese, and there are slight differences. Think it is called “chee pai” in Hakka, which translates to “paper cards”.

Even more relatives came, even more food arrived which were catered. I can’t imagine how stressed my mum must have been to be able to kau tim such a large crowd. I guess that’s why they call mum’s “supermums”. For all you mums out there, a special toast to you! Younger cousins started arriving, and some, I had to recall names as I hardly keep in touch with them. At such gatherings, it is imperative to get the name callings right, like “Ko ko” (elder brother), “Ku ku” (younger aunty related via the father’s side), “Ku Chong”, “Ku Che”, “Pak Mei”, “Pak Pak”, “Po Po”, “Tai Ku Po”, etc. Whoa! That’s a lot to remember to get right. Me? I call most of my uncles and aunties in English, but sometimes, those which I know for sure (so that I don’t get it wrong and land in hot soup!), will call by the Hakka generation rank equivalent. Not only that, also need to know the order of rank, like “Tai Pak Mei” (eldest aunty by rank), “Ye Pak Mei” (second eldest aunty by rank), “Sam Pak Me” (third eldest aunty by rank), etc…Tough man! No wonder some of my younger cousins (less than 5 years old), will smile and quickly run away when asked to call a certain uncle or aunty. But then again, young kids should have better memory retention powers. Usually, at functions like these, there’s a whole range of dialects being spoken (Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese) as well as English, especially amongst the younger ones. I wonder if the young ones understand what is being said, probably snatches of conversation here and there. After all, English is still used, and notable phrases like “Don’t run!, Quickly eat!, Sit still!” were pretty common that night. Last I counted, my immediate generation (99th generation of the Jong (in Hakka) or Yang (in Mandarin) from my grandfather who migrated from China) consisted of 37 of us. And no, it’s the “muk yee te Yang”, and not the “yang mek mek”. :) The 100th generation is already expanding.

At events like these, I can only count my blessings, what with the abundance of food, and the large number of family members. In small towns, people are normally related somehow or rather, which they call “fan su chin”, i.e. related via roots of potatos (because there are lots of roots branching out here and there). Speaking of potatos, I just found out what is Soo Kun known as in English. It is actually an Indonesian word for Sukun or Breadfruit. Was pondering it earlier, and one of my colleagues asked whether it was Cassava. Huh!?! Cassava? What the heck is that? Nope, it is not. Cassava (new word for me) is another name of manioc (which I have heard) or better known locally as Ubi Kayu. But I digress.

Big moment came, the cutting of cakes (no, it wasn’t my birthday, but my dad’s). And would you believe it, we had four cakes! The main birthday cake was the banana cake (baked by my mum) and frosted with sour cream and chocolate bits (my elder sister did the layer of cream) and topped with three glazed strawberries (I decorated)! There was another cheese cake which my mum and another aunty experimented on earlier. Added to that, my elder sister made tiramisu (but she went easy on the alcohol as there were kids around). A close family friend brought another birthday cake (another type of cheese cake) which was quite nice. Can you spot which is which? And yes, it was “all gone” by the time the party was over! We started dinner proper at about 6:30pm, and by 8:30pm, almost all were on their way home already.