A Community Party

Compared to other housing complexes, mine is no different from the others. You name it, you have it here: traffic jams, crimes, pollution, malls (6 actually!), sports centre, hospitals, etc. What we don't have perhaps is just an airport.



But there's always something different every May that you can't find anywhere else. That's the festival to celebrate food and fashion which, to me at least, is more than just a gathering. During that ten days in May, I feel that all of us living in my area are one. I can see that many ethnic groups with different social backgrounds and 'styles' all united into one, one 'community' when it comes to parade.

I started my roam by visiting the Nasi Kampung Festival. Of course, the food was definitely unique. Then,after a while, I realized that's not the only that's unique. The terms of payment was also designed especially for this event. A set of 'money' was made! Talk about giving all your best!!!

The old and the young went to the premise and the common questions people asked was, 'What's jenang lemu?' or 'What's es goyang?'. The names of the food displayed on the board definitely brought back some memories. Ahhh...those fine days.....

Then, after a few hours at the mall to kill some time before the parade started, I went out and I found many people were ready to enjoy the parade attraction. I was expecting some decorated cars, dancers, clowns in poles, music and fireworks. To my disappointment, there were only 6 cars, a small scale drumband (which didn't play very well. I know because once I was in a drumband), around 100 dancers divided into 3 cars, barongsai, fire-eaters, no music, no clowns. To make it worse, the intervals between the cars were 10-15 minutes apart. You can imagine, 6 parade cars only and it took them one a half hours to march.

The only consolations I had were from the barongsai group who did a wonderful job showing their teamwork and a group of fire-eaters who attracted a lot of attention because of the danger level.

There was something interesting about the parade, another side I saw. When there was that marching, several people wearing yellowish green vests were moving around carrying bottles of water. It seems that they would provide drinks to anyone who needed that. When the parade was finally over, they gathered around all the garbage and collected them in a special place they have prepared. I couldn't read the name of the organization but apart of it said 'Volunteers: Perhimpunan Budha'. Hmmm... That's what I call work from the heart.