A Funeral, A Wedding and A Baby's First Month Party

Current Song in Head: The Blower's Daughter, Damien Rice

An interesting thing happened during the course of last week. I managed to witness 3 of life's greatest moment, birth, marriage and death in a single week. Not in that particular order though.

The week started off with the first month party of my baby nephew on Sunday.(wow, I'm an uncle not to 1, 2 or 3 but 4 kids, I'm getting old!) Although not exactly the birth of my nephew, it was almost as close as it could be. Being a family affair, it is only natural that the whole party was boring. (I have a boring extended family) About the only interesting there was the buffet spread, prata, teriyaki chicken, porridge, nasi lemak, waffles. You name it they have it.

Even such a sumptious spread could not make me stay for long. Somehow I just cannot connect with my extended family. Maybe half of them being clowns and the other half being cyborgs could be part of the reason. Hmmmm....

In any case, as in most of these parties, the centre of attention is obviously the newly born. My nephew didn't seem to be bothered by the attention he was getting. As a matter of fact, I think we share something in common, both of us feels that our relatives are a boring bunch that can put a person to sleep. If I'm not mistaken, my nephew was sleeping almost all the time, only crying once or twice when the boredom really got to him. Poor sod.

The next day, I attended a friend's dad's funeral. This being the first time in awhile since my JC classmates have met each other, the funeral became more of a class outing. It started off respectfully enough. We arrived at the funeral parlour, lit a joss stick each, said our prayers, offered our condolences to the family of the late and gave our white gold. For those not accustomed to the Chinese custom, white gold, or baijing, is kind of like a monetary donations to the bereaved family. Most of the time the money is used to cover the funeral expenses. In some cases, it can be used to build a 3rd story in your existing house.

Anyway, after the initial respectful chit-chat, we started our usual corny banter. Even the friend of the recently departed dad joined it. Glad to see that in death, there is still joy. It is really interesting to note that finally everyone is in the working world. Hard to believe that we've known each other for more than 8 years. Strange that it took a funeral to bring us together after awhile, but nevertheless, it was a great night.

Having attended a funeral and the first month party of a baby, the wedding of my little princess's friends at the end of the week completed life's journey for me. Since I don't even know the bride and the groom and my little princess do not have many common friends with the couple, we were seated at a table with nobody that we know.

It was not exactly a night for me to remember but I wouldn't say the night was a disaster. I guess the main problem here is I do not know anyone and wasn't exactly in a chatty mood that night. In any case, I'm glad that I had 3 servings of shark fin soup. Hehe... Oh yes, and my little princess looks like an ice-skating champ that night! With her hair tied back and a black haute neck that has a shimmering strap, she could easily pass off as a Winter Olympics champ! Too bad I didn't have the camera with me that night.

All in all, it has been a rather eventful week, and if there is one thing I've learnt, it doesn't matter what the occasion is, what matters is the people that you're celebrating/attending/mourning the occasion with!