...Of Sharing Festivities and of Black Earth

** A note first. This post was meant to come out on Thursday, but I've been running around since the hols started. I apologize for any typos and / or grammatical errors for this post. Shall take a look through and edit them when I have a little bit more leisure time. Cousin's getting married on Sunday. Cheers all! **

Happy Deepavali and Selamat Hari Raya to everyone celebrating and Happy holidays to all who'll be enjoying a break! Malaysia's a great place to experience a melting pot of cultures. Granted we get other countries with larger diversity of cultures, but I think in Malaysia, you really see that melting pot effect. Though not often, we get to see Chinese and Indians in Baju Melayu (Traditional Malay Clothes), Chinese and Malay girls in Sari (Traditional Indian Women's Clothing) and Indians and Malays in Cheong Sam (Traditional Chinese Women's Clothes).

This integration of cultures also see happy people like me pigging out on food from different cultures. I've had nasi lemak with chinese veggies and Indian curry. Yum! But it's also in Malaysia you get to see people with weird food combinations on the buffet lines. I've personally seen someone with nasi lemak with kurma gravy and grilled sausages and Chinese fried prawn dumpling with mayonnaise on the side, some sort of salad with thousand island dressing, and a helping of Indian 'Vadai' (Vadai, Wadeh, Vadei... never figured out how it's spelled) to boot.

Recipe for an interesting stomach, if you ask me. Come to think of it, you're quite likely to find something like that on my plate now and then. Malaysian food. Yum!

Another nice feature we get in Malaysia is what we call 'Rumah Terbuka' that translates into 'Open House.' An open house is simply an open invitation for anyone to walk into a house during a festive celebration, such as Hari Raya and Deepavali, where guests are (obviously) greeted and served food and drinks. I'm not too sure how this started, but my theories are:

1) A celebration where personal friends and relatives were invited and grew into a larger scale to include people in the streets, or

2) Families being thankful for their fortunes and giving back to society and to the less fortunate so that they can enjoy the mood, food and general festivities.

Personally I'd like to think that Malaysians are nice and generous enough to follow the second theory. Anyone with better insights feel free to educate me :) And invite me while you're at it! :D

I see open houses more often with Malay and Indian homes, very rarely (and sadly) with Chinese homes (where celebrations are usually with invited guests only). Yes, we're stingy buggers. :P

Also, anyone with any idea in which other countries and cultures do we find open houses? I've seen it in Indonesia, and I'm wondering if it happens in India as well.

My family's never held an open house before. I actually wonder what it would be like, having strangers walk into your house and all. Would be quite horrible if a couple of kleptomaniacs walked in. "Right. Someone just took my Scratch and Sniff 2000 Limited Edition Pink Underwear(tm). Nobody leaves until I recover it! Err... not that I wear it or anything. Just sentimental value, you understand."

Almost everyone serves some sort of liquor or liquor based food duing festive seasons, be they Chinese, Malay or Indian. Yeah, yeah, we 'know' Muslims don't drink. The bottles are purely decorative ;) Anyway, stay away from Chinese liquor, especially if it came from China. I'm speaking from personal experience here. I bought this bottle of liquor when I was in China. Translated to English, the name meant "Black Earth." Somehow I should have just taken that as warning number 1 to stay away. Black Earth is stilled and drunk around the Chinese borders of Siberia to stave off the feeling of cold. Warning number 2, and yes I know liquor makes you lose body heat and only gives the illusion of warmth.

Back from the digression, my friends and I caught a whiff of the Black Earth and it just scared the bejeezus out of us. Even the worst alcoholics among us refused to touch it. Nonetheless, after much deliberation, we took a capful each. ONE CAPFUL. I'm never touching that shite ever again. It helped clear the cockroach problem my host had though. We poured a third of the bottle down a sink hole on the floor and it cleared his cockroach problems for quite a while. So let's look at it from this perspective: Coackroaches can survive TNT, but Black Earth kills them. Conclusion? Stay away from any beverage named "Black Earth!"

On a different tangent, I love festive holidays, be they Deepavali, Hari Raya, christmas, New Year or Chinese New Year. That's the time where Kuala Lumpur's free from traffic. That's also why I usually opt to stay in KL during these holidays. Home to KL City Center under 20 minutes, 15 if the colorful gods of traffic lights are feeling favourable that day!

I wish a happy and safe driving to everyone who will be going outstation. Keep within the speed limits, be careful when you don't. Notice I said "when you don't" and not "IF you don't" because I know almost nobody sticks to the speed limit here. Interestingly though, there's a list of speed traps for this festive season that's being circulated on emails. I really wonder the validity of this list and more suspiciously, from where it originated.