Gong xi fa cai.. .

I should have posted this a lot earlier - but the truth is, it only hit me that it was CNY a day after CNY (as the lecturer for my winter course offered his wishes for those who celebrate it). Duh!

Anyway, for all who celebrate the lunar new year, have a great, prosperous, fun and healthy year! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

(Still, it also hit me that my baby might not be too pleased to be born in the year of oink oink... alamak, sorry la sayang ye...)

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Something big happened in our family during CNY - my younger brother finally got engaged, alhamdulillah.

Well, I must admit that my parents are a bit choosy when it comes to approving Abang’s choice. He went out with several girls until he met his current fiancée about 4 or 5 years ago. Sarah is 8 years his junior, is now in her final year of degree, but she has won us all over since the first meeting. She’s our second cousin actually, the daughter of Ayah’s cousin and when Ayah first invited her over to our place, it was to strengthen ties between relatives rather than wooing a potential daughter-in-law. After all, back then we kind of pitied her, being so far away from her family in Kedah, all on her own in for the first time in a big city to get her diploma. But it wasn’t long when we started noticing that Abang would be home early whenever she came for a visit…

Being the sweet, kind, polite, clad-in-tudung-labuh-Muslimah as she is, Mak and Ayah had no trouble at all in approving her to be their prospective daughter-in-law. She gets along well with me too, and she even gets along well with Ummi, our biological mother. The only problem was her family who were rather reluctant to see her marrying my brother. It had nothing to do with my brother actually – he’s after all, quite a good catch, what with doing rather well as a self-entrepreneur (despite never finishing his degree at UUM or KDU or UiTM or MMU – he said he’s just like Bill Gates; he doesn’t really need a degree to prove his worth) and basically a practicing Muslim. The reason for her family’s initial unwillingness was due to old family history - really ancient family history. And for a while my brother seemed to be the victim of sins of the grandparent/father/father’s siblings…

We tried approaching the family a couple of year ago, but sensing the heavy reluctance back then, Mak decided to wait. “Be patient, Allah is with those who are patient. Besides, with passing time, their reluctance might be thinning… If it’s meant to be, insya Allah there’ll be some opening for us some day”

It came as a wonderful surprise when Mak told me over the phone a couple of weeks ago that they would be going to Kedah to propose Sarah. Mak said she’s glad that she could get this done before coming to Tokyo, since we have been waiting for ‘the opening’ for quite some time now. Abang is turning 31 this year and doesn’t seem to be interested in anybody else but Sarah, so my parents had been pretty worried – what if the family wouldn’t give in after all? But as it turned out, Sarah herself had been pretty steadfast in her decision to marry him; stubbornly saying no to all other ‘risik’ proposals, so much so that her mother began to worry about her not marrying anyone at all if they didn’t allow her to be with my brother.

Alhamdulillah they are now happily engaged. The date for the wedding has not been set as yet – but I told Mak to go ahead even if I might not be able to return home for the occasion. Mak told me that Abang said he wouldn’t mind just having the nikah first and the kenduri later, to which I disagreed. It wouldn’t be fair to Sarah, especially since we learned that one of her uncles is trying to persuade her mother to have a two-in-one kenduri for both Sarah and his daughter at their kampong. It’s different had Sarah and Abang been studying/working in the overseas and decided to just have a simple nikah ceremony – that would be quite acceptable. But under their circumstances, I believe Sarah deserves a warm reception, whatever it is that we could afford. (Abang has been planning all along on having his kenduri in a hotel – somewhere fit to invite his business associates and hotshots – but his budget is rather tight at the moment). Mak is thinking of maybe just having it at a community hall somewhere – a really “sederhana tetapi meriah” kind of reception, and I definitely agreed with her.

The truth is, I don’t want Sarah to regret not having her real big day like one of my aunts who missed it. Chik got married a month after Teh, and a couple of months before Ayah Lang. Because my late Tok Ayah could not afford having two kenduri in two months, Chik was married off in a simple nikah ceremony first, and shared a two-in-one kenduri together with Ayah Lang a few months later. As it happened, on her husband’s side, the kenduri sambut menantu was also postponed a few months so that they could have a two-in-one kenduri with her husband’s brother. Yes, they are still happily married after 16 years, blessed with 6 kids, but somehow I felt like Chik was cheated of having her own big day…

Anyway, I hope everything will work out well, somehow, someway…