Joy....

Yesterday night, my family and I had some really fun time together. Though we made a trip to Long Poh Restaurant in  Muar for our sumptuous meal but it was the fellowship of the night that marked a sharp win altogether. You see, we had my sister ( Lee ), my brother in law ( Tee ),  my cousin ( Siang ), my brother ( Liang ) and even my mother joining us for dinner. We travelled in my sister's Alza car and it was great fun of talking and teasing one another. With Tee driving the car, you can be assured of wise cracks of humours and jovial teasings!

Yeah! I really missed those joyful and free talking times. Somehow, we had become so constricted by our activities, work pressure, responsibilities and sometimes indifference that we had lost a lot of time of being together. I was most happy being able to get my mom to come along and also spend time talking to her. It was a jolly good time ; travelling and just talked about the events that had unfolded over the weekend. Mom, younger brother, Liang and younger sister, Lee had remarked that they had not been to Muar for more than 20 years now.  I still remembered those young days when mom and dad would travelled by bus to Muar so that we could take a taxi up to Pagoh in one of the rubber plantations to visit my grandpa, who was once a rubber tapper. It was a really a far in rubber plantation and grandpa's house was a dried rubber store room cum stilt beds on eitehr side of the back room. I was particularly thrilled each time I go there as we would have "kampung" chicken as our meal cooked over a make shift kitchen in one of the front huts. Vegetables were whatever we could get from the nearby forest and rubber plantation. There were two other families near my grandpa's place and they were very nice to us. Everytime the family came to know that we are visiting grandpa, we would get some special dish from them. It may be wild boar dish or even some game meat that they could catch. It was fun and so....free. There was a natural water pool at the bottom of the hill. The place is enclosed with zinc cladding and made a bathing house.  What I like most was that the water was always very cold but refreshing. Eventhough, the natural water pool was near the rubber processing house, the water is crystal clear and two huge gourami fish lived in it. That is the deterent for the young children from plunging into the pool! Being the eldest, grandpa would teach me to look for wild fresh vegetables that we could pick for our lunch or dinner. He would even bring me to the woods to check on the traps and see if we had caught anything. There was once that we caught a nice jungle fowl and though the meat was tough,it's chicken,man! Yeah, my brains were flooded with these wonderful memories and I was so overwhelmed.

When our car hit the tarmac of Muar bridge, I could see that my sister,my brother, my mother and I were in our own thoughts. Mom smiled and so did all of us. We sorta understood each other and there was such a connectivity-lar! It was good. Then, I made a stop at Jalan Bentayan to pack my regular dosage of "otak-otak" for the family to enjoy as we wait for our meals at the restaurant. At the restaurant, we talked, laughed and waited hungrily for our meals. Patiently, as the food started to roll, we had steamed fish in a tasty spicy broth, fried kang kong with special milky spicy sauce, Hokkien mee, rojak chicken, Thai mango strips with cuttle fish strips, kum heong sotong and fresh kailan plus our "otak-otak" delight. Everyone was filled to the brim with good food. It was truly a remarkable night. That night I could see that the family was happy....being together meant so much to us and it was really a delightful night indeed. One night that I would cherish a lot. It was really just a fun night..........