The eve of the Lunar New Year -- the old house and the night

The old house (老家) went through renovations some years ago. In fact, my uncle and family moved there from an old house (the real deal "old house") which was wooden.

This is a picture of the room that i slept in during my stay there. I got the bed near the window, the other one was for my brother. In fact, there were no beds, only matresses last year or so.

The interesting thing about this room is the fan. It's quite helpful, especially during the day, when it was very hot. The stuffiness of the heat and humidity is like a sauna bath to some. However...

Night falls and this fan acts like a soft, cooling hand, swaying and smoothing your face. It feels nice at first, however, if you were to be caressed a thousand times, by a very cold hand, you'll soon feel the discomfort. My blocked nosed was blocked even worse during those few nights. At times i even need to cover the blanket over my face, just not to let the wind from the fan get to me.

Some "city people" might not be used to this setting. Feel not good, uncomfortable, sometimes even dirty. But i feel that we must adapt, fit in. For all we know, the people there don't even care for such things, they have much other things to worry and care and spend time on, rather than focusing so much energy on how clean should a room be, where to place a table fan etc etc. (not that these are minor things...)

Food, or rather, the reunion dinner was served at 530+ pm in the evening, quite early. And It was only the 4 of us. One would thought that it would be a gathering of more than ten people, relatives, uncles, aunts

The eve of the Lunar New Year -- the road back

It was a tradition of sorts, that most of the people go back to their hometown to meet old relatives and friends, to have a good time together, to spend the first few days of spring together, to get away from the busy work schedules together...

I went back to my Panchor, a small town between Muar and Pagoh, Johor. The trip back wasn't that bad, but it wasn't really fantastic as well. Let me try to give a fair account of it here. Starting from the KKKL express bus to the Pagoh toll.

Panchor is such a small town that, normal express buses doesn't even stop there. A lookup at google reveals nothing about Panchor. We have to alight at the Pagoh's toll, just to skip the extra trip to Muar town. You can see from the picture that there are quite a few people waiting for their relatives and friends at the toll.

After waiting for a while, my dad came in my uncle's benz. A red benz, maybe you'll see it in later posts. My mom and brother was in there as well. It's been some time since the 4 of us actually got together, but somehow, not much was said during that trip. We would just graze out the window, looking at the endless rows of palm oil trees (pokok kelapa sawit). The trees didn't wave at us, unlike the essays that we wrote during primary school where 椰树也向我们招手. The trip wasn't long, the trees were as green as before, same old road, same old trees.

end of part 1