Currently Playing: Elbow - One Day Like This.
This song is so uplifting. Zimini, the credit is yours.
Eid this year was a little sedate compared to last year’s celebrations, but it had its many better points as well.
Kudos to Masjid Duta for putting up English subtitles on huge screens for the translation of the Raya khutbah which was naturally delivered in Bahasa. I thought it was very considerate to our foreign brothers and sisters, and it acknowledges the fact that not all Muslims are Malays, which, until recently, I thought was obvious to everyone else. Mind you, not all Malays are Muslims either so please bury that ill contempt when turning to the person next to you after jemaah prayer and finding him/her a Chinese/Indian/lain-lain Muslim.
The one thing I rue about Eid this year (other than it being the last year I’m on the receiving end of the duit Raya tradition) is not taking Raya pictures when we went back to kampung. We were all so preoccupied with work in the kitchen that it slipped my mind. I only remembered the absence of Raya photos from kampung when my aunt asked me if I had any over Facebook. She’s in the US, so pictures is one of her ways to stay connected to our family over here. I was really sorry to disappoint. 
After the kampung escapade, my dad decided we needed a little TO and took us up north for a short getaway. Pangkor was the designated island. We stayed in Teluk Dalam for a couple of days before heading back down to KL.
Teluk Dalam wasn’t bad, although the beach was mediocre. We were supposed to have stayed in one of the better beach spots, but all the rooms were fully booked. After the first night, Abah exercised some democracy and asked us to vote on whether to stay put at Teluk Dalam or to transfer to a better (and pricier) hotel.
Truthfully, I’ve never been particularly picky about the hotel. It really depends on what you’re looking for in a holiday. If you intend on staying in all day, then pick a place that gives you the best services and accommodation. But I just wanted the beach, and the chalets weren’t that bad. It was clean and had good air-conditioning, despite the faulty TV, bad lighting and pesky mosquitoes.
So on we stayed for our last night, with Abah, Ummi and myself outnumbering the other two who voted on moving out. The long walks on the beach did wonders for this battered down psyche. The past few weeks have just been suffocating, so mediocre or not, a beach is a beach, sand is sand and salty waves, salty waves.
The good thing about staying in a not-so-popular hotel was that you don’t get too many guests crowding the beach, and also end up recognising the other people who stay there with you since you see them at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
There was a family staying there who brought along their dog. How they managed to get her onto the ferry from Lumut to Pangkor, I’ll never know. I’m not sure what breed it was, but judging from its character, it was one of those trained pets who could sit, fetch and roll over.
I’m a fan of dogs actually, despite the fact that I can’t touch them freely, so I didn’t have that big of a problem since the owner (a tall foreigner) seemed to recognise the sensitivities of other guests and made sure Peggy never went wandering freely around. The only qualms I had was that they didn’t put her on leash at the beach. How was I supposed to walk peacefully if I had to keep on turning about, worried I was going to have to make a run for it if she approached me? Masalah betul.
Anyway. My sister developed a bit of a crush on Peggy’s owner’s son, whom I thought wouldn’t look out of place as the 6th member of Click Five. I thought it was funny, and since I couldn’t get any work I had brought along done, I decided to play matchmaker. It was all in good fun, and fairly entertaining. At least I now know my matchmaking prowess. I won’t go into the details, but I have a strange feeling we’ll be seeing him again, since it turns out he’s got a Malaysian mum and they stay nearby. (We have our ways at finding out these things.) I pointed out to my sister that this may mean he knew all along that we were talking about him when we switched to BM in the cafe, but she doesn’t mind. “Never mind, biarlah dia tau. Let him know. Hahaha.” It reminds me so much of Marianne Dashwood’s line: “Why should I hide my regard?”
Should we ever see the fellow again, it’ll be a miracle. Unfortunately the one sole important thing we didn’t get was his name, and in that sense, I’ve failed my matchmaking responsiblity. But at least the whole experience gave me a lot of laughs. Ah, holiday romances. My sister seems so besotted; she’s such a drama clown.
I’ve come to learn that I really do love islands. I love the simple way of life, the winding coastal drives, the narrow roads, the friendly folks, the less stressful, non-hectic atmosphere that comes with living in a place where the expectations of others don’t pull you down, where your expectations of life and its offerings make everything seem enough. Sufficient.
I read the Danish are among the happiest in the world, and some say it could be because they set the bar lower when it comes to self-expectation, which means they feel fulfilled even if comparatively, they accomplish little.
But who sets the bar on how much we should accomplish anyway?
At this moment, I just want to go back to Pangkor, rent a small place and work at a job that will give me enough time to read and walk and write and talk to people.
Enough said here.
Ps-I hope you’re all having a fulfilling Eid.
And for those I’m not able to contact, Eid Mubaarak to you, and please forgive my faults and flaws. Wasalam.
When you take up the job, tell me k. I want to come visit, and I’ve never been to Perhentian before. 
