A lot of things have changed during this CNY, about me, my feelings and others. For instance, my definition for CNY was no longer firecrackers. Before this year, I always looked forward to play with fireworks. So why did it change? Probably something to do with my maturing process. Anyway, the "must do" stuff during CNY in my mind now is gambling.
What's so good about gambling? Well, you can feel the excitement and nervousness inside you when you open the card
slowly, bit by bit, then with a little luck, you'll smack the card onto the table and yell out loud "Yes!!". Ha ha, that's only if you don't lose. And also, you can increase your speed of calculating. Thus, you can say it's educational. But the best and most important thing is - money. I don't have to explain, do I? If you are damn lucky, you win fast cash - but if you're unlucky, you'll go bankrupt. Okay, maybe not that serious. You'll lose every single cent of your hard-earned pocket money. But even if you bankrupt, you also feel happy because you gambled, right? What the hell, I'm teaching my readers crap. Don't let this blog brings you bad influence, ok?
On the first day of CNY, I was at Mengkuang, Pahang - 30 minutes from Temerloh and a few kilometres away from a small city, Triang. Mengkuang is a tiny little chinese village with only 2 schools - 1 each for primary and secondary - , a small market place and no shopping malls. Even shops, including coffee shops, grocery stores and mechanical shops, are less than 50. I have to mention, due to a chicken farm nearby, every coffee shop within a radius of about 1 km, the tables are filled with flies when there is no customer sitting. Yet they seemed to pay no attention to the annoying flies. I thought I saw a police station there, but it's either closed or the cops were slacking because nobody would bother you when you play with firecrackers and fireworks.
The second change of this year's CNY is that my angpao get less. Maybe I was so busy gambling with cards that day, therefore some aunties couldn't find me and forgotten about my angpao. Besides, usually I'd greet them with a lot of CNY's 4-word idiom, such as (translated from chinese) well and healthy, safe while going anywhere, and something similar. This year, I only focused on my cards and they have to shove angpao to me, then only I said "gong xi fa cai" without facing them and continue on my gambling. What a rude boy I was. But I proved I didn't need that much angpao money by winning RM30! I bet 1 or 2 ringgit each round because I was afraid of losing, and after 3 long hours I tucked my winnings inside my wallet and walked away happily. Lucky day for a Boar.
I stayed there for 3 days starting from New Year's Eve. Generally, what I did to kill time in that boring place was playing Bleach on PS2 (for some reasons, I never get bored with this game), find my cousin brother to have fun together (sometimes we also played Bleach), reading my novel, watching tv while letting my mind wander away, eating and sleeping. Gambling was just that 1st day of CNY, during the second day, for some unfathomable reasons, everyone seemed weary. Our most active gambler fell asleep at the sofa. Disappointed, I also took a nap too.
My cousin brother's father - my uncle - had taught me a few magic tricks. He said that he learned them himself by watching Youtube videos. These tricks are simple, everybody can do it, with practice of course. On the 3rd day, I went to Bentong. Once I reached the destination, I rushed towards the main door, leaving my parents to bring out our stuff. I was so excited to perform a magic show to my cousins. All of my tricks got bocor - some of them they know already or figured them out successfully, whereas others I revealed the secrets to them. Yeah, I know a magician shouldn't reveal the secrets of the magic tricks to a non magician. Next time remind me to not let people know what's behind the tricks. We cracked jokes over it, and they enjoyed my show and my generosity. My another uncle said jokingly that he'll be my manager and bring me to Genting Highlands to let the people know "Carson the Magician". Wakaka~
(In case you want some introduction of Bentong, click
here.)
Shit, I forgot to take photos of Mengkuang! Instead I took a lot of photos of Bentong...It's not that Mengkuang is ugly or something. I just wanna show you how the tables were filled with flies.
That afternoon, we played mahjong, also a form of gambling. Oh, so some of my friends don't know I can play mahjong? I can play, but only 3-player mahjong. Everyone related to the Soo Family should know how to play, but still a few family members don't know but are willing to learn. I thought I was clever because I know how to play, and then I acted high and mighty. Little did I know I was playing with the ultimate grandmaster - my grandpa. As a result, I lost
every cent from what I won from gambling at Mengkuang. Yes, RM30, in not more than half an hour. Damn. Actually I'm not that bad in mahjong, I'm considered average for the youngest generation. At night, as a mahjong addict that I am, my cousins and I taught my 2 cousins who wanted to enter the mahjong world, and ended up playing with my other cousins, only without gambling. The two newbies abandoned their lessons and went to watch tv.
The mahjong table where we played mahjong.
Anyone who is interested in playing mahjong, please call Carson: 012-xxxx325. I will charge you according to my mood, ranging from RM5 to RM500 per lesson.
The next and last day at Bentong (we only stayed for 2 days and 1 night), my mum went to consult the
guan yin ma ma for this year's luck and advice. As far as I know, that woman is a person who can let the god -
guan yin - possess her body and gives advice to people who seek her. She is not bluffing, because last year I always shut the curtain tight (one night my mother pulled away the curtains and saw a man in black - probably a robber - sneaking at our roof and she let out a scream. Since that day, I always closed the curtains tight) and she could tell. This year, she said that I'm a clever person. *giggles silently* She advised me to do my homework early and sleep by 10pm every day. What the hell? The first one I can forcefully accept, but the latter is a "no way"! Impossible, because my body clock is hard to change. Like when you sleep every day at 3 am and I tell you to sleep at 10pm and wake up at 6am!
Since my uncle was rushing to go to his wife's family, we decided to go back earlier. We had a photography session, where we took photos of our family with the house. The house's gonna be sold soon, although they still couldn't find a buyer. The price is RM90,000, but they will give discount to relatives or friends they know. Sometimes I wished I became a rich man, so that I could buy the house and the land surrounding it. I would get some servants to clean up the house nice and clean every day, even though we won't be visiting it often. Plants and trees would fill the land, and it would be the nicest house in the village...
Yeah, nice daydream, but being a rich man has its disadvantages too. Rich men always get robbed and kidnapped, and that's a high chance for being killed. Ha ha. Be a rich man or not, your choice.
After the session, I went around and took photos by myself. I'm not gonna waste any opportunities to have one more glance of the house. After all, this house was where I grew up, and it left me a lot of childhood memories.
So, they're still having their photography session? I wondered when they would get tired for posing and shooting.
The beautiful woman in the center of the photo (Yes, the woman who was blocking the cameras) is my mum. She was walking back happily after "stealing" those passion fruit from the neighbor's farm.
Stealing is a word that suits half in this situation. It's actually like this: My granddad went to ask the neighbor whether he could pluck the passion fruit growing on her tree. She said can, then he told my mum about it, and my mum plucked a hell lot of them - just enough to fit in a plastic bag - without asking the owner again.
The photographers. Standing behind them is my aunt, who was also plucking those kind of fruit.
The posers. At the front were the two mahjong juniors I'd mentioned, although 1 of them is 5 years my senior.
Screw this picture. Did you noticed that in my hand are the passion fruit?
When I started packing mahjong back into their box (mahjong always comes to my mind first), my cousin saw me and thought I wanna play some more, then said "Sifu, you wanna play ar?" Hahaha. At the end of my Bentong trip, I became a "sifu", both in mahjong and in magic tricks. Is leadership one of my personalities this year? The feng shui book didn't say so.
THE END
Oh, before I go, here's some photos for my cousin Carol, when we removed pictures (I think they're about 10 years ago) from the wall of our Bentong house. In other words, they're "photos within photos". I don't have a scanner, and thus I used my crappy hp to take pictures, which made them crappier.
These are the photos from ten years ago, when we went for a trip to dunno-where.
Oh shit I am not &^$@% with Carol! That time we were still little, and...and we were told to pose together and that's the result of these damned photos! Anyway, cousins cannot ^$%*# with cousins right? Yeah, right. Phew.
This photo, you can see an old but still looked beautiful woman. And there's an old but happy man. And with common sense, you know that it's my grandparents.
And for the next and last photo, please tell Ken to come before you scroll down......
WAAAAAAAAH!
So cute!! Can't believe a 9-year-old boy with a pair of specs now had this face when he was a baby...
Dunno what's his reaction will be..I'm dying to know! Please let me know after you showed him, k?
