Lights In Cages

Saturday nights are usually spent at home, playing with Hugh. But ah, this past Saturday wasn't so loser-ish! Derrick hosted a lantern festival party at his place, mainly organized by Donovan. Typical of last minute plannings, when Donovan and Beh came to pick me and Chand up at Taman Connaught's McDonalds, we went hunting for candles and lanterns. Because nobody had any.

We went driving around in Giant, but after getting laughed at by some Chinese sales aunties for celebrating one day late, we had to go to the tiny Chinese sundry shops instead because Giant is a giant loser that doesn't stock extras. Beh and I found some vintage lanterns at one shop, in the form of Pikachu (for Jay), a fish (my favourite), and.. um..one more animal. A rabbit?? We stocked up on 10 boxes of candles, and went hunting for the pull type paper lanterns. After what must have been the third shop, we find treasure. Donovan bought up the whole lot, all 60 of them, and off we went trundling back to Derrick's mysterious house.

As we're on the road heading towards Derrick's house, it becomes clear why Donovan or anybody didn't bother telling us the address. According to Beh, even the Tuan Rumah didn't know. -_-' I immediately recognized the roads because it was the same place where I took my driving lessons and practices; all the way in the Hulu Langat/Cheras area. The best thing about Derrick's housing area was that there was a football field surrounded by hills right in front of his house; the Perfect place to play tanglungs.

And as usual, party+Yuen+Suxi=photo deluge

The sound system was blasting hits, the occasional Era.fm, and really really really old school music when Thomas had the control. There were moments when Beh used my belt to 'whip' Chandni, and the belt was reused for an impromtu limbo session when the song came up on the radio. Ah.. the spontaniety of youth!

It was a barbeque; sausages, crabsticks, fishballs, and the mandatory chicken wings. I gave up trying to barbeque after my first chicken wing didnt stretch properly, so it burned. Chandni and I kept making faces when we handled the slimy fleshy chicken, so we essentially left most of the actual cooking to the men, who did a pretty good job. I just had fun playing with the honey. They also tried experimenting with Pepsi and cheese, but God knows how that turned out; the pepsi made the sausages stick to the bbq pan.

I am never more proud of Suxi than when she manages to capture the best moments, whether intentional or not. There were Brokeback Moments, Best Incriminating Angle Shots, DonoLyn Shots, and Jeffrey Trying To Feed People Shots.

It's been AGES since I've set foot on a playground/field, so when we went to play with the lanterns and candles in the field, I was the first one rushing out clutching a bag of candles.

*skip*

*skip*

*skippity skip*

RAWR!

My inner child went ballistic! Nyaaahahaah! Unfortunately, there were some pretty breezy winds going around, so there were only a few lanterns and candles lit up before people started playing football.

John, me and Chand doing the ghetto thang.

Group shot!

It was just sparkling juice okay..

Some of my favourite moments of the night were

• When I taught Chand how to play 'Mary had a little lamb' on the piano. I have it on recording :D
• When we played Mafia. I finally GOT the game when I was lying in bed drifting off to sleep.
• When they suddenly popped open marshmallows and a pan of chocolate. This was the first time ever I've had roasted marshmallows. Plus I have cute photos of John, Chand and Jesslyn eating chocolate.
• The radio started playing 'Abimawe, abimawe, in the jungle, the mighty jungle' and everybody went into karaoke mode. Again! On record.
• Chand, Beh and Jay wiggled to an Indian song. Yes, it's on record.
• Beh did a lapdance for the Birthday boys: John and Derrick :DDD
• When Charles played the ukelele. ur. The tiny guitar.
• When we played tanglungs, and one of them caught on fire (purposely or not purposely, I don't know), and they started playing flamethrower with a mosquite repellent spray.
• When me and Chand were sitting on the bar at the goalpost, and it suddenly gave way, making this horrible grating moaning sound, and I ran away screaming because I was suddenly falling and I thought there was a monster behind me making the horrible noises. Scare of the Night award winner, this one.
• When everybody discovers how loud EeLing can be.. She was laughing her head off at my 'monster'
• EeLing and I gave Jesslyn a boost so she could hang on the Goalpost
• The Goalpost group shot.

I have rediscovered simple kampung fun. Back to the basics. Fire, food, and people. AHH! primitive fun! woooooot

By the way, I have noticed that a lot of people have no idea why we celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival. I must have babbled a lot of crap to Chand when I was trying to explain why we..er. play with fire.

The Mid Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th Lunar month. (bat yuet, chor sap mm) The folklore goes something like this:

In super super old times, (way before sliced bread, Columbus, and dodo birds were extinct) there were 10 suns. Now, even in today's zaman modern, one sun already causes enough havoc at the equator, so you can imagine the torture olden-times-people had to endure with 10 suns. The heat killed crops, and so people had no corn to sell and stuff, so they were living in dire dire dire poverty.

Then came along this hero, Hou Yi, and he went all the way up to one of the mountains, Kunlun mountain. Being the Larry Sue of folklore that he is, he directed his SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH to maximum power (think of it as nitro to the max in car racing games) and using his super chunted legolas like bow, he shot down 9 suns. He left one for us la, of course. Even that one didn't properly escape. He bullied it into rising and setting on time. And so, now everybody had to suck up to him, because nobody else bothered to climb a mountain and shoot down suns. Larry Sue, I mean, Hou Yi now was a martyr to everyone, and was respected by everybody. (or so he'd like to think)

One of his pupils riding on his coattails of fame was this dude called Peng Meng. Now you can already tell this fella is evil. Even his name is so loser-ish.

Now, Larry Sue has this Mary Sue wife, of course. Her Chinese name was Chang Ee. She was beautiful, and kind hearted, and the usual la.. One day as her hero of her husband was climbing KunLun mountain to visit his drinking kakis, he bumped into the Empress of Heaven, Wangmu. (I suspect they were having an affair) Empress Wangmu gave him an elixir of Heaven, which upon drinking it, the drinker would ascend to heaven and become a celestial being. (That's better than being a fairy okay) But because this Hou Yi couldn't bear to leave his beloved wife behind on earth, he gave it to her and asked her to hide it.

As she was hiding the elixir away in her makeup drawer (stupid stupid place to hide it, idiot woman), LoserPengMeng saw it and tried to rob her. Knowing that LoserPengMeng, loser he may be, knew martial arts, and her own husband had never bothered teaching her any self defense or given her any pepper spray, she made a critical decision!

She swallowed the elixir. (Hey, I said she was kind and beautiful, not smart)

And so she floated up towards Heaven like a mini hot balloon! When Hou Yi returned, and found out what happened from the chambermaids, he was understandbly quite sad. He looked up to the moon and found that the moon was super bright and there was a shadow on the moon that looked like his wife. In a moment of insanity, he tried to chase after the moon (Another idiot, go hentam that PengMeng la!) Thinking of his wife day and night, he had an incense table set up as a memorial to his Chang Ee. And so from that day on, people would arrange the incense table in the moonlight and pray to Chang Ee for good fortune ($o typical of the Chine$e) and peace. And that's where the custom of worshipping the moon started.

But as always with folklores, there are many different versions.

In another version I've read, Hou Yi was a tyrannical ruler who shot down 9 suns, and won the elixir of immortality. His wife knew that people would suffer if he lived forever, like Darth Vader, MoJoJoJo, and other cartoony villians. So she drank the potion instead, which made her lighter and she floated to the moon.

She should just have let him drink the potion and let HIM float to the moon and live with martians forever.

There are possibly a million and one versions of Chinese folklore on this festival alone. I still have no idea where I read that mooncakes were a vessel to pass secret messages during olden times, or that people lit lanterns to fool the Gods who were furious at the whole let's-shoot-down-suns incident, and wanted to set Earth on fire. So the lanterns that were lit made it look like we were all burning in our own living hell.

NEXT! Deeparaya is a few weeks away. Then my favourite festival of the year : CHRISTMAS!