The Scribblings On The Wall...

Have you ever heard of the "Balik Kampung" song? If you're Malaysian, or have been living in the country for some time, this song will definitely be familiar. It's like a "must-play" song on the radio everytime Hari Raya is near. It's a song about how everyone will go back to their hometown for the Raya celebrations. And usually if I'm driving when the song is on, the people in my car, myself included, would be singing, "*mumble**mumble* BALIK KAMPUNG, OOOHHH, OOOHHHH, OOOOHHHH, BALIK KAMPUNG, HATI RIANG *mumble**mumble*" because we only know the chorus part. So the other day, when this song was on the radio, I asked my mum, "How come we never go back to Kelantan for raya?" and my mum was like, "Why bother? All of our immediate family are here". After that, I realised what my mum said is the truth. Because even though both my mum and my dad's side are from Kelantan, most of my cousins are here in KL, all my grandparents are here, some of my maternal grandma's siblings, their children and their children's children (some of the children's children already has children, by the way!) also live here and heck, even my great-grandma lives here (although she hates KL). That's like four or five generations of the family all residing in KL!

Well, I can understand why my mum thinks it's much better staying here rather than take a 6-hour drive down to Kelantan where our closest relative would be my mum's uncle. The sacrifices we make for a so-called better life where pollution of every form, haze, traffic jams and time-constraints rule our lives. Oh, the irony of the situation. It's a classic case of "the grass is greener on the other side" syndrome. But I confess, no matter how lovely Kelantan is (and it is lovely, believe me), I don't think I would pack up my things and go live there because well, KL is my home in every sense of the word.

Now that I realised that I am basically kampung-less, I'm very depressed. OK, maybe not very depressed, but still a wittle bit depressed. Sometimes I feel so isolated because almost all of my friends go back to their kampungs for the festivities (Fine, I know I'm whining). But you know what's weird? I'm not even going to be in KL for Hari Raya this year. The whole family is going to Port Dickson, to my uncle's place for Raya. So instead of going around collecting duit raya, I'll be spending time at the beach. At least I won't have people stuffing (yummy) food down my throat for the first two days of Raya.

I read in The Star a few days ago about the shortage of blood at the National Blood Bank and I realised that because my blood type is O+, I am basically a universal donor and that everyone can use my blood. My sister and I actually wanted to donate our blood to the Blood Bank, but because we're fasting, my dad said that it's unadvisable to do so because we'll be so dehydrated afterwards. The thing is, everytime there's a major festival coming, there will always, always be loads of accidents on the road and it's especially bad during the fasting month. And well, if I can help save a live, I'll do it. Too bad I can't do it right now when they need it the most. Maybe I'll go donate my blood after Hari Raya. Who knows, maybe one day we'll need a blood transfusion and we might just get our own donated blood back.

I need to go to sleep now. I'll have to wake up for sahur soon. G'nite!