“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians” (Queequeg)
It’s been a rather eventful weekend. Kayak-ed on Saturday and attended a funeral in Danu on Sunday. Ironically, the funeral was great fun and it took me a while to dig up my ‘cultural archive’ stored somewhere in my tiny cerebrum to understand such situation among the Penrissen Bidayuh or the Biatah. I shouldn’t write the word “fun” to denote a sombre event like a funeral but I lack a better word to describe the deceased’s relatives’ laughter, loud lively discussions and free flow of langkau (and food).
We arrived in Kuching at around 8.30pm and went to Expert at Jalan Song to continue with the Tigers. This is to neutralize the langkau taste lingering in our mouth, I said. Bertran and Cam, who came with me to Danu and probably had fun too, were not convinced with my explanation for the Tigers. But who cares. It worked for me. I was a bit tipsy later and I decided to go home. Maybe I’m getting old for this but it was good.
whoa…id like to go to that kind of funeral….
i was right, you’d ask me who jay z is. try google him lah. The only Iban funeral I’ve been to was when my grandmother died. The funeral itself was sad and all that, but it’s the “after party” that’s happening. Which was a shock to me, we’re her grandkids and we’re chinese, we didn’t know if we should act happy or sad.
sourmilk: Thanks! ;) I got nothing better to do yesterday so decided to mess around with photoshop and of all things, the HTML (of which I have no clue how to use). Thus, the ‘missing’ links!
Who’s Jay Z?
i like yer new pic, it’s coolness. the way you designed it to be a book cover of langkau fiction. and from that angle, you look like jay z dude.
I think they enjoyed the trip. For me, it was ok. Never been to a Bidayuh funeral but some Iban funerals are very strict (ie. visitors aren’t allowed to enter the longhouse without ‘hukum’) and some are extremely jovial, to say the least lah. Either way, it’s always fascinating to observe how different communities build specific cultural mechanisms to handle such situations as death.
The only ‘turn off’ for the night was the disgusting toilets at Expert! I’ve never seen such filth since my trip in Sanggau many, many years ago. Gosh. I became sober after looking at it. Shocking!
damn, the trip must have been good. i hope cham had fun. i’ve been to a few bidayuh and iban funeral wake and i must agree with you that there is no other word to describe the atmosphere but….maybe, ‘fun’ in the most abstract form.
this good iban friend of mine who never fails to bring me along to these ‘celebration’ always refers to it as a fun-fare. like he goes…’bro, ada pan pay di betong besok. mok ekot sik?’. like that.