REWANG

Kuali awesome!!! Pic taken from here

KENDURI, the most synonym word that comes next to kenduri is, REWANG. This word is new to me. I know this word when I date this guy that I married. It means gotong-royong basically. As penduduk kampong, it is mandatory for one to join this REWANG for social acceptance. I have never been to one, but there is one incident where my husband left me in a kelompok of Javanese speaking makcik2 and I have to mingle with them immediately. I froze for a few second, I don’t know what to do and panic attacks me…this is because I have no idea what are they talking about. Well one thing that I have learned working with people is, just smile and laugh when they laugh.

Ok back to the tajuk, things that you have to bring to REWANG through my observance of my mother in-law (she’s cool, go to the same school as me) is:

1. Kitchen knife – this is used to potong bawang or whatever that you have been assigned to do that day. (p/s: sometimes the tuan rumah already made a duty schedule for ‘rewangist’. Do check the schedule to avoid duty repetition and to have a productive REWANG session :p) Oh, “rewangist” is the urban name for people who went to REWANG. Sounds cooler :p
2. Sophisticated Jawa words or trendy common phase/greetings of your place of stay -  this is very important especially when you live in a Jawa speaking community to capture their attention thus accept you as one of them. For example: Kabare? Waras….basically it means How are you? I’m fine. Sorry la lau example terlalu common. That the only phase yang I’m confident with. :D
3. Slippers/Selipar Jamban – if you go to rewang, it is advisable for you to wear the most hideous selipar jamban that you have to avoid of losing those slippers.
4. Skills – this skills can be vary, it can be skill potong bawang, potong sayur, potong daging or people skills for that matters. Kindly sharpen them before heading to REWANG…it can be your savior from being the gossip topics of the makciks-makciks until they have a new victim to wailed upon :p

So that is all about REWANG. Do consider all this tips for the social acceptance of your community. Or you can ignore them and be the rebel in your kampong…..hahahahha!!!!

p/s: REWANG sekali baca macam nama hantu kat Filipina tuh…The ASWANG :P

Post nikah implementation review :p

Its been 6 months after the nikah ceremony. And the one thing I can tell you that marriage life rocks! I learn new culture, living in a new environment and the most exciting thing is I can “date” the guy I love the most everyday. Sound cheeky kan…but it is the truth.

Well as per described, I am learning a new culture. So, it seems that my husband lives and grew up in a “kampong” and currently I am residing in a “kampung” which I am not very familiar with. You see, I grew up in KL and have live there for almost 27 years. Not saying that my parent is urbanites, they have their own kampong too. But my parents never did exposed me to the kampong style of living, we are rarely go to kenduri (if we were to go, it is a very close relation family kenduri) if not we’re just going to skip the kenduri.

When i marry my hubby, I am also married to his whole family and neighbors, which happen to be a VERY big family and they all are close too. Within these 6 months of marriage, I can say that almost every weekend there will be a kenduri. It is very exciting! I can’t seem to recall this kind of experience my whole life. But there is a downside to this, I don’t have sufficient amount of baju kurung to attend to all this kenduri. I don’t wear baju kurung, and my baju kurung are made once a year during Aidilfitri, which is satu helai sahaja. And I am not getting smaller every year you know. So the total amounts of my baju kurung are the very thin 3 helai sahaja. The end result is, I am wearing the same baju kurung over and over again. Lesson learned from here is…to kumpul baju kurung as many as possible.

Not quite :)

Pic from here

The second thing is, I don’t understand JAVANESE (not the programming language). Oh..yeah my hubby is a JAVANESE and they still speak the language which I have no idea whatsoever..damn. I am learning it slooowwwwly..as most of the words are totally different is syllables  to either Malay or English (the only 2 language I know). It is not like you can guess or catch what they are saying because it is different totally from the language that I am familiar with. I mean you can’t Google translate ‘em cause there is no JAVA in Google translate. So it happens when my hubby want to ‘perli’ me he will use the ancient language and speak to the others. And I am as the malay said “terpinga-pinga dan tergapai-gapai di lautan” without understanding the word that they said.

Bila aku Google Image untuk JAWA ini yang keluar...terconfused sikit.

Besides all that, marriage makes you more mature I guess. You have to tolerate each other and have to endure problems together. It is not all happy-rainbowwy fairy tale like life. It is more than that. 

P/S: Kawen tu best....wohahahah!!