Thaipusam

We are gearing up to be ready for our trip to Melbourne next weekend to celebrate another family wedding. We fly out Friday night and on landing will drive straight out to Yarra Glen. Anna is my brother Col's eldest daughter, a teacher and social worker. While she was doing her teacher training she visited us in Katherine and was able to accompany me on a School of the Air visit to Limmin Bight Fishing Camp. It will be lovely to spend some time with the family again and see some of the Yarra Valley where I grew up.

At work we need to have everything up to date in the green boxes for the relief staff. We get back in time to work the following week and then fly out five days later to spend Chinese New Year in Darwin. Sadly Adrian has already left for Alice Springs, Sue Rose has returned to Melbourne to care for her ailing father and Yve and John have retired to Adelaide. No doubt we will still find enough people to enjoy some social moments. We are staying with Sandy this time in the new place she is renting in Lyons, very close to Tiwi. 

While we were trekking to Base Camp in December Heather and Michael visited Morocco. They brought back a tagine and Heather decided it was time to put it to use. Over a quiet conversation, that one dish turned into a shared dinner where Eric volunteered another Middle Eastern recipe (though we don't have our tagine here with us) and in no time it turned into a three course dinner party. He needed dates for the recipe so that required a trip to Mustafa's in Farrer Park on Saturday night after work. The place was absolutely jam-packed with shoppers and as soon as we found what we needed, we escaped to the rooftop restaurant for dinner which offers both indoor and outdoor dining areas but no alcohol on the menu.

While we were there, the streets of Chinatown came to life with the official light-up to usher in the Chinese New Year. It was a night of song and dance - not just in celebration of the coming CNY, but also Singapore's Golden Jubilee this year. We will have to go down there in the coming weeks to see the motorised goat lanterns and dazzling gold coins weighing five kg each, hanging above the streets - all to ring in the Year of the Goat. The HDB across the road continues to be upgraded with a new preschool, mailboxes, covered walkways and lifts etc. To commemorate the pioneers one of the void decks has been refurbished with posters of local landmarks from the early days. Only last week a taxi driver was telling us that it was once a cemetery.

One of the residents died this week and the funeral is being held in the void deck. These are just some of the paper funerary articles donated by the family to make sure they will be comfortable in the afterlife. To give you some idea of the size, I could have sat in the car.



Scheduled tor Monday night, everything was going to plan until Eric ran out of time to cook his Moroccan dish so I was left with the task while he walked the rail trail from Buona Vista to the Rail Mall. And I had only volunteered to do brandied oranges for dessert. No cooking involved! Women's Weekly Cookbook doesn't credit that second dish as being Moroccan but who cares. Oranges are very plentiful here at the moment in the lead up to Chinese New Year. Anyway, it turned out to be a lovely dinner at Maria and Robert's and even the left overs of my lamb with dates recipe were snaffled up. 

On our way to the Moroccan dinner party we dropped by Melisa and Craig's condo in Lorong Chuan to share in her birthday celebrations. She held an all afternoon pool party, quite an event for a Canadian who usually celebrates her birthday in the deepest, coldest part of the year. Apparently all her friends back home were quite jealous. She turned 27, same age as our Luke. Everyone else at the bbq would have been in their 20s and 30s too so we felt a bit like the responsible adults, but no one there seemed to take any notice. 

This week Hindus celebrated Thaipusam which sees devotees take part in a procession seeking blessings, fulfilling vows and offering thanks Lord Subramaniam (also known as Lord Murugan), who represents virtue, youth and power, and is the destroyer of evil. 

 The procession on Tuesday was the culmination of a month-long spiritual preparation with a strict vegetarian diet. Devotees carry milk pots and pierce their tongues with skewers or carry a kavadi elaborately decorated with flowers, peacock feathers and spikes. 

We first saw this spectacle in Penang and this year the MAE Social Committee organised a mid-term dinner at Banana Leaf Restaurant in Little India, close by the starting point at Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Serangoon Road, Little India. The procession makes its way to Layan Sithi Vinayagar Temple at Keong Siak Road. 







That would be less than 5 kms but take a lot longer than an hour as they continually stop along the way, dance and spin for the chanting crowds. It is a very colourful and noisy parade and creates traffic havoc. 

In mid January Pongal is celebrated mostly in South India over four days, by farmers who give thanks to 'Surya', the Sun God and giver of life, for the blessings of a rich harvest. Celebrations begin with worship of Lord Indra, the Ruler of Clouds and Giver of Rains. Thorough spring-cleaning as well as the discarding of old belongings is carried out to signify a fresh start. Oil lamps are lit, new clothes are donned and colourful designs in rice flour are created on the floors of houses. One of the days is set aside to honour cattle. The lights of that festival still adorn the streets in Little India as the last of the Thaipusam parade makes its way to the end point.

We had a great turn out at our dinner, a good mixture of staff from all branches.