Raya Open House

Since it is still in the month of Syawal, every weekend there will be someone's open house. Talking about open house, here in Sydney, ‘open house’ means that particular property is on sale, and it is open for inspection for prospective buyers during the open house day. Whereas among Malaysian, it is the day when we open the door of our houses to people to join the feast and enjoy the celebration, not matter who. Nowadays, it has became a tradition in Malaysia for every culture to do so during their annual celebration particularly Hari Raya, Chinese New Year and Deepavali; the biggest celebration rejoice by Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnics.

The tradition of open house does not only practiced by people in Malaysia, but it continues when they are overseas. Here in Sydney, the same thing occurs. Although it is usually not fully ‘opened’, cause we normally choose people we would like to invite to our ‘semi’-open houses, the tradition brings happiness among Malaysians and provide the opportunity to meet fellow Malaysians that we might not know before. It is a good platform to revive our culture, especially to inculcate and make sure the younger generation aware about their own traditional celebration.

It is a good practice if we sincerely and open heartedly invite people to our house to have party and share many kinds of food together. This is the time we can enjoy ourselves and talk about our much-loved home country, and forget about research, assignment and so on for a moment. The food, not forget to mention, are the main attraction and with the rich cuisine of Malaysia, there are a lot of different kinds of food to enjoy and try. As food is my passion, I normally try to taste all kind of food, especially the one that is not familiar to me. This is usually the main cause people gain weight after Raya, following the hard work losing some kilos during Ramadan fasting month.

Anyhow, it has been more than a fortnight we are in the month of Syawal. But I reckon this year we do not received as many invitations as last year. I wonder whether there are not many people doing open house, or we are just being forgotten eh. Yea, there's a lot of new students that we don't really know, or not really close to. And the old batches are getting smaller, many has gone back for good. And there's a rumour that the new batches does not get along very well with the old one, huh. I thought that only happens in high school, but here? All with families, matured age and most are the intellects of the nations.

Thanks to those who had invited us to their houses. Ours? I know people are questioning that. We will think of it and inform later if ever we would like to have one, hehe. Even though open houses are still happening on weekends, we must get back to WORK!

1 Syawal 1429H

It is mid week, Wednesday. Sydney's inhabitants went to work as usual. However for Muslims, it was the Eid Al-Fitr celebration. As previous years, we went to Malaysia Hall for the Eid prayer. We woke up at 5am, get ready and had a breakfast with my rendang dan ketupat instant. Than at 6.25am, we started our journey to MyHall, about 25km from home. It was still early, but there were so many cars on the road that I thought we couldn't make it on time for the prayer scheduled at 7.30am. But anyhow Allah knows best, we arrived around 7.15am, and we joined the crowd for takbir. The prayer started at about 10min to 8am. After prayer there were a little food prepared under the tent, such as lemang, rendang and pasta. The real celebration will be this Saturday where lots of food will be there.

We went to visit our friends until night, about 6 houses altogether. Enjoyed a lot of different kinds of food, went back exhausted. The following day Elyn went to the Uni, while me and reena just stayed at home, finishing hatever food left in the fridge. And every weekend untill Syawal ends, there will be open houses among the Malay communities around Sydney...

Whatever it is, how happy we look in the picture, I miss my home, my mom and dad, my family....