Funeral

Uh huh. My Chinese New Year was "celebrated" with funeral. Well I can't complain much about it, but all the things I do several days before were eating, kneeling and praying. It may be weird, but I ate more compared to previous CNY celebrations.

Ok lets tell you some stories about funeral. Firstly you must know what is "Da Zhai" (I really don't know how the heck can I translate this into English) - 2 whole days of veggies! Well it didn't matter to me since I like veggies as much as I like meat. The first thing that initiated the funeral was the arrival of my grandpa's coffin. Well a lot cried, including my dad. I hardly able to since my conciousness always dominates my emotions. Furthermore I didn't really have good connections with my grandpa. Of course, still, without him, I am nobody.

The first night was where the actual ritual started. The "Namo Lou" - a very unrespectful name to be called to those priests in my opinion, sang and played the gongs for the whole night while we sat, kneeled, prayed and burned joss sticks during the process. The kneeling was extremely painful which my joints were full of pain after that. My eyes were irritated as well by the carbon fumes of joss sticks. But the first night wasn't really that awful compared to the second. Haha.

The second night was the same thing but costed us a longer time. I was so pain to kneel down again due to the damage done during the first night. But the ritual on the second day was more interesting though (weirdo?). We had to answer for the questions the priest directed to us to help our grandpa to reach the underworld. The funniest part was when the priest "activated" the paper servants for my grandpa. The ritual ended with the combustion of the paper house, along with the servants, a Mercedes with a driver and also paper money which we folded for 2 days (around 20 fully filled black garbage bags). Hopefully my grandpa is rich now in the other world. Haha.

It was 2 after the ritual ended, and I was instructed to guard the change the joss sticks before it lit off so I stayed overnight with some of my cousins. We teased one of our cousin for his boyfriend and another of my cousin conducted anonymous calls for entertainment. So the night was quite interesting. We slept at 5 before waken up again at 7.

It was the day for the funeral parade. We sent our grandpa to cemetery and finally we were off for the restrictions after the funeral ritual started - we couldn't wash our hair! It felt so good to wash the gelled hair due to excessive oil from the scalp. Most of our relatives back after that day, except those family of sons of my grandpa - which include my dad, who needed to pray again the next morning.

And so I finally managed to back home at Saturday and I was glad to know that Tuesday finals is postponed - which grant me another day for study!