heart to arau 25.1.08

back in arau, i always stay under the same roof with my two aunts, mak cak and cik, who are both my mom's eldest siblings. feels like going there somehow now that i don't have much to do here at home. screw the laptop (wow, can you really do that?). being there, as i've mentioned before, nights never end. chats go on forever, especially when cik talks. she's like in her 60-70s now, she could easily make anyone laugh and she's been doing that since i was like, 5. she used to stay in seremban here in my house and take care of me and my schooling and stuff until i was in standard 2, then she got kind of old and tired to take care of all of us (4 siblings!), she returned to perlis. after that i cried a lot at home, missed her so much.

last time i saw her was at my sister's wedding kenduri at sungai petani, where like the whole arau and kuala pilah crowd was there and whew it was damn hot again! for this one, i just took my old purple kebaya that i last wore in 2005 - dis one, can really restrict my movement, but douH, just go on with it. why the fuss? it would all be over with soon. but cik was like woah when she saw me, i didnt remember what she talked about tho, lol. but one thing i remember was that she was saying how 2 sisters of mine already got married now and 2 more to go. she was saying she may be able to see kak zahi (the sis after me) get married, but maybe she won't be able to live long enough to see me on my wedding day.

i kept silent at that, it saddened me. i know how she's getting older by the day. stil she's one of the best cooks in the world alongside my mum and their siblings + my dad + my family. stil she's one of the funniest, most talkative, most generous people i've ever known, and much more to it. out of many other relatives of my parents', she's i'm most close with.

stil i can't tell what's to happen in the future for her or even for myself. wallahualam... to even say that i'll die sooner is stil possible, no one knows... it's a sensitive issue. we r to fear death- it wil hurt.

to be in arau though... its windy there. mom said there used to be a sawah padi in front of my aunts' house... but the land was sold to build a water logy. there used to be a chinese shop across the street from the house where i used to buy some keropok for fun snack, but it was dirobohkan - which we all were in seremban - it was so sad! no more shops to depend on. it could've been so easy to get snacks from. but that was years ago, when i was a kid. then again it had always been easy to eat there. my relatives are always making something and they're all great at cooking. once done with it, they pass some to other houses, which aren't far in walking distances. it's kampung, after all. outside my aunts' house, there's a buaian that was hanging on to a tree, which is always the place to hang out, be it for kids or adults. yeah and there are some other seats there and a pondok near the buaian. the buaian has existed there for years already. on the ground there are always many branches of wood, and i used to love picking up these stuff when i was a kid. and i'd give them to cik, i think, to be burnt for purpose of cooking something outside the house as the branches burn fast. so i liked it, to be doing a good deed. near the buaian and all, there used to be a big kandang, or reban or whatever, there were both - in a kandang there was a reban ayam. i used to go into the kandang that was fenced up and chase around the chickens that were running around in there. cik would sometimes scold me, saying they'd get angry and patuk me. being a kid back then, i didnt think i listened. what happened to them? eventually the chickens all died, now the kandang is all empty. it used to be fun, though, remembering back. hehehe...

that chicken talk reminded me that i used to have some geese, in my house. well not in, around my house. like my dad took care of them, there were several of them. in the end, some of them got missing - stolen, most probably. even i saw them got taken away, being sorta shooed away by a woman down the hill (my house's on the hill) with the thought that she probably was going to return the "missing" geese to us, but they didn't get return. She probably took them instead. The geese were noisy, though. I was too small at the moment, 7, 8?

ok, this has become a domestic animal talk already. the only animal i have now in my house would be cats, 3 cats in exact, that'd be 2 if to discount "Cit" who has not been around the house much lately. she only comes home once in a while. "Qot" and "KoKo" only are the ones staying home, both too, females. all males apparently gone with the wind, probably following their girlfriends away O_o hehe.

i haven't been to arau for a long while. i hope i can go there...