Wedding, anyone?

Wedding dinners should NEVER be attended alone. The intimidation of not knowing anybody around you will really get to you. Especially when it comes to Chinese eight (8) course dinners. Pray that the people who will eventually grace your table are decent, otherwise, "fuhgetaboudit!". Being around people who have no sense of the meaning of "double dipping" will make you lose your appetite in an instant. You just want to get the food onto your plate as soon as the food arrives and not touch the dish until new ones arrive. Such is the atrocity of dining with strangers.

Apparently, the forks and spoons provided with the dishes were mere ornaments in these people's eyes. One on each side of the dish to provide a sort of balance, some "je ne sais quoi" idea. As bad as always being the first person to scoop the dish may look on you, try to think of when you spot someone who's just stuffed his chopsticks into his mouth and THEN go for another piece on the plate, muddling around with the gravy, dropping the food and then picking it up again. Yuck!

But, queasiness aside, there were more things to come for this particular wedding dinner that I went to. An old neighbourhood friend's wedding dinner. Not surprisingly, Malaysians are at their best when it comes to making grand entries, that is, coming at the latest time possible. The invitation given to me was printed as "7.00pm SHARP", but the dinner didn't start till 8pm. I arrived fashionably EARLY, just before the bride and groom arrived. And you'd think, by printing the time in bold with the capital letters would help you know WHEN to arrive, the tables were hardly filled by 7pm, still half empty at 7.30pm. I wonder if the Daylight Savings Time put them off a bit. Oh wait, Malaysians aren't even affected by DST! Funny how the people that DID come in late, came in looking like they were early. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

Let me save the best for last, or should I say the worst. The Master of Ceremony. He spoke in Mandarin throughout the dinner and as accommodating as it may seem to the Chinese educated friends and relatives there, the bride and groom does not even speak/read a word of Chinese at all! He sang karaoke songs with so much flair and pizzazz, you'd have thought he was auditioning for Karaoke Idol. Thankfully, the karaoke machine was opened to the people who attended the wedding, unfortunately, "Seasons In The Sun" was just not the type of song you would sing at a wedding dinner. 'Goodbye to you, it's hard to die' ?!?! Wow, what message was the relative sending, I wonder!

Oh well, it ended with the usual shaking of hands with the bride and groom as we walked out into the dark night. However, the emcee was still singing when we left, without so much as a care to the visitors who just ignored his presence. And still with so much flair. Kudos to him, but I won't be hiring him for ANY occasions for that matter.