Hari Raya 2008 - Day 1

I guess it’s a bit too late to tell the story but you know what they say, “raya kan sebulan”. So roughly I still have about 15 days left before it ends.

Though I was really looking forward for the hari raya holidays, it was not all according to plan. The last day of the fasting day, I caught a fever. At first I thought that a couple of panadol would wipe it out but it kept coming back. After 5 hours, it will continue to attack. Luckily the panadol would relieve the pain for a while.

But what made it worse that I had the most painful sore throat that I have ever had. The kind of sore throat that would require your full endurance and determination to swallow the saliva. What more to drink a glass of 100 plus as the doctor prescribed? After 4 days of fever, luckily it went away. I went to see 2 clinics. Luckily the second one’s medicine was a bit stronger I guess. A Rm2 for a pill of antibiotics. Luckily I just had to take 6 of em. At times, I myself wondered if am I infected by dengue? Oh No, not now. So at the 3rd day of Hari Raya as the fever went away, I was very glad that it wasn’t what I suspect that it was. Fuhhh!!!

Now back to the raya story. As implemented by a lot of married couple, the alternate system does has it pros. For this year, we were suppose to celebrate it with wifey’s side. But this year, they would be celebrating the first day in KL as well and as informed earlier, they too would go out and visit relatives house. As my parents would not accept guest (even their own children) at night, I guess it would be better to have breakfast at my parents and then spent the rest of the day with my in laws.

So went over to my parents house and drop off Sofea before heading for the UTM’s mosque. I would say it was a good decision as this is the last time we will conducting Raya prayers there. They would be tearing down the mosque to make way for a new mosque complex to be build. I am not sure how long it will be ready but one thing for certain, I’m gonna miss it. I’ve been going there ever since we moved to Jalan Kent way back in 1985. Hopefully the new complex is gonna be awesome.

After the prayers, we went over to my parents house for breakfast. As usual the family’s infamous sate goreng is served together with the kuah sate, rendang and also lemang combined together with a cup of coffee. Now that’s what I call a perfect breakfast.

As soon as Jie and Zekri arrived, we continued with the tradition of forgiving. Bermaaf-maafan together with the handing over of duit raya. We managed to take some photographs at the same old spot and as soon as it is done, we headed out to my in laws.

By the time we arrived there, my father in law had already gone out to work. There was a case of motorcycle theft. So went out anyway without him to the relatives’ house at Petaling Jaya and Shah Alam. It’s not that I don’t want to mingle around with everyone, but the thought of opening my mouth to speak and swallow the saliva would only worsen the condition of throat and fever. So I finally opted the say, “Silence in golden”.

After the Shah Alam visit, we went back to my in laws place where the relatives were planning to ber-raya at my in laws place. Well ok then. We went back and waited for them to arrive. By 6pm, my fever was really burning up. All I could think of at that time was to reach for my jacket and lay down and hopefully everything would be ok.

We reached back at our place around 730 pm whereby I automatically surrendered and lay down on the floor with my jacket and comforter on hoping that thing would get better. As expected, after about an hour of panadol, it would finally kick in and I was feeling a bit better by then. For the rest of the night we spent it by watching TV and for me having a hot bowl of maggi which usually works wonders when I have a fever.