Hari Raya

For the past three consecutive days, I have been spending most of the time with my family and relatives celebrating the month of Hari Raya.
On the first day of Hari Raya which falls on Friday, after my Dad and I performed our Friday prayers at the mosque, my family and I visited my grandma's house in Jurong. We feasted on traditional food and chatted all day long. That wasn't the only house we visited, moreover, we did also visited some of my our relatives' house whom most of them live in the western part of Singapore. Below are some photos of the festive goodies and my counsin's son with their family, taken when they visited my house to celebrate Hari Raya.



The following day, it was rather an opposite experience as compared to Friday. Instead of being a guest, my family and I became a host as hordes of my relatives visited my house. We served them drinks, let them try our festive goodies, chatted together and last but not least, my parents gave the children like what the chinese used to call it, 'hong bao'. However, my family and I didn't spend that Saturday just entertaining our guests, we did went out late in the afternoon to perform more visitings at our relatives' home once the guests have left.
Yesterday was rather a much more exciting day than the first two days of Hari Raya. The reason being, I got to visit my closest cousins. It has been a long and lengthy time since I met them. The only time we get to meet each other is only during Hari Raya. I still used to remember those times when my cousins and I were young, where we would played video games together, had a game of football and also hang out together. But now since we had already grew older, we are not as close as we used to be. Our relationship started to change. We don't spend much of our time together like we used to. Probably they might be busy with their work or they already have their friends to hang out with. Moreover, since I live in the west while my cousins live in the east, it makes even harder for me to visit them as oftenly as I would have preferred.
So far I have collected 'hong bao' worth more than $100 from all the visitings made for the first three days of Hari Raya. To be honest, I guess it's a fair amount. Since the economic crisis and inflation had made a huge negative impact on the financial needs of some of my relatives, I guess I shouldn't be expecting a lot of 'hong bao' this year and perhaps the year after.