Oh great, it’s wedding season again and I’m being bombarded with tons of invitations. Okay maybe not tons, but at least 6 if I remembered correctly.

So this month is really a tight financial situation for me. You know why? ‘Cos we Chinese (okay maybe only Chinese in Malaysia/Singapore/South East Asia region) have this cultural (is it really cultural?) practice that whenever we are invited to wedding dinners, we chip some money out for the bride/bridegroom for the wedding dinner, generally as a sign of prosperity, considerateness and friendship/familial ties. We ‘help’ the newly weds by easing their financial burden of the marriage.

Now I don’t mind getting into such a situation you see because all invitations *should be* (note, should be) only sent to persons that you are very closed to. Surely it is odd to invite a not-so-close acquaintance or a friend that you have not been in contact for years (’cos that means that you guys are not close at all). But there are always those who invite for the sole intention to invite and get people to chip in money only. I know I shouldn’t be bad-mouthing people but there are such people. I just wish I could just tell them that “hey we are not really that close, are we?” but in this community where oriental cultural values of courtesy is what we grew up from, it’s considered a very mean thing to say (yeah okay, I’m too wussy to say it then, but please gimme the benefit of a lame excuse please…). So in some ocassions when I’m invited by some one I’m not really close with and I attend, it’d be only because I wanna meet close friends/relatives who are attending.

To add salt to injury, people always ask you all sorts of questions that resembles “hey when’s your turn then?” or “see? people so fast lo, you must also ‘add oil’ la, catch up mar!” or “ei next time when it’s your turn arr, invite me! I sure come one!” or “ei how come you come alone geh? got gf don’t just keep secret secret mar! must bring out and let us meet!” or plain just taking photos of pairs of love birds, whether married or going to be married (okay this one is personal, plain annoying me only ‘cos I’ve got no one to take photos with).

Sorry la, don’t have gf cannot meh? I’m not gay! Geting married late cannot meh? Wanna choose from more choices cannot meh? Wanna play bachelor for a few years more cannot meh? Blah bla bla bla bla… I could go on and on.

The truth is, I’m jealous. I admit. But hey what did we just say about courtesy? And I thought we should be always looking out for other people’s feelings. So I bitch about it, why not just refuse to attend? Well… it’s courtesy at work again, miraculously, hypocritically. Good luck in your marriage, I’d say (in a different tone for different people ).

I know my posts are long and a lot of words. There are a few reasons why I do so. So if you do get this far down this post, you either have nothing else better to do, bored, likes to read about other people’s rantings and daily life, or maybe you are one of my close friends / relatives (well generally my relatives aren’t tech savvy at all so I doubt any of them will be reading a blog), or maybe you have a crush on me . We’ll talk about this some other time then. Need to attend another wedding.