Exclursion to our 阿公's hometown

Intro
阿公 refers to my mum's dad here.
From young, we know 阿公 comes from Malaysia, a place called 四湾岛. Only recent years then I realized that this place is actually at Johor, Pengerang. Many of my cousins have not been to 四湾岛 or have no recollection of the place at all. I've been trying to organize trips to 四湾 with some of my cousin but it failed. I'm surprised when most of them turned up on 15 Feb'09.




Our 1st stop - 阿祖's tomb

It's Chinese culture to go 扫墓 during 清明节. Since 阿祖's tomb is in Malaysia, most of us have never been there before. My mum came up with the "brilliant" idea - to go 阿祖's tomb together. If you ask me to use a word to describe this place, it would be "DISASTROUS". 阿祖 is buried on a mountain. There's no beautiful scenery, only withered yellow grasses and scorching sun! But of course, no one dare to give much comments since it's our ancestor, we've to give our respects.




Main Objective
After a long walk, many were regretting coming to the trip honestly. For me, I was more looking forward to the restaurant... hehe... 四湾 is a place full of lobsters. Lobsters is of course our 主菜.


Other than lobsters, I like 山猪肉 as well. These are the things you usually don't eat in Singapore. I saw ostrich meat on the menu too, maybe we should try it the next time round.






Wa Si 连泰 e Cha Bo Qia
This joke will probably last a decade. I remember the very 1st time when I went to 四湾 with my parents & my younger sis, it was to attend a wedding dinner. My mum was bringing us around, proudly showing us her hometown. The funny thing is that she knows almost everyone there. She was going into shops, telling them that she is "连泰 e cha bo qia" (Lian Tai's daughter). My dad was commenting jokingly that we should rent a pick-up and a loud hailer for mum to “答谢选民” (thank her voters). Haha.. so you can imagine my mum going ard like a MP saying hi to everyone.

Apparently, according to my dad, 阿公 is quite a person there. He was the 校董 of the only school in that area - 育本学校. He owned this shop-house and build the 2nd level himself.


我的“母校”
Haha... we din study there. My cousins were exclaiming 我的“母校”when they see the school. "母校" it's 我母亲的学校. This is the school that I was talking abt just now. It's a small village, so there's only 1 school. When I first came to 四湾 for wedding dinner, the dinner was held at the school's basketball court. In fact, all dinner is held here. In memberance of our dad & mums, we took a "class photo" at the basketball court.


Ending
This also marks an end to our 四湾岛 exclursion.
Jiaxun is going back to Australia and we probably wun be seeing him till next year's holidays. Hope this will be a memorable , if not happy exclursion for him. As for the rest, guess I don't have to put in much efforts for the next trip, all I have to do is to set a date/time and I guess they would turn up at the ferry terminal. Hopefully Ah San will be able to join us the next time round.