A Very Crowded Pre-Ching Ming

Went to visit my grandma's grave this morning at Nilai Memorial Park, thinking that we would go one week earlier to avoid the Ching Ming crowd next weekend.

Guess everybody had the same idea...

Traffic already started piling up from the highway before the entrance to Nilai Memorial. Once past the gates, cars are parked on every bit of grass available and people are unloading lots of stuff from their car boot. Some look like they were coming for a picnic carrying food and drinks, and PreTeen even spotted someone bringing a large blanket!

We were there at 9 am, thinking that we would stay for about 50 minutes to an hour the most, before sending PreTeen for her ballet class at 10.30 am. My parents were early but most of my uncles and aunties were caught in the jam and only arrived close to 10 am. We thought it wouldn't be polite to leave just as they arrived, so we stayed until 10.10 am before excusing ourselves.

It took us about 45 minutes to exit the Memorial Park as there was a bumper to bumper crawl on the way out. PreTeen had to miss her ballet class but we still had to make it back for CoolTeen's haircut appointment...yup, he only cuts his hair at this salon where I need to call up to make an appointment because the hairdresser is the one who washes, cuts, blow-dries, colours, perms the customer's hair. CoolTeen likes the way she cuts his hair (and she knows that I want his hair neat) and her rates are pretty cheap because it's at some low-cost flats, so she's pretty busy on the weekends.

We were about 15 minutes late for his haircut appointment and there was already an elderly lady in the salon perming her hair so we had to wait until the hairdresser had finished putting the elderly lady's hair in curlers. Hearing that I was late, the elderly lady proceeded to tell the hairdresser how she never likes to keep people waiting and how she would always call if she knew that she was late...and she went on and on while I stared daggers at her back. Ok,ok I know I was late but I had apologised and I didn't need a complete stranger to indirectly lecture me about being on time!! (especially when hubby practically flew us all the way back from Nilai while I kept my fingers crossed that there wouldn't be any speed traps along the way, and I really didn't have any other time to bring CoolTeen for a haircut because of our busy schedules). Hubby is reading this and he says that I should have added "We would have got back faster if I had driven"...very funny (frowns)...