Picnic Yengko

The low profile Picnic Yengko, which was intended to be low profile (but expected to be as colourful as all the previous reunions had been), went ahead quietly – just as low profile as the preparation and advertising/merchandising had been. By far, of all the reunions that the self-appointed reunion committee had organized – this had the lowest participation.

There were many factors for the low turnouts – a lot of the usual suspects blamed it on B1N1! It’s a stage of our career where quite a lot began to go back to classes for MBA and other qualifications, so the other half has to be at home looking after the children. To be fair, the A(B1N1) group constitutes a small number so there must be other reasons why we did not achieve as high participation as what we were used to.

I just hope that it’s not a sign that we no longer like eating-related events – because that is equivalent to abdicating everything that Malay College has taught us (he he).

We must thank Epit & Aily and Idzam & Ayu; and especially Ajaque because they organized everything on their own. I had my own complications so for the first time, I did not do much towards the end – so everything was left to Epit & Idzam.

We nearly abandoned the whole thing because we could not find a good beach. The idea was to have a free and easy gathering where people can come and go, have lots of activities but pay a pittance, so a public beach would have fit that bill since our anti-social behaviours would definitely drive other people away from the spot we decided to colonise.

Wrong.

We spent almost 2 months looking for a suitable beach spot and didn’t find any. First, on Chamat’s recommendation we went to Bagan Lalang, only to see the legacy of the infamous Khir Toyo (of the Tempe/Botox fame) spoiling the whole stretch of beach making it cramped and too congested. Unless we start the picnic at 4 am in the morning, there was no way we could get a spot.

Then Wong suggested a stretch of beach in Kuala Selangor – so Idzam, Pak Tuan and I drove all the way to Kuala Selangor, only to find mangrove-populated riverbank (hidden by a large tract of oil palm estates) instead. By Wong’s definition, any part of the land adjacent to a flowing stream is considered a beach – so we ended the trip by sampling the food in Kuala Selangor.

Pak Tuan then lobbied for the event to be shifted to a waterfall – so my bulky car revved up the hills of Melawati to sample the coolness (so it claims) of Kemensah (ada la a small jeram there). The water was all yellowish (they blamed it on the rain) and it was too cramped to house a crowd as rowdy as the Yengkos.

So I gave up and didn’t do anything on the location – nearly scrapped off the plan altogether.

Fortunately, while fooling around at MCOBA’s futsal we discovered that Ajaque’s company was one of the sponsors (and Epit discovered this while taking the token prize for our team’s victory as the plate winner for the senior category), so they had a chat (myself and the rest were already at a Pelita restaurant somewhere devouring our late lunch!) and the subject of Picnic Yengko cropped up.

So that was how we were upgraded from Khir Toyo’s tempe-like beach and Wong’s smelly mangrove riverbank to a nice villa by the beach in Port Dickson!

I didn’t do anything after that; so much so that I had a control-freak attack on the morning of the picnic. I went to pick Chamat first and throughout the journey was panicking with what could go wrong. Due to the huge guilty conscience, I also did not pick up any calls from people who had arrived there (obviously they thought I would be the first there to start the BBQ pit and running around ha ha) - so Mattop's first words when I picked up his call: "aku ingat kau dah sampai and aku dah boleh makan BBQ!". He he.

Nak dijadikan cerita, I subconsciously took the Putrajaya exit on ELITE and spent the next one hour making a huge tour of Putrajaya, before coming out at the exact exit that I first came in to go back on ELITE.

Contoh2 conversation with Chamat:

“Eyh eyh Chamat, dah siap dah AG’s Chambers nya office, kat sini rupanya. Lawa kan?”
“Aku peduli apa ngan AG’s Chambers, mana jalan nak pi PD ni”

“Hmmm somehow aku rasa kita pernah lalu je jalan ni”
“Yes ****** this is the entrance that we took tadi”

Ha ha after that berjam2 la Chamat mengungkit pasal salah ambik exit. And ramai lah yang lain chip in sekali ridiculing my sense of direction.

By the time we entered KL-Seremban Highway, Chibix overtook us so I just followed him (and tertinggal) so there was no issue on direction from there onwards.

Ajaque’s place was nice and perfect for things like this. The house was perched on top of what looks like a mini cliff then there was another flat land where we put the tents up. Beyond that was the beach.

I had another control-freak attack when I saw the amount of fruits that Epit arranged for the picnic – ONE LORRY. And there were varieties too – buah rambutan & pulasan (same category), buah langsat & something that looks like buah langsat (same category). By the final count, there were only about 40 plus of us (including the kids), so the 30 adults present had to try to devour a lorry worth of fruits.

In the end, we had good time with the durians (I have to admit it was one of the nicest durians I had in my life and I never eat that much durian ever) – but we had to pack the rest for everyone to bring home. Syam was entertaining the thought of opening an instant stall somewhere to sell the fruits, but that thought fizzled out as we saw Fadli & Pak Tuan taking whatever left of the durians in a big bakul with them.

As for the BBQ chicken and the rest of the food – there were a lot of leftovers because most of us spent the time eating the lorry-worth of fruits; that I felt really bad for Aily & Ayu who had to wake up early to cook all the other foods.

We finished by 6 pm (or rather we had to chase people back by 6 pm since Ajaque had to go back too) and left by 9 pm, after cleaning everything.

This may be the most low profile reunion so far; but looking back I consider it more of a reconnaissance mission. There were a lot of lesson learnt that we can use for the next reunion – and all were unanimous that we shall have an annual gathering at this place from next year onwards ha ha ha (tak tanya Ajaque lagi ni, pakai assume je).

So thank you very much to Ajaque for the past, present and future deeds (he he), roget me not (ala2 vandals in koleq dulu)!

LESSON LEARNT / THINGS WORTH NOTING

1) Don’t give the budgeting and estimating task to a PTD – he will build in a 200% fat. That’s how we ended up with a lorry worth of fruits.

2) In the end it was not even a picnic – it is a replay of Pesta Buah2an in koleq that we started in 1994 (more driven by the need to main jambu and kacau junior, lagipun KPKM ada duit lebih!). So next time we shall call it Buah Yengko (ha ha sounds dodgy!)

3) Aily’s & Ayu’s plea – “lain kali boleh tak jangan bagi my husband masuk komiti food ni, letih I kena bangun pagi prepare food”

4) We all discovered the existence of Youporn.com – the parallel of Youtube.com but for porn home made videos. Thanks to ***** – he said he tried to access in Malaysia but it’s blocked ha ha.

5) Md Shah teamed up with Idris for a volleyball game against Leman and Ahmad. I think Leman and Ahmad won, especially when one of Md Shah’s players (KNO la tu) did not move at all and waited for the ball to come to him. The other trick is to shout each other’s name and they all ran away from the ball (ha ha best kutuk, sebab kitorang menang!). Md Shah/Idris = Idzam, Chamat & KNO, Leman/Ahmad = Noni, Chibix & Jita

Photos here (malas aku nak upload kat Flickr or Fotopages, pi check Facebook la)