The Dusuns' one hour :-)

My paternal aunt and her husband celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary yesterday. It was such a beautiful celebration, what with her children (I think there must be about a dozen of them), who are all grown up, and her grandchildren/great grandchildren were all gathered up. And the place, Bundu Tuhan, is such a bonus. Fresh air, nice temperature, just like spring in Perth, it made for a beautiful party setting.

My kids were reintroduced to another aspect of Dusun culture, the Dusuns' sense of time. Very true to what my friends always say: "where there are two or three Dusuns gathered together, they can sit and talk for hours on end". The lunch reception started at 1pm. The kids asked me how long were we going to be there, to which I answered, "an hour". We arrived at about 1.30pm, when the party was just starting. As usual there were so much party food, catered to feed the whole village population and some.

Meeting long lost cousins was definitely exciting. After food, the merry making begun. (Since the Dusuns are well known for their hedonism, it would never do not to have some music in a party; at least a karaoke set). Yours truly got carried away too, that she agreed to sing two songs (duet with a sister-in-law of course because yours truly isn't a professional singer!) and danced a few dances. The best part of course was having the first dance with the uncle who's the 'groom'. He is well-known to be a serious person, but surprisingly agreed to have that dance! What a wonderful feeling :-)

Anyway, the kids were watching the clock all the time, waiting for that 'one hour' to come. (Thankfully they got to know some cousins who were too fascinating not to pay attention to in the end). Needless to say, the one hour dragged on that we only managed to get away from the party at about 5.30pm. (Well I wouldn't have minded staying till the end if it wasn't raining and the road condition was a bit better though). My eldest came to this conclusion- "if mom says "an hour" to attend a Dusun party, it would probably mean 3 or 4 hours". Well done, daughter. You have been successfully reintroduced into the culture :-)