Bunga telur - Part One

A day after my second anniversary.

A little dash of my wedding reminiscence mode is still there, my friends, readers, whoever you are, I would like to make a clarification on something today.

My father once told me, focus on the end factor. Do not scrape back old wounds, the wisest thing I could do to my wellbeing is to forgive and forget.

It’s not in my slightest intention to dig out a buried memory, especially when it is not exactly a good one, alright definitely not, but I feel for once and for all, let me just tell what had actually happened.

This has taken place somewhere around three months before my wedding day.

Back then, I still stayed at my rented apartment in Subang Jaya. Through the innovation of webs and blogs, I found out that my ex schoolmate, N and a few of her clans were venturing into the wedding business. Cool. They had a blog for their services, and eventhough during that particular time their business fellowship and operations were really very new, I couldn’t help to feel proud and happy for them.

The best thing was, it was at that very time I was in the beginning to start full gear on my wedding preps, the planning, the cards, the decors, flowers, bunga telurs, souvenir gifts. This is perfect, I thought.

I always admire entrepreneurship spirit in young people. These girls were all attached with their full time job, and the wedding business was their brainchild out of hobby and passion.

When we were in school, N and I were not very close. I remember we were classmates though, but she was in my school only until Form 3 before changing school. Ahh those all don't matter I thought, her house is just five minutes away from mine and that should make our arrangements more convenient, and I was happy to support a new business of a friend’s. After all, I thought some more, rather than going to a total stranger and discuss about the most important day of my life, it’d be better to do it with someone I have known. Well don’t you all think so?

After a session of coffee and chat, the first item that I ordered from her was bunga telur. I recalled she was saying about somebody who was delighted and impressed upon seeing their workmanship, so without much fuss I confirmed 80 sticks. As norm has it, I did ask if she could show me some samples. She promised she’d bring that over the next time we meet, and assured me not to worry, because I would surely love their design. I finally ordered a mix of RM10 and RM8 sticks, for 80 sticks.

I was happy to have a peace of mind at least for a small part of the entire preparations. I had so many other things to think about, so a tiny baggage was lifted out of my shoulder.

N worked odd hours. It was an international company and her line of duty involved calling foreign countries so she was free when I was working, while she finished work at midnight, when I had to get up at wee hours the following morning. I remember it was difficult to actually see the samples that she promised to show me. I started to feel like waiting with bated breath.

Finally, she SMSed to go over to her place so she can pass me, not a sample, but how my bunga telur was going to look like, since they have started making them and everything was almost complete. When I received the SMS, there was a mild feeling to pass out, because I had no idea how the damn sticks gonna look like, and I had no choice to just accept them as N said I could collect them in a couple of days or so.

Okay, she passed me one that belonged to RM8 category, a cream coloured tulip (though I felt it was a bit too kuncup) with a string of thin gold ribbons and… well I think that’s it. It was very simple looking and I was surprised to know people were charging RM8 for something like that.

Initially, during the coffee, I mentioned I wanted the bunga telur to look somewhat fluffy.. and I remember using the word ‘kembang and meriah’, as I didn’t want my bunga pahar on the dias to look stiff. So I naturally refreshed her memory on that request, that this one didn’t exactly define my description. She firmly suggested this one was better, because this was the latest trend. As the one yg gembar gembur tu didn't look tasteful and that one simply old style, she stated.

I rationalized to her, of course I wanted them to look tasteful. Why can’t a fluffy bunga telur can’t be made tastefully beautiful? So after a few more exchange of lines, I told her to please make sure the RM10 ones look much better to compensate the simple (lame?) looking their RM8 sisters.

Now, let’s fast forward to collection. She delivered the boxes to my house. My first meeting with the RM10 bunga telur was not much different from the day in the before paragraph. I was slightly shocked but quite heavily disappointed. N was in a hurry during the delivery of those sad looking tulip thingy that laid stiffly in the carton box. Good thing she left early as I couldn’t pretend to like those sticks in the boxes that cramped my small living room. I frowned, and stared at the bunga telur for a long time before putting it back and took a long nap.

Bigfish and Suz my housemate, were sitting at my living room, both with a bunga telur in hand, like it’s a studied specimen. Suz thought they were not bad but the price was a bit like a highly commercialized business. I told her, this is a part time business of my friend, there isn’t a shop or anything. She settled “Okay, then that’s expensive for something like this”. Bigfish looked at the innocent bunga telur closely, “How can the labour cost be 50 or 60 percent of this? I mean, just check out the materials they used to make these.”

“You’re missing the point dear.. it’s not about the price. I just want these things to look nice!” I snapped. But now, they were not exactly pretty, and they were quite overpriced. I felt dizzy.

The following day we were at Medan MARA to check the laser proof of my wedding cards. I brought two sticks of bunga telur along with me. The cards were fabulous. We stopped at a shop that looked crowded with hantaran, trays, glittery flowers and decorative beads were everywhere.

“Kak, ini saya ada bawak sample bunga telur. Berapa ya harga kalau akak buat sama macam ni?”

Belek-belek.

***********************************

To be continued.