Fun With The Neighbours ...

A strange phenomenon overcame me today. This evening I actually attended the neighborhoods community fair for the first time ever in my life. And that is a strange phenomenon for me indeed!

I've been staying in my neighborhood for about 12 years or so now and I'm not really the most social of neighbors (my mom is the social one here). This afternoon, after my disastrous lunch time excursion (you can read all about that one in my other blog, Spiff, The Spaceman) the wife and me decided to attend the community fair in the park near my house and we actually had fun there :)

A little background on the place I live - I live in a place called USJ Subang Jaya and we basically have a couple of different sections that has its own community events and stuff. The section I live in is a small little community in the middle (or at least close to the middle as I can make it out). This community fair has been held for as long as I can remember and my mom is an active participant in this fair, unlike her anti-social son ... LOL!

So, this year, in conjunction with our 50th year independence, the fair was held on a slightly bigger scale. There were loads of community advertisements in the neighborhood about the fair months in advance and as always I didn't give two hoots about it. But this year the wife and me decided to go and check it out since the 2 boys were going cos they have loads of friends from their school that would be there.

About 4pm today (that's the time the fair started) The boys walked over first (it's only 2 minutes away from my house) and the wife and me joined them a little over an hour later. When we arrived there, the fair was just about to get into full swing and I must say I was kinda surprised at the turnout and the activities going on. The kids were busily in the midst of some telematch or something (which unfortunately my younger son didn't win anything due to the fact he was paired with this other doofus boy ... LOL!).

There was this urmmm 'local' filipino band that was belting out some mixed numbers, a dancing trio of young teens doing some hip shaking routine (there were crowd pullers for obvious reasons ... LOL!) music was blaring, people were chatting and having fun, kids were running all over and the wife and me were totally awed by this. One of the committee members even came over personally and welcomed us to the fair. I was impressed! I've always thought of all the people around my neighborhood as a little stuck up. I guess they proved me wrong today.

So, after that, we joined in the fun. There was the entertainment sections, the telematch and games sections, the prize giving sections and the best part of all, the food sections :) And all this was actually for free, the music, fun and games, the entertainment and even the food and drinks! And they had loads of food and drink of various kinds. From the local favourites with the likes of nasi lemak ( literally means 'rice in fat'), fried noodles, goreng pisang (banana fritters) to western stuff like macaroni, sandwiches, muffins, cupcakes and loads more.

The wife and me had a blast, stuffed ourselves silly (gotta run a little extra tomorrow to burn it off) and sat around and enjoyed the entertainment they put on for everyone. In fact everyone had a blast, even the security guards who patrol the neighborhood joined in. Even my more anti-social than me Neanderthal neighbor turned up, though he didn't look like he was enjoying himself (the wife and me had a great time gossiping about him ... LOL) For those of you who don't know about my 'hatred' for my Neanderthal neighbor, you can just read one of my earlier posting titled Neighbour from Hell ... LOL!

I was really impressed by the community spirit that was in evidence here. All these years I've been giving this event a miss and have not really mixed around in my community and after today's experience I'm happy to say that I'll be there for next years event or even for any other events that they organize (they do have other events every couple of months) and may even try to play a more active part in it ... hehehe ... I'm actually surprised with myself for even writing this down cos I never used to believe in this community thing before. I guess I'm getting a little mellow in my old age ... LOL!

I'd like to share some of the pictures (well, 3 pictures anyway ... hehehe) I took. The quality is not that good, bear in mind it was taken with my lowly cell phone camera. So, to the USJ Neighborhood Community, thanks for the fun time :)