cny celebrations

today, i brought my mum to the elderly rehab center chinese new year celebrations. and it was quite an interesting event. the celebrations was held at the headquarters of an insurance company. for that matter, it was organized and sponsored by this particular insurance company as part of its corporate social initiative. what happened was that since early this month, the elderly rehab center contacted us to check if we were keen to attend. as for me, the center manager called me up personally to invite me. of cos i agreed. and we were reminded to dress as nicely as possible. and so i drove my mum to the location this evening. here's what happened and my thoughts about it...

when we first arrived, i was pleasantly surprised to see all the center staff dressed and decked up to the nines in chinese traditional wears, especially so when most of the center staff are malays. i must say they were so sporting! and it was nice to see them dressed up compared to their usual center t-shirt and jeans attire. the center manager wore a long cheongsam-cut dress that has beautifully hand-embroidered chinese mandarin ducks and flowers, matching long pants and guess what, a matching tudung too! as for the malay male assistants, they wore silk chinese top (macam those made famous by those movies with hong kong triads). so nice of them. and the mood that was created was very festive, very cross-cultural. very nice indeed.

we were treated to a spread of nice buffet dinner once we arrived. interestingly, while it was hosted by the insurance company, not a single insurance company staff was allocated to host us at our tables. and so, it became some sort of an elderly home dinner with the elderly guests talking amongst themselves. as for the insurance company staff, all of them were dressed in black t-shirts and they were either acting busy, talking amongst themselves or serving us food. in fact, some went as far as serving us food and then coming back to serve us drinks and to top up our drinks. think they were really too free. haha. yup, a host-but-not-a-host kinda occasion.

regrettably, at some point, the staff made us feel like we were props for their agenda. you see, from the time we arrived to the time we left, there were quite a number of their staff walking around busy taking photos/ video-taping with their ipads. come to think of it, it seemed like these people were more enthusiastic about taking photos and video-taping. and during the dinner, we kept hearing them mention that this is for their company website. hmmm. combined with their seemingly less than enthusiastic "hosting", it almost felt like they were merely putting up a show. then again, let's not think too much, let's just enjoy the fact that they actually hosted us.

and of course, dinner would be incomplete without a performance. they had their staff singing chinese new year songs, they invited school children to perform some chinese drum performance, a chinese dance, a wushu demonstration, and so on.  and given that the event was self-hosted rather than staged and managed by professionals, the whole feel was rather impromptu and un-co-ordinated. but of cos, i am not complaining. rather, i find this rawness contributed to the overall warmth and charm of the event.

all-in-all, i would say it was an interesting event. regardless of the agenda of the various stakeholders, i thought everyone enjoyed it.