Remember in Gawai, the Love weighs more than gold

I have not celebrated the traditional Gawai festival this year with my friends who celebrate Gawai but I am with them in spirit and in love.

I have celebrated harvest festival in Sabah and tomorrow, on harvest festival, I am visiting with my good indigenous friend in Peninsular Malaysia.

Gawai in Sarawak, as I have learned, is celebrated among the Iban Dayak community but not he Orang Ulu community which have other celebrations. I have friends of both side of the spectrum, and irrespective of the differences in cultures, people in Sarawak have hearts of gold.

I know I am writing about hearts of gold for the umpteenth time, but in Sarawak, love and friendship and family and camaraderie's does weigh more than gold.

Mack took butterfly and buddy on a close to 14 hour road trip back for the Gawai and we have had many jokes about how butterfly is going to be the favorite among the grannies (an inside joke which I will not explain here).

Others go back to their villages, open up their hearts, take any friends and have a great nice time.

People just open up, things just change, some rules are just relaxed. On Friday, when I was leaving the place of my work, I saw this Gawai decoration in the lobby. The usually decorate up the lobby for every celebration. And in the decoration, the had a few bottles of Tuak which is traditional rice wine.

I wished the security folks a happy Gawai and noted that even Tuak nowadays comes in Johnny Walker Red Label bottles. To my surprise, the ask me if I wanted to try some. I thought it was for decoration plus my company is very strict of all this health, safety and security issues and would never permit drinking alcohol on company premises.

Then I said, yeah, I would like to try some. The poured me a nice warm temperature cup of Tuak right in the lobby of my company and there it was, the start of a nice holidays.

I have requested for my friends to bring back some Tuak and hopefully they will, and we will have this nice Tuak party on my home by the beach, have fun and have a post Gawai celebration.

I really look forward to that, and I really look forward to go to some friends longhouses which I am planning in June as well as another one in July.

Until then, this Gawai, like all celebrating, I am celebrating my Gawai with my family, my loved one and hopefully meet up some of my friends on this part of the country.

Confucius said, "To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right."

Happy Gawai to all my friends, those celebrating it and those not celebrating it, as in spirit, I hope for all of my friends to have hearts set right, and to have hearts of gold.

Take care and be well.