Not sure what....

That basically sums up today. Not sure what.

We were supposed to have a kenduri, mainly 'orang masjid' and close family.

That was cancelled due to the passing of a relative late last night.

She was almost like a mom to my Dad, and like a grandmother to me, second only the my late grand-aunt who used to live next door to our current house.

So obviously my parents went 'menziarah' or 'mengunjung' or whatever term you use in your general area of living.

I kinda woke up late, so I woke up to a lot of food, chair, tables and even a tent put up for the kenduri, but no kenduri.

Also went out to pick up some 'kuih' we ordered.

Off course the close family came by anyway, and generally this usually means my wife's family, because by virtue of being an only child and, obviously, having no siblings, I really don't have any close family.

I prefer the company of my wife's family anyhow, eventhough their a bit loud and havoc-gitu.... it lends to a 'ceria' atmosphere, so to speak..... plus they've got kids in the range of my kids' age (cousings obviously) so bolehla bebudak tu main-main ke apa ke... anyhow most of the 'close-family' on my side is either Chinese (which for the purpose of the planned-but-cancelled kenduri renders them irrelevant, I think....) or Malay but live on the other side of town (since the kenduri was supposed to be small-scale, this sort of also rendered them irrelevant, again, I think... ).

So anyway, after waiting until a little bit after Zohor - to make sure that anyone who did not hear of the cancellation of the kenduri and came by anyway, could be given an apology and an explanation of why it was cancelled (nobody came anyway... I guess they all knew...) by yours truly - we decided to go to the Zoo. Why? The mind works in mysterious ways. Anyway there were like 4 restless kids in the house, and it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Anyway, to cut to the chase.... doesn't make sense to make the story short after that long introduction I know, but it's my blog so I can be as goblog as I wanna be.... anyway the point is, we got to an animal which kinda got me thinking.

For those of you who don't know what animal this is, this is the official info displayed at the Zoo.

And that brings me to the often-used semi-profane word CIPAN and it's close relative, CIPET.

What the heck do these words mean anyway?

Are they supposed to mean that you're a sleepy black-yellow-white striped aquatic-vegetarion mammal with a trunk?

OR one that is domesticated, hence the addition of the word PET?

So I looked it up on the net.

The best return I got on the search for CIPAN, leads me to believe that CIPANs are indeed mammals, but not aquatic-vegetarians with trunks, rather a group of mammals, doing some god-know-what medical or scientific research somewhere in Portugal. And they're probably wearing black-yellow-white striped lab coats. Maybe. And some of them maybe also have trunks, albeit in another area of their body, and not to suck in water, but the opposite. Maybe. If you know Portuguese let me know....

On the topic of CIPET, I also got some results on the search-engine, which lead me to believe that CIPETs are a group of mammals, trained somewhere in India, dealing with Chemical, Petrochemicals and even fertilizers. Also probably wearing black-yellow-white striped lab coats. Maybe.

So would you rather be a CIPAN or a CIPET?