Apapun Makanannya, Minumnya ...

Not too long ago, I was invited to a wedding of, apparently, a childhood friend of my cousins? I don’t know the details either; all I know they know my family, but I don’t know them. Or I didn’t, until now. Not gonna lie, sometimes it baffles me how much I don’t know about my own family.

Okay, back to the wedding.

To say that the wedding was massive is an absolute understatement. Just imagine, the whole procession lasted for about 14 days, with different parts of the procession being held every day, from the religious ones to the traditional ones. Every. Single. Day. And on the last day, they wrapped it with an absolutely insanely massively excessive reception, where they invited around 4500 people. Yeah, you read that right. 4500 invitees.

Four thousands five hundreds.

Assuming that each one brought at least another person with them, the attendees were approaching, let me crunch the numbers real fast, 9000.

9000 people for a wedding reception.

NINE THOUSANDS.

Let that sink in. Okay, no, actually let them stay outside. We don’t have a sink outside, and too many inside.

For a scale, the population of Clausthal-Zellerfeld as of June 2025 is around 13000. That wedding reception alone was more than half of Clausthal-Zellerfeld population. Thankfully, it was a wedding reception, so people actually made an effort to take care of themselves. Unlike, you know, the infamous animecon, where onion-smelling, cellar-dwelling weebs roam around.

The food served? No comment on that, but let me phrase it like this: if you can afford to organise a 14-day wedding procession and feed around 9000 people in one day, then you can definitely afford a good catering with an extensive menu. Therefore, I believe there won’t be people who complain they didn’t get the Zuppa soup or couldn’t find a specific wedding menu.

And imagine 9000 people, queueing in the buffet area, taking what they could fit on their plate. Full was an understatement. And as a freegan myself, of course I used this chance to fill what hasn’t been filled in thousands of years. Thankfully, I was in the VIP section, so I didn’t have to queue with a lot of peasants people, privileged even though I know absolutely no one from the bride's nor the groom’s family.

In the midst of digging and scooping the roasted goat, I saw someone familiar from afar among the peasants sea of people. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be here. Someone who was said to be dead. That someone was Hara. No, no, not the Hara Chicken, nor are they the owner. They just happen to have the same name.

I was about to approach Hara when I saw another person also approaching. I could only see their back, unable to identify the person. It seemed like they were close, as they talked and laughed together. Well, seems like they don’t need another person in the conversation, I said to myself. Right when I was about to go back to my seat, that very person showed their face! Shocked beyond belief, I almost dropped my plate. Okay, not that dramatic, but I was indeed shocked. It was Nawang. Na-effin-wang. The same person who, a couple of years ago, said that Hara is dead to them.

Suddenly, all the ridiculousness of this reception is nothing compared to what I just witnessed.

The event that unfolded before my eyes was way, way more ridiculous than whatever was happening around me. Nawang and Hara, together, like nothing happened between them. Okay, to be fair, I only know the story from Nawang’s side, not Hara’s side. Maybe Hara could convince Nawang and they reconciled, maybe they realised they can’t live apart from each other, maybe they realised what they did was dumb, maybe maybe maybe. I don’t know.

I sat on my assigned table and thought, how fickle the human heart is. Just like a drop of water in the ocean can ripple the surface, where it might become a tidal wave. And just like that, everything changes.
You’ll never know how The Universe will spin your life, whether the outcome or the split in the life path. All we can do is to never say never; nothing is absolute in the face of The Universe. Like the wise people once said that only Sith deal with absolutes. Or in Indonesian we say, apapun makanannya, minumnya ludah sendiri.