Sunday 2 August 2015

Durian Fest V - Post Mortem

This year's Durian Fest taught me a lot.  This is the first time that I had an open invite and I must say it was a stressful experience for me albeit it has its highlights.  Preparation for the event was already stressful as I had some people upset with me when I declined some of their rsvps.  It was a necessary measure as the response was already large.  Many responded late and some didn't confirm till the last minute so I really couldn't accommodate them. All my previous durian tests was by invitation only so this is the first experience that I had in trying to nail down how many are coming.
The day arrived and true to my guess, quite a few people arrived early, some disrupting the preparations and some quite rude.  This created stress for my crew and I, something which I wanted to avoid.  The paying guests could be categorised into 3 - the good, the bad and the ugly.  Since I always like to know the worst first, let's address the ugly.  The ugly are those that paid RM 10 and know that it is a "eat-at-site" function but yet choose to steal durians in plastic bags or other bags that they brought with them.  These are people that I noted on the registration sheets and will choose to no longer have anything to do with.  Then there are those "uglies" that came and eat without paying.  Again, I will choose to no longer have anything to do with them.  Since they didn't register in, it is easy to avoid them in the future.
Next we have the bad.  These are those that think that since they paid RM 10, they can waste as many fruits as they like.  Over 100 fruits were wasted by these "Bads" who ate a couple "ulas" of the fruit and then left them lying around, and sometimes throwing the barely eaten on the ground.  Guess what, these "Bads" will no longer be welcomed.  There are also the "Bads" who refer to my crew as "kuli" and wanted to order them around.  Guess what, RM 10 doesn't buy you a slave that you can be rude to and threaten to report to me.  The other type of "Bads" complaint about the durian and the lemang, all the while downing the food like there was no tomorrow.  These people also go into my "undesirables" list.
OK, enough of the negativity.  Let's hilight the Good.  There were groups who used this opportunity to get together, laid their mats down, shared fruits and ate lemang and enjoyed the drinks provided, all the while having a good time.  It was a pleasure to see them enjoy themselves.  Then there were others that shared fruits, even though they didn't know each other because they decided that they wanted to try other fruits.  Then, there were those that got there only to find that we had run out of fruits.  Durians are not something that you can simply pluck, and due to the Bad and the Ugly, we ran out of fruits faster than anticipated.  They were understanding about it and I will put them in my "Desirables" list.  Some of them came from as far away as Melaka and first time to the area.  Imagine how bad I felt :(.
My apologies goes to those who didn't get any durians and I will add you to the list of invites for next year's event.  This will be the first and last time that I will have an open event.  I will revert to previous format where we had a closed event by invitation only.  I want everyone to have a pleasant experience, both the guest and my crew, the same kind we had previous years.  A very important lesson was learnt this year: You can only control certain things but there are so many unknowns :).

8 comments:

  1. It must have been an interesting albiet stressful experience. Some things/behaviour just cannot be anticipated i suppose. Unfortunately i couldnt make it...my daughter n family are arriving from US tomorow/today for 3 weeks... so much prep to do. Anyway kudos to you for organising the event.. hope there were enough 'goods' to have made it somewhat worthwhile. Take care.

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    1. Yes there was. And it also provided an invaluable experience for me. After all, if I never tried it, I wouldn't know :)

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  2. Hi Kak Ros. It was brave of you to host an open event. It's of course unfortunate that some Malaysians have no manners to speak of and have not evolved much from prehistoric days living in caves. I'm sorry that you had to endure such brutish and unsavory behavior. I would've flipped in an instant if I were you.

    Apologies again to having missed this opportunity, but I hope that you could organize a Kangkong Party Event over at your farm closer to the end of the year.

    Please continue doing all the wonderful work over at your organic farm. I will drop by kg Sg Penchala one day and look you up at the morning market... Warm regards, Thiru.

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    1. Thank you Thiru. Too bad you missed it. Did meet with your ex-secretary and her hubby and family. Maybe I will host an event in December you you guys can bring me a birthday cake :)

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  3. By invite is better than open event. A lot of uglies if it's open event. Not worth the heartache. Got to know about your event through Malaysians Gardeners FB

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    1. That is the lesson I learnt but on the other hand I alto got to meet quite a few "Goods" :). It was a good experience though.

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  4. Assalamualaikum Kak.. Masih Ada ke durian yg saya boleh beli.. Peminat durian kampung ☺️☺️

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    1. Wa'alaikum salam. Sorry for the late reply as I was out of town. The durian season ended awal Ogos jadi dah habis dah masa DF V.

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