Flying back from Hong Kong on the 27th, I was immediately thrown into the pandemonium that is the entire paternal side of the family scrambling to organise a ‘non-Low’ like event for our grandparent’s golden anniversary. 

What does it mean to be Low-like? My theory is that we’re the descendants of sloths, only better looking. In general known to be extremely relaxed and terribly easy-going. Turn those two attributes on its head and you don’t really have the ideal party planning team. But somehow or other we pulled through. From the excellent song choice to sing, the crowd participation games we hosted, right down to the venue, photo/videographers and last but certainly not least, touching the hearts of the golden couple beyond measure, I have to say we really pulled this one through. Anyway I really think the photos will do this event more justice than my words ever could.

We opened with the song ‘Only You’ by The Platters. Two days of somewhat practice, or rather most of us just learning most of the lyrics while the couple’s three children (Dad, Aunty Cecelia, Uncle Ronnie) took the lead mikes.

While the couple waltzed in led by the youngest of the grandchildren, with all their loved ones surrounding them.

My little Low man took centre stage earlier during sound testing. See what I mean about photos really turning out dashing?

Adrian and I sang nervously under the eyes of Mama, who we thought seemed somewhat unhappy or angry almost. But we found out later on it was just the face she was making as she held back her tears.

As the three oldest grandchildren we were given the task of the welcoming speech. Adrian spoke about how he could only hope for a marriage as long lasting and that if he could wish for one more thing, a wife that nagged a bit less. I made my pretty short, just the lessons I learnt from living with them for three weeks during HSC in 2010. Steph spoke from an experience she observed between the two, on how Khong Khong always realises when Mama is cold, and shuts the air conditioning flaps before she goes to bed.

Khong Khong making his speech to his wife of 50 years

Kicked off the night with the anniversary quiz. Questions about the couple were put together by our entire family.

Answer sheets not unlike those we had for UPSR were handed out to each table, expecting a solid group effort from every one of them to answer the questions flashed on the projector screen.

For the answers, I put together a video filming the Q&A session between myself, dad, Kie, Owie, against the golden couple. Kudos to all of the above and Stepmom for help with direction and filming.

The top two tables had the same scores and we called our granduncle and a grandaunt to come on stage to answer a tiebreaker question: 

What did Casey bring Nyoke Chin on their first date?

a. chocolate

b. flowers

c. durian

d. satay

e. nothing

After two rounds of guessing between them. Our granduncle caught between durian and nothing, said nothing. And he was right, LOL.

Next was the beauty pageant competition where we called upon the women in our family who were 55 and above to show us their stuff.

These were our finalists, with contestant number 4, our grandaunt from Tampin being crowned best dressed.

Our last pony trick was a Who Am I powerpoint presentation where we cropped photos of people in the crowd and asked everyone to guess who the people are. It was incredibly hilarious and by far my favourite event of the night because people just could not recognise themselves. Everyone in the slideshow after all was present that night. And also the fact that we got everyones photos off Facebook, the thought of them all going home to unfriend Dad for this was just too funny.

Uncle Jimmy proving us all wrong that it was indeed possible not to recognise oneself when he raised his hand to guess someone elses name on a photo of himself.

With everything out of the way, obligatory karaoke session began with people making song dedications to the couple.

My dress which was a huge, huge steal bought only a couple of days before the event.

Family shot once more.

I don’t think I’ve ever ran around so much or fiddled with my laptop at any family event. By the end of it my feet were hurting so much despite my making it a point to wear relatively low heels and not my usual prostitute ones. It was so worth it though. Everything was.