兄弟

For the non-Chinese friends out there, the title means brother. It could refer to your very own blood brother or your very good guy friend.

Speaking of which, I was one of the 兄弟 for my good friend's, YY, wedding, which typically involves accompany the groom very early in the morning to the bride's house and fetch the bride from her parent's place. However, the task isn't as simple as it seems. The bride also has her sisters a.k.a 姐妹 who will think of devious tasks for the groom and his brothers to do before they actually let the groom into the house. Most tasks usually involve eating / drinking something gross, doing embarrassing stuff,etc.

I've usually laughed out loud at wedding dinners of other friends whenever I see the antics that the groom and his brothers had to put up, but nothing in this world can prepare for you this...

If memory serves me well, these were what we were supposed to do...

1. Upon arrival, the groom has to shout from the carpark "I love you" to the bride in 7 different languages. Us brothers needed to lend a helping hand so that the bride could actually hear this to pass this task.
2. Then came the apple vinegar for us to drink which tasted very sour! It's part of the 4 tastes, sourness, sweetness, bitterness and spiciness... That kinda prepped us for what was to come later...
3. After the apple vinegar, we had the sweet part! Bananas in caramel sauce and we had to finish everything on the plate, i.e., to drink up the caramel using straws. I could have sworn that my blood sugar levels spiked up that day.
4. Finally we could take the lift to the bride's flat. Upon reaching the flat, the groom had to kiss 3 of the bride's photos among many other photos of women on a piece of cardboard. Think that's easy? The groom has to be blindfolded and the cardboard's actually pasted to the ceiling of the corridor outside the flat. In the end, us brothers could not carry him all the way and one of us promptly took the cardboard down for him to kiss, much to the chagrin of the sisters. ;)
5. Next was the bitterness part. Blended bittergourd, which most of us felt it was quite good, much to the surprise of the sisters, who gave us more upon our request. Hah~
6. Then came the semmingly-impossible part. To lick a giant icecube that has the key of the house frozen in it.. Luckily we brought along a bottle of mineral water! Which helped to melt the ice slightly faster to get to the key.. but the key was a fake one!
7. Then the spiciness part. Pure fresh chilli paid! I helped the groom to eat most of the chilli which left me with a bad tummy and a numb tongue. Hah.
8. Finally we had to sing the bride's favourite song along with headbands made of flowers, hula hoops. YY had to put on a cute set of bunny ears for this. Laughter ensues.

And then we were in the house! =) It was a pretty tiring morning cos some of us brothers spent the night at YY's new place where we were supposed to discuss about the plans for the next day but ended up playing PES 2009 on PS3 instead. Well done, Sony! And we all pretty much had a couple hours' of sleep. Hopefully I can get some pics from YY for this post. If not, I'll just upload some photos I managed to take that day. =)