At home now, having spent the whole afternoon sleeping. Am replete with dinner and rest; now what the hell do I do tonight?
Andrew (Gan)'s kind advice on the wedding money issue: "hey, re: wedding angpaos, what my parents do is ascertain the cost of the wedding dinner per person, i.e. if they know shangri-la or mandarin hotel charges say $50 per person for use of the function room plus the lavish dinner, they use that as a rough estimate. But they consider that the baseline."
One of my recently married colleagues showed me her very cool wedding valuation Excel spreadsheet, which included a very nifty macro for calculating the ideal angpao amount based on a variety of factors - overall economic outlook (value pulled from another spreadsheet she uses for personal financial planning), closeness to bride, closeness to groom, wedding venue, fengshui factors, personal vs couple's wealth differential, number of guests, etc etc. I plonked in all the numbers, and came up with RM128.50. A bit more pricey than I would've thought.
Other comments:
"Is it a hotel or a restaurant?"
"The guy is your friend, or the gal is your friend? If you give too much money to your guy friend.. it's like insulting him.. but if you give too little money to the female friend.. it's like you're being cheapskate."
"Weddings can have damn good return on investment man... from your family and close friends can probably make back the cost already."
Me: "That's one way to measure your social rank in life; how much of a financial success your wedding was."
"THE BLOODY RESTAURANT 'SAPU'-ED THE WHOLE (leftover) BARREL OF BEER! WHY DIDN'T YOU DRINK MORE!" (My recently-married colleague venting her frustration to another of our colleagues who was only concentrating on hard liquor at the wedding dinner)