I have been sharing some of my favorite angpow pieces on an angpow collectors group in Facebook and some members have been telling me to continue sharing my memorable stories and so I thought, why not write it down, that way, our kiddos can read about it when they grow up next time, eh?
For those of you who are not familiar or never heard of the words 'Angpow' (also known as 'ang pau', 'ang pao', 'angpau'), here is a quick definition:
Angpow = Red Packet (filled with cash inside) given during festivals
So for today's angpow story, it comes from some pieces of lovely angpow or sampul raya in our national language since I'm using one for today's story:
Today's story revolved around this batik design angpows. I like all things batik related. During high school days, there were some Arts lessons which revolved around batik stuff. That was where I learned how to use the batik tools, the tjantings, this little metal pen thingy where you pour the hot wax into the little cup on top and it comes out through the little spout at the end of the tjanting. The batik cloth stapled tightly to the wooden frame (I remembered the torturous times to unstaple the cloth out arghh...), the process of mixing the dyes.
The steady hands needed during the process...
The focused eyes as you point and bring your design to life on the batik cloth...
The overwhelming wax smell that you have to endure...
The horror when you realised you missed the wax line somewhere and the dye went over and mixed up or overlapped with previous dye...
The excitement when you finished your batik painting...
The torture wait for it to dry...
The further torture to soak the cloth in some solution for hours to preserve its colors...
The neverending torture in waiting for the cloth to be further processed in order to remove the wax and final rinsing...
The sigh of relief when finally you see your finished batik painting and you realised.. 'That was done by me?!'
When I went to college, I did a part-time job as a sales promoter in a souvenir shop. The first thing that brings back memories to me is of course, the batik products being sold in the souvenir shop. Scarves, pareo, sarungs, handkerchiefs, wall painting, postcards, bags, purses, all sorts of batik stuff you can imagine. I was happy seeing that and even happier to be selling and promoting it to the tourists that came by the shop.
My ex-boss even went a step further by providing unique wrapping paper services. What he did was he bought lots and lots of batik printing wrapping paper (similar to the design and quality of the sampul raya in this picture) and he cut it out to different sizes, DIY and glue into different sizes paper gift bags so that the items that customer bought can be individually placed into the unique gift bags.
I love the idea, though the process of making them was tiring as well. I do love the compliments poured by customers on how the souvenirs they bought is individually placed into each paper bags, the extra thoughts that went into making their souvenirs special.
So, yeah, whenever I see batik related stuff, these memories will surface back, bringing smiles to my face :)
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