Preparing dinner at 4 pm is nothing unusual here in Lumut.

As I was cleaning a bunch of spinach at that exact time today, I was struck at how easily I fall back into the routine of life in Lumut – a schedule that I kept when we lived here.

Because in Bandar Seri Begawan, dinner is prepared after I return from picking up my daughter around 5pm and it  can be a mad rush trying to have the food and the kids ready for dinner around 7pm.

Unlike here, where dinner is at 6.30pm, prepared leisurely from 4pm onwards.

And even that is not exceptionally early, for Belait standard.

Yesterday, as we were lounging around in the living room waiting for dinner time, I asked my nephew (whose family eat in their own part of the house) if he has had his dinner.

He replied in an answer which I knew full well.

“We ate at 5(pm)”.

That would mean his mother started making dinner at 3 pm and what time was lunch? I wondered too sometimes!

Actually, this is common practice for many households in the Seria, I was told. My mother in law explained that this was because in the olden days, dining area is usually on the ground floor of a stilt house, without any walls and no lights. So these households had their dinner early to escape the mosquitoes and also to catch the last light from the setting sun.

6.30pm or 5pm, dinner is taken early in our household in Lumut too.

Our bodies wind down easier and faster here.

And to quote my youngest daughter who would start to make her rounds of good nights to all the family and demand to be sent to bed at 7.30 pm, it is “Ne nen!” time.