Sunday, December 27, 2009

Santa's 2009 present.

11:33p.m, 27-Dec 2009, Home.

During midnight on Christmas Eve, Santa knocked on my balcony sliding door, he whispered, "For sure I'm increasing everyone's paycheck next year as a gift". He dropped a cheque as well as a few cane candies before jingling off. A generous Santa, he is. Hooray and yay :)!

Santa's cheque to me. Very inspiring, motivating and realistic indeed :). 100% achievable. Ho Ho Ho! Click on picture to enlarge.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Non-related statement
You can not raise a man up by calling him down - William JH Boetcker.

Friday, July 17, 2009

33rd Bon Odori (盆踊り) 2009 festival - Panasonic Sports Complex, Shah Alam, Malaysia.

Go to: 32nd Bon Odori (盆踊り) festival 2008 blog.

12:26 a.m, 17-July 09, Home.

The time has come again for this long-awaited exciting Japanese festival, Bon Odori 盆踊り, a festival to worship and honour the departed, hence the first word interpretation "Bon ". Japanese Buddhism ditto to the Chinese believes the "door" that separates the horizon in between the human and the deceased, open once a year to give freedom to the spirit to revisit their family. Of so many years of practicing, it has been assimilated into the Japanese and Chinese custom where family members gathers (reunion) at their beloved-deceased's graveyards with then a small feast ensues. During this day, it's a taboo to question the genuineness of the spirit and the "door" existence, fearing bad omen will imminent to those who question, ya know stubborn and trying to be cute young kids nowadays love to query and make lots of disturbing and unnecessary statements especially from scientific perspective :). In return, the adults, in order to appease the kids, fear is instilled frequently into them, haha :p.

In respectful to the cultural beliefs, it has become a practical from generation to generation. This festival sometimes will associate with dancing, thus the final word connotation "Odori 踊り" to hype up the festival. Bon Odori 盆踊り, in short, a dance for the "watching" spirits as an entertainment not only for the departed but the living as well :).

View all pictures in a slide show manner. Click here.

33rd Bon Odori's flier


Huh? The name changed drastically to Kompleks Sukan Negara? See the difference of last year picture taken, below. Hmmm perhaps to nationalise the name from wholly English to national language?


Last year 2008, Panasonic Sports Complex entrance


As always, tones of people visited this auspicious event!


Audiences awaiting the opening ceremony to commence joyfully


The Japanese drums (Taiko, 太鼓) for performance


The drums for performance - upclose


Drummers, burning desire and couldn't afford to disappoint the audiences, to unleash their months of hardwork practice, bowed silently awaits the clock to strike 7:00 p.m sharp!


7:00 p.m struck, performers hit the drums in paramountcy, donned in their Yukata 浴衣 with a Japanese word (祭) printed, means festival



Continuous courage of drum hitting


Similar to last year, audience joins hand-in-hand, emulating the stage dancers


Everyone was emulating merrily!

Not forgetting - time to eat!

Cute Yakult's illustration banner, a yogurt-alike beverages


Not only myself but other visitors to salvage the foods and beverages booths!


Futomaki, sushi, mochi, unagi and etc, you name it, they have it!


Caterer, grilling the scrumptious unagi to serve pilling up thousand of customers


Enticing ice-cream!


Pleasant Yakitori (skewered chicken) as well!


Cute Yokomon ice-cream, I see them heavily promoting whenever there is a Japanese function


Hmmm! A new booth for this year, Sushi King!


Incredible! The whole concept of belt conveyance was installed! Yes, you got me right, the belt is moving the sushi's plates as though you are dining in their restaurant!


I'm still amazed with the belt conveyance idea brought to outdoor and installed there and then!


The only difference is that you have to stand while eating rather than sitting on cushiony sofa!


Well, reluctant to stand? You can purchase the nicely packed sushi for your later consumption :)


Japanese myriad of Omiyage (souvenir) for your selection


Poo poo indicator by Doraemon :p


Mobile toilets at your dispense by Toi Toi. Funny name, indeed!


A tank to collect and transport the feces? Yikes :)!


Visitors resting, chatting, leisuring, enjoying, cracked jokes and many more delightfully :)


Plenty more visitors at staired seats


A slight difference on 33rd Bon Odori. Additional performance besides drumming - Soran Bushi (ソーラン節) (fisherman's song and dance in Japan, click on the link to get the Lyrics @ Wikipedia :p)


Other additional dances, Malaysian mixed cultural dance. Malay, Chinese and Indian dance

Aesthetic pictures taken:















Children on right, pro-actively and fearlessly posing for picture taking


However, the left was clueless :). Their parent had to say "thank you, thank you very much, thank you for your kindness, we have to make a move", where everyone was storming to take pictures of their children :p


The end of 33rd Bon Odori :)

As usual, we hastenly rush out of our life before the whole ceremony ends officially lest traffic jam. Thanks again to divinefang for his DSLR camera, if not we wouldn't get such a nice quality pictures :p. I'm kinda disappointed this time of not having the opportunity to video shoot their performance especially the well done Soran Bushi! I will be well prepare on next Bon Odori. However, you can view examples of Soran Bushi's in YouTube (below):



Another video:



That's all folks, extremely tire right now (2:04 a.m), time for bed. Will retouch this blog on the following day.

Go to: 32nd Bon Odori (盆踊り) festival 2008 blog.

Non related statement.
Often the test of courage is not to die but to live - Vittorio Alfieri.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

High expectation - just a far fetch.

9:33 a.m, 31-Jan 09, home.

On the 4th day of Chinese New Year (CNY), my family except myself was planning to go to Singapore for a holiday trip. My mum prepared and loaded everything into her car, the moment just about to enter the car 4 snatchers, one of them pounded on her, there goes her purse and money. Since when the snatchers are terribly good at the concept of "Just In Time (JIT)"?

Went to the police station to make a report but to no avail with an excuse of server down, couldn't key in report. I offered to write the report manually but was rejected and was requested to return when the server is up, duh!

Well after few hours, a Samaritan call us said he found our documents, intended to return to us. All documents were found except credit cards. Things start to get funnier, I hastenly informed to the police the whole situation, hoping the police will be able to detect and nab the culprit asap once they swapped the cards. Here's the dialogue via phone:

I: "Puan, semua dokumen telah dijumpai kecuali kad kredit."

While speaking, somehow my brain was operating at 300 Giga "imagination" per seconds with mind maps pluses animation of Hong Kong action movies :p:

Inspector:目标人物出现,目标人物出现!全世界 STANDBY!, 全世界 STANDBY!”。

The instance where the card is swapped,

Inspector:ACTION!SDU Go Go Go!".

Action packed with glass breaking, SDU rolling, smoke bomb, targeting, aiming ensue!

Pity, the adrenaline rush was short-life and this was the reply I got:

Puan: "Kad kredit adalah urusan bank, sila berurus the bank!".

I: "Huh! ar!".

Puan: "Sila berurus dengan bank".

Hah! "High expectation is just a far fetch" :). Well, lucky us no physical injury though the snatchers were wielded with a parang!

Non-related sentence:

Content makes poor men rich, discontent makes rich men poor - Benjamin Franklin.
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