Valentines Day

How did everybody's Valentines day went? My 2nd Valentines was a bit unexpected but it was ok because at least I gotta spend it with my sweetheart. Spent 2 hours of the day stuck in traffic jam... Although the economic is experiencing its worst slump in recorded history, people seem to be flocking to Pulau Tikus to celebrate Valentines as I experienced one of the worst traffic jams in Pulau Tikus ~_~

I spent my noontime with my friends on S.A.D which is also known by them as single awareness day. Went to redbox karaoke and sang our hearts out to forget our sadness, our lonelyness (ok its their sadness & their lonelyness~_~)

After that valuable time was spent with my sweetheart at hagen daz before her orchestra performance.

And I just remembered I left my Valentines present on the backseat of my grandma's car when I returned my car to her. Sorry >.<"


Fern & Jeremy wishes all our readers Happy Valentines <3

Pre-Valentines

1 day before Valentines day, sacred day for couples through out the whole world but a dreaded day for any single. I heard from my grandma that my cousin was making home made chocolate for her boyfriend, such a sweet thing to do. We don't get these kind of presents now days right guys? Valentines day is not just about the gifts, its about the feelings of the person giving and receiving the gifts which matters the most.

Went to do my last minute Valentines shopping just now, met Corny and Xin Rui. Lol... Received a beating from them for buying my late late gift. Saw lots of guys and girls doing Valentines shopping and some couples celebrating an early valentines due to the fact that tomorrow is a schooling day for us in Penang.

Teddies and flowers are nice presents to give to girls but its best to only give a girl huggable teddy as she can only hug one right? If you keep giving her new ones, she might just discard the old ones as they are quite big and take up lots of space. Well, flowers are nice if your girlfriend is between 20-30 because if you give flowers to a high school girl, imagine how is she going to explain it to her parents when she returns home.

Jewellry is a nice gift to give away. They are SHINY and your can see your partner wear them everytime you go out so you could feel their appreciation of the gift which you gave them. It is also quite small which makes them pretty easy to hide and you can easily lose them as well :P The only downside is that jewellry is expensive but I recommend stainless steel jewellry from Laconic. They look like their made from platinum and the price is affordable.

I'm currently making my Valentines day gift for tomorrow so as to meet my deadline, I'll be signing off :P

CNY Heritage celebration at Penang

Hoo Hah! Just came back from one of the best CNY celebrations in my life! Saw a lot of traditional chinese stuff which was unique because most of it contains a hint of Malaysia and is different from its ancestors in China! This post would be highly pictorious so beware!


Main gateway of the celebration


The celebration was held among the world heritage site which contained buildings and streets from downtown Penang which were build by the first generation of Chinese which settled in Penang. The roads were a little small so it was a bit crampy and the smell of sweat and the drains of the roadside was nauseating.


Traditional wedding ceremony, Suana(the most noisy Chinese musical instrument ever invented) + guards + kepo onlookers are included.



The Chinese puppet show was pulling quite a crowd, we had to literally push ourselves through the blockade.


Traditional Chinese wedding dress


Offerings for the Gods


One of the majestic altars of the Ti kong (God of the Sky)


There were like... I dunno, at least ten teams of lion dancers at the venue (each of the teams had a minimum of two lions, so yeah... There were lions everywhere XD)


Dr. Sun Yat Sen's office (he lived in Penang after he escaped from china)


There were also a lot of activities that day, there were top(Gasing) demonstrations;

Traditional sign board making;

Traditional Clay Figure making and many more!


The nonyas, (where's baba?)


A team Kiddys which were playing the 24 season drums resting :P



There was even a mock 状元门 which scholars from old china paraded with their certs after obtaining them in exams


Wushu performance at Khoo Kongsi


Khoo Kongsi in the morning

At night!


Chinese orchestra performance (Sorry, I took this from another miao hui because I didn't take any pics of the Chinese orchestra performance in the current miao hui)



Gail's Guzheng performance sponsored by Shangri'la Hotel (The booth was really nice and quite unique because the people taking care of the booth were all Malays except her XD)


Group pic! (Fern, Gail, Lai Sheng and Me!)

All in all, it was a really great experience coming to this CNY celebration. This is what makes CNY worth celebrating :P

Pics were courtesy of Joyi Cheah and Gail. Thanks!

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

Its this time of the year again, when the weather is unusually hot, where everywhere you go in Penang, the CNY songs just overwhelm you in every direction, when kids earn extra pocket from their parent's friends and relatives XD and its the time where family members from far away come back to their family while enjoying lots and lots of nice foods which is synonymous to Chinese new year.

CNY starts out on sa cham meh in hokkien, or the 30th night. Where every member of the family comes back and have their reunion dinner in one of the relatives house (usually the grandma's house). This year, like every other year, my family's reunion dinner consists of steamboat with wine and fire crackers for desert XD


My family enjoying the steamboat


My aunt putting cuttle fish into the broth as my cousin looks on (Yummy~~~)


The 2 bottles of wine for the day a Wolf Blass yellow label Carbonet Sauvangion Red and a South Carolina Premio white!

On the first day of CNY, we would go to my grandma's house for breakfast and receive our first batch of ang pows from our closest relatives. After that, we would go to my grandfather's brother's house which is near Union secondary school. The kids love going there because every year he would hire lion dancers to perform at his house at noon.

Lion dance! With firecrackers hung in between them :P


They are praying to the gods in front of the altar in the house


My family + my uncle's family


Solo pic of me with the lion dancers


Hmm, what's it doing?


Tada! He was making the word 福 which is upside down with the Mandarin oranges


Big family photo with my grandpa's brother in the middle

After that,my mom would bring us to various temples in Penang to pray to ensure that we have a prosperous new year. A worthy mention is the Kuan yin temple in Penang which I considered to be one of the few places which my eyes couldn't open because the smoke inside the temple is too thick and hazardous to human eyes XD


The outside of the Kuan Yin Temple


The Crazy people fighting each other to put jossticks on the main altar


The back of the temple (The place I usually hang out because it has better ventilation XD)

Smile Smile :)

Well this happened last Monday, I had the urge to write about it but I didn't have time nor did I take a picture of the phenomena. I think I should write about this from the beginning.

The gang (Chong, Micheal, Philip, Terence, Alex and Wilson) were walking from Chinatown to Sugarbowl to meet Wilson's parents for some desert after our dinner at Cafe Primo. While we were walking, Chong pointed upwards towards the moon. (There was a Chinese saying that if you point towards the moon your ears might fall off :P , Well that's what the elders told me when I was young.)
Anyways, I saw that the moon and two stars came togather to form a shape of a smiling face :)

According to Chong, the 2 "eyes" were Mars and Venus. And I saw that one of the eyes was brighter than the other. So I said to him that I don't really believe it and I think that the brighter eye is the northern star which is the brightest star we see in the sky. After we arrive in Sugarbowl, Chong used Wilson's Iphone 3G to find the article at yahoo regarding the phenomena and proved me wrong with a "Nah, in your face attitude" =.=

OK, I admit I'm wrong but this is quite a nice spectacle to behold don't you think? After reading another article on the web when I got home, it seems that only Australia and a few other countries in the region had the chance to witness the smiling face as the people in other countries saw this phenomena in a different angle thus seeing either a deformed face or the moon was upside down showing a crying face.

You can read more from here about the phenomena in different parts of the world and here for a news report of the phenomena at Sydney, Australia.