Month: January 2017

Stylo Mylo Prebet Trevor

Trainee soldier Trevor checking his phone after a hair cut, presumably. Stylo is the famous and long time Indian barber shop at the corner of Chinatown, KL I have seen the iconic 80 year old barber shop featured in tourism guide books, brochures. coffee table photo books and such.

Its visual attraction is the old school facade that is quite quintessential of the remaining and surviving old shops in Kuala Lumpur. I can read the name Trevor off his name tag. Possibly someone from East Malaysia.

Although I have seen the shop for many years, this is the first time I am photographing it as there was a fresh customer standing outside today. I remember the shop had a classic barber’s pole with spiraling red and white stripes at one time. It also had the typical “air conditioned” crowd puller emblazoned on the glass.

Funnily enough, there was a ball of hair below his feet, on the kerb. It looked like drifting tumbleweed similar to those seen in a cowboy movie ghost town. I cropped it out as I wanted the human figure to be tighter, composition wise.

Soldier recruits undergoing training are required to be smartly attired, even when they are painting the town red.

Panasonic Lumix GM-1, ISO 200, f5.6, 1/250 sec

#barber #sylo #chinatown #hairdresser #saloon #haircut #streetphotography #urbanscape #soldier

Cock Fighting

Those who received the greeting card featuring the rooster may be interested to know the circumstances or backstory. I was outside a kampung house in Ulu Slim, near the famous hot springs. I was enthralled by the sight of two cockerels play fighting almost non stop. Waited for the brief moment they took a break and captured the solitary pose of the rooster on right. Organised cock fighting is illegal in Malaysia.

Sony A7R, ISO 800, f4, 1/1600 sec.

#cockerel #roosters #cockfighting #kampung #greetingcard #nature #farm

Understanding The Chinese Psyche

It is a Hokkien (Fujian dialect) term you will hear a lot during Chinese New Year. It goes with the Chinese obsession with prosperity and luck in the form of riches via a windfall. Chinese folks like to gamble, be it at home card games, on mahjong tables or at casinos. So “huat” is like a clarion call and a good luck greeting.

It is not exclusive to Chinese New Year, though. I remember when the deities at the Nine Emperor Gods festival were paraded, every joss stick toting devotee was shouting “Huat Ah!” at the top of their lungs. So was the crowd when the ominous looking Hell Keeper’s deity was lifted for burning during Por Tor or the climax of the Hungry Ghost month.
Huat means ‘to prosper’ as in Fatt in Cantonese. So Huat Ah!

Sony A7R, ISO 160, f4, 1/250 sec

#culture #custom #chinese #hokkien #fujian #huat #prosper #neg #twilight #sunset

Those Halcyon Days

There were (only) Geocities, Blogger and bare knuckle hand coding of html during that era.

Soon content management systems (CMS) entered the market. It required not only frequent and tiresome software updates of the core system but also updates of plug ins.
One of my WordPress blogs had issues that made it inaccessible for a long while. It was resolved only recently. Before that, I already moved to Drupal, another CMS, with its own host of issues.
I will write about how I resolved the WP problem another time.

Anyway, from the revived blog, I found a treasure trove of images. One of them, is this shot of candles and blue sky captured in a Chinatown temple on the first day of Chinese New Year 2014.
This was posted at http://tvsmith.net.my/blog/blue-skies-and-candlelight/

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f11, 1/800 sec.

#cny #temple #flame #fire #candle #sky #tbt #blog

East Meets West – Ikan Salmon Asam Pedas

It was RM 16 (expensive possibly due to last minute price gouging by traders). She asked me how to cook it. I was too lazy to google for recipes and in the evening, I discovered Asam Pedas Ikan Salmon. Her own fusion food. Haha. She used some spicy tamarind paste and garnished it with sprigs of Coriander or Chinese Parsley or Cilantro. It turned out quite delicious.

Asus Zenfone 3, ISO 181, f2, 1/40 sec.

#reuniondinner #salmon #fish #asampedas #cny #asian #dinner #foodphotography #asus #fusion #cny