Category: Thoughts

That Face You Make

While rummaging through the old photos of Lap Chun from last year, I found some unpublished ones.

One of the monkeys who grabbed a balancing egg from me discovered raw egg is hard to swallow. The face one may make at the mamak when the “sentengah masak” (half-boiled) eggs are too raw.

The old world monkeys or macaques are mischievous and aggressive. Be careful around them as some may run off with your camera bag. This one eventually crouch forward and licked the spilled egg yolk clean.

Sony A7R, ISO 2500, f9, 1/250

#lapchun #lichun #monkeys #egg

Rage Against The Machine

Lithuanian street artist Ernest Zacharevic, who is well known for his wall murals and 3D installations in Penang, is credited with this weird 3D inatallation in Chinatown KL entitled Rage Against The Machine. I said weird because some of the painted children look like ‘Matsallehs’ (or Caucasians).

Although I have read about it previously, I was lucky to stumble upon the self-commissioned artwork by chance today. I had no idea of its exact location before this.

Another weird thing is the choice of location as it is at a private car park. Cars were parked in front of the cutout yellow school bus making photography and appreciation difficult.

The brilliant light or weather this morning made the rough texture of the brick wall stand out and it contrasted nicely with the blue pinafore uniforms worn by our schoolgirls. I would never think about vandalisng the school bus that transported me though. Am I weird?

Panasonic Lumix GM-1, ISO 200, f11, 1/1600 sec

#chinatown #wallart #rageagainstthemachine #mural #3dinstallation #schoolbus #ernestzacharevic #streetphotography #schoolchildren

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

The Reunion Dinner

Its cultural significance is similar to the Thanksgiving dinner of the West. The modern families are separated by obligations of career and marriage. Hence the yearly rush back to hometowns to reunite for the dinner. In China, the exodus can result in traffic jams hundreds of miles long and at one time, it lasted for weeks.

Nu Sentral put up an interesting mock up of the traditional reunion dinner table setting when I visited. The dishes were sampuru or Japanese fake or plastic display food. Reunion feast usually includes sumptuous dishes like prawns and steamed chicken meant for the prayer altar, fish and tinned abalone, mushrooms stir fried with mixed vegetables. Missing here is the customary soup. There are no hard and fast rules and the dishes cooked or served can vary according to household and family custom.

The reunion dinner custom serves more than eating. Daughter-in-laws face pressure when they are required to demonstrate their cooking skills. The sitting down is a time to catch up on news of siblings and relatives. It is also a time when younger members are interrogated on marriage and expectancy of babies for newly married couples, Thus, it is an event not always look forward to by all.

Panasonic Lumix GM-1, ISO 1000, f4, 1/60 sec.

#reuniondinner #sample #sampuru #cny #asian #custom #food #culture #dinner #table #chinesecustom #nusentral