Nick Chan Dot Net

Away to PLKN (Day 9): Penang Tiger CNY Miao Hui Until At Night

Written by Nicholas Chan on April 5, 2010 – 10:00 am -

Chinese New Year Penang Celebration Miao Hui 庙会 post is back again. This time I’ll show about what happened at night. I’ll let the photos speak more because I am in NS and I lazy to write more. So sorry people.

Some people stay there until 11am because there’s fireworks, I went home at around 1030pm already because I was too tired. I was there from 4pm till 10pm, it’s quite long for me, moreover I’ve been there before, so I didn’t want to stay until everything ended.

My aim was to visit every corner of the Miao Hui and finally we did, only that we did not see the fireworks.  At night was prettier because there’s the lantern and light. Ideal for photoshooting.

Andy Ooi.

Taking photos with the God of Wealth. Haha.

Wearing Kooi Jin’s uniform.

Lou Sang!

Janice was part of GBBM too.

Then I went to look for Kooi Jin who was the helper for GBBM which organized part of the event near Han Chiang’s Temple. Their theme was 忠 (zhong), literally means honest.

Taking a break at mamak stall.

Then we went to eat dinner at a mamak stall, the same stall I ate the year before.

Squeezing the balloon to BOOMS.

There’s fashion show too! Best part.

There’s also band performance at the temple.

Walk around, shoot shoot, and played Chinese calligraphy and I admit my calligraphy skill sucks, since high school.

I wrote 天天快乐 which means happy everyday.

Chinese Opera.

Bubble tea rocks!

Met Jocelyn Yew. =D She’s helping at there too.

Went home! Really tired and interesting photoshoot. I was satisfied with what’ve got in my camera. Didn’t really meet a lot of people there but it’s still fun.

Tags: Celebration, CNY, cny 10, Friends, georgetown, Happenings, Lifelog, Many People, Miao Hui, Night, Penang, tiger
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Tiger Chinese New Year Celebration in Penang, Miao Hui 2010

Written by Nicholas Chan on March 25, 2010 – 7:08 pm -

This year is Tiger year for the Chinese, very cute because many Chinese will use Tiger as their mascot or buy Tiger bear for fun, or even drink more Tiger beer. So every year in Penang, my hometown, there’s Chinese New Year Celebration and Open House for everyone to visit, play, eat and drink in town area, which is known as Miao Hui 庙会.

Every year also has that many people come to this place, somewhere around Armenian Street and Pitt Street. They set up stages, lots of booth and everywhere at there are well-decorated with Chinese New Year feel.

This year would be my third visit already. I was there in 2008 and also in 2009. Actually every year go there also is take photos only, and go for fun to join the crowds, since there’s so many people. This year was different a bit because I shoot with a different lens, the Tamron f/2.8 17-50mm. Hehe. No idea whether I will be there or not next year. If I got a new lens or a new body, maybe I’ll go again.

Actually nothing much one, it’s the same every year. Cultural booths, game booths, food stalls, lion dance, fashion show and many Chinese-related thing. There’s youth doing treasure hunt and found me because I had a “Tiger” tooth that they were looking for. I guess joining the hunt is funner than photo shooting.

Cultural dancer.

Something not very comfortable was that this year’s weather went crazy. It’s very hot. Alvin, Andy and me were there at around 5pm, it’s almost sunset already, but still very hot. Luckily I had just t-shirt and shorts.

Andy Ooi.

Starbucks Coffee had a booth there too! Java Chips Frapuccino!

Compare to last year, I feel last year has got more people, there’s people like sardine cramming on the street, but this year didn’t have.

Met Cai Qian.

Met Chin Keong, Kelvin, Kok Sheng and more.

Met friends but not many. The Magnificent SIX was not there, they went to a movie and there’s only me from the SIX was there. But I saw a lot of Leo Club friends. ROAR.

What was Kok Sheng doing there?

I like happenings place. If there’s place in Penang that’s always so happenings then it will be nice and cool. I don’t like to see a dead city or dead town, it’s not fun. I know some people like to be alone, but do go out some times to take a look what’s happening and go back again. Me, myself is a weird person, I like quiet but I also like happenings, weird right. Haha.

Found Spongebob hanging somewhere. ^^

Happy faces for CNY!

There’s cultural dances on the stage but every year, I didn’t bother what happen on the stage. Feel bad for all the performance, I know their tiredness and effort in performing and I am talking cock. Haha, but anyway, if got chance, I will check the stage performance again.

Governor of Penang, Abdul Rahman bin Haji Abbas was there too! For like less than 15 minutes. He came here to “hi and bye”. So high post and high class people, at least must come and “hi and bye” for a while to give face.

Cool CM.

My favourite Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng stayed a little while longer than the Govenor for media interview. Hehe.

Boss! a.k.a. Lion Alan Thoo, my Leo Club’s District Chairperson. Rocks!

I like to call him Doctor Yew. I.T. support man for Digi.

My employer did actually ask me whether want to work on that day or not because Digi was a major sponsor for the event, but somehow, I decided to go for photoshooting rather than promoting. =)

Pinky.

Met colleagues a.k.a. friends that I’ve work before with.

Met Amanda the blogger.

Sometime I feel headache when I’ve taken so many photos, I don’t know want to put it up, obviously I have a bad mind in presenting it to you all. So I am splitting the post up. Stay tune for more about this Chinese New Year celebration evening, Miao Hui.

 

Tags: Celebration, Chinese New Year, cny 10, Event, Festival, Friends, Happenings, Lifelog, Many People, Penang
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Throw Coconut on Thaipusam Day at Datuk Keramat

Written by Nicholas Chan on February 13, 2010 – 2:52 am -

Oh hello, I am back again and now I am going to talk about the Indian’s big Thaipusam Day that happened two weeks ago. I am so lucky to be in one of the states that has big celebration for this big Indian/Tamil/Hindu festival. As far as I know, Penang and Kuala Lumpur are the two places here in Malaysia that have it big.

Last year, some friends did invite me to go to the festival to do some photoshooting, but because I couldn’t wake up so early in the morning, so I missed it. This year was different, I didn’t plan to go photo shooting too, but it’s just that on the day before, Thaipusam’s Eve, the procession has already started and I was going no where after the Chung Ling Memorial thing, so Chien Chern, my friend decided to go visit a friend at Datuk Keramat Road whose his dad’s shop is just right in front of the Thaipusam thing.

So what they had that afternoon was the coconut throwing and some procession take place and people pays respect to the Indian god by contributing prayers thing like fruits, candles.

Till now, I still remembered it’s a very hot day, the sun was hanging high in the sky, shinning down, with the heat radiating the ground. I didn’t care because I wanted to shoot the festival and share it up.

The coconuts were bought by people mostly have their business along the road, they throw the coconut on the ground, break it, is to clean the road for procession, as a respect to god, a prayer, for wealth and health. It’s said to be good luck to throw the coconut. I did try before long time ago when I was small, when my dad had a furniture shop at Datuk Keramat Road, it’s now moved to Gottlieb Road though.

Arron and his family.

At the time 2.30pm sharp, “piak piak piak” sound can be heard and coconuts were everywhere on the ground with the juice splashing out. The scene was epic. Try not to stand near to them because the coconut can be rebounded. Hehe, just like a basketball.

Part of the road was block for this thing and people who bought coconut were at the middle of the road while me and other people like me who see for fun and takes photo were on the other side, hoping that did not get hit by the coconut.

These coconuts although are hard, but it’s actually kinda easy to be squashed. At some time, some un-squashed will roll to my place and I will pick it up and join the fun too!

Chien Chern, Me and Arron.

The whole thing was like 15 minutes. The aftermath was cool with a wet coconut juiced road and coconut every where.

The MPPP people were very efficient, when everything stopped, they quickly come and swept the coconut to a side and let the real procession began and don’t want to stuck the road.

The next thing after the coconut throwing was the procession thing, with devotees paying respect and offerings.

They walk with their bare feet and I believed the road is not hot already because it had been juiced.

I don’t really know how to describe this, so I’ll let the photos speak. =)

Happy Thaipusam, super belated!

Tags: datuk keramat, Festival, fun, Happenings, Hot, Lifelog, Many People, Penang, sunny, thaipusam
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Penang PC Fair 2009 Fun

Written by Nicholas Chan on December 10, 2009 – 10:41 am -

Last weekend was the PC Fair exhibition in several places in Malaysia. We’ve got one in Penang, at PISA, the Penang International Sports Arena. I didn’t think of going there because I have nothing to buy, but some friends wanted to go there to take a look, walk around, and feel the crowds, so I joined them.

PC Fair is always crowded and I didn’t go to PC Fair a lot. A lot of people like to go there buy laptop. In my opinion, there’s too many laptop in the market, competitions and hard to choose a good one, I picked a out of competition, you-won’t-see-it-at-PC-Fair-model and that’s Apple MacBook. You probably won’t see people shouting “Come and see MacBook!” because the price is fix all the time.

On that Friday morning, Chien Chern came from Batu Feringghi, passed by my place and fetch me along. PISA is like on the other side of the island from my place.

Then we reached Zez’s house as a meet-up point for everyone, waited everyone at there only we walked to PISA because his house is just right across the street.

We haven’t went in and we started taking photos a.k.a. camwhoring, a blogger’s term. As the picture shows, we are Digi user, I am too.

Since H1N1 is not over, there’s handsanitizer, but I believe not many will bother about it.

We then started walking, following the route to the exit as we didn’t have anything wanted to buy. I just wanted to look around, to spot anyone familiar and find some cool new gadget.

Fangs, Simon, Chung and Chien Chern.

Elaine, Chaiwei’s friend, who were both working on the same booth.

Chaiwei.

It’s all flyers, flyers, and flyers. They just keep handing out flyers even you have already got it. Their task was to give it out all.

After passing by a few laptop booth and there comes the broadband booth. It’s like a war zone there, all the promoters were in their coloured uniform representing different broadband service provider. This is the most happenings part, which created by their own “army” but not people.

They will never ever convince me to potong (cut) my broadband line because I like sticking to my Streamyx. This part is the noisiest and there’s balloons by Maxis and P1.

Arron and Huaken.

To make things fun, I went to speed test all the broadband and found some pretty interesting results.

Chien Ming, working for Digi and was poisoned by Digi broadband.

Priscillia.

Met friends working there too! Too bad they can’t get my support, what I could do was just take photos.

After walking around on the outer zone of the indoor arena, we went into the real sports arena.

Chien Chern, HP girl, me, Arron, Yong Chieh, Simon.

There’s camera, hardware, laptops, antivirus and all the same computer stuff that you can think of. Nothing much interesting, except we went to take free gift from HP.

Avira’s Showgirl. =D

So sad that there’s no booth babe in this Penang PC Fair. I always thought of there will be booth babes at fairs and exhibition, especially a tech related one, but this in Penang, didn’t have. That’s not fun.

Kaspersky Boys. =D

Met Yiphing there too!

Wallace too!

Although there’s nothing to buy, we spent quite long time at there. We spent like 3 hours. I don’t know what did we do actually at there, but I remembered I spent most time speed testing and collecting balloons.

They liked giving me balloons because I Maxis’s balloon, then P1 came and gave me their balloon, then Maxis came again and same thing to P1, in the end I’ve got a lot balloon, which in turn, I became a unofficial broadband balloon boy.

Me, Fangs, Arron, Simon, Matthias, Chien Chern, Edmund.

For your information, I am also a Maxis Broadband user, I uses the data plan on my phone but the speed test I had at PC Fair, sucks. No choice.

So, after taking photos with the balloon, we dumped back the balloon to the broadband company but sticking onto their cars. =D What I’ve actually got that day was a hell lots of flyers, plastic bags and a lot of photos in my camera. It’s a fun PC Fair day outing with all the friends, but bought nothing.

Tags: Crowded, Event, Happenings, Lifelog, Malaysia, Many People, pc fair, Penang
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Pillow Fight at Penang Times Square

Written by Nicholas Chan on November 23, 2009 – 10:38 pm -

Last weekend was pretty fun-filled to me. I took my Saturday off, less study but was out for a whole day to see the event organized by the Leo Club. It had been a few months that I have been confining myself from attending Leo Club activities because of exams and studies, another thing is that I have already retired myself as the Vice President of the club.

Basically, I am out of Leo Club of Chung Ling High School, but as in between of transition to a new Leo Club (for high school graduates and young adults), I still consider myself as a Chung Ling’s Leo.

So what happened last Saturday was there’s a first and ever pillow fight party happened at Penang Times Square, jointly organized by Catcheye and Leo Clubs. Long before, I didn’t think I will be there, but the hard part of the exam had past, so I took a break from study.

Yi Jun and Yong Seng.

It’s so good to see the Leo Club friends there and I was there as an observer, not helping on anything, but just see, and take photos, and say hi to everyone.

This was not just a party, pillow fighting, you beat me and I beat you. It’s a fund raising event, and there’s a need of ticket and pillow, which all selling goes to charity. People was allow to bring their pillow but I think getting their pillow is better because they provided cheap pillow with lots of feather. =D

Kenny was one of the official photographer.

Alvin and I-don’t-know-name, his friend.

At first, I thought of helping them on taking photograph, but then turned up there’s like more than 10 official volunteered photographer. So, I’ll stick myself with a little bit of behind the scene and photos with friends.

I got no pillow. >.<

The place was huge, organizer expected thousands of pillow fighter but turned up around 500 unfortunately. Though, I could see everyone had fun at there.

Lion Marcus and Lion Alan Thoo.

Kenny and Victor, trying to capture cottons from low angle.

Another thing that’s lacking to make it a perfect one was flying cotton! I guess there should be a fan, there would be flying cotton, HAHA, there’s cotton falling onto the ground, but somehow I didn’t see many cotton flying up.

Good to see there’s some nice performance like beatboxing by young young boy, dance and being entertained by the funny Baki Zainal. You would know him if you watche NTV7′s Mr Siao Mandarin Class and 15Malaysia’s Meter.

Sin Yee, president for Leo Club of Han Chiang High School and Tict Chyn.

Yng Shin, cute blogger.

New friend I met, Qiao En.

Brothers, Lester and Jameson.

Brother for Lester and Jameson, Victor.

Wallace.

Few of I-don’t-knows from my school. But I know Yong Seng and Jason Ch’ng both on left and right.

Siew Ling, Yimin and Kexin.

The Plurkers, Yijun, Yilin and Chee Yang. Follow me on Plurk!

Him Keat, Kenny and Min Xiang.

Lion Ong Lai Peng, a very cool regional committee chairperson one.

Boon Yan, president for Leo Club of Union High.

Alicia, who was once featured on a Chinese student’s newspaper, Xuehai.

Fun noon time because I walked around, met people that that were long-time-no-see, and also met people that I-didn’t-know.

From Ipoh.

There’s also Leos came all the way from Ipoh but sadly, they didn’t get to join the fight because the bus was late.

Very cute and classic Mini.

Christopher, Chee Cheng and Chia Chun.

GenYong the blogger and Yong Seng.

Chien Ming and Yimei. Just realized that I’ve forgot to take photo with Chien Ming. >.<

Janice from Catcheye.

Emily, president for Leo Club of CDK.

Tags: Event, fight, Friends, Leo Club, Lifelog, Many People, Penang, penang times square, pillow fight, Saturday
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ION and Orchard Road

Written by Nicholas Chan on November 23, 2009 – 12:02 am -

I think I am getting into the last post of my Singapore trip, should be saying that this is the last part of my one day Singapore tour and Orchard Rd was my last stop. We skipped and ran away from Royal Selangor Gallery from the Nuffnang tour and came here by ourselves via the MRT, it’s was just a few stop away, pretty fast.

One thing I got to say that my legs were really tired at that time, had been walking whole day already and it’s evening.

The Orchard Road station was really very crowded with people and this was my first time getting off at that. The times before that I went there few years back were by cab. Somehow, we still have to queue up again at the MRT station to get S$1 refund from the ticket.

I was just so excited about Orchard Rd, especially ION @ Orchard, the main reason I went there. I wanted to see how beautiful the building is.

Look at the LED bar. Pretty isn’t it?

The MRT station is just right below ION and the first thing I saw was ION! It’s so cool, with all the lights and all those huge designers’ label made me saliva drop and it’s felt so not-Singapore, perhaps Tokyo?

I was so amaze and salute to the developer. Before that I thought Pavilion in Kuala Lumpur was cool, but now, I can’t think about that already.

I can’t afford branded, designers’ label but I so like to look at them.

The ION is so round, I like also!

And they got a huge curve LCD screen outside, showing news, weather, info and stuff, just like a small part of Times Square and Tokyo. I think Malaysia don’t have big screens and with sound. There’s big ad screen, but mostly no sound, that’s not cool.

Alvin and I spent quite a lot of time out there “Wah, wah, wah” which made us don’t really have many time to walk around inside, and really we just walked a little and that’s when my brother called me to meet him at Cineleisure. Fast window shopped the first and second floor, then we started walking to Cineleisure, it’s like 10 minutes apart. Not far.

Their Cineleisure and ours Cineleisure at Damansara is also no fight, so crowded, so happenings and like the LED tickers out there.

Legs were tired and was looking for place to seat, then I found the cinema and there’s chair. =D I was like so hungry and didn’t feel like exploring anymore, moreover I’ve went there before, once, 2 years ago, where I was among the first getting the first release of iPod touch.

They came and we had our dinner at Sakae Teppanyaki, delicious and good. Again, Malaysia has it or not?

After dinner, daddy thought of going back to the hotel but I insisted to walk for a little while and to visit Uniqlo in ION. It’s part of my itinerary and I wanted to check out this Japanese store for a long time already. Daddy didn’t feel walking anymore so he found a pub in front Wisma Atria and he got his alcohol.

Walked back to ION and went shopping at Uniqlo and a few stores. Woot! I bought a couple of nice tee at there. Shopping does take away my tiredness. Maybe it’s my first time going to ION, the place inside is like a maze, most of the shops are underground, few floors down. Upper floor would be all those branded and designers’ label.

Me, brother, daddy, mommy. =)

After shopping and getting late, we went to find my dad at the pub. Interesting was, I saw a she-man dancing and lip-syncing with the live band playing. Woo.

Went to Lucky Plaza and took the cab back to hotel.

Next stop? No more. It’s going back home on the next day.

again, thanks to alvin yang for the photos.

Tags: Crowded, Happenings, Many People, nnawards, nuffnang, nuffnang blog awards, orchard, Shopping, singapore, Travel, trip
Posted in Cool Stuff, Shopping, Singapore, Travel | View Comments