Yap Foh......warding the bad spirits away

A curious Chinese ritual when people move into a new house/flat is that the new inhabitants bless the house first........called "Yap Foh"

Blessing the house involves quite a few steps......

Burning charcoal in a clay charcoal pot in front of the main door, draping a red cloth surrounding the door, and one has to step over the charcoal before actually entering the house.......starting with the 'man of the house' first.......

Different kinds of dishes have to be whipped up and strangely to some......rice intermixed with salt is thrown into all corners of every room..........

Rice = staple food of Asia thus the symbolic meaning of it that it will provide steady, continued food on the table....and as for salt.......that's to ward off 'bad' entities to enter the house and disturb its new inhabitants.

You might think by now, what a load of bollocks, .......but like all legends and myths there is a core of truth........to these kind of rituals. Now don't ask me what the underlying message of these rituals are...........

At least it provides a peace of mind for the new inhabitants.............

The owners of this particular house are Christians and besides doing the Chinese rituals, they also brought in a pastor who blessed the house with Holy Water...........double protection and double blessing indeed.........

Ow, I just found out that a new owner is not supposed to sweep the floor of the new house on its first day of occupancy......as customs say that this will sweep away all the blessings............

But apparently, no one was aware of this little, but important detail..........as it is, the maids did sweep and mop the floor on that very same first day of occupancy...........and with it gone were the 'blessings'......

Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh................don't inform the owners of this detail................bless their ignorance

Red Devils in town

Manchester United was in town, and boy oh boy........football loving peeps here went totally berserk at the prospect of watching their idols up close.

Manchester United (MU) played a game against the Malaysian national squad on Saturday, July 18th 2009, as part of their pre-season warm-up Asian tour........with stops in Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea and China......

As the game was heavily advertized on all media, the 85.000 available tickets were snapped up in a blink of an eye.........and nope, this dude here wasn't intending to attend........I ain't sporting MU colours, never in this life time........

MU came, saw, and conquered Malaysia, albeit conceding 2 goals.............and were planning to resume their tour with their next stop, Indonesia.........

But terrorist activities, in Jakarta, sadly resulting in the loss of innocent lives, have required MU to cancel their Indonesian leg of their tour...........and as a bonus for the Malaysian populace, an additional game was scheduled...........

An ordinary Monday, with just 1 day in between the the scheduled and unexpected additional game ....., it was a bit too much to ask for the ordinary crowd to shell out their cash again to see this game.....

A few football teamm8's and me grabbed this chance with both hands and off we went to Bukit Jalil, National Stadium........

True enough, been to several stadiums in my life, and heard that the Nou Camp, San Siro in Europe are considered the walhalla's.......in terms of seating...(80 to 90k+), but this Malaysian stadium is able to pack up to 85.000......a mega-stadium indeed.

Even though prices were slashed for this impromptu game, attendance figures never went beyond 30.000 in my estimate and thus the game was played........

Suffice to say that MU made its superiority felt, and within 13 minutes it was 2-0 in favour of the Red Devils............, that was also the final score,.......could have been more, but heck, at least they had the courtesy to let Malaysia play along a bit........

The crowd obviously cheered for whatever in MU jerseys/colors appeared on the pitch (including the training staff) but undoubtedly the loudest cheers where for the Malaysian team.........too bad the Malaysian team couldn't emulate their heroics of 2 days ago as their fitness wasn't up to par I'd suspect and thus were quickly finished off before the game really properly started......

Reds beat Blues....(that's the away kit for the Malaysian squad, a bit strange......visitors get to wear their home kit, ........rolling out the red carpet for the Red Devils I'd dare say, literally.......)

Baby Joy

Referring back to our previous post......kiddo's....we maintain the theme........d'accord?!

It's a Chinese tradition that when a newborn has reached 1 full month (1 lunar cycle), the parents and immediate family organize a baby warming party.........involving an abundance of F&B and as guests we are supposed to give the new-born red packets of money (a token to bring him/her wealth and happiness in his/her life to come).

Jess's cousin bro became a proud dad of his second son and hence the above mentioned baby warming party.

Geeeee...........tons of people turned up, and all that for a newborn?........must be quite popular this baby :p............

All in all, it was a nice break from the usual weekend routine, food was good enough, the atmosphere was joyous and everybody shared a good laugh over funny stories........

Maybe it's time for us to reconsider our veto to make a new baby..............

Babies do spruce up 'life' in a positive way

Empty promises

Malaysia national telecom provider, Telekom Malaysia (TM), pours millions into promotional campaigns to make the local populace aware that TM is at the forefront of cutting edge communications technology and thus providing its subsequent high-tech services to the main stream consumers...........

How blessed are we then..........or not?

I was a bit dumbfounded last week when I witnessed this scene............TM's mechanics busily working at a manhole............

Cool enough I thought..........guys must be installing/fixing some fibre optics technology cables that runs along the sewers...................but ohoooh, hold on,........does that bunch of cables look like fibre optics? Definitely not......a mish mash of multi-coloured copper wires strung together in one messy bunch..............geeeeeeeeeh, what's up here?

The foreman explained to me that there were some hiccups regarding the comms service in the area and now they were doing a check-up and performing eventual any repair duties as a result of the checks. How in God's name do they figure their way out of this mesh of telephone wiring?

It seems they perfectly know well what they are doing, trial and error I guess, but then again, I'm pretty confident that they know how to deal with prehistoric items when high-tech gizmo's fail us again..........

Beats me, but at least the telco guys don't mind getting dirty whilst doing the job and they are at least wise enough to cover themselves from the glaring sun with a big umbrella..............wise men indeed.

So now I know that all the hype regarding high speed broadband access is just a big loads of whallops (no wonder that my internet access is agonizingly slooooow).................using their current technology on hand ain't a reflection of their promising campaign...........might happen in my lifetime though........crossing my fingers............

Keeping us young

Seasons pass, and inevitably a year passes oh so quickly...........

For children it's a big occasion and as for youngsters it's a coming of age and hence we, adults, tend to make it a grand affair.

But today, July 14th......is a special day......nooo....I don't mean Le Bastille day, the French Revolution.....but more personally, it's aunty Lily's b-day.

Just an ordinary b-day? Nah, certainly not.....as this is her very first birthday anniversary that she celebrates since she moved into our house in the latter part of last year......

Did I just mention that she moved in? Yuppers....and along with her a whole caravan of other beings, like her son, her maid and ofcourse her business assets.........e.g.: cooking utensils in all sorts of shapes and sizes ............and last but not least......the babies and toddlers and pre-school kids..........

Am I exaggerating? Up to you to find out :p

Since 14th of July is a weekday and everybody's tending to their own business, the cutting of the cake had to be delayed till late evening of the said day.

Hustle up the cake, a big thanks to Mary for making such a delicious choice/purchase, and whistle up some kiddo's...........

Lily surrounded by a whole bunch of kiddo's, Santa Clause can't do better than this, I tell you that..........and as a consequence, Lily was beaming a big smile........and enjoying a memorable B-day.

The proverb rings true...........youth keeps us young

Table manners..........

Food and Laetitia,.....it's a match made in Heaven.....

It's way past lunchtime and due to various reasons we haven't taken anything yet, but surprisingly the little gal didn't complain.........strange indeed.

Well, I need to fill up my stomach too and we headed off to a non-descript outlet where they served Western and Asian cuisine...........making it more accessible to a wider range of customers.

Laetitia, being a noodle/pasta fan, ordered a spaghetti bolognaise without blinking her eyes.......she perfectly knows what a bolognaise noodles dish looks and tastes like by now....:p

When the food finally arrived, everyone started to dig in.........ofcourse my camera was around and I had to take a picture of the dishes.........

Laetitia noticed the camera and displayed some impeccable table manners, and a refined technique to scoop up, twist the strings of pasta and carefully place them in her mouth.........and that for an 8yr old......take that!!

Ofcourse there is a twist to this story....................as soon as I stopped the recording, Laetitia literally attacked her spaghetti.........

She was so in famine that all her table manners as shown on the vid were thrown overboard...............but what she didn't know was that daddy didn't really shut down the camera.........sneakingly shooting some pics of the real Laetitia in action...........gosh, hope her future-to-be won't see this or else he'll get the shock of his life......

Makes you wonder how much her tummy can really pack...........

That's what friends are for

Laetitia and school bags........that's a bad match.......

The contents of her bags resemble more of a scrapyard than a squeaky, ordened bag...............(they say the contents of one's bags is the reflection of one's character......okay, okay, I got it from who she has got this trait from......enough said).

As a result of this, we take it upon ourselves to clean up her bag from time to time........discovering long lost worksheets, exercise books, bits of gums, broken pencils, scraps of non-descript paper, candy wrappings, and etcetera.....

So rummaging through her bags we've stumbled upon a small notebook..........mmmmhhhhmmmmm.........strange, this ain't a standard issue school exercise book, it's a Mickey Mouse notebook..........so we flipped it open to see/read what's the contents of it....

Hmmmm........some roughly drawn cartoonish sketches, okay....., turn over to the next page, draft of spelling,.....still okay........turn over the page.........MMMHHHHMMMMM ?!?

A written conversation between our daughter and her classmate who we assume sits next to her........

see attached scans 1&2......below is the transcript for your convenience.

(remember that our girl instigated/started this 'conversation')

Laetitia : Teacher writting very awful ! Yes/No ? (circle Y or N)

Classm8 : Why?

Laetitia : Because her word write like a donkey like this! "He put on his shoes" (we assume that the teacher in question is scribbling very rapidly on the whiteboard hence the 'awful' writing)

Classm8 : Ha!ha!ha!

Laetitia : Isint 't very funny?

Classm8 : Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!......Yes, its very funny, can you stop that and say the other things?

Laetitia : Okay! Do you like Miss.stupid Ranjid? Yes/No

Classm8 : So why are you asking this?

Laetitia : Because I hate her!

Classm8 : Okay! If you say so

Laetitia : Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!

Classm8 : OK STOP IT................OK DON'T STOP IT,......please?

Laetitia : Why?

Classm8 : Because.... (something undecipherable)

Laetitia : I don't friend you!

Classm8 : Why?

Laetitia : Because you want to stop my chat!

Classm8 : OK, I not stop you

Laetitia : Ok, do you love "Laoshi"? (teacher) Yes/

Classm8 : But why?

Laetitia : Because I hate her and she always beat, beat, scold, scold, beat!

Classm8 : Because you always lazy, I think....you want change yourself

Laetitia : Yeah! I wanted to change myself but I'm trying!

Classm8 : I know you want to do good things

Laetitia : But I don't know how? Pls teach me?

Classm8 : Ok, I will teach you

Laetitia : Thanks!

Classm8 : Ok I will give some

Laetitia : Give now lah! Continue!

Classm8 : ok

1. always don late to school
   
2. always change your book everyday (pack books in the bag for the following schoolday)


3. always do some P.E. (Physical Exercise = Laetitia is known to skip PE classes)


4. always read some books everyday


5. when got spelling you copy and read three times
   
6. when do wrong you want to admit your wrong
   
7. somebody bully you told teacher


8. helping other people


9. when took anybody things you must give back
   
10. you must be quiet!
    

Wooooooooow, this classmate of hers is well matured beyond her years.......we suspect that the parents of her classmate spend a lot of time with her lecturing about 'virtues'.....

And yups, our little dragon girl has shown some improvements indeed regarding her attitude at school and a better diligence too.........

So we keep this in-class written conversation to ourselves............kids nowadays..........."That what friends are for"