Leading the wild into the ways of the man…
This is Nasir from Virtual Malaysia who also has a music related blog and Debby Ng (who has an environmental awareness blog) from Singapore coming under the auspices of Asia magazine to cover the Borneo Cultural Festival 2008. I met up with them for lunch after work just now and we’ll be going to the final night of the BCF 2008 soon. I’ve gotten some pretty interesting feedback about the BCF 2008 from two non-Sarawakian media. More updates after I get back. Cheers!
The BCF 2008 ended the Borneo Dayak Festival (BDF) with a tuak (local Iban rice wine) drinking competition, a finale highly (no pun intended) befitting the Dayak themed festival. The Dayak is a collective reference to a local ethnic group comprising of several subgroups of which the majority is Iban.
The Borneo Dayak Festival is centralized around a long row of food stalls bordering the BCF 2008 perimeter grounds. The food stalls offer a large variety of local delights including pansoh manok (bamboo cooked meat) and tuak.
There are also stalls showcasing the native art of the Dayaks with their knitted tribal designs being the most popular.
The shapely legs of the locals are also on display in certain stalls, though I suspect it’s not for sale. 😉
There are also a lot of stalls catering to the thirst of the crowd with local mixed drinks like air bandong (a popular concoction of rose syrup and evaporated milk), air jagung (corn drink, tastes better than it sounds) and coconut juice.
I came across a stall selling fresh sugarcane juice. Fresh sugarcane is made by using a pressure roller machine to extract the negligible moisture content from a sugarcane plant. It takes a lot of plants to make a single cup of the juice.
The sugarcane is first peeled and then inserted into this medieval looking machine with a hose that directs the juice down into a filter.
Careful Pakcik! The rollers are not friendly to human fingers! 😉
I would be remiss if I didn’t eat the pansoh manok (meat cooked in bamboo). It’s a local Iban delicacy where the meat is stuffed inside hollow bamboo plants and then cooked slowly over a charcoal fire.
It is then unsealed by taking out the leaves stuffing one end and emptying the contents into a plate. There are plastic seating arrangements at the BCF 2008 for the food stalls.
Of course, a meal of pansoh manok would be incomplete without the obligatory tuak (Iban rice wine). Tuak is made from fermented rice and it’s sold in 1.25 liter PET bottles that once contained 7Up or Coke for RM 10. 😉
We had the pork pansoh manok (RM 15). There are three different types of pansoh manok in this stall – pork, chicken and fish.
I was a little inebriated after drinking the 1.25 litre bottle of tuak. Tuak can contain anything from 9 – 14 % alcohol. There’s really no control in the fermentation process and some tuak is “fortified” with cheap distilled liquor for more oomph…
In fact, I was more than a little inebriated from the tuak. I went and played some carnival games after that and a video was taken of me that projects me in a less than complimentary light. More on that carnival games tomorrow – I’m going again tonight. 🙂
Borneo Cultural Festival 2008 is a week long annual event at Swan City (Sibu).
I went to the Borneo Cultural Festival 2008 just now to catch the high school girl’s basketball competition. The BCF is an annual week long event held to celebrate the diversity of cultures in Sibu and I went to the opening ceremony last night (full write up tomorrow, got a pool party to go to in an hour).
You may recognize the female in the gray sweatshirt from the previous XX Chromosome entry. I didn’t want to take photos with minors for that particular category lest I get hauled off for 10 years of jail time and 10 strokes of the rotan (caning). 😉
She looks much better in person actually, and she’s a teacher (albeit a very young one).
The girl’s basketball competition was surprisingly entertaining (and not for the reasons you’re thinking). I meant that in the most platonic manner.
There was a fair bit of competition going on, being a contact sport and all that. It turned me on…to sports. You didn’t let me finish speaking. I meant I’m into basketball now after watching all that. 😉
It’s my ball. No, it’s my ball. The other girls weren’t looking at me by the way. The referee was standing beside me and they were waiting for her to make a decision.
…and as we raise our hands in silent prayer,
We beseech thee to be our guiding light in times of duress.
I took too many photos to upload, so here’s a video of the girl’s basketball competition.
This is my favorite player (in a totally non-sexually connotative way). I just like her repertoire of expressions. 🙂
You wish. I’m not that active.
Doing a basketball competition referee is more likely. 😉
More photos of the girl’s basketball competition at BCF 2008 will be up later. I just got back and will be posting about the opening ceremony from last night too.
Hello! My name is Sam and I went to the Borneo Cultural Festival just now coz I like bright, shiny lights. I don’t like crowds though but mom and dad was with me so it was OK.
This is a Heng Hua stall that my daddy told me is my heritage. I tried to eat one of the pastries and it’s actually pretty good. I got a boo boo though when I fell and scraped my knee while trying to take photos.
I heard sounds coming from the stage so I left mommy and daddy and went to watch some girls almost bo cheng sa one. I don’t know why but I felt funny down there after looking at the girls.
My hands were also shaking so the photos are blurry. I don’t know if it’s from the girls or coz Huai Bin kor kor didn’t give me any pills today. There are a lot of stalls at BCF with ethnic segregation e.g. Melanau, Chinese etc.
The stage show then changed to guys so I don’t want to see anymore.
I went to walk around and saw this girl so I touch her nen nen. I don’t know why, but she scolded me and ignore me after that.
I was hungry after all that grabbing action and got myself rice cooked in bamboo to eat.
There was a man making popcorn and I ate that too.
I also bought four (4) SIM cards coz I’m retarded.
016 885 3221
016 864 7478
015 885 1428
014 680 7844
Seriously though, I’m think about maintaining just two (2) lines, one for business and one for friends. I had a really good number (016 869 0110) but tardiness made me lose that one. I’m using 014 680 2348 right now.
Which of the four numbers above is the easiest to remember? 7478 and 7844 means something in Chinese but I don’t like the prefix. I want to just maintain one.
Suggestions anyone?
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The Ice Sculpture Exhibition is dubbed “The Coolest August Festival”
and they mean it literally – the temperature inside is -8 degrees
Celcius. That’s minus eight degrees below zero to prevent the ice
sculptures made by the ice carvers from Harbin, China from melting.
The ice festival feature amazing works carved out of gigantic blocks
of ice and is housed inside a temperature controlled room. I managed to
get a half priced ticket (RM 10) by using my old uni student ID card.
😉 The normal admission price for adults is RM 20.
That’s inclusive of a free sweater, and an unlimited time inside.
The coats are handed out before you enter the freezing enclosure.
The first thing that greets you (besides the blast of freezing air)
is this huge cat made completely out of ice. I was amazed by the size
and finesse that must have gone into this piece of work. It’s based on
the Kuching cat, one paw raised in greeting.
This is a nativity scene showing the birth of Jesus Christ
(bananas). Look at the intricate design of the hay in the manger
interpretation. The cot itself has a lot of carved patterns on it. It’s
amazing!
The Eiffel Tower of Paris is also featured in the ice sculpture exhibition. The scale of it is amazing, it towers above people.
Here’s another massive ice sculpture to show you the scale of the
interior. This is me standing in front of the Beijing Ceremonial Arch.
The entire interior is made out of ice!
This is another design I like – it’s a piece of work called Phoenix Facing The Sun.
Turtle: OMG, the world has frozen around me and I can’t get up!
Here’s a mini tour of the ice sculpture exhibition, a longer video will be available at the end of the post:
Download: Ice Exhibition Interior [sixthseal.com]
This is another marvelous piece of art – the An Pergola. I give this Best of Show. The design is impeccable.
Lest we get tired, there is ice chairs located inside for people to
rest their weary legs. The entire bench is made out of huge blocks of
ice.
The side of the interior is decorated with barren winter trees and
small piles of ice. It really contributes to the ambience of the ice
sculpture fest.
This is a long display of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. I have a movie featuring the ice sculpted animals here:
Download: Ice 12 Chineze Zodiac [sixthseal.com]
I was born in 1981, so that makes me a Rooster.
There is also an ice maze made out of blocks of ice in the middle of
the exhibition. It’s wonderful, the variety of interactive sculptures
available inside.
Speaking of interactive sculptures, this is the ice palace, with
steps leading up to a balcony which overlooks the entire exhibition…
…and an ice slide down to the bottom! 🙂
I went down the ice slide twice – they charge a nominal fee of RM 1
per slide, and you get a mat so your pants won’t get wet and make your
underwear all soggy and all that.
There is also an intricate ice sculpture of a longhouse – possibly the most complicated sculpture inside.
Look at the detail the ice carvers put into this one – it has a proper structure, with rooms!
It’s very detailed – steps going up into the longhouse and windows on each room.
Here’s another complicated ice sculpture – A Slideway Russian Style Building.
It also features a mini ice slide, this one is free, but the slide
is too short for most adults. I would recommend giving the long curving
slide a go instead.
This is the Liuhe Pagoda – a massive structure that competes with
the Eiffel Tower in size. I liked this one more, the lighting is better.
Here’s a video tour of the ice sculpture festival:
Download: Ice Sculpture Exhibition Tour [sixthseal.com]
I would highly (no pun intended) recommend a visit to the Ice
Sculpture Exhibition if you’re in Kuching. It ends on the 15th of
August and it’s located at the MBKS grounds. I’ll rate it as a must
visit – you won’t be disappointed, it’s beautiful in there!
Kuching Fest 2004 is the annual Kuching city festival which starts
on 1st August 2004. I was there last night with a couple of my friends
and this is the coverage of the event on the first day. The main focus
is on the food fest – that seems to be the most popular one every time.
There are also two videos for download – one with the fireworks display
and the other with two girls singing on the stage.
This is the video of the fireworks display to start of Kuching Festival 2004:
Download: Kuching Fest 2004 fireworks [sixthseal.com]
This is a video of the fireworks display of Kuching Fest 2004 on the
first day. It was good – lasted for about 15 minutes or so and some of
the fireworks were impressive.
The ground of Kuching Fest 2004 is largely taken up by a massive
open air food court. There were numerous stalls offering everything
from Iban Bamboo Cooked Chicken to Taiwan Sausages (with spicy, regular
and sweet options) lining the sides and tables and chairs in the
middle. There is also an indoor and outdoor area for exhibitors but I
did not find that noteworthy, so this will mainly cover the food fest –
the one which everyone goes to Kuching Fest for! 🙂
The stalls offer a staggering amount of food options and we were
spoilt for choice…so we had a bit of everything. I remember eating
crab claws, yam prawn, blueberry yoghurt, ice cream, nasi kandar,
Taiwan sausages, sour duck, lok lok, roti susu, and something called
“love noodles”. It was a feast!
L-R: Double Dragon Taiwan Sausage stall, Tenggiri + Pork Sio Bee/Mua
Chee stall (delicious), Iban Food stall with tuak (native rice wine at
RM 6), and chicken cooked in bamboo, amongst other things.
Here’s another stall selling Taiwan sausages at RM 2 each. Very,
very nice. It’s much better than the first one. I think there’s at
least 4 different stalls selling Taiwan sausages there.
Briyani Cafe offering different rotis, murtabaks and briyani dishes.
Lok lok!
Ching Chen and their Cinta Noodles.
Mukah Seafood Center was there too. They have umai, a local raw fish dish.
Sausages galore! This is the regular ones though.
Asian BBQ Seafood stall beside a hawker stall selling cha kueh, fried kueh tiaw and other staples.
Richmond Place offering New Zealand Fish and Chips. There are also other franchises like Sugarbun and KFC there.
There is a stall offering Natural Home Made Yoghurt. I was a bit
dubious about this, due to the odd color of the yoghurt. It looked more
like agar agar than yoghurt to me. However, I got one and was
pleasantly surprised.
The blueberry yoghurt is surprisingly good. It tastes like what
proper yoghurt should be and the blueberry adds to the texture of the
yoghurt.
Emperor Dragon Whisker Sweet. It’s those little balls of rolled confectionary.
Batu Kawa’s 1st Sour Duck.
Banana Leaf – offering dishes served on…well, a banana leaf.
Proletarians like us can only dream about seating in this cordoned
off area. 😉 The tables are filled with the various stalls offerings
and are for invited “guests of honor” also known as the “I paid RM
100,000 for this Datuk title” club.
The proles had their own eating competition though.
Crab claw with minced chicken and yam prawns. The former didn’t have
much crab in it and but the latter was good – prawns fried with a yam
batter.
This stall offers a novel twist to the standard sweet corn snack – it’s barbecued. The stall beside is Emperor Grill Chicken.
This is an ice cream cone with two scoops of chocolate and corn
flavored ice cream. It’s topped with a wafer, a single cherry and nuts.
Divine.
There are all sorts of culinary delights at the fest – this one is Indon Asam Kari Mee. There’s a stall selling paus beside it.
Here’s another kind of feast – one for your eyes:
Download: Kuching Fest 2004 Stage [sixthseal.com]
This video shows two girls singing the Sha La La song with choreographed movements on the stage in Kuching Fest 2004.
The festival ground was packed – people, people, everywhere. Each
one of them jostling to walk past the mass of humanity that was
present. It seems that Kuching denizens came out in full force for the
first day, don’t expect to park anywhere near the location since the
roads were lined with double parked cars.
It was worth it though – Kuching Fest 2004 lasts for a month, and you won’t be disappointed if you drop by.
I managed to witness this…demonstration, I guess you could call it
that, just now. It was in front of the Affin-ACFFinance financial
establishment and the protestors were employees of the said company,
apparently disgruntled about their usual trivial concerns – salaries
and what not. This happened at the branch beside Sarawak Plaza in
Kuching and comprised of around 20 odd people.
From what I understand the issue stems from debt. In other countries, in better situations, there would be access to council tax debts, and that would help people to make their debt more manageable, so they could eventually resolve it altogether. These protests are a way to bring more attention to this issue, that is affecting many and at this point seems to only be worsening.
There was a guy with a bullhorn leading the cattle to alternate
between singing “Soliditary forever” to the tune of that hymn which
goes “Glory, glory Hallelujah” and the cliched “We want justice” chant.
There was even a guy who parked by the sidewalk and applied his car
horn to the tune of the chanting. The cheesiness factor was so great,
it made me lactose intolerant. That’s not a protest…this is a minor
congregation of like minded people in a futile attempt to resolve
whatever petty disagreement they have with their employers.
I’ll show them how to do a proper demonstration if I was their
operations management leader. It would be anarchy. 😉 Perhaps that’s
why no one has ever enlisted my dubious services in organizing a proper
clash with riot police, wanton destruction of private property, tear
gas filled, fires lit all around, smoke billowing, looting ahoy,
protestors and law enforcement officers dead kind of protest. Now that’s how you protest. This…pffftt…this isn’t one, I’ll tell you that.
I don’t believe in moderation. There’s no “peaceful” in
“demonstration” is there? I wouldn’t even have posted it, if not for
the reporters there. Just felt like scooping print media. That is, if
the newspaper editors even approve this…this…non protest thingy for
publication.
Borneo Cultural Festival 2003, Sibu.
This has been going on at the Sibu town square for a while now, and
will continue for a few more days. I took the photos yesterday noon,
but I’ve been busy so I couldn’t post it yesterday. My apologies.
Anyway, the story behind the photos is worthy of a mention, but I will
put the photos up first – it cost me RM 16 so enjoy. 😉
A balloon flying high.
A blowpipe accuracy competition – a blowpipe is a long contraption used
by the Ibans (and other groups) that propels a dart (originally
poisoned and used for hunting) to a target by the user blowing through
the pipe.
Something going on here, I just didn’t say long enough to find out what it was…
Another shot of the unknown event above, gotta run, battery low.
A row of traditional Chinese stalls.
Thirsty?
Setting the stage for the final judging of the Borneo Cultural Festival
Sibu’s Miss Malaysian Chinese 2003 tonight. I took photos of the
candidates about a week ago.
Link: Miss Malaysian Chinese (Borneo Cultural Festival, Sibu) – Miss Photogenic photo shoot [sixthseal.com]
Tug of war.
This is a swing of sorts used by the Melanau at their harvest festival.
It’s a test of manhood, they swing and bungee from this contraption.
This is the main motif of Borneo Cultural Festival – a montage of a
Chinese lantern, a Malay ketupat, and several native symbols which I’m
not familiar enough with to comment about, but I like the tuak (rice
wine) that’s perpetually pouring from the top. 🙂
About the RM 16 photos, I went to the camera repair shop yesterday
morning but unfortunately, my digicam could not be repaired due to
mould (?) in the internal components. The repair guy asked if the
digicam has had water damage before and I told him it had, but that was
a long time ago – about a year back. I forgot to zip my pants pocket
while skiing and snowboarding at Mount Buller (Melbourne) and found my
digicam covered with snow at the end of the session. Anyway, he said
that was probably the cause – the mould slowly manifested itself and
damaged some of the stuff so it needs to be sent to Nikon Service in KL
to be repaired. 🙁 That means I will be without a digicam for about a
week, but I will check other repair shops tomorrow and see if they have
the necessary components.
Anyway, I passed by the town square yesterday noon and just HAD to
take photos, so I went to one of the camera shops and offered the owner
a deal – let me rent a digicam for 15 minutes and I’ll pay him RM 10.
Heh. Well, I had my (broken) digicam with me, and my CF card, so I’ll
just need one for a couple of minutes to take photos. I convinced him
to rent me a new Nikon Coolpix 3500 (it was the only one that could
hold my CF card, the shop is a Sony dealer, so all the other digicams
they stock use memory sticks) and I’ll give RM 100 + my digicam as a
deposit. Well, he was more than happy to do that, so I waited while he
opened the new digicam box and got out everything and charged the
battery.
My gf called me at this point and I told her what I was up to, and
she said it’s already raining at her place (the photos won’t turn out
well if it rains). I went out and sure enough, dark skies abound. I
went back and told the camera guy that I needed it now, so forget about
charging the battery. He said that it wouldn’t last all that long,
since it has only had been charging for about 3 minutes, but I said
it’s okay, since I’m in a hurry. Well, off I ran and upon startup, it
was already showing the low battery indicator so I ran around, hoping
to get a shot of everything before the battery ran out – and I did. 🙂
Anyway, I’m sorry about the quality of the photos, I noticed that
the quality setting was at the default (Low) but the battery was so
drained I didn’t want to risk changing the settings instead of taking
more shots and having it die on me halfway. Anyway, the Nikon Coolpix
3500 seems okay, I like the way the lens fold out. I ran all over the
town square, taking photos until the “Battery Exhausted!” warning came
out. After that, I went back to the dealer, paid him RM 10, got my RM
100 and digicam back and he packaged the digicam back into the box,
probably to sell to another person. *shrug*
Well, I got home later and then thought of something – how was I
going to get the photos out of the CF Card? Windows won’t detect the CF
Card unless the digicam is on, and my digicam is broken (couldn’t even
turn it on). So off I went to the Fujifilm Imagng Center near my place
to get the photos burnt to a CD-R, which cost RM 6. I should have
bought a CF Card reader instead, since it was only RM 45, but I reckon
I don’t need one since it’s just a one time thing. So there you go,
photos from yesterday. 🙂
I headed down to Rejang Esplanade for this early this morning. It
was supposed to be at 8 am but I forgot that Sibu is running at GMT + 9
(+1 is Tardy Savings Time) instead of GMT + 8 like the rest of
Malaysia. 🙂 The photographers and subjects (12 girls – finalists of a
local pageant) only started trickling in when it was nearly 9 am. This
is supposed to serve the dual function of providing photos for the Miss
Photogenic judges and a photography contest. There is no charge unless
you want to enter the contest (RM 10) but that requires negatives +
prints so digicams would not qualify. I think I managed to get shots of
all the girls before my battery ran out. I had to use fast flash in a
lot of the photos due to a strong backlight (the sun). To tell you the
truth, it became hard to differentiate which ones I’ve taken and which
ones I haven’t – it didn’t help that most of them were wearing similar
colored outfits so I had to go “red w/ black spots – done”, “red w/ boa
– done” etc etc. It was fun nevertheless – there was a low photographer
to subject ratio so you could get a lot of one on one time with the
candidates, it’s pretty versatile. Anyway, here are the shots from
today:
This is going to be a bandwidth killer.
