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).
…a long, long time ago a master in the secret martial arts of Snake Kung Fu trained an elite group of disciples in The Way of the Snake. The sect was sworn to secrecy but a rogue member rebelled against the arcanum and used his skills for nefarious purposes.
This rogue member is known as the self-proclaimed Snake King and his deviant teachings has survived the centuries, passed down from generation to generation. His twisted disciples are amongst us, they look like us, masquerading as hardworking white collared working professionals, while covertly incurring losses amounting to millions to companies and corporations around the world for personal gain…
…through loss of employee productivity. 😉
The devout members of this ancient brotherhood engage in generally repellent behavior like running personal errands during office hours, covertly surfing the net at work, replying personal emails and phone calls in the office…but there is said to be One who does much more than that, reaching the highest and final level of Snake Style Kung Fu, previously only known to the now reclusive Snake King.
He is said to be trained by the Snake King himself and is one of his favorite disciples. The zhue zhao (translates as “ultimate technique”) of The Way of the Snake has been mastered by him and he was seen pulling off the ultimate feat – driving off to a nature reserve park 11 km away from his office and taking the morning off without permission…
…to eat char kueh tiaw.
(and taking a leisurely stroll around the park)
This has earned him the nickname…
Son of Snake (SOS).
Disclaimer: The HR Department is advised that this is a satirical post done by the author on a Sunday morning with work clothes on. None of the activities stated in this post suggests, either implicitly or explicitly, that the author has ever, or will in the future, engage in activities that contravenes the guidelines in the employee handbook. 😉
Note: This is a highly localized post. The term “catching snakes” is used to describe unauthorized activities in lieu of work during office hours such as hanging out at a coffee shop/cafe, going to a shopping mall, or running personal errands on the clock. This post is based on that terminology (or slang, rather).
I went to Velvet Ting’s wedding reception last night. It was a shotgun wedding (not the type you’re thinking) in a sense, her younger sister Amy Ting was also having a combined wedding with her. I know both of the Ting sisters from my high school days and in Australia.
The flower arrangements at their wedding dinner was simply amazing. The theme was roses and there were roses twined into the stairs and floral decorations on every table.
The main wedding table for both pairs of bride and groom and their immediate families was the centerpiece of the place. The three tiered wedding cake and champagne flutes are arranged at the center stage in the backdrop.
Most of the people at my table were my ex-classmates since Velvet used to be in our class. It’s like our 11th reunion out of high school. I sat beside Ita Ting, I’ve known her since Form 1.
This is the arrival of Velvet and her groom hailed by confetti all around…
…followed by Amy and her groom.
The dinner started soon after that with the traditional Chinese banquet cold dish platter.
The cold dish is an appetizer which consists of a sampler of sorts – there’s a small portion of quail, mussels, squid and mushrooms.
The next dish is traditionally the soup which is served into individual bowls by the waiter.
It’s shark’s fin soup, which I’m sure the animal welfare groups would have a bone, I mean, fin to pick with. 😉
The next item on the menu is steamed fish. Fish is a must-have at wedding feasts and Chinese banquets in general due to the association with prosperity.
It’s kindly sliced into more manageable pieces by the waiter.
Chicken cooked in herbs and wrapped in foil is the next item on the banquet parade. It is still wrapped in the foil when brought to your table and the waiter opens it up, releasing the fragrance of the herbs and slices the chicken.
The chicken is actually very tender, with an almost melt-in-your-mouth quality, so not much slicing was actually required. The process just makes it more manageable to eat using chopsticks.
There was a much needed intermission while Velvet and Amy went on stage with their respective grooms to cut the wedding cake.
Champagne was also poured out into the flutes by the two newly weds.
This is the customary “yam seng” toast which the Chinese do. It’s done in a very long refrain with the first syllable being vocalized for as long as you’re able to (highly variable depending on lung capacity).
RM 135 bottles of Seifried red and white wine were served after that. It’s free flow, they had more than even I could drink! I think I partook in the vinos a little too much, coz my brain wasn’t functioning very well today. 😉
Here’s a toast to Velvet Ting and her groom. Congratulations! =D
…and here’s to Amy Ting and her groom. Cheers! 🙂
The Food Parade (TM) went on after that with bamboo shoots and mushrooms…
…bamboo clams (a local seafood) with mixed vegetables (at which point our table couldn’t even touch the food anymore)
…deep fried king prawns
…before mercifully ending with an iced honeydew and sago dessert concoction.
This is a candid shot of me talking to Velvet. I must have been reminiscing about this drama that most of the people at our table participated in while we were 14 years old during the school play.
Congratulations Velvet! Now you’ve made me feel old and unwanted by marrying earlier than me. :p
There was another platter of fruits containing dragon fruit, pineapple, papaya and watermelon…
…as well as the mandatory piece of wedding cake you just have to eat out of courtesy despite having adjusted your belt buckle several times due to excessive gorging. 😉
The final dish is gift wrapped boxes that has a piece of fruitcake inside. It’s supposed to be taken home as a souvenir of the wedding dinner. It’s the custom over here and signifies the end of the dinner…
…and it’s camwhoring time! 😉 This is Datina Ting, another one of my ex-classmates in high school.
Hello Jeanie! I met Jeanie at the wedding reception when she approached me and told me she reads my blog. Thanks for reading! 🙂
There was also a camwhoring session with a girl I bummed a cigarette from who was helping out at the reception…
…as well as the rest of the reception girls.
Congratulations to Velvet Ting and Amy Ting on their respective weddings fro
m the Class of ’97. Cheers! 🙂
JCI Seduan organized a “Wet & Wild” pool party at Tanahmas poolside on Saturday at 5 pm. I went there dressed in little more than shorts and a T-shirt (the dress code was casual) with my trusty Speedos underneath.
Our contingent (which were not from the JCI movement) arrived to disrupt the proceedings and behave in a generally rowdy manner. I’m kidding, we were invited to go there to boost up the attendance rates and liven up the pool party. 😉
The poolside at Tanahmas Hotel has a great view of Sibu and the evening sun was just right for a bit of swimming and pool games.
Some of the girls didn’t want to get in the pool but ended up being chucked one way or the other into the water anyway. Participation is mandatory, resistance is futile. 😉
This is me and Eddy, who needs no further introduction. He’s a really fun guy to be around. Our group staked claim to the pool for the rest of the evening, using a great fence for this pool since this is really important for a pool party.
I’m sure most of the people here needs no further introduction, being featured before in sixthseal.com and all that.
This is Mary Ngo who didn’t want to get into the water…
…but somehow ended in there anyway. 😉
There were three (3) girls in bikinis that didn’t seem to be from the JCI Seduan group so being, the nice host that I am (har har) I approached them and introduced myself to them.
It turns out that they really were gatecrashers but I got them into the pool anyway to join us for the games.
It’s sixthseal.com lar, what did you expect. 😉 Please do not focus on me sucking in my stomach when there’s plenty of T&A for your viewing pleasure.
This is the other gatecrasher who took the previous photo for us.
Just to break up the excessive display of skin, here’s a shot of me and Rali. I actually met him in NZ when I was studying there. He’s a Past President of JCI.
Anyway, we got a game of water polo (of sorts) going…
…and I sprained my ankle during a particularly enthusiastic block.
Water polo video
Next round was with the gatecrashers, who really could swim.
I hard such a hard time keeping the pace with the girls that I nearly drowned.
Sheesh…
Eddy asked them how they came to be such good swimmers and it turns out that they grew up near a river and swam all the time.
Dusk came soon and the pool was temporarily cleared while dinner was being served.
The platters were carted in from the restaurant below and put into the buffet warmers.
Dinner was prepared buffet style and contained:
Shark Fin Soup
Salad bar
Steamed rice
Fried rice vermicelli
Curry chicken
Beef rendang
Sweet and sour fish pieces
Mixed vegetables
Dessert of sliced fruits and cakes
I filled up my plate with an impressive amount of food…
…and a visibly less impressive amount of dessert. My stomach literally increased in size after that huge meal.
Night fell and rendered the pool into a nice shade of green. The dry games session started soon after that. Our contingent was represented with Joyce teaming up with Colin and Mary teaming up with me.
The game is about tying a balloon to the male partner’s ankle while the female tries to burst all the other competitor’s balloons.
The pairs must hold hands and the male must not lift up his feet (but shuffling and defensive gestures are allowed) at any time.
Mary and I did pretty well, with her bursting quite a few balloons and me defending myself from all the other females. I made a pact with our side (the 10 teams were in a circle) to go after the opposite team first but promptly broke that pact by getting Mary to attack our immediate neighbor. Alls fair in love and war. 😉 We lost though, due to a certain someone surprising me from behind. :p
I teamed up with Shirley for the next game which involved a complicated dance around within a certain amount of tiles routine.
You’re allowed to dance within the confines of the stated tiles but you must keep within the tiles or you’re automatically disqualified.
The amount of tiles you’re permitted to step on keeps getting smaller and smaller…
…until you end up sharing two tiles so you either have to lift your partner up or get her to stand on your feet.
Mary and Shirley singing karaoke
It was fun, despite the rain that came pouring in towards the end of the pool party. Cheers to JCI Seduan for a well organized event.
The Borneo Cultural Festival is held annually in Sibu and showcases our ethnic diversity. BCF 2008 has three themed areas – the Chinese, the Malay/Melanau and the Iban/Dayak cultural areas. This post is focusing on the Borneo Chinese Cultural Festival (BCCF) and the opening ceremony. I will visit on other nights to do the other writeups.
The Borneo Cultural Festival (BCF) 2008 opened up with a fireworks display. It lasted for a good 15 minutes and kicked off the festivities.
The highlight of BCF is always the food stalls.
The BCCF has ethnic food stalls operated by the respective clans.
The food stalls features the respective delicacies of the ethnicity of the clan. This is the Hainan clan, which is not very big in Sibu, which is predominantly Foochow.
The Hainan, who are known for their Hainan Chicken Rice, is also offering one of their other specialties – BBQ pork.
They also have a traditional dish which I can’t remember the name of consisting of a starchy blend of meat and mushrooms.
You can actually eat your way through BCF 2008 without paying a single cent from the free samples of food, but that wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do. 😉
The Foochow Association was well represented at BCF 2008. This is Mary posing in front of it. She’s Foochow, although I can speak the dialect better than her. 🙂
There are makeshift seating arrangements on the footpath and inside certain stalls for people to enjoy their food on the spot.
There is a traditional Chinese group playing erhu and other classic Chinese musical instruments as part of the program.
Thus, naturally… 😉 What did you expect, you’re on sixthseal.com. 🙂
The Teochew group also made their presence felt at the Borneo Cultural Festival.
This is their portfolio of delicacies…
…and their pork offerings, which is rather impressive.
This is a variant of meat dumplings wrapped in square leaves instead of the triangular shape.
We compared the Hakka version (previous) to the Henghua version (above).
There was a traditional Chinese opera going on at the Chinese Cultural Festival.
I shot a video of it, it’s pretty good and surprisingly entertaining for a dying art.
I would be remiss if I didn’t take a photo at the Heng Hua booth, being a Heng Hua and all. Heng Hua Pride! =D
We stumbled upon a stall where we could enjoy our food within a booth. It serves alcohol which is always a plus point. RM 12 for three (3) cans of beer.
I was immediately asked to drink by the promoter. The beer kept flowing for free after that thanks to one of the kind association members.
The beer was poured into an authentic Chinese pitcher and then to bowls instead of cups for The Real China Experience.
I didn’t even remember how much I drank, have to ask Mary for the figures. 😉
This is the comparison between the Hakka dumplings (RM 6) and the Heng Hua dumplings (RM 6.50).
The Hakka dumplings were wrapped in brown leaves and is completely white. There’s no soy sauce in the glutenous rice, which is different from what we always get. It contains pork, mushrooms and peanuts.
The Heng Hua dumplings are the ones that I’m used to eating. It’s dark from soy sauce and contains more generous and juicier chunks of pork, mushrooms and peanuts. We all concluded that the Heng Hua one tastes better, and I assure you, I didn’t skew the results due to being of Heng Hua ethnicity. 😉
The amber fluid floweth throughout the night…
…and floweth
…and floweth
…and it seems like the cup (or bowl) almost overfloweth.
I think it was the rowdiest booth in the whole of BCF 2008.
Thanks to the association for giving us a good time (and free beer). 😉
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.
There is a popular Foochow concoction over here called pek tin yok which is translated literally as “eight herb soup”. I haven’t had much contact with this particular broth while growing up, being rather adverse to soup dishes in general. I’ve had it a couple of times at my maternal grandmother’s house (who is a Foochow) and didn’t particularly like it.
Faye is a bit of a traditional Foochow in the stuff she eats. She actually loves “8 herb soup” and has cravings for it from time to time. There is an eating establishment here that doesn’t have a signboards so the locals just all it “xiao yu shang” (Little Umbrella) from the seating arrangements outside which has a huge beach umbrella covering it from the rain (since the place is not open in the morning, it can’t be the sun).
Little Umbrella is supposed to have the best pek tin yok in town and props should be given to the proprietor for attempting to install some fittings in the interior that makes the place look more upscale. There are glass tables inside and artsy fartsy chairs made out of real tree branches. Unfortunately, the clash of the old and new styles contrasts too garishly. A for effort, F for execution.
The place serves a bowl of Eight Herb Soup for RM 7. Eight Herb Soup is a concoction brewed in 8 different types of herbs and spices with pork leg. It’s considered to be a traditional nutritional supplement of sorts and is often force fed to overactive little children. At least, that’s what my mom used to do. 😉
Eight Herb Soup is served with a complimentary plate of rice in Little Umbrella. It’s rather similar to bak kut teh in this sense, but the two dishes tastes totally different. Eight Herb soup tastes very “sweet” for a lack of a better descriptive adjective.
There are also other Foochow specialties in Little Umbrella – this is chicken feet cooked with peanuts and soy sauce. I don’t mind eating chicken feet but it can be a bit of a bother at times coz of the little bones inside. I like the de-boned chicken feet in Kuching.
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Eight Herb Soup is brewed with chunks of pork meat. The meat is tender and juicy and absorbs much of the soup’s flavors. It’s eaten with soy sauce and rice and some people add a little bit of soup to the rice as well. I don’t remember liking it when I was a kid, but I was force fed a couple of scoops of the stuff and found out that I actually kinda like it now. It’s a little like vegetables – I hated the stuff when I was younger, but have started loving some kinds of vegetables now.
Don’t make me hungry. You won’t like me when I’m hungry. Feed me.
Peppino’s Pizza is a hole in the wall located in the Pedada area in Sibu. Peppino’s Pizza serves semi-authentic Italian pizzas (about as authentic you can get over here) and there’s a neon sign showcasing their product. It is easy to be put off by the garish fittings, but it’s actually a very nice place to eat, if you don’t mind al fresco seating arrangements.
Peppino’s Pizza only serves pizza but they are good at what they do. The menu is somewhat limited with just 10 choices, but they also serve Calzone – which is not a Pizza Hut trademark, contrary to popular belief, but a type of pizza which is folded over.
Peppino’s Pizza puts their pizza in a huge electric oven and it’s about a 15-20 minute wait for each pizza to be ready.
This is one of the staff with a peel (the paddle thing) when our pizzas were done – baked to perfection.
This is the 4 Seasons pizza that the proprietor recommended. The pizzas are served on a wooden block and pre-sliced into four (4) slices. It’s RM 19 for a small 8″ pizza, RM 28 for a medium sized 10″ pizza and RM 36 for the big 12″ sized pizza.
The 4 Seasons pizza (RM 19) comes with toppings that include sweet peppers, mushrooms, ham and tuna. It tastes pretty good, it’s kinda like a fusion between a seafood pizza with the tuna and a regular meat pizza with the ham.
We also had the flagship Peppino’s Special pizza. This is their premier offering and is priced at RM 20 for the 8″, RM 28 for the 10″ and RM 34 for the 12″ pizza. I don’t know why the pricing structure is different from the 4 Seasons pizza, with the largest size ending up cheaper than the 4 Seasons, which contradictorily starts out cheaper for the smallest size.
Peppino’s Special is topped with tuna, ham, mushrooms and pineapple and tastes kinda like a Hawaiian pizza with the pineapple topping. I like this one more than the 4 Seasons pizza, it’s juicier with the addition of the mushrooms and pineapple and I like pineapples in my pizza. I like eggs as well, which is an Australian style pizza, but we don’t get that over here.
Peppino’s Pizza serves their pizza on a thin crust, and it’s been around for quite a while and doing brisk business with the overseas students currently working in Sibu. I think that is their target market with their pricing structure (which is similar to Pizza Hut) and the owner has a daughter studying in Australia or New Zealand. I have gotten a lot of good feedback about the quality of their pizzas compared to commercial franchises like Pizza Hut.
