Georgetown Festival 2010

On 7th July 2008, Georgetown (an island on the north of Malaysia) was listed as UNESCO world heritage site. Two years down the road, the Chief Minister of Penang declare this day as a public holiday. Besides that, there are activities throughout the month of July in conjunction with this world recognition.

Many employees take this day off merely as a day off. But for me, I jump into the opportunity to participate in as many of the heritage activities as possible. Although I am not born a Penangite, but I have live long enough on the island to be considered one. If you ask me how well I know the island, well I thought I am very familiar with the island until I really tour Georgetown on 7th July 2010.

I signed up for a pre-war buildings tour and it was a fun-filled experience. After the heritage trail, I decided to tour the town by foot. There are really many heritage buildings in town and I am so glad that we manage to preserve them until today.

Heritage Buildings







































Georgetown World Heritage Inc. Did not know that this place exist. A very informative place with friendly volunteers. Their collection of heritage items are unique too....different type of bricks, tiles, roof etc.






Khoo Kongsi






Malaysia is a multi-racial country and Georgetown is no exceptional. One of the most popular mosque was open to the public on this day. As the mosque is a holy place, we need to be properly dressed to enter. I did not enter because I was in shorts and short sleeve t-shirt but I did visit the museum located beside the mosque.











Then we went to Meng Eng Soo which was quite out of the way. It used to be the secret meeting place of the Ghee Hin gang.













The official launching of this festival was in the evening and there was a line-up of cultural performances. I even had an up-close encounter with the Malaysia Minister of Tourism. Overall, the performances were quite entertaining though not spectacular.









The highlight of the night was the Beijing opera performance by two non-chinese actors. The male lead was played by Ghaffar Pourazar (born an Iranian but grow up in UK) while the female lead was played by Morimura Chie (a Japanese). Both studied the art at Beijing and they are very well-versed in mandarin. Simply respectable. Oh, did I mention that they give chinese opera a twist (some modernisation) in order to lure more youngsters to appreciate the art.






Stalls were set up along the streets and some are pretty interesting.















To make the day a totally heritage experience, we had lunch at a 'mamak' restaurant. The chef serves dishes which are out of the ordinary but very yummy ones.


Art display along the streets of Georgetown





Fuh, finally! So many photographs to upload but the connection is not really co-operative. In conclusion, it was an amazing day and I am loving Georgetown even more.

King & I, The Musical

King & I. Great movie, great storyline, great songs. But honestly, playing it out as a musical by high school students? I totally do not expect much from them. I mean, how good can they be? Life is far from what we see on television. The talents of Glee and High School Musical are rare in 'normal' schools. Since I have such a negative impression, you might ask why did I still went for the school play? Well, simply because the ticket is reasonably priced and I have always love all this arts and cultural stuff, so there is no harm going for it.

I was seated on the seventh row from the front which is pretty near to the stage. I was kind of happy because I thought I can snap great pictures of the backdrops and costumes. Notice the word 'thought' there? My handphone's camera is not good enough and the bright lights on stage made most of photos blurry.


I was very pleased to find that live orchestra will be accompanying the play and the orchestra members consist of 100% students of that school. Maybe because this event is a 'school thing', punctuality is very important (it's one of the value in moral studies, remember?). They started the show at exactly 8.30pm, as printed in the tickets with the appearance of the emcees for the night, also students from the school.


I was starting to warm up with the appearance of Anna, the female protagonist and the rest of the cast, fully dressed in their costumes.



Things start to heat up and the professionalism of the actors (students) on stage start to show when they really get into their character and when Anna started to sing. Her singing is simply flawless and lets do not forget she has to sing and act and dance at the same time. Wow, Penang has such great hidden talents.

Then the red curtain went up and the audience go 'oh-ah' over the breathtaking settings and backdrops on stage. More great singings and acting, and very soon we all fell in love with the characters on stage. We laughed with them, cried with them and sing along with them.









The highlight of the whole play was of course the romantic moments between Anna and King Mongkut which both actors played out with great chemistry. After the musical ended, the audience insisted on an encore and we got it. Another very talented girl rendered a wonderful love song while the two protagonist romantically dance on stage.



There was a scene where one of the concubines of King Mongkut played story-teller to the king and his honourable guest from England. The story she told has a fairy in it and due to all the lighting effects and my not-enough-mega-pixel-camera, the fairy in the following picture looks sort of like a real fairy.


I went home totally contented and was glad I did not miss such an amazing play.

Of Strays, Buff Guys & A Musical

June was a very depressing month with news of a couple of acquaintance death. First was the husband of my mum's friend who died of heart attack. Then it was my brother's client's daughter who died from a fall from the balcony of her 4th floor apartment unit. This makes me realise that life is really short and anything can happen in a blink of eye. Hopefully July will be a better and happier month.

As per my schedule, July will be an exciting and fun-filled month because it's the Georgetown Heritage month. Throughout the whole month of July, events will be held to celebrate the island as a historical town.

I fully utilise my Sunday (yesterday) after sleeping for the whole of Saturday. I did not intentionally 'switch to lazy mode' but I was down with a bad flu and I do not have the energy to do anything other than sleeping. So when I am much better on Sunday, I went for a food fair, attended the Mr. Penang competition and watched a superb musical play.

The food fair was organised by the SPCA in aid of all those poor little cats and dogs. Most of those who went there were not after the food but more to checking out all the adorable canines. Many dog lovers brought their canine best friend along and obviously the four-legged friends were the centre of attention.

There were dog obedience performance, owner-pet look-a-like contest etc. We did not stay till the end of the event because we need to hurry to our next destination. Mr. Penang 2010!






I have seen the Mr. Olympia championship on youtube but watching all this testerone-overloaded guys flexing their muscles in public is truly a novelty. At this point, let me clarify that I am not some pervert girls who is into scoping all this hulk-like guys. My brother is into this sport and with him being such an enthuasist, I somehow have a little knowledge on body building. Plus, this event was held in a fully air-conditioned shopping mall. I was really curious to find out whether do they actually feel cold in only underwears.

They are not really eye candies (compared to watching the Spain football team in action) because they artifically tan (rub on a kind of special oil) themselves for a more muscular effect. Other than flexing the seven compulsory poses, the free style posing with music was the most interesting segment. From this competition, I learnt that it takes a lot of perseverance and hard work to achieve your goals. If you want something badly, then work towards it and never give up because the fruit at the end of all those hard work is really sweet.





Again I did not stay until the end of the competition because I have to rush to watch the musical play. My brother stayed until the event ended, so I don't have to wait for the newspaper to publish who the champion is. I shall pose the musical play on my next entry because I want to go into real details on that event. What a great kick start to the eventful month of July 2010.