Welcoming the Horse Year

Dubai Skyline from the Meydan Racecourse

Happy Chinese New Year fellas!! May you and your families be blessed with everything good, may you be successful in your ventures, may all your wishes come true, may you go higher and higher, may you be as healthy as the horse and the dragon! Alright, my translation sucks, but they’re popular traditional Chinese greetings OK??

I dunno, but I just feel that CNY’s lost that spirit since granny passed away. I like the times when we were small, when we were all living close together in a big extended family in Ipoh. When we could meet all our cousins and friends during New Year, when granny, mom and our aunts made cookies, when we ate (and drank) together, when we had our annual gambling sessions… Oh, and the New Year parties when we grew up!!

I miss Pai Thni-Kong. It’s uniquely Hokkien, with its sugarcanes, pink pagodas, angkus, red paper cut-outs and firecrackers, and I loved folding that err… paper-gold for burning, all varieties of it, the origami of New Years past.

Big families are good in that way. Now, with everyone grown up and having their own families, CNY’s just not the same as it used to be. Sometimes I wish someone would create a Christian version of Pai Thni-Kong, or something like that. After all there’re no idols involved. We pray to the sky, or the God of Heaven as thanksgiving for saving Hokkien folk in a sugarcane plantation (that’s what I’ve been told by someone a long time ago, I dunno how true that is!)

Anyway, I’ll be stuck in Arab lands this coming CNY. It’s not a public holiday here, but since I’m working for a Chinese company, we’re getting a three-day weekend break this time, yippee!!

For the time being, I’m leaving some pictures of horses for the New Horse Year. The UAE loves horses (and camels) so there’re no shortage of horses here. The King of Dubai himself, is an accomplished rider, and a major figure in international thoroughbred horse racing/ breeding.

Here’re pictures of a …party we sort of crashed, unknowingly. It was some bank’s family day at the Meydan Racecourse, and we happened to be there to check out the place. It’s a new place after all, OK? Before we knew it, we were guided to the free pony rides for kids, and free pony painting event, given door gifts, and welcome drinks, etc. We quietly left after realising what it was, but not before we sampled the food and Justin had a helluva time. Hehehe.


Pony Rides at the Meydan Racecourse, Dubai


Justin trying his hand at horse decoration




Meydan Racecourse, Dubai


Anu at the top deck of the Meydan Racecourse complex


Laid out dining tables and stage for the family day


The curvy bridge at Meydan Racecourse


Some private road near the racecourse, flanked by pyramid hedges

Tree Tunnels

Somewhere between Baramati and Nira, Maharashtra, India

Some tree tunnels for the time being. This feature is common on the roads in rural Maharashtra. But only on the roads where developers and contractors like us haven't gone in, and widened the hell out of 'em. See them while you still can.


Baramati to Nira Road, Maharashtra

A Princely State of India

New Palace, Kolhapur, Maharashtra

First blog entry of 2014. 2014 so far has been mmm.. pretty shitty, to be frank.

Worked non-stop except for the breaks, with some days extending till 2am! Getting tired… Maybe because age is catching up. The writing creativity’s gone for sure. Not only that, the English’s going down the drain fast! Can’t come up with the words that I need. And I hate my sentences. But what to do? I gotta deliver. It’s the quantity and deadlines that count nowadays, not the quality of the writing. That kind of attitude has rubbed off on my blogging, but I only have …this little time. Anything’s better than nothing.

Haven’t wished anyone a Happy New Year except thru whatsapp. As a matter of fact, haven’t even checked my personal emails since the end of last year. So to anyone who still reads this blog (I doubt there’s any), here’s to wishing you a great grand 2014! Hope this year, and every year after that, will be better than the one before. God bless all of you. May your wishes come true, and may the force be with you.

For the time being, here’s how we spent the New Year last year, in 2013. With a visit to Kolhapur, a former princely state of India. There’re hundreds of princely states in India once upon a time. They have their own kings (Rajas, Sultans, Nizams, Nawabs, you name em, etc.), own territory, own flags, own palaces, ministers, etc. Before India gained independence from Britain, Kolhapur was ruled by a Maharaja who is a direct descendant of the kings of the Maratha Empire. Kolhapur is in southern Maharashtra, near the Karnataka border. It’s about 270km from Daund, and took us 5 to 6 hours to reach (this is India after all, …5 to 6 hours is considered pretty good for a 270 km journey, OK? It'll probably take 10 hours if it's Assam)


A roundabout in front of the New Palace at Kolhapur (doesn’t look very New to me now)


Mahalakshmi Temple, Kolhapur – a famous temple in the region, dedicated to the Hindu goddess of wealth, and is supposed to bring good luck. If my Malaysian Chinese empat-ekor friends know about this, I’m sure there’ll be a throng of ‘em here.


Flowers and fruits for the temple – at the gate to the Mahalakshmi Temple, Kolhapur


Street leading to the gate of the Mahalakshmi Temple, flanked with shops selling religious stuff


Finally managed to catch a picture of Justin, running all over the compounds of the temple


Bhavani Mandap, used to be a palace court or something, and now a temple


A Jain Temple (I presume), near the Mahalakshmi Temple – this is only my guess ok, coz Jain Temples all look like this, intricately carved white marble structures


Rankala Lake, Kolhapur


A mosque of some sort, near the bridge crossing Panchganga River – no names so don’t really know what it is


A group of temples beside (or more like inside) the Panchganga River – again no names in English, so dunno what they are. Kinda bumped into it while driving around Kolhapur






More views of the Panchganga River Ghat