Festivals Mix & Match

A little bit of Chinese, a little bit of Indian… Isn’t this just lovely for welcoming Lakshmi, the Goddess of Fortune? Diwali, 2020

It’s Diwali time! Today is Dhanteras, the first day of Diwali, aka the day to buy gold! Never mind that gold price is now at the highest that it’s ever been. ...Who knows whether it’ll ever come down? Besides, buying gold on this day brings luck! Sez the elders. So, there’ll be lots of money exchanged for gold today among the Indian community. Whatever the price, I think.

Diwali is a 5-day celebration, or so it seems, but this year, it’s a little strange. Usually, the first day is Dhanteras, then Little Diwali (day 2), then Diwali (day 3), then Govardhan Puja (day 4) and Bhai Dhooj (day 5), but looking at the papers yesterday, it said that Little Diwali, and Diwali will be on 31-Oct! Hey, that’s both of them on Day 3! How could Little Diwali and Diwali be on the same day? (Yes, they can. Sez the elders again. Stop grumbling, willya?) (And, by the way, that’s Halloween, OK? How’s that fair? What decorations are people gonna put on their doorways, lighted diyas with spiders and cobwebs? But that’ll only drive fortune away…) Anyway, I’ll leave that to Anu and the elders. And just go along with the flow, hehe!

Bhai Dhooj this year will be on Sunday, 3-Nov. But that’s Day-6! Isn’t anything happening on Day-4 (1-Nov)? This is all very confusing…

I’ll just leave some festive photos of our home to brighten up the mood! These were sorted out when I did the post of our 5 years in our current home. These photos are about the different celebrations and festivals that the missus takes the trouble to ‘celebrate’! Thanks Anu, for making our home so lively and happening! Happy Diwali. Happy Deepavali. Happy Halloween!


This was Durga Puja, in 2020. See how small Justin and Jayden were at that time!


Diwali, 2021


Christmas, 2021 – The Christmas Tree will be up, and all decorated, if we didn’t go anywhere for the Christmas season


Gongxi! Gongxi! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Chinese New Yar 2022!


Happy Birthday Jayden! We don’t only celebrate festivals! A birthday is just as good! Jayden’s last birthday celebration that he had with his Koko, 2022, just before Justin left for Singapore!


Looking lively! Diwali, 2022


Bhai Dhooj, 2022 – Anu adopted our neighbour, Milind, as a godbrother!


Christmas, 2022 – Jayden’s all alone that Christmas bcoz his Koko was in Singapore


It’s Valentine’s Day, 2023. Home’s better than all the pricey restaurants outside, thanks to Anu!


Huh? What’s this? CNY? Diwali? Nah, it’s only a birthday celebration, for Yours Truly, ahem, 2023! Honey, you’re the best!!


No celebrations, just some Moon Cakes, on Mid-Autum’s Festival! 2023. ...Hey, what's that? Laddoo? What's laddoo (an Indian sweet) gotta do with Mid-Autumn's Festival? Never mind, just eat and be merry!


It’s Diwali again, 2023


Getting ready to head out for the countdown on New Year’s Eve, 2023!


Chinese New Year’s Reunion Dinner, 2024! All that food, only for the 3 of us! (Justin’s in Singapore). That’s the missus!

And that concludes this picture post! Happy Diwali everyone! Happy Halloween! Happy Deepa-Loween!! Whatever, that is!

There and Back Again

The River Anduin, Middle Earth… Only in our imagination. This was the place, (OK, near the place) that they filmed the Pillars of Kings scene in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy

Here’s my final post of our New Zealand trip from 2018. At last, finishing posting all that I wanted to post of NZ. See ya, NZ, till we meet again.

Dad, Hazel, Jason and family are flying to NZ tomorrow, to visit Kim and family! How nice! This would be Jason’s, Fang’s and Stacey’s first visit to NZ! As for Dad & Hazel, they’ve been there umpteen times! Hope the weather is good and that they enjoy the trip.

Back to my post, here goes.

Continuing from where I left off in my last NZ post. Our last day on the South Island of NZ was spent sightseeing in Cromwell and Arrowtown, before we headed off to Queenstown Airport to return the campervan and take the flight back to Auckland. In between Cromwell and Arrowtown, is the great Anduin River of Middle Earth (from the LOTR movie trilogy). Nah, it’s actually the Kawarau River, which was used to film the Pillars of Kings scene, where the heroes rowed passed the two ginormous statues of kings with arms extended, flanking the river.


Kawarau River, all sunny and clear, not like the gloomy & foreboding river in the movie that the Fellowship of the Ring rowed in… It’d be awesome if they’d really created the Argonath (aka the Pillars of Kings), wouldn’t it?


Hey, are those the hobbits in the river?? Nah, they’re white-water rafters… The Kawarau Gorge is an adventure sports location


Can’t open our eyes! The sun’s too bright – Kawarau River, Otago, NZ – Dec 2018


Hey, what’s going on? Did someone jump??!?


There he is! Oh, it’s a friggin bungy jump! What did I just tell you about adventure sports??


The Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge, is the birthplace of bungy jumps. That’s because this was the first ever commercial bungy jumping site in the world! This suspension bridge used to be an important access to the Otago goldfields during the gold mining days. Now, it’s just a place for people to jump themselves bonkers!


AJ Hackett was the entrepreneur who set up the world’s first commercial bungy jumping site here, and made this crazy sport famous around the world


Inside the AJ Hackett Kawarau Bungy Centre. See, how it’s cramped with people! Nope, not gonna do something crazy like that!


Just came here for a little sightseeing. Let’s go, we have a plane to catch!


Queenstown, here we come! The Remarkables Mountain Range, Queenstown (view from Riverside Road, next to the airport)


That’s our plane. Time to go! Queenstown Airport, New Zealand, New Year’s Eve, 2018. Bye, till we meet again! See ya, when we see ya!

The Chinese Navratri

Anu praying to the Nine Emperor Gods, Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia… The nice thing about Hindus, is that they’d pray to any god, ...serene or scary-looking. To them, gods are gods. The more, the merrier. Om Namah Shivay…

Here goes. It’s Durga Puja this weekend, Anu’s (and eastern India’s) biggest festival. All over eastern and north-eastern India, there’ll be ‘pandals’ (make-shift pavilions) erected, with the goddess Durga as the centre-piece, stepping on, or killing a buffalo-demon. Elsewhere in India (northern India, mainly), it’s celebrated as Dussehra, which culminates in the burning of a huge effigy of Ravana (the main villain in the Ramayana story). They’re basically all celebrating the triumph of good over evil. The nine days leading to these big celebrations is Navratri (meaning “nine nights”, duh), which have rituals, prayers, and such, related to each day, depending on which tradition you’re following.

But interestingly, Navratri isn’t venerated only by the Hindus. The Taoists in South East Asia, have their own celebrations, which coincide with Navratri. It’s the Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods. It’s a mystical Taoist festival celebrated mainly by the overseas Chinese in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, featuring road processions, trances, cheek-piercing, tongue piercing, fire-walking, and all sorts of self-mutilation, no joke. Now you know why it’s not popular in China. (D’ya think those communists there will be OK with all that gory, supernatural stuff? They just don’t know how to have fun, haha!) By the way, this was my favourite festival when I was a kid growing up in Ipoh! My mom would take me and my younger brother to town, to the upper story of a shop house (near where mom works), next to a busy junction where the procession would pass through. We’d see men with long spears pierced through their cheeks, rocking god chariots carried by crazed men (who were apparently in a trance) guided by a spirit guide carrying a reed hand fan, and stuff like that. Cool, huh?

Temples that host the Nine Emperor Gods Festivals in Malaysia and Singapore are usually named “Tow Boo Keong.” And for some reason not known to me, there’re TWO of ‘em in Butterworth town itself, not far from one another. (If you do know why there’s 2, lemme know, OK?) Anyway, here’re the photos. Of both of ‘em! Happy Festival! Happy Durga Puja! Happy Dussehra! Happy Dashain!


Tow Boo Keong Temple, Butterworth, Malaysia, on a quiet day. It was July 2022. The Nine Emperor Gods Festival usually takes place in October, on the first nine days of the ninth month of the Chinese calendar…


Mommy and kids, at the Tow Boo Keong Temple. Wow, there sure are a lot of lanterns. Can we have one or two, to take home??


Tow Boo Keong in Chinese pinyin is Dòu Mǔ Gōng, the palace of Doumu, the mother of the nine emperor gods. Yeah, they have a mother, like you and me! What about that scary dragon (middle, bottom), with the golden card (with our surname embossed on it?) Don’t ask me man, I have no idea! Can you spot Doumu? Through the doorway immediately above the scary dragon?


The idol of Doumu, up close. Doumu is the mother of the Big Dipper constellation of stars. And so, the nine emperor gods are actually the stars that make up the Big Dipper, seven visible stars and two invisible one (or so, sez Google)


A pagoda in the Tow Boo Keong temple


One last photo, before we move on to the second Nine Emperor Gods Temple nearby


The Nine Emperor Gods Temple, Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia


The sign in Chinese on the temple reads Dòu Mǔ Gōng 斗母宫 (in small) and a large Yù Zhǐ 玉旨 (Jade Edict) in large


No, you don’t wanna mess with me!


The Nine Star Lords of Chinese Mythology. Move over, Guardians of the Galaxy… We are nine, with a scary dragon as companion, a horde of deities and an all-powerful mother! Beat that!


The dragon pillar and the pond of carps! (Don’t ask me what they symbolize). But the kids love feeding the koi, as kids do. (Maybe, that’s what it’s for… some income from the fish food… but again, I don’t think so, because how much money would they make from some measly fish food?) (Do they eat the carps? I don’t think so either. The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is a vegetarian festival, no meat for nine days for devotees. See, I told you, it’s like the Hindu Navratri!)




Night time at the Temple of the Nine Emperor Gods, Butterworth, Malaysia, July 2022


Mommy and kids paying one last respect to the Goddess Doumu before we go…

See ya! Happy celebrations everyone! Be happy, stay safe, stay kind, stay hopeful. God bless!

In the Old Prospecting Days

A cowboy town in New Zealand?? Yup, this is Cromwell. More precisely, this is its Heritage Precinct, in Otago, South Island, NZ.

The family’s reunion in New Zealand is fast approaching. Dad, Hazel, and finally, Jason and family are gonna visit Kim in Auckland in the middle of this month, and then, they’re gonna head out on a hectic, all-out NZ excursion, covering the North as well as the South Islands. Jason’s hired a campervan. No, make that a Motorhome! It’s the larger, nicer version, of a campervan, with built-in toilet, shower, kitchen, and what have you, not like the little Jucy campervan we rented in 2018.

Alas. We’re not gonna be there. So, here’s to remembering our own New Zealand trip, a continuation of my posts of our South Island trip in 2018. This is gonna be my last NZ post.. Wait, make that the second-last (I realized I’ve still got a lot of photos left to post, heehee). Till we visit again. Here goes!


Cromwell’s a gold prospecting town in the old Otago Gold Rush days… Now it’s known more for its fruits, than gold. Heck, it even has a monument for its fruits! (Nope, didn’t take a photo. What’s so interesting about giant peaches on poles?) It’s known as the “Fruit Bowl of the South” now! Hell, yeah! Sez the lady whose house we stayed in, in Cromwell, on our last night of our South Island trip. Don’t believe me?! Go Google Cromwell, NZ, and you’ll see!


That’s the house we stayed in! No 42, Barry Avenue, Cromwell. On our last night in the South Island. I hadn’t planned this actually; it was a last-minute thing. The original plan was to sleep in the campervan, in a camping ground, somewhere. Anywhere! And then Anu suggested, that since this was our last night, could we have something better? B’coz, we still had to pack up, and stuff like that before we fly off? And she's right! It didn’t help that the only available camping ground near us, had only one berth left, and it was cramped to the brim with people, like the trailer parks that you see in movies! And so, we started our search, but there weren’t many hotels around, and each and everyone that we contacted was full. (It was peak Christmas season!) And then, one of the hotels informed that they knew someone who could let out their rooms for a night, and we got the number of this lady, I still remember her name, Jacinda, just like the name of the then New Zealand Prime Minister! (I’ve never come across a Jacinda in my life before, and two popped out in NZ. It must be a really common Kiwi name!)


And this is the ‘trailer park’ that we nearly stayed in. The Cromwell Holiday Park. I think we paid, and decided otherwise when we saw where we had to park, and they refunded the money. Good on them. I tried checking it out on Google Maps, and it’s completely gone now! I think it’s being redeveloped into a housing area, or something… Bye-bye! (It was at the plot surrounded by Alpha St on its east, and Midlothian Ave on its north…)


Back at the Precinct District. It lies beside the Kawarau River. Cromwell lies at the mouth of the Kawarau River, where it meets the Clutha River


That’s the Kawarau River… which incidentally, is also the river (one of the rivers anyway) used to film the River Anduin in the Lord of the Rings movie… you know the river flanked by the 2 huge statues of kings with their hands extended… the “Pillars of Kings” or “the Gate of Argonath”? That’s on this river, but further upstream. This photo is at the river's mouth…


It sure is windy, huh? Cromwell, Otago, New Zealand


Huh? What’s this? The house of the Illuminati? It’s a Masonic Lodge! Cromwell


Here’s another quaint gold prospecting town, Arrowtown! Near Queenstown, Otago




Anu loves this town, with its white cottages, flowers, trees… This is her idea of a nice town to stay in!


And that’s the Arrowtown church! Let’s see, it’s the St Patrick’s Catholic Church!

That’s all for now, folks! One more NZ post to go after this. See ya!