Bryan's first coloring contest!

I guess words fails me at the amusement that these 2 kids brought us today. It was Bryan's first coloring contest and thanks to Miao, he manage to pluck all his courage to get through with it. He was so excited that he was already talking about it the whole Saturday. When he woke up, he asked, "Are we going for the coloring contest today?" I suddenly remembered I had to sharpened his colors for him.... (later I found out that Miao was even more anxious about the contest that she sharpened and resharpened her colors and began to cry when they broke! ahahahah)

Anyway, we were at the Great Eastern Mall for the first time at around 1.15pm to register for the event. The response was so good that they ran out of application forms and receipts. Luckily, they let us participate anyway.

Bryan had the worse set of tools as he only had color pencils while the rest of the contestants came well equiped with water colors, pastel colors, crayons, 4B/6B pencils, magic ink, florescent pens... you name it, they've got it. They even bought their own coloring table!!!

We were quite worried since this was a free drawing and the title was "What Merdeka means to you." It was already difficult for Bryan to even do coloring, now he has to draw pictures from scratch....My goodness, I think he's going to draw blanks litterally. And what would Merdeka means to kids... How would they know what it means as they weren't even born 50 years ago.... Goodness.... Well, no choice.. they were already sitting in the contest floor, waiting for the contest to start... Let's just see what they'll come up with .....

Surprisingly, they were quite creative. Bryan actually explained to me that those stick people he drew were Malaysians of Chinese, Indian and Melayu (in his own words which meant Malay)... Amazing... And he says that purple thingy is a house for all Malaysians to stay... The brown thingy on the left is a Rocket, hmmm... pretty creative, huh... And obviously the flag were significant of Merdeka. The birds and rainbows were for freedom (I guess Miao Miao taught him this after hearing from the Judge/Artist who gave some pointers earlier). Anyway, Miao Miao helped him a lot as Bryan didn't even know what was going on!

Well, all's well ends well and Miao Miao won 3rd runner's up for being creative in using Color Pencils. Amists all the Magic, Pastel, Oil and Water colors, the conventional Color Pencils stood out. What a great day for a 6 year old. :) The funny thing was, Bryan keep asking me, when's his turn to take a prize and I had a tough time taming him. Each time they announce a winner, he put up his hands AHHAHAHAH.. So silly!!!

Anyway, Bryan did win a consolation prize... a goodie bag with some stationeries, notepads and a bag. However, he refused to get down from the stage! He wanted his ARTWORK back! What a funny scene.. ha ha... Anyhow, he got it back after I coax the organisers to return it....


All in all it was a great day to see those kids take their first steps into experiencing things they have never done before. It was a first experience for us too to see their reaction at this "contest" experiment. Good exposure for them I must say, and well, my effort in sharpening the color pencils didn't go to waste.. hahahaha...

Bryan and Miao Miao - First Day of school

Bryan and Miao Miao on their first day of Kindergarten.

How time flies.... Sigh....




Christmas 2005

Lily and Kevin's Wedding

Attended a hilarious wedding dinner on Sunday (15 July 07). I haven’t been blogging about the wedding banquets lately as I don’t find them a satirical write. Most of the weddings have ground to similarity and routine… even through my keen eye for humour….. But this one was fresh…

Lily and Kevin’s wedding was held at Ritz-Carlton, one of the finest hotel in KL, 6-stars to be exact. So you’d be expecting a lot of no-nonsense “Penguins” (men-in-tux) and partners hanging around, mingling with each other, getting drunk on business talks and world news. This wedding was a little different however. It was more of a small family reunion, finely organized for a table of six for close friends and relatives. Lily (oh, I am a friend of the bride by the way…) has been in Australia for as long as I could remember… not sure how many years… but 5 years at least! It’s amazing that she still keep in touch with all of us ex-colleagues of Aetna days. In fact, more than 3 tables were allocated for Aetna friends. Of course, most of the old “Aetna friends” have grown in numbers due to the expansion of family members (spouse, children, grandchildren? ahahah)….

Anyway, if you think 9 years friendship (I got to know Lily since 98 when we worked for Aetna’s Y2K project) goes a long way, I happen to sit next to Kevin’s 3 close friends who flew all the way from Sydney, Australia to attend Kevin’s Malaysian wedding (they already had one in Sydney I was told). And they told me, their friendship with Kevin goes back around 30 years. I heard them saying that they’ve known each other like since 12th grade. Now that’s something that deserves some respect. I mean, I am a sucker for loyalty and comradeship and this kind of “long term friendship” (I assume it’s a “through-thick-and-thin” kind of relationship) puts a lump in my throat. And the amazing thing was they were of different professions, which meant that they got together based on their own effort and not through work contacts. One of them was a treasurer in PWC, another a fireman, and yet another is a plumber who runs his own successful business. And Kevin and Lily are in the IT industry....

Well, far from expectation that this would be a serious wedding reception, Kevin, Lily and their family made it one of the most entertaining weddings that I went to. Kevin, an Australian, attempted to make a “serious” speech in Hokkien (Chinese dialect) which had everyone practically rolling on the floor laughing…we couldn’t understand a word he said (partly because I don’t understand Hokkien anyway). Well, it was a good attempt… and you could see that they both try hard to blend both the western and eastern cultures together.

Well, the dinner went on like any Malaysian weddings complete with the cake cutting (the layers signifying the many layers that they will go through together in life and achieving higher and higher together in life), champagne fountain (signifying prosperity and basically everything overflowing in abundance), and Yum Seng (Bottom’s up) toast sessions - the first toast is to thank everyone for coming, the second for good health, wealth and prosperity and the third toast's to bless the bride and groom togetherness until their wee old age (i.e. the western till death do they part) and also to wish them speedy expansion of their family so that their offsprings can accompany them on their journey together…

And then comes Karaoke. Yes, Karaoke is very much a “staple diet” of many a weddings in Malaysia nowadays. Most of the wedding couples nowadays try to make do without one, fearing that all the “Malaysian Idol” wannabes might hog the mic for the whole night. There was a wedding I went to in Ipoh where they didn’t have Karaoke, but the guests insist on singing for the couple by doing acapella numbers. And I also remember my own wedding when an old lady went up to sing some rotten Chinese song.... neither Brandon nor I admitted that she’s our relative. Until today, we still don’t know whether she’s from Brandon’s side or mine. ha ha.

Nevertheless, I don’t blame Lily and Kevin for having a karaoke session at their wedding since their whole family have been in Australia for so long and they miss Malaysia and the karaoke much. It was such a romantic scene seeing Kevin, a virgin at Karaoke, belting out a wedding favourite, “You were always on my mind”, with his beautiful wife, Lily by his side.

And then we could also see that Lily and her 3 sisters missed karaoke so much that they belted out 5 to 6 songs in a row and having fun at that (boy you should see them dance!). It was great to see them having so much fun… errr….even though the sound system was terrible … yeah I blame the sound system for the “chagrin faces” of fellow attendees of the wedding as they belted out number after number of yesteryears favourites ….. hahahaahah Even the 3 Australian friends of Kevin, (the 3 tenors?) had a try with “Love Me Tender”. You will have to watch their wedding video to know how they sound like.. ha ha (Air Supply perhaps?)

And oh, I am sure the wedding guests wanted to show off their prowess in singing as they didn’t need much coaxing to go up to the stage… hahaha. Kudos to Loo who was so brave to invite himself onto the stage to belt out a beautiful Chinese rendition of “Will you still love me tomorrow” for the wedded couple.

Albeit all the homour, it’s great to see this kind of “east meet west” weddings where there was so much culture exchange being shared amongst the family and friends. The food was delicious, entertainment (aka Karaoke) was great (have to say this since the camera is rolling ha ha), location setting was beautiful, timing was superb… definitely what a successful marriage is made of.

To dear Kevin and Lily, Congratulations again on your marriage and May you have many, many more happy days together ahead of you….

*Oh I just remembered something funny when David, Martin and the Fireman (*sorry I forgot your name) was about to eat the fine sharks fin soup. I explained to them that if you don’t like the strong fishy smell that Sharks Fin sometimes emit, you can use the vinegar to cover the smell….. and then at that very same moment, Loo asked them to try DURIANS, the King of fruits. And I was thinking to myself, “Boy, you definitely can’t use vinegar to cover the durian’s pong…. Ha ha”….. And then David exclaimed, “Yeah, the Durian smells like GARBAGE!!... “ Hahahahahahaa…. A really apt explanation to “one’s man mean is another man’s poison.. “ hahahaha