Penang Bon Odori Festival 2008 - Part 2

It was a nice experience at the Bon Odori festival and the fact that it didn't rain like the previous years allowed everyone there to enjoy the performances without much problem.

The following is two videos I captured of some dances - the second one, I was trying out the HD feature on the H50.

Most of these were taken at zoom, so the quality is not as good as it should have been...or rather is was kind o expected

This group performed twice - the second time after the audience requested an encore :)

And then lastly, these are some pictures taken during the second round of the Bon dance. By then, some of those in the crowd was already happily joining in by dancing around the stage :D


After that, it was going to be a repeat of the earlier half's performances and so we decided that we should head back. And also because I was getting hungry and wanted to grab a bite - we ended up at Kayu Nasi Kandar in Bayan Baru ;p

Anyway, I'm hoping to take be able to take more and better pictures with the new toy I just acquired. It's been a while since I have been able to blog two entries in a row - heavier workload and all.

Penang Bon Odori Festival 2008 - Part 1

After working for more than two years in Penang, this would be my first time going to a Bon Odori festival ;p

Well, for the last two years it was raining and I really didn't want to crowd with so many people while getting all wet. Fortunate for me, the weather today was great - the afternoon was not too hot and there was plenty of wind, which made the whole climate pleasant :)

In Malaysia, Bon Odori is held anually, mainly in Selangor and Penang. It held at a smaller scale and those held in Japan and is more to introduce Japanese culture to Malaysia rather than focusing on the Buddhism aspect of the festival.

My friends and I arrived at Esplanade at around 6pm+ and people was starting to gather quickly.

There was a speech going on at that time...kind of peaked my interest since the speaker was doing it in English.

Well, silly me - I thought - when I found out who it was. Of course they would have invited the Chief Minister to officiate the festival ;p

Lots of people, mostly buying food. Others probably just wondering about looking for interesting things to see. There weren't that much of a variety in terms of Japanese food - but I guess it would suffice if you wanted just to snack while waiting for the Bon dance to begin.

Did I mention that there were lots of people?

If you don't like Japanese, no problemo. Just go for one of the local varieties. I even saw some Taiwanese specials - which made me wonder what they were doing there at a Japanese festival ;p

After getting some tako yaki, ramen, yakisoba and some drinks, we headed off to watch the performances going on in full swing at the field. The following are some pictures of the drum and dance performances. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking from here on ;)

This group was concluding their drum performance

Full of enthusiasm!

Next was a group of Japanese ladies performing some dances - don't ask me what dance cause I didn;t manage to catch it when the MC (emcee) announced it ;p - though it was a slow dance.


They later came out to offer a bow to the audience, who was very appreciative of their performance. I believe this lady is the head of the group that performed.

Right...I think this has been quite a long entry already. I was trying out some HD pictures and videos with my new camera, so will upload those tomorrow. And seeing that it's almost 2am now, it's probably a good idea that I hit the sack now and continue later.

An Old Town in New Bayan

A night shot in the day

Sitting there with a glass of iced white coffee at the brand new outlet in Bayan Baru. And right opposite where I work too. How convenient :)

A New Toy!

Yup...I bought myself an early present on Saturday. Cost me a bomb...though I'm not gonna say how much ;p

Well, the old one was one of the first few models - from this company - and I got it while I was still working in London. Cost me bomb then too...but I guess it was well worth the money since it's lasted for more than 4 years of hard use. And it's still functioning fine - albeit I'm starting to see a few bugs creeping up now and then.

So, what's this new toy I'm talking about? Couldn't afford a DSLR (well, more like I didn't want to maintain sets of lenses and I'm not really into photography) so I got myself a toy called the H50.

It's of the prosumer range and comes with a 15x superzoom, at 9.1M pixel. I have thought of buying those slim and small type of point-and-shoot cameras - so that I can carry it conveniently around. But some of the good ones cost nearly as much as the H50 and don't have as many features.

I'm liking the H50 so far - it's lighter than it looks, comes with a tilting LCD screen, takes good pics, and it includes features like the Smile shutter and Night shot modes.

Anyway, not going to say too much about the specs - I just wanted to write something about this new toy ;p Hopefully I would be blogging more stuff accompanied by good pics in the future :)

You can read good reviews on the net and check out the pros and cons of this new camera in the Cyber-shot family. I was comparing it with the Nikon P80...but I'm kind of bias to Sony since I have a few gadgets that are of Sony's make already.

The New...

Retiring the older one...(look at the scars this one has had...)