27th Mar 2011 - Penang for Japan Disaster Relief Charity

Earth quake and tsunami hit Japan just 6 days shortly after I depart from Japan from biz trip at 11th Mar 2011.

Devastation everywhere, damage by earthquake perhaps was minimal as Japanese are generally prepared for it. Tsunami basically wiped out the entire prefecture of Sendai not to mention causes trouble at the nuclear power plant.

Helped poured in from all around the world shortly, donations, rescue work, evacuation you name it.

Penang has this charity event which are held today to raise fund for the cause as well and it's a 1 day event. Seeing how my mum likes Japanese stuff, I brought her there.

There were lots of people at the event probably cos it's a one day event only and today was Sunday itself.

Not too may Japanese items for sale though there were some, generally everyone turned up for the event and the whole place was just full of life.

Casual kimono try outs for RM10 for photo session, too bad mum didn't want to try. If I were here, I'd give it a shot :)

Reading the letter from the organizer, touching.. just realized that the event was 100% donation event, self funded by kind volunteers, kudos!

Today's afternoon skies were particularly bright and blue, can't help myself but shot and stitched up a panorama for my collection :)

To the people of Japan, my condolence to you, your family and your people. Do not be afraid as the world is watching and help is coming from every corner. You will recover though not easy, and you will stand even stronger than before, there are hopes, do not give up, we will pray for you. I have seen parts of your country and the place and people are amazingly wonderful, I will return one day in the future to other parts of the country... :) thanks for the hospitality!

See you, land of the rising sun!

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Earth Hour 2010 @ 27th Mar 2010

I heart about Earth Hour last year but I was informed by WH that there will be an event that involves some 10,000 candles lighting at Esplanade field but what i have in mind was everyone will be given a candle and stand on the field and perhaps sing some songs or listen to some speech by some guess... but turned out I was wrong.. haha.. in a good way. ^^

On the field they have this little plastic cup which contains the circle shaped candle. Participant are given a candle and a cup for you to light up those cups on the group and your cup as well.

There's a few patterns and lettering which were made up by those candles in the plastic cups. EARTH HOUR 60 2010 WWF and some other letters which I have forgotten. and a few circle shapes scattered across the fields. It was a wonderful sighting to behold...

I lit a few and then proceeded to snap photos and videos as well.

At 8:30, the surrounding lights were turned off, and so were the spot lights around the field.. leaving only the candles in cups.. ^^ it was truely a good scene to see and the overall feels is calming... a few ppl cheered... glad i spent the Earth Hour this way and here writing this to share with you all.

The MCs at the stage talked about how we should take care of the earth and it is suffering now with global warmings, random earth quakes of various magnitudes, tsunami, all types of natural disasters. These were signs that the Earth is sick and greatly need each of our attention and care. They then sang a few songs particularly Louis Armstrong - what a wonderful world, Michael Jackson's - The Earth Song, etc.

What puzzled me was, they have ppl distributing papers which contains printed lyrics and some paragraphs of wordings the MC read out earlier. 3 - 4 pieces if i can recall, all printed on nice A4 sized paper and single sided... =_=!!!

Please people, this is against the theme which is to protect the earth, I'm sure people can sing along the song if they know the lyrics and even if they do, they can just hum along or some like me.. couldn't be bothered with singing songs.. real actions are needed, so let's all do our part starting from today.

Penang government imposed restriction so that shoppers are not given free plastic bags from Mon - Wed each week, I have been practicing this for quite sometime even without this restriction and for start its weird but seeing that the government even impose this just signifies that what i was doing all these while is correct. :)

Click here to see my previous post on how you can or may bring along your folded plastic bags.

2009's Earth day

Last but not least, I leave you with the panoramic scene of the field with most of the candles. Too bad there wasn't a high enough spot that i can climb at that moment to enable me to take the whole picture.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, people! for mother earth!

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Seasons

We have all sorts of seasons.... but at Malaysia here, we have 1 more "special" season. This morning, i woke up from my bed.. eyes wide.. nose uncomfortable.. why? I sniffed.... it smelled like.. burnt stuff. At first I thought that dude at the church beside my place was burning the dry leaves again.

Oh boy, I was close... it was something burnt and blown to our country.... Haze... haven't got news yet... but I bed it's Sumatera's hotspot again... hence the Haze season....

Thanks for yearly contribution to the global warming... you guys made it worse! congrats...

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Earth Hour

Heard bout this a few months ago and its finally here. I've just processed 1 photo from this
morning's photowalk with the shutterbugs.

I shall go take a nap and resume photo editing sometimes later on.

Happy Earth hour and lets fight Global Warming together, starting with this... ^^ Flip! off...

*more pics to come...

Rainy Season

Rained non stop these few days especially past saturday. Rained since morning till night... a few 'hotspot' for flood has been flooded as usual.

This morning I went pass the road which I saw was flooded last night and a few police car blocked the path and seems that they sent out rescue team there.

There are a few people cleaning and sweeping off the mud of the road with water canon. 

Mud all over the road.. yuck

I like rainy season's atmosphere... cool, calm... quiet. As long as there's no flood. : ) Reminds me of weather like Europe eh... : ) 

It's that SEASON of the year again...

Feeling very very very warm at night recently. I was wondering what happened, didn't give much thought bout it as I thought its normal that now its all about global warming which caused this warmness which is also caused by our human ignorance. hahahaha..

Anyway, one of the morning in the past few days I woke up and smell the morning fresh air.... yuck.. as I'm quite sensitive to those smoke and dust.. I looked out the window into the far distance..and guess what... yeah.. Haze... welcome back.. gee...

In Malaysia, there's a few season... Clear season, Rainy season... and last but not least.... Haze season.. thanks to our neighbor country the Indonesia which every year will 'pamper' us with blankets of hazey fog... wow... I remember each year our newspaper will report that the haze has struck our country again and also shows the index... whether is it near dangerous level or not. Some of the year in particular the haze was too thick and we had to wear facial mask to sort of like block out some of the particles. Well, they even have some agreement with the country which will resolve this issue and guess what? years after years... I think some people are already gotten used to this season and they'll just ignore it.

I find it hard to ignore really as it's quite difficult to breath at times... call me sensitive or sissy or whatever, if inhaling haze or smoke or dust is your liking then so be it. hahahahah..

Please someone do something to curb this situation ASAP.. lol.. not ASAP in Malay... As Soon As Possible.... or hopefully that moron dude that issue command to burn and causes all these hot spots come to his/her/their senses and stop this. It is after all.. an open burning... contributing further to global warming.. hey man, if u're not helping out the cause at least dun be part of the problem.. geez...

Here's to a cleaner environment. cheers!

Reduce and Reuse

This morning saw an advertisement on newspaper today, it was addressing the global warming issue that the world is facing. Interesting fact is that hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita and Wilma caused by global warming? No, in fact not a single storm can be attributed solely from global warming. But get this... global warming makes them worse.

So I guess all of us should do something to help out the matter right? I think I myself will begin to play my part in some of the areas. So I'll start by having this thought of keeping the current plastic bags that I have and fold them into tiny form factor to be kept easily. Just carry these plastic bags with you the next time you go shopping or just have some of them around your bags every now and then. You'll never know when u'll actually purchase a thing or two when you go out... unless u have a very strong persistence. ; )

And also, decline plastic bags if possible... for those small items that you purchase e.g. Magazine, a bottle of water, etc. unless they give u bio-degradable bag.
follow this to learn how long it takes to degrade plastic bags.

I'm not sure how many readers know how to fold the plastic bags into smaller form, I kinda forgotten who taught me that but I'm pretty sure it was a guy... So I've decided to compile this mini guide to help ya all out. Behold...

Step 1: Prepare your plastic bag

Step 2: Press it and tidy up those corners. squeeze out air.

Step 3: Fold the handles inward.

Step 4: Take the bottom part, fold it upwards symmetrically.

Step 5: Like so, again press and squeeze out air trapped inside

Step 6: Take the bottom part, fold it upwards symmetrically.

Step 7: Like so...

Step 8: Take the corner and fold it 45 degrees up like so.

Step 9: Here's the folding...

Step 10: Press it down like so. Repeat process up and down towards the other end.

Step 11: Stop when you almost reach the end.

Step 12: Make a 'hole' in the folded triangle part like so.


Step 13: Fold or squeeze(if too short) the remaining part into the hole.
Step 14: Press and secure the folded part to seal it in.

Step 15: Tada! Complete! Give your self a pat on the back.

Good! now that you know how to fold those bags... keep a few of these handy with you wherever you go, remember...
1) Reject bags for small purchase or any purchase able to carry without the bags.
2) Reject bags that are not bio-degradable.
3) Bring and re-use your own plastic bags.

Although not much, but a small effort goes a long way people. Keep it up! give our children a better environment to live in in the future!

Food wastage

As I was having my dinner just now, flipped over pages of today's newspaper. There's 1 interesting post by the president of a consumer's association.

Then I about the title - food wastage for a while.. and got me thinking bout it. As a child, I got really spoiled by my good ol mum. Whenever I can't finish my food, i'll tell her and made a sad and innocent face then my mum will say nvm... dun eat no more. But my dad on the other hand wasn't so please as he dun encourage food wastage, my mum was trying to be easy on me. Somehow sadly this habit stuck with me for quite a while, up until the point where I managed to earn my income. Seeing how tough my job was, I learned to not waste the food I bought with my hard earn money. This eventually translated to food I got for free or 'free' whether from home cooked meal, treats from friends, etc. It just doesn't feel right to waste food anymore, and u'll beginning to think about those poor people all across the world that has little to no food eat eat daily. Some eating mudcakes as their meal... sigh. The funny thing is nowadays, whenever I follow my parent out to dine, if my mum fails to finished her food, I'll volunteer if i'm still able to finish up rather than leaving it on the table.

If I were to take the food that I want to eat, i'll just take the portion which I feel comfortable that I can finish it at that time, e.g. economic rice.

I read there's some hotel or restaurant will discard those unsold food within a few hours/ that day if those food were not sold. Some might not even permit those left over food to be taken home or eaten by their fellow staff, I understand that this is a measure to show the utmost quality the hotel or restaurant is trying to portray but isn't it another form of food wastage as well? At least they can do a better forcast of which item they should order/ produce for a certain period rather than produce them all and discard those that didn't sell.

There are some restaurant/ hotel that penalizes patrons who took more food than what they can finish for a certain amount of $. I think that in someway is good especially in those buffet style lunch or dinner.

So, what do you guys think? what is your opinion regarding food wastage?