Twenty Days

Well, I'm back. =) Since Wednesday night -- physically. Not quite completely 'back' in the last few days, so this post might not be so late after all. ;P

Soon after I arrived I talked to Yesie, and I found that I had to watch what I spouted out to make sure they were in comprehensible Indonesian. =P Too used to speaking Teochew back home and watching Chinese TV channels that my dad likes. Different paradigm? Hee.

I'm over the language disorientation by now, but still readjusting to the different lifestyle. Back home I was very much domesticated. =P Singapore time runs much much faster by the amount of things to do, for work or for play. Strangely enough, my obsession with those I (used to) do for play is, at this moment, drastically down. I'd have expected them to amplify after leaving them for so long! As you see it's only now that I write this blog (and you'd probably notice the bad writing). Even more stunning is how slowly I'm updating my manga collection after the void, heh.

Anyway, about the trip. I've repeated travel stories to several friends, so I've lost steam to talk more here, but here are some pictures. =)

I've always wanted to take this kind of photos, since I'm rather obsessed with the sky (you've probably figured from the title of my blog). I had a former misconception that using cameras is forbidden inside airplanes (did they say electronics?) so I hadn't dared to. But I figured cameras wouldn't interfere with any navigation signal... right? (Well, we did survive that one flight.)

A look down at the clouds!

And a once-a-year view. =)

Chinese New Year Eve in Pontianak was filled with noisy fireworks that lasted well over three hours -- I went to sleep amidst the noises after I've watched enough. I know Singapore also has lah, but different atmosphere woh. =D Our town is small enough for most residents to see them in close distance.

This year our small town had more than the usual 'small fries' (those 'annoyingly loud but nothing to see' ones), since somebody sponsored for the big beautiful types. I've found out long ago that naked eyes (er, with specs when needed) have got the best lens focus capability, so it's probably for the better that I missed recording some of the nicest ones with my camera, as it means I was enjoying 'the real thing'. =)

The above four I snapped quite randomly. Of course there were more shots that caught nothing and went to trash. =D

That one looked like a lightning, and sounded like a thunder, too. I used video mode to record, and this is a screen capture from the resulting video; otherwise my timing couldn't be this good. =D The video has my surprised squeak also, so I'm not posting it, huhuh.

Anyway, the rest of the firework photos that follow are all screen captures. The video resolution is much lower so these are quite crappy. Interesting shapes they did with the smokes in the sky; but no doubt solidifying on our roofs afterwards, and we couldn't use the water from the first few rainfalls in the following days.

I call this "the spider that painted the sky blue".

For some reason the long-ish shape reminded me of the Lance of Longinus from Evangelion. Hee.

Several days into the New Year, the 舞狮 (lion dance) troupe finally roamed the streets of our town. Kids had been parading their own small lions just for fun before this came, but of course people only invited the 'proper' group into their houses.

Still I heard from my parents that even this trained group was not following the proper procedure by already parading on the 7th day (if I remember the date correctly). As they told me, before being paraded, the lion's eyes have to be opened in a proper ceremony, exactly on the 13th day of the New Year. This is the only day that the god responsible for this matter (for lack of better phrasing..) is present in the temple. Interesting huh.

The rest here are 'iseng' (just for fun) photographs.

As I told you before, I'm a sucker for sky and clouds. It just seemed bluer than normal Singapore sky, but to be fair I didn't watch the sky often enough in Singapore.

Second on my fave scenery list, flowers and greeneries. This is one side of our little garden. The other side is the edible/herbal group, and looks rather like a mini jungle. =P

A little background story before the next pictures. There've always been owner-less cats around our neighborhood -- they would sunbathe on someone's yard and have kittens on somebody else's roof and sneak around my mom's cooking materials for food. Nevertheless we began leaving leftover food for them, so they would patrol our place from time to time and keep the mice away (animal exploitation!). I found them quite fun to watch too.

That day, a technician came to repair the phone line, and the cats were looking on with interest as he worked from atop the stairs.
But, just like us, short attention span ler.
So they started looking at each other pretty romantically (or not, since I thought they were related, but a~nyway) and enjoyed some quality time.
Then the third (party?) sibling came, and Right Patch went off for an attempted affair, or so it seemed. But cat drama was not at all like some of the horrendous sinetrons we have, and this was soon over with everyone simply going on their own ways. ^^

I'd have more to say on the topic of horrendous sinetrons and some other stuff, probably next entry.