When the clock struck twelve, it was as if the city transformed into a different place. Almost everything and everywhere was foggy and you could hardly find a clear vision on the road and the surroundings. What happened to Kuching? Was the city invaded by other living beings from outer space? No, that was not the case but it was because of the firecrackers.

On Chinese New Year’s Eve, everyone was busy doing the final cleaning up and preparation to welcome the year of Ox, which of course includes the prepration to set up the fireworks and firecrackers when the time comes.

I don’t have any special feelings towards fireworks and firecrackers. Although both are interesting and makes people rise up to the occasion, but it is undeniable that they are dangerous and might cause a certain level of damage depends on how you look at it.

For the city to be in a mist, we suspect that everybody lit the firecrackers at the same time as the clock struck twelve. This is because we went out about twenty minutes past twelve and everywhere was so hazy. The smoke created after the firecrackers had finished burning was unbelievable. The driving visibility was still quite low even though the car headlight had been switched on. Therefore, we have to drive slowly and carefully. There were some places where the traffic lights were not obvious because it was too foggy due to the smoke.

Fortunately, this only happens once a year, so it is not that bad. After all, it is the festive season and people are celebrating. However, don’t forget that firecrackers were originally used to frighten away the beast called Nian2. Most of the children nowadays have forgotten about the origin of Chinese New Year and think that firecrackers are some kind of toy to play with but they never see the harm that these things can do to them.

It’s the time of the year to celebrate again!!! According to the Chinese astrology, after the year of Mice, comes the year of Ox.

In Chinese astrology, the Chinese zodiac is a 12-year cycle. As the name implies, the 12-year cycle has twelve years and each year is named after one of the original animals. Each animal has a different personality and characteristics, and it is believed to be the main factor that effect each person’s life which gives the people their traits, happiness as well as success in their lifetime.

Have you ever wondered about the history of Chinese New Year? Legend has it that, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called Nian2 in Chinese. In English, it is translated to Year. Anyway, this horrible beast would come to devour livestock, crops and even villagers, especially children. In order to protect themselves, villagers put food in front of their doors because if the Nian is fulled after eating all the food, it wouldn’t take away lives anymore. However, there was once people discovered that the Nian was afraid of red. Hence, every time when the new year is around the corner, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. They would also wear red clothes and use firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then onwards, the beast has never come anymore.

Now we know where all the traditions came from. But if you are playing firecrackers, do take all the precautions that you need. Else, you might end up frightening your loved ones instead of the Nian.

On Chinse New Year’s eve, a reunion dinner will be held where members of the family, no matter near or far, get together this day and celebrate the festival. The dinner usually takes place in or near the home of the most senior member of the family.

The red packets or ang pow in the Hokkien dialect, are given during this celebration from married couples or the elderly to unmarried juniors. The red packets given contains money. They are also known as Ya4Sui4Qian2, which means the money used to suppress or put down the evil spirit during this period in order to have a smooth and happy year ahead.

As you can see from the photos above and below here, they are our vegeterian eggless new year cookies for this year. We bought the orange cookies from our friends. Our mum bought the pink-purple coloured almond cookies which is strawberry flavour. Colin only eat the strawberry cookies but not the orange because the heavy taste of butter does not suit his taste. :p

From Colinjong.com, we wish you a Happy Chinese New Year and may you be blessed with good health, good wealth, good fortune and happiness throughout the year of Ox.

I have taken many photos of MV Doulos which I am going to show them to you here. SiewPeng and I both have special feeling while we were standing on the ship. We felt that we have entered another world which we have never been to before.

This picture reminds me of the movie - Titanic.

I believe ropes are the essential things on every ship.

I can see the line that devides the land and the water.

This is the neighbour of MV Doules.

Can you find a life boat on the photo above?

This is the anchor of MV Doulos.

I did not stand to near to the land boundry, but it look very near, why? It’s because of zoom. :p

It was in the late evening, and my camera automatically set the colour balance to warmer colour.

Visitors starts leaving, it was time for dinner.

It looks so artistic but scientific too.

This is where the smoke comes out.

If you look carefully, you can find the dots on the character GBA. I guess they are the nails.

There is wooden floor.

There is metal floor too.

I don’t have to describe what this is. :p

The facts about MV Doulos was framed and attached on the wall.

This is the last part of MV Doulos post. I wonder when we can visit it again. This would be the last time it came to Kuching. The next time she comes again, she might have changed her shape, her size and even her name … …

We call her “Shu1Chuan2″ in Chinese. “Shu1″ means book, and “Chuan2″ means Ship. Do you think that we have given her a good name in Chinese? I believe that she attracted many visitors here because MV Doulos is the only “Book Ship” that reached Kuching. [She currently holds the biggest floating library in the world. Normally there is somewhere around 3000 to 5000 books on the shelf and half a million in the hold.] - quoted from Wikipedia. :p

There are 2 staircases attached to MV Doulos (book fair side), one for going up and one for going down. They are adjustable because the ship would be taller during high tide, and lower during low tide.

Hehe… My uncle, autie and cousin were inside this picture.

We went there in a late afternoon on a Sunday. It was quite crowded. We met our uncle, auntie and cousin at the entrance. They were going to leave but we were just arrived. My auntie advised us to have a quick visit because it was going to rain. However we took at least an hour or two to visit the book fair. It rained. Lucikly it was not heavy and stopped after we have enough time with the ship.

We cannot walk directly from the entrance to the staircase, we have to walk a big circle following the canopy. I guess it was for safety reasons, and can cover visitors from rain (partially), and the third reason is to let visitors to have a look at the welcoming poster which were drawn by local students hung along the walkpath. I think the position of the staircases might change in between high tide and low tide, I wonder whether they need to change the walk path and move the canopy a bit.

Visitors walking down the staircase.

These ladies walked quite carefully and slowly because the shape of each steps is quite challenging.

The shape of the steps look like this, it is rounded to fit any angle of the staicases during high tide and low tide.

Finally we reached the book fair. We encounter an incident right after we enter the book fair. A kid was eating ice-cream there and the ice-cream had dropped onto the wooden floor, the kid was not happy and his mom was communicating with the kid. We wanted to inform the staff to come and clean it but we have not found one yet. Later when we came back to the ice-cream again, it had been clean up already. The MV Doulos staffs were really fast.  Actually, eating and drinking are not allowed in the book fair area.

[Whether captain or cook, administrators or book fair staff, all crew and staff are dedicated volunteers. Most people joining the ship have to raise financial support to cover their living expenses while serving onboard.] - quoted from Doulos.org website. The volunteers are from 40 over countries. It is great because they can travel around the world.

This was another section of the book fair selling specially priced book.

We have bought some books as SiewPeng’s teaching resources. MV Doulos use a special currency unit, where 25 unit is equivalant to RM2. We thought the books on the ship might be very expensive, but some of them are really cheap. We also bought a ecology-safe shopping bag for RM4.

This type of shopping bag is made of cloth. It is getting popular here now. Some supermarkets here have started to encourage shopper to use this type of shopping bag instead of plastic bag. A reminder for you if you go to some supermarket here that sells this type of bag, you better make a mark on your bag when you reuse it, because the supermarket cannot differentiate if the bag is from the shelf or owned by you. Another solution is to use different bag from the one sold in the supermarket. A doctor told me that he wrote his name on his bag so that the casier won’t charge him for his bag.

Bringing knowledge, help and hope by MV Doulos. I hope that she can come to Kuching again.

We did not know that she came to Kuching until my sister told me that the “Book Ship” was here.  She came silently when we went to KL and Ipoh last month.  We had only visited her few days before she was going to leave Kuching.  This is the second time I visited the MV Doulos, the first time was many years ago, either when I was in primary or secondary school.  Months ago, I had mentioned this ship during a conversation with a friend, but I did not know that she was coming to Kuching.  Months later, she really appeared.  Amazing?

MV Doulos is the name of this ship.  She came to Kuching last month and left earlier this month.  The main attraction is the floating book fair on the ship which I will tell you in the coming posts, but now the “lights on the ship” has caught my attention.

There is a wide area for car park space at the port, we stood quite far to take the photo of the whole ship.  The sky had turned dark, and we can see that the ship switched on her lights.

If you thought that the cars are just next to the ship, it is not true because the distance between the cars and the ship is about 20 to 30 meters (estimated).  Therefore from these photo, we cannot imagine how big is the ship by comparing with the objects around.

GBA is a german word which stands for Gute Bucher Fur Alle eV.  It is a private, non-profit and charitable organisation registered in German who currently own this ship since 1977.  Previously it is known as Good Book for All.  This ship is about the same age as the Titanic.  She is going to travel around the world for the last time before she will be decommissioned in 2010.  Hopefully there will be a new ships replacing her to bring knowlegde, help and hope to the world.

Light on the Ship #1.  Do you want to install something like this outside your house?  :p  I believe the steel bar must have its purpose.  It protects the lamp, am I right?

Light on the Ship #2  This is the side view of the same lamp as above.  I like the steel bar although I am not going to install this type of lamp in my house.  :p  The steel bar make the photo look more 3D, no matter from what angle I took the photo.  It always present the side lighting effect. 

Light on the Ship #3.  This is a windows actually.  I am still looking for the answer of why it is in round shape.  Light purple colour is my favorite colour.

This is not MV doulos, but her neighbour.  He is bigger and we saw that he ‘vomitted’ cars from his stomach.  He has transported new cars from some where else to Kuching, new car owners are going to pick them up soon.  We have a friend who has recently bought a car.  Her car had not arrived when we saw this ship, we guess her car was inside this ship.  She just got her car last Saturday.

Yes, we put our camera on top of our cars to take photos again, but the horizon line is not really horizontal, therefore we found a concrete block, and we took the photo again.  We spend at least 15 minutes to get a satisfied photo.  I switched to manual mode, with the flash switched on.  The shutter speed was 2.5 second, therefore, we couldn’t move even the flash has fired.  If someone passed by, they must had thought what happen to us.  I insisted to use ISO 100 because my camera produces noise for ISO above 100.

My dream camera appear already, but I am not ready to have it yet.  Life is not easy without sufficent $, life is not difficult too if we can overcome our greediness.  Get what we should get with a right way, at the right time is not called greediness, but it is called “desire”.  I hope the right time can come soon.