Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri or Happy Eid to all the Muslims in Malaysia and also around the world.

Last month, this cat statue was decorated with the Kuching Festival theme, within a week or two, it is now decorated with the Hari Raya (Eid ul-Fitr in Malay language) theme.

The background light of this cat statue was similar to the decoration last year except the costume of the cat.

If you look carefully, the cat is wearing a Tengkolok (traditional Malay head gear for men).  Its right hand is holding a Ketupat (packed rice).

Actually I wanted to ask my brother to take the photo of SiewPeng and me with this cat statue, but it was raining.  My brother took most of the pictures, and we all stayed in the car without getting wet.  Therefore this time, you cannot see SiewPeng and I standing next to this cat statue.  …  but you can see the side mirror of my car at the bottom right corner of the photo above.  :P

Last year, we visited a special Muslim friend during Hari Raya.  It was a memorable experience, unlike the local celebration, he did not served any food as he was living alone at that time, instead we have a long chat for the whole afternoon, and we have learned a lot about his culture and his profession in sociology.  This year, he moved to another state, and I will only be able to send SMS to greet him.

I have another friend who I only know that he is a Muslim recently (just converted may be).  This year will be the first time I say Selamat Hari Raya to him.

This year we are not going to visit any friends during Hari Raya because we are traveling to Sibu for a short weekend course.  SMS is the only way to send my greetings.

Again,  I wish everyone who are celebrating Hari Raya after fasting for a month, Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Happy Eid.  :)

The 7th month in the Chinese Calendar is usually known as the ghost month by most Chinese who have traditional believes that the ghosts were coming out to the human world for the whole month.  Many people are scared about it, and the main praying ceremony is usually in the middle of the 7th month.

As I know some places has big ceremony on the 14th day, but in Kuching, Chinese held it on the 15th of 7th month.  Here, starting from the 1st of the 7th Chinese month, we can also see many little flags for the ghost which are placed beside the roads, and many Chinese start burning paper money for the ghost.

I have taken the full moon pictures above on the 15th day of 7th month (about 2 weeks ago).  On that day, the moon was in light orange, and I found an angle where I could use the tree as the foreground and moon as the background.  I was inspired by a photo where a plane is flying across the moon.  If you know photography well, you will know that this type of photo can only produce by long focal lense (at least 300mm  above).

The ghost month has just gone, it also means that the mid-autumn festival (or also know as moon cake festival) is coming soon.  The 15th of the 8th Chinese month is a day for kids to play lanterns and for adults to have gatherings, enjoy the moon cake, watching the moon and have a romantic night with beautiful poems.  What a big contrast with the 7th month - the ghost month.

Related posts:

1.  Full Moon with details.
2.  Half Moon with details.
3.  New Moon with details.
4.  Moon Cake Festival 2009.
5.  My Old Electrical Lantern.
6.  Koala Bear Moon Cake.

Recently, I came across a phrase from the IT section of a newspaper - “Grandmother Friendly.”

Wow, this phrase is really amazing and even measures how a software interface interact with human more specifically.

Automatically, my mind linked this phrase with another similar phrase - “User Friendly.”

User Friendly and Grandmother Friendly are similar, but they are different.  Grandmother Friendly is a subset of User Friendly.

If you have seen someone who does not know how to use a computer mouse, and push the computer mouse with one finger only, you will know how important “Grandmother Friendly” is.

In order to make a computer to be “Grandmother Friendly”, we can create shortcuts on desktop or even make the program to be auto run at startup etc..  All the setting needed to be pre-configured.

The grandmothers might not need to know their email addresses  / passwords but yet they can still be able to send and receive email.

The grandmothers might only need to switch on their computer by pressing the power button, then they can talk to their children using the webcam and mic.

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This word is not limited to the usage of computer only but also can be used in the modern electrical / electronic devices such as mobile phone, camera, DVD player etc..

Do not look down and laugh at those “grandmothers”.  Remember that we will become old too one day in the future, and at that time there may be some new technologies that we have not learned.

A serious technical issue occurred to this website weeks ago has reminded me about the word that one of my lecturers likes to use, “bullet proved“.  Years ago, when I was studying in the university, I could hear this word from his mouth very frequently (almost every lecture and tutorial for the first few weeks of the semester.).  He was teaching us how to make the software as “bullet proved” as possible!!!

However, there is no software with 100% bullet proved in the real world.

“Bullet proved” here means a software which is secure from any attack, or can handle any input properly even the human has intentionally taken over the control from the normal software operation.

A standalone computer without external storage or networking might be safe from virus, but certain human input might be harmful especially to its data.  Furthermore, it might not be practical nowadays to isolate a computer from accessing external media or to prevent it from connecting to a network.

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Without any sign,  I got the following when I tried to load my blog into a browser…

First thing to do was to complain to the hosting provider, but it was still not solved after a few hours.

The database had corrupted, and I was not able to recover it with the backup that I had.  Finally, without the help from the hosting provider, I have successfully restored the database by creating a new database.

The hosting provider said that my account might have been compromised, but I think it was more likely that someone has injected some commands into the database.  The old database has just gone like that, and the hosting provider was not able to find it out.  I believe it is still hiding somewhere in the server, and they were not putting effort in recovering it.  What I might have lost was only some comments from the readers but they wanted to backdate my database for a few weeks by their outdated backup.  No way!!! I think it was better to restore it myself with my latest backup.

I have gained some experience in rescuing a website, and I will make it more “bullet-proved” too.

We were attracted by the Malt Sugar Art in one of the stalls in the Kuching Festival this year.  It is an art from China which is categorized as “non-material inheritance“.

There were some samples being displayed at the stall, but their prices were very costly, from RM 4 to RM 20 or more, depending on the design.

We chose to turn the wheel with RM 4, and the artist would make the design where the pointer has pointed to.  Luckily, we have got a dragon.  He said that it cost RM 10 if we did not take the wheel.

This is what we have got.

I thought it might take 5 to 10 minutes, but the entire process took less than 3 minutes.  I have taken a video clip as well, but since it was so fast, the video clip is very short.

He first melt the malt sugar.

Then he used a tool which is similar to the one used for storing wax for batik.

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The Food Fair and Fun Fair
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It is the main attraction here and we can’t skip introducing to those who have not been here.

But since SiewPeng and I are vegeterian, we do not have much choices.

Come and try hundreds of types of food next year.

Besides, there were also some games to play to win a prize or two.

This part of the festival was the area for a mini fun fair.  At the entrance, we were welcomed by a few dinosaur statues.  Don’t be threatened by them though.  They are friendly! Haha… If you take a good look, you can see a merry go round at the far end.

Every year, there will be a massive jam outside the venue of the Kuching Festival and it is often difficult to find a parking space.  The jam usually starts around 5:30 p.m. and you can see people walking in and out of the festival with all kinds of food which they have bought.  There is also a big crowd within the festival and it’s hard to move around.  But that is okay if you like to be in the crowd.  So, if you have missed it this year, don’t be disappointed.  It will be on again next year with more exciting ‘tummy adventures’!