Sirius

When I stepped out of the house to take in the full moon at about 11.15pm yesterday, I couldn't help but be drawn to a brilliant whitish-blue spot directly overhead in the night sky. It must be Sirius. The Dog star. In the constellation of Canis Major. 

And this can only remind me of one thing: that Spring is just around the corner. In fact, we Chinese shall be celebrating the Coming of Spring, or Li Chun (立春) on 3 Feb 2021. That's only 34 days away. 

(Note: The picture was cropped from a digital image of Sirius that I took last night with the zoom lens set at its maximum 150mm focal length on my little Olympus E-PL7 camera. Not the best of equipment, I'm afraid, but that's all I can play with.)

Before that, I would want to wish everyone, especially my followers of this blog, a Happy New Year. But we should keep our feet firmly on the ground and not be delusional. Don't expect changes. Next year will not be any much different from this year; 2021 will only be a continuation of 2020. Therefore, please keep safe and keep healthy. Practice social distancing, sanitise your hands often and wear a mask when doing anything outdoors. Happy New Year....again.

Nicky

A heart-warming story I discovered through social media this Christmas. It is a bit long, but worth your while to read the first few paragraphs. Then I assure you that you shall continue reading till the end!

In 1979, I was managing a Wendy's in Port Richey Florida. Unlike today, staffing was never a real problem, but I was searching for a someone to work 3 hours a day only at lunch.

I went through all the applications ,and found that   most people were  looking for full time or at least 20 hours per week. I found one however, buried at the bottom of a four inch stack that was only looking for lunch part time. His name was Nicky. Hadn't met him but thought I would give him a call and see if he could stop by for an interview. When I called, he wasn't in but his mom said she would make sure he would be there.

At the appointed time, Nicky walked in. One of those moments when my heart went in my throat. Nicky suffered from Downs Syndrome. His physical appearance was a giveaway and his speech only reinforced the obvious.

I was young and very sheltered. Had never interacted on a professional level with a developmentally disabled peson. I had no clue what to do, so I went ahead and interviewed him.

He was a wonderful young man. Great outlook. Task focused. Excited to be alive. For only reasons God knew at that time, I hired him. 3 hours a day, 3 days a week to run a grill.

I let the staff know what to expect. Predictably the crew made sure I got the message, " no one wants to work with a retard."

 To this day I find that word offensive. We had a crew meeting, cleared the air, and prepared for his arrival.

Nicky showed up for work right on time. He was so excited to be working. He stood at the time clock literally shaking with anticipation.

He clocked in and started his training. Couldn't multi task, but was a machine on the grill. Now for the fascinating part.....

Back in that day, there were no computer screens to work from. Every order was called out by the cashier. It required a great deal of concentraion on the part of all production staff to get the order right. While Nicky was training during his first shift, the sandwich maker next to him asked the grillman/trainer what was on the next sandwich. Nicky replied, "single, no pickle no onion." A few minutes later it happened again. It was then that we discovered Nicky had a hidden and valuable skill.

He memorized everything he heard! Photographic hearing! WHAT A SKILL SET!!

. It took 3 days and every sandwich maker requested to work with Nicky. He immediately was accepted by the entire crew.

After his shift he would join the  rest of his crew family,  Drinking Coke like it was water!  It was then that they discovered another Rainman-esque trait.

 Nicky was a walking/talking perpetual calendar! With a perpetual calendar as a reference, they would sit for hours asking him what day of the week was December 22, 1847. He never missed. This uncanny trait mesmorized the crew.

His mom would come in at 2 to pick him up. More times than not, the crew would be back there with him hamming it up. As I went to get him from the back, his mom said something I will never forget. "Let him stay there as long as he wants. He has never been accepted anywhere like he has been here." 

I excused myself and dried my eyes, humbled and broken hearted at the lesson I just learned.

Nicky had a profound impact on that store. His presence changed a lot of people. Today I believe with every fibre of my body that Nicky's hiring was no accident. God's timing and will is perfect.

This Christmas, I hope we all understand what we are celebrating.

We are all like Nicky.

 We each have our shortcomings. We each have our strong points, but we are all of value. God made us that way and God doesn't make mistakes. Nicky certainly wasn't a mistake. He was a valuable gift that I am forever grateful for.

The great conjunction

November and December are not exactly the best months for sky gazing at night because of the weather. If it is not raining, then it would be the thick clouds that would prevent the moon, planets and stars from being seen, especially from my house. 

Since last month, I had been aware of the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the evening sky. Actually, I was looking forward to it a lot. After all, there were lots of news in social media, especially Instagram. But at the same time, I was prepared to be frustrated because of the weather. 

The earliest I got to see the two planets close together was in the evening of 9 Dec. Jupiter was still positioned well below Saturn, but they were unmistakably there in the western sky. But after that date, it was impossible to see them again. I might have seen Jupiter with the thin crescent moon on the 17th, but I am not completely certain. I had better not post the picture here since I am uncertain.

In the week before 20 Dec, it had been raining rather heavily in the late afternoons. At night, it was impossible to view anything at all. Even the quarter moon, always the brightest object in the sky, was all fuzzy and hazy. 

The 21st of December came by and I was pleasantly surprised when the day turned out dry and warm. With blue skies all around me, I was hopeful that this weather could last into the night. And I was glad that it did. 

At about 8pm, my wife and I ventured out of the house and there they were, hanging low westwards, Jupiter on the left and Saturn on the right, side-by-side and closely together. So this was the Great Conjunction on the night of the Winter Solstice. But I would also call this the Great Conjunction of Tang Chik.

Both pictures above were taken with my Olympus E-PL7 camera with my zoom lens set at the maximum 150mm focal length. The widest aperture setting was f5.6 and the shutter speed was 0.4 seconds. The camera was braced against my gate for stability. No cropping was done to the two images.

As a comparison, this is how the two planets looked to the naked eye, shown here above my neighbour's house: two tiny pinpricks of light side-by-side. How utterly small, how easily they could have been overlooked if you had not been aware of the conjunction.

By the way, despite the good weather on the 22nd and 23rd of December, I was unable to see the two planets again. It was really a chance in a lifetime.

Tang Chik 2021

I couldn't post this image in the blog yesterday, nor wish anyone Happy Tang Chik, because I had lost my Internet connection in the house since last Saturday. But thankfully, I'm back online now. And so, I take this opportunity to wish my friends and readers a belated Happy Tang Chik. Remember, you are one year older now.

 

 

Li Chun (立春), 2021

This is normally what I do every year on the third or fourth day of February: filling my rice bucket to the brim with a big packet of rice. It is a cultural tradition that has been handed down for many generations in my family. And, no doubt, in many other families also. 

My forefathers observed it during those distant days in the Ow-Quah village in Hokkien, China, more than 200 years ago. Today, so very far removed from my ancestral village, I still practice this tradition in my house in Penang, Malaysia. A brief 15 to 30 seconds to cut open the bag of rice and empty it into the rice bucket. Perhaps it takes a little bit longer to stick a new piece of red paper with the auspicious Chun character (春) on the bucket.

The whole process is simply to signify the hope that the forthcoming year will be bountiful and abundant for me and my family. After all, this is the day which, according to the Chinese luni-solar calendar, signifies the Li Chun (立春) or Coming of Spring. On this day, the sun moves across the 315° longitudinal line in the sky. The start of a new year when winter officially ends and spring takes its place.

In 2021, Li Chun falls on the third day of February at exactly 11pm in Malaysia (1500 hours UTC). And it will be at this time that I shall begin replacing that piece of Chun (春) paper and then pouring in my new packet of rice.

By the way, I've been writing diligently about Li Chun in this blog since Year 2007 and you can still read them here:

Li Chun, 2020
Li Chun, 2019
Li Chun, 2018
Li Chun, 2017
Li Chun, 2016
Li Chun, 2015
Li Chun, 2014
Li Chun, 2013
Li Chun, 2012
Li Chun, 2011
Li Chun, 2010
Li Chun, 2009
Li Chun, 2008
Li Chun, 2007

End of an era

Yes, this New Straits Times front page says it exactly. The last day that the Penang ferry service will operate will be 31 Dec 2020. After that, the sea link between the Penang island and mainland will be replaced with a fleet of passenger-only water buses and vehicle transporters. The flimsy excuse given by the federal government is that the spare parts from overseas are hard to come by. And the state government has no say in the matter because transport is under the purview of the Ministry of Transport and it is the turn of Wee Ka Siong to take his revenge on his nemesis, Lim Guan Eng, and his successor-in-government, Chow Kon Yeow.

Shame on the federal government. Why can't the present ferry service, which is an iconic heritage of Penang, be salvaged? If anything, the water buses should complement the ferries, not replace. Both can and should operate together. 

It is very strange to blame the demise on spare parts and suppliers. After all, the equally iconic Hong Kong Star Ferry, founded 1888, has remained the main means of public transportation between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. The oldest vessel there was commissioned in 1965. Still running, their fleet carries some 22 million passengers a year. All our politicians and administrators ever do is quarrel among themselves, trading blames and ridiculing each other in public. The losers are the Penangites, no one else.

Incidentally, the ferry service was started by an illustrious member of Penang's society who happened to be a past president of the Swee Cheok Tong (Seh Quah Kongsi). I do not have any record to show when he was first elected as the president of the Kongsi but I do know that he was already one in the mid-1920s. He held on to this position until his death in 1952. He played an active role in founding The Old Frees' Association and was a vice-president sometime in the past. His part in the history of the Penang ferry service was documented in a separate blog post that I wrote two years ago. Click here to read.

J&T Express

If you want to torment someone you don't like, send him a package through this "excellent" delivery service from a wannabe courier company called J&T Express. You will certainly drive him up the wall. I have several unpleasant experiences with this company. In the latest one. a package which a friend (if I can still consider him a friend after this incident 😝) had sent me has been sitting in the J&T Express office in Kota Permai, Bukit Mertajam, since 1.38pm yesterday (7 Dec) without any attempt made to deliver it to me. As I said, it's not the first time I'm experiencing a fucked up service from this delivery company but this occasion takes the cake! It's anything BUT J&T Express for me! [Update: The package finally arrived on 10 Dec at about one o'clock.)

Saturn

It's not like I haven't tried to take a picture of Saturn in the night sky before. But the problem was, you see, this planet is so far away that it is just a small dim point of light. Still can be seen on a clear night but very difficult to photograph. If I were to set the shutter speed too slow, all I would get is a short streaky line. And if the shutter speed was a wee bit faster, then I won't see any point of light that's reasonably bright enough.

But tonight at about 8.40pm, I was outdoors to take a picture of Jupiter and I saw Saturn hovering above the bigger planet. Both planets could be captured inside a single frame, and I took many shots to be on the safe side to eliminate any camera shake. There was this one picture that could possibly be the best from the batch taken. Jupiter was round, which means that there was very minimal camera shake at this very instance. So theoretically, Saturn in the same frame as Jupiter would turn out reasonably well too.

I know that it is still blur, especially with the prevailing cloudy weather condition and I had to crop and enlarge the picture, but this was how my standard telephoto zoom lens picked out Saturn in the night sky tonight. The resolution is so-so only. No doubt, people with better quality lens should be able to get a clearer picture of the rings around the planet. (The picture on the right, showing a clearly defined Saturn, is not mine. It came from an Instagram post.)

I should add that as we get nearer to 21 December, the apparent positions of the two planets will be edging even closer together. It seems that the last time it happened was some 800 years ago. Maybe it also happened some 2,000 years ago too. Who knows?

Anjung Gurney hawkers

Would you support those hawkers who ripped off their clientele when times were good but are now suffering when there's no business during the pandemic and the enforcement of the various stages of the Movement Control Order? 

Yesterday, the state assemblyman for Pulau Tikus, Chris Lee,  appealed on his facebook page to "give these hawkers a chance as there are good people here trying to make a living as well." 

But as my old friend, Jim, observed, "A few years ago, as a local I paid RM5 for a piece of pineapple. The foreign worker said his boss’s policy. I stopped going there."

You can visit this particular post here and read all the comments that have been left there. Very revealing comments that expressed what many people in Penang think. What a slap in the face for the Gurney Drive hawkers! 

By the way, are the hawkers in other touristy areas facing the same difficulty? Places like the New Lane hawker centre? Or the Weld Quay food court? The New World Park food court? The Kimberley Street night hawkers? I'm sure if the hawkers are badly affected, all they have to do is learn to reinvent themselves. Bring themselves down from the pedestals that they placed themselves. If they cater more to the local people, their business will return. 

I know for sure that some hawkers in non-touristy areas have reported little difference in their earnings. Some are even experiencing roaring business. At the end of November, for example, I went to the Berapit food court beside their market to buy from this stall. It wasn't not as empty as I thought. The proprietress was enjoying roaring business every day. Even as she opened her stall at 9am that day, there was already a long queue of people placing orders. I had to wait an hour for my order to be fulfilled. Who says the CMCO is bad for the food business? You just need to go to the non-touristy food courts where food can be equally good and prices are more reasonable.

The Street of Harmony digital brochures

Today, I shall put on display the covers of the 10 digital brochures of the Street of Harmony which my friend, Siang Jin, and I had produced for the George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI) in 2011. As can be seen, a lot of effort was put into the research, writing and subsequent editing and layout. While these brochures were then put up by GTWHI on their website for visitors to download, they were removed after a few months. No reason was ever given for the removal but we could sense some hidden tension. I shall leave it to people here to conclude whether that decision to remove the brochures was justified. First, here are the 10 covers.

And below are the contents of one of the brochures which I have chosen at random. I won't be reproducing the contents of the remaining nine brochures though. It will take up too much space.

Direction signages

Two days ago, I had written about the digital brochures and wall plaques which my friend, Siang Jin, and I had prepared for the George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI). I had also mentioned that we had direction signages made for display at strategic points along the Street of Harmony. These have certainly outlasted the brochures because until today, they can still be seen along Cannon Street, Pitt Street and Farquhar Street, as these pictures below show, while the digital brochures have long disappeared from the GTWHI website.

In addition to these, we had also prepared two signages with street maps of the area to assist tourists. One of them near the Armenian Street junction while the other was in the grounds of the St George's Church. Are they still there? I haven't checked for quite a while!