Rubénerd!

I arrived a little too late for much of the Chinese New Year Markets in Sydney this weekend, but that didn't stop me gorging on dumplings and taking a few photos! Enjoy, and Gong Xi Fa Cai! :)

The early evening

The night

After wandering around enjoying the atmosphere for an hour, I head off to the nearby Starbucks on Elizabeth Street. In Singapore they had Chinese New Year themed drinks with mandarin and other such flavours, but no such luck here. Oh well!

I did some more wandering around Chinatown, then came back after the sun set to take a few more. Without a tripod and with the D60 that looks super grainy even at 1600 ISO it was tough, but still fun :).

I've been informed that it's not just Chinese New Year (Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni! Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni!) but its also Valentine's Day. So in the spirit of the day I thought I'd wish all my blog readers here, Google Reader buddies and Twitter followers happy Valentines Day, because you make my life just that little bit less lonely, and I love each and every one of you! Don't ever change! Except Neal, you should move closer to inner Dublin so when a freak blizzard messes up our schedule its easier to meet up.

Sincerely and with lots of hugs (or manhugs, as the situation may warrant),
Ruben

Starbucks have released a PDF of their opening hours during the Chinese New Year long weekend. Their branches at Liat Towers, Pacific Plaza, Plaza Singapura (with the exception of Tuesday), Raffles City, Northpoint and all the airport terminals are still open 24 hours. All the branches in the CBD around Raffles Place are completely closed.

No word at all on the Coffee Bean's website whether they're open or not. Killiney Kopitiam seems to be closed from the ones I've been to.

This has been a public service announcement from the Rubénerd.com Coffee Obsessors Association, Pte Ltd, Pty Ltd, GmBH, Sdn Bhd, LLLLLLLP.

Google's creative and unconventional logos celebrating certain events and milestones throughout the year are fun to watch, but their latest one for Google Singapore shows the local versions of their sites aren't so local!

The current localised Google Singapore logo is the same Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics logo featured on the primary Google.com site. While it certainly is cheaper to do homogenous worldwide marketing, one would think the local Google Singapore site would have reflected an infinitely more important celebration here and the rest of the Sino world: Chinese New Year.

In terms of value and importance, CNY is the equivalent of every Western holiday rolled into one. I walked along Orchard Road early this afternoon -- one of the busiest shopping precincts in South-East Asia -- and it was practically deserted. It is HUGE here. No, let me say that properly:

Chinese New Year is HUGE here

The other thing to keep in mind is Singapore is a tropical country. The temperature barely ever falls below 29 degrees C during the day. People here could barely care less about Winter Olympics, especially during this time of the year.

Something screwy going on?

I hadn't even thought of this, but Dean (@dg01844) on Twitter even suggested an ulterior motive for not putting Chinese New Year graphics on their Singapore site:

@Rubenerd could be a snub given their troubles with China

If that's true, and it could very well be, it's a snub against independent Chinese communities around the world and not just the PRC with whom they've had difficulties. I would be extremely disappointed and quite angry if that were the case.

Anyway some free advice to Google if they're listening: if you're going to operate local versions of sites, you would do yourself a huge favour by celebrating (or even just acknowledging) local holidays and events and not using blanket marketing for sites around the world that some of your customers either don't know or care about.

The weird thing is, I remember seeing Chinese New Year graphics on Google in the past. Again I hope they're not snubbing all Chinese people around the world just because they've had a spat with the PRC, and perhaps on a lesser level I hope they don't really think a Winter Olympics here are somehow more important otherwise I worry about the long term viability of their "local" site!

</rant>

For those of you who've never been to Singapore, Chinese New Year weekend is similar to Christmas in that everywhere is almost completely deserted! It was such a stunningly bright and gorgeous day I replaced my workhorse 35mm with the much slower but wider 18-55mm VR to take some photos around the neighbourhood :)

The photos of the roads around the Orchard-Tanglin area don't seem terribly interesting until you realise this was taken on an early Saturday afternoon. It's usually one of the busiest roads in the country and it's almost deserted! And check out the footpaths!

Coming back from Starbucks where my dad and I chilled for an hour or so to take a break from scanning, digitising and collating his work documents I couldn't get over how beautiful the sky and trees looked, so I took a few more shots. They're not the sharpest photos, but set on 18mm the kit lens really captured the light and shadows well I thought. My 35mm would have been much sharper with less effort, but you would have obviously seen less.

Am I a professional photographer? No! Do I obey the Rule of Thirds? Only when I could be bothered. Do I have fun? Yes! ^_^

The full Flickr gallery is here if you want to see a few more terrible shots.

Photo by zipped06 on Flickr of Singapore last night (CNYE). Literally the only time of the year when none of the lights are on in the office towers!

The only times when Singapore and Australia have public holidays at the same time is generally if they're Christian or British holidays. In this case though Chinese New Year and Australia Day fall on the same day, so I could call my grandfather in Firefly in rural New South Wales and say hello during the day. It's nice when the moon decides to usher in a new lunar new year on Australia day, how decent of it!

Chinese New Year is of course the biggest holiday in Singapore. We have Christmas, Hari Raya, Deepavali and Vesak days off for the respective faiths here, but the two day Chinese New Year holiday is the time when Singapore feels the most like a Western country around Christmas. The roads are practically deserted; the hugely crowded Orchard Road shopping precinct can be navigated on foot with ease; you can get a table at a Starbucks or a prata shop with little to no trouble whatsoever; there are no queues to ATMs; you can get a seat on the MRT trains... yes, you can actually get a seat! Wild!

It's particulary eerie today given that it's extremely overcast, and very few people are walking around. It's the middle of the day and it's dark in this otherwise tropical country, and here I am sitting in a coffee shop typing this and half the tables are deserted. If I were to sit here during a regular Monday lunch hour, it would be packed with lots of people chatting loudly.

zipped06 on Flickr has taken some amazing photos of the River Festival last night if you're interested, such as the one below. I wish I had been able to go!

This year of course is the year of the Ox for those not keeping track at home. I'm not into zodiacs personally (Western or Eastern), but if it's your cup of tea here's what you can expect:

The Ox (牛) is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Ox is denoted by the earthly branch character 丑.

The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

Me standing in front of Parliament House in Canberra in 2006

Of course we must also not forget that today is also Australia day, the day the First Fleet from Britain arrived on the Australian mainland in 1788. It's a somewhat conflicting day for while the Australian society I was born into was born on that day, it also marked the beginning of the marginalisation of the Abroriginal peoples of Australia who still have not recovered.

I guess it would be more constructive to say Australia Day (Wikipedia link) is more about thinking about where we've come from, and thinking about where we would like to go, rather than celebrating a specific event. Or that could just be me. I'm not Bill Kurtis.

Gong Xi Fa Cai and Happy Australia Day all!

Well the Chinese New Year festivities are mostly over, and Kuala Lumpur seems to be getting back to normal. Peak hour traffic is back along the highway to Gita Bayu, most the dissapearing people I posted about on Saturday have reappeared again and the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in KLCC is full of business people and students once more ;).

Took my mum yesterday to the hospital for her weekly chemo and all the beds in the therapy ward were taken again. Guess people didn't want to be sick during their lunar new year break either; understandable. Those chemicals they give you are nasty SOBs.

Obligatory Malaysian flag post:

Some people have the whole week off though, so I guess we won't see a full change until Monday, but walking around here it certainly feels like the bustle is back. So much so that I've even got my first blog comment from a Malaysian!:

all the chinese went back to their respective hometowns (me included), cant imagine how deserted KL was :p

I was going to respond and say g'day, but her latest comment on her blog she linked to made me think twice... ahem:

This is what i get when i approve lame dumbass psychos online, i swear it happens more often than i can even say fcuk off. I've blocked a couple dozens of them. Oh go out and socialize you poor bastards.

And I'm an Aussie-living-in-Asia student ang moh too, we're the worst kind of dumbass phychos who need to socialise! ;). I mean, look at that freak!