Ostrich is an interesting big bird. Now you can see them in many places in Sabah. Personally I have seen them in the mini-zoo at Tenom Agriculture Park and Tuaran Crocodile Farm. I heard that Papar also got an ostrich farm.
But one thing that puzzled me was the missing of their beautiful feather on the tails. I thought someone such as naughty tourists plucked it. Now I think I got the answer. Click Here to see the video.
Malaysians are so fond of making the LONGEST in Book of Records. For example, longest hours of speech, longest hours of gong hitting, longest hours of dancing… If you look at our addresses, their length make great records too. Very often, you would see Malaysia addresses similar to below:
Mr. Beng Long Long
1st Floor, Lot 4, Block C,
Fook Yu Apartment, Phase 5,
Lorong Binatang 3A,
6 KM, Jalan Ling Kun,
89743 Inanam,
Kota Kinabalu,
Sabah, Malaysia
Besides house number, you need to specify the name of taman, jalan, lorong, distance… Many years ago, our government introduced POSTCODE system (which is practically useless), to add more junk to the old lengthy address. Then I forgot who was the smartass who proposed the use of “fancy” state names such as Kedah Darul Aman, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Kelantan Darul Naim, Pahang Darul Makmur… Again it lengthen the already-very-long-address and makes more school kids fails Malaysia geography, and do nothing else… Probably that’s why sending letters from Sabah to Peninsular takes 10 days or more. FYI, in USA, no matter from what state to what state, it takes maximum 3 days.
Amazingly, despite the overly excessive details, I bet many of you still experience the difficulty of locating your friend’s house, if s/he didn’t give you a map or some direction hints such as landmark. I think POS Malaysia is so screwed up that until today, they don’t dare to offer next-day-delivery service to ALL addresses. To complicate matter, you also cannot use English or BM address interchangeably (see picture below).
Pizza Hut is one of the victims too. For me, it was an annoying experience to order pizza delivery. It takes them more than 40 minutes to deliver the pizza to my house. And EVERYTIME they would lost and called me for “step-by-step” direction. By right, if they can’t deliver the pizza within 30 minutes, we can get it FREE. We are so generous not to be so mean. But please lah, build a address info database or something, don’t call me everytime to repeat the same instruction, whenever I place an order. Sigh… Malaysians…
Our address is so long that my university overseas has problem to store my complete Malaysia address record into their database, coz their local addresses were only 2 or 3 lines, for example:
UK Address
26A Randolph Avenue
London W9 1BL
United Kingdom
USA Address
175 East 96th St
Apt # 21K, New York,
NY 10128 USA
BTW, their land are MANY TIMES bigger than Malaysia. Please learn from others… Anyway, we do make another record, the SLOWEST mail delivery service in the world.
I found the picture below on a ticket last month. That picture was actually taken by my late uncle. He displayed this photo in his photography shop many years ago. I saw it so I asked if he could give it to me for use in web site. He hesitated for a while then he handed me this photo, like something very precious. I posted this photo on the web in late 90s. Even until today I find that some copycat stole it and used it for different purposes. A good piece of artwork is something can live on, though its creator had passed away.
There was a Miss Malaysia Tourism 2006 (Sabah State Selection) Beauty Pageant Final in BED last night. I decide to post all the photos earlier to boil your blood, before the newspapers do so (yeah, I am faster than them). For me, publishing beauty pageant is the easiest way to get more hit traffic. In fact, after I posted the Miss Malaysia Tourism 2005 Beauty Pageant in Oct last year, the hit of MySabah.com doubled. On the other hands, I also worry that the readers will think Smoke Head is a shallow guy (even though yes I am) who use cheap tactic to attract audiences. No choice lah, I have no pretty face like those HOT female bloggers, so I only can show the pretty faces of others. Really, male blogger has to work multiple times harder. FYI, MySabah.com got more than 1 million hits this month. Thank You.
Click Here to see 120 photos of this Beauty Pageant >>
Same as last year, the BED was crowded. If not because of the FIFA Worldcup, I believe there would be more people coming. Last year there were only a handful of photographers mainly from the press. Don’t know why this year there were dozens of photographers, most equipped with those multi-thousand Nikon camera.
Starting at 9 PM, 12 contestants were competing in 4 rounds. First round was the traditional costume, 2nd round was beach wear, and 3rd round was evening gown. After that, only 7 finalists would be selected for knowledge test in 4th round.
Click Here to see 120 photos of this Beauty Pageant >>
Below are all the knowledge test questions that I can recall. Have fun testing yourself and see if you are good enough to be a Miss Tourism.
1) What is the other name of Dutch Monkey? Where do they live?
2) How many indigenous groups in Sabah? Please name five of them.
3) What is the former name of Menara Tun Mustafa? Why is it so special?
4) What is the most famous diving site in Sabah, and where is it?
5) If you become Miss Tourism, how would you promote tourism of Sabah?
6) Where is the oldest building of post office, and what’s its name now?
7) (Forgot. Anyone can tell me what was the question?)
The Final Result (see picture below)
Middle: Miss Malaysia Tourism 2006 (Sabah), Miss Florinda Johnson (No. 6)
Left: 1st Runner-Up + Miss Personality, Miss Cornellia Bernard (No. 5)
Right: 2nd Runner-Up + Miss Estelle Body Beautiful, Miss Viola Fidilis (No. 2)
Miss Talent: Miss Connie Ramy (No. 12)
Click Here to see 120 photos of this Beauty Pageant >>
Guess many of you had seen this funny sign at a roundabout near Tuaran. The sign reads, “Don’t Cross the Road like a Chicken,” “Look Right, Look Left, Look Right… Cross.” I have seen died snake, rat, lizard, dog and cat on the road, but didn’t see any death chicken, so the chicken is actually smarter than human on crossing road, consider more human are killed each year? Personally I think they should use cow as the “model”. If you’ve been to Kota Belud, you will agree with me.
I went to the Michael (Guang Liang) Promo Tour on last Wednesday in KDCA Penampang. Quite ok lah, an enjoyable evening. Good to see more superstars coming to Kota Kinabalu. It was rainy that day but it didn’t stop thousands of Michael’s fans to come. The show started at 7:30 PM. I was already there at 6:30 PM, and the parking lot was already 50% occupied.
The standard ticket costed me RM10. The VIP ticket costed RM100. The thing I found was that the seats between VIP and normal zone was only 2 Meters apart. Luckily I didn’t pay extra RM90 just to move a few Meters nearer to the stage.
Like other promo tours, the MC tried to heat up the atmosphere by playing game with the fans. Then Michael came out after we shouted encore loudly (you can see the video clip here). It was not a concert, so Michael only sang a few songs to promote his new album “Commitment”, played game with fans, then ended the show with signature drive.
There were many people in the queue to wait for their turn to shake hand and eat tofu of Michael. I tried to move to the front to take closer and better pictures of him. It was quite crowded, so I had to move to front inch by inch, among those liang moi fans who were so concentrated on taking his pictures (forcing me to eat a lot of tofu).
I think the response was quite good. They setup up a booth to sell Michael’s CD for RM38 discounted price, and they were all sold out. No wonder there are more and more promo tours now.
More Photos Below (click to see larger version):
I took this video at Tuaran Crocodile Farm. It is so funny that it deserves another blog entry. There is one famous old Chinese idiom “stopping a car with mantis arm”, which describes a person who overestimates his power and ability. Now I believe mantis is really a creature like that. Mantis Fist is also one of the popular Chinese Kung Fu (So in theory, you can defeat a Mantis Fist fighter with a car).
This praying mantis came from nowhere when I busy taking pictures of a python. I tried to take its photo and it attacked my camera several times (probably it saw its reflection on the len). Then it attacked the python and the small crocodile. The poor reptiles could not counter attack coz their mouths were sealed.
The crocodile was really freaked out coz the mantis attacked its weakest spot, the eyes. Everytime the crocodile blinked its eyes, the mantis would attack its eyes (I heard that the mosquito bite to crocodile’s eyelid can make them very sick). After getting several painful mantis fist, the crocodile decided to do something to end this.
Before you view the video clip for answer, probably you can guess the result of the fight between 10KG Crocodile and 10g Mantis:
A) The crocodile flee.
B) The mantis killed the crocodile.
C) The crocodile broke the seal and ate the mantis.
D) Smoke Head ate the crocodile and mantis.
E) None of the above
I believe Discovery Channel can be a better channel if they talk less about crocodiles. Anyway, I still think crocodile is one of the most fascinating animals on earth. The structure of its body makes it the most effective (and beautiful) hunting machine. The crocodile skin product is also one of the most expensive on earth (see below).
Click Here to see 70+ photos of Tuaran Crocodile Farm >>
Since childhood, I was told a lot of stories about crocodile. My mom was also very scared when she washed cloth at the riverside in the old day, coz crocodile is very good in sneak attack. I even heard people hired bomoh to recite certain chant to make the crocodile showed up and didn’t resist being seized. The most famous tale is the 200-year old and bullet-proof white crocodile in Sarawak. Well, nobody actually sees it I guess. I think most of you had seen the crocodile displayed inside the Sabah Museum. If I am not mistaken, this crocodile was first discovered in the mangrove forest behind my primary school many years ago. My classmates saw it and told the teacher, who later called the hunter to shoot the crocodile. The body was donated to the museum.
Click Here to see 70+ photos of Tuaran Crocodile Farm >>
However, those folklores only make crocodiles sound more mysterous and scary. But this made my trip to Tuaran Crocodile Farm more anticipating. Contrary to our impression, the crocodiles there look pretty cute and can even do show. You can see and even touch them. FYI, most of the crocodiles in this farm are Crocodylus Porosus (Buaya Tembaga), a salt water crocodile which can live in both fresh and salt water. Too bad I didn’t manage to try the crocodile meat there. The restaurant there was run by Muslim, so they don’t serve it.
Click Here to see 70+ photos of Tuaran Crocodile Farm >>
Besides crocodiles, they got a mini-zoo that has small wild animals such as leopard cat, badger, eagle, pheasant, peacock and deers. Cultural dance (e.g. bamboo dance) is performed 2 or 3 times per day in the long house.
Dance With Crocodile:
You also can see the crocodiles perform. You must look at the video clip that I created. I added a few effects to make it looks funny. Watch lah…
Click Here to see crocodile dance >>
