;; The ellies ;;

Saturday, October 28, 2006
Malay Heritage Centre~

ahh, kaiying here.

i just noticed the e-mail to join! whee~ the elephants are so cute! better than what abi can EVER draw { evil laughter. Oh! anyway, since abi posted on the zoo trip, i'll post on the malay heritage thingy!
On thurs ( supposedly the last day of school) we went on an excursion to the MHC ~ and before that there was a jumbo sale by the parents in the canteen and they sold super nice sweets and stuffs real cheaply! Like the banana choc Meiji for $0.50! and abi said last time she saw at 7 eleven or something it was much more expensive. and they sold wood dust at $1 which is something like clay but must cooler! use it to make tribal figurines =) oh anyway, we were distracted by the sale where the evil parents were evily pushing their tempting sweets at our faces and the dazzling prices made us go back late for recess!

argh! i'm getting out of point! okay anyway, at the heritage centre, almost all the tribal members took up silat and games. Silat is a malay self defense thingy and they taught us the starting battle stances. It seemed at first like sign language and i thought i was supposed to answer back with my own cool moves or something, but it turned out that each stance represented something. first opening your arms, taking a step back with your left leg = i welcome my opponent with open arms. Next was reaching the sky with you two hands = I seek permission from the gods or something. Then you point both hands down with the middle fingers touching the floor ( it's not supposed to mean anything in a bad way!!) = and permission from the earth. Then clap your hands together over your heart and put right hand on forehead and left behind your head = my { can't rmb}. face palm of right hand at opponent = is as pure as the palm of my hand. turn one round and execute your most manly fighting pose = and i'm ready to defend~ that's all for silat!
then they thought us some traditional malay games like five stones, the feather thingy and some rattan ball thing. we went to eat lunch which was fried bee hoon and currypuff. and then we went to the museum where there were LOADS of tribal stuff!
we took some blur photos and then suddenly this scary guard came and stop us, saying it wasn't allowed! they didn't put up any signs =0 and that was before we saw these cool bronze guy with tribal glasses! we wanted to take a picture again and the creepy guard kept STALKING US >= anyway, after that there was this cultural performance and they sort of combined all the stuff that diff groups learnt from the trip. like beating the dunno what in music section, silat in the dance to symbolize protection and peace or something. oh. okay, they didn't really combine all since there was still pottery and batik. turned out that the much fought for group, pottery which was fast booked by everyone and even had a round of ballot, wasn't really what people had expected..it was much more like a plasticine molding session, it seems. but batik was cool! it had hands-on! and the people got to keep their cool batik butterfly hankies ~

oh well, that's all for the heritage centre.. the pictures were quite blur and probably illegal =O so i didn't put them up =D so that's all!