Kaamatan blues

Tomorrow is the beginning of Harvest festival, an event that every Sabahan (and Malaysian) celebrates for two days. The Harverst Festival, or more well known as Pesta Kaamatan or Pesta Menuai is a traditionally a celebration of the ancestors thanking the Gods for the abundant paddy harvest that they received. Now, this annual celebration becomes a platform for everyone to meet and be merry - it's almost like an new year's celebration for the Kadazan. That culminates on the 31st of May where the highly-anticipated Kadazan Beauty paegant contest, Unduk Ngadau, takes place. All these (pretty) girls, who don the traditional costumes of the various indigenous races in Sabah, have come this far now - from competing with thousands of other girls in the village-level, to district and now for the ultimate stage - State level.

Just a note of interest: There is even a representative from Klang for this contest! Despite not being a district in Sabah, Klang was chosen. As to why Klang and not other districts in Penisula Malaysia, I have no idea. I don't think there are even many Kadazans in Klang (if not I would have already gone out to Klang every weekend to meet them in my KMB days!). Imagine if there's a representative from Banting, how would you think the costume be?

Definitely not like this! (too revealing!too much skin exposed!). They are my family members, by the way :)

Below is the list of the contestants of this year's Kaamatan Unduk Ngadau (curi from a blogger's website called Carol). I just can't believe how commercialised this event has been.

(click here to enlarge)

And here I am, in London, finishing a super boring, stupid, and tedious 8000-10,000 word essay which requires me to be critical of my own recorded interview with a patient, think about the potential psychosocial and ethical implications. LOADS OF B***S***. All (okay, not all)I'm interested now is to study for upcoming exam (one more month to go!) . I better pass my exam this time. I want a proper summer holiday back home. Can't wait to go home!!!!

Anyway, Happy Harvest Festival! Kotobian Tadau Tagazo Do Kaamatan!!

Violinist Child prodigy

Bazzini's 'La Ronde Des Lutins'

I'm really amazed by this kid's talent:



And this is how it would sound when a pro plays the same song:

If I wasn't a doctor

...I'd like to be a profesional violinist or cellist.

At the moment I'm just in love with John William's (birth 1932) "Schinder's list". Ideally you would like to hear this in a quiet, comfortable room, and with your eyes closed so that you fully feel the intense melancholic rawness of the string music.

This is the cellist version of it. I personally prefer this because of its very profound note.



And this is a violinist version

Moonwalk volunteer!

I volunteer for Moonwalk 'Walk the Walk' , helping out to distribute space blankets and raincoats to the 15,000 women (and few very brave men) walking just in their bra around Central london. They walked to a about 20 miles and that took them the entire night from Saturday till Sunday afternoon the next day. It was cold and drizzling but they all persisted. All in the name of showing their support for Fight Against Breast Cancer!

So that's how 'wearing' a (t-shirt) bra feels like - from 5.30pm to 12.30am. Yeah, they even made the volunteers wear something I won't even wear when I go to bed. I just wished it would look more decent so that I can wear it around. Somehow, I didn't feel embarrased wearing that as we (QM students) were in a group together. Caught the attention of the public when we took the train home that night. Hehe. I know, we were very ... flashy


There were more girl volunteers, and looked at how they bullied the guys. Kejam weiiiiii, kena harrassed:



















The heroines (and heroes) of the night... Congrats

Mind over matter?

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” -Dr Seuss.

Psychiatry

Diagnosis: Idiopathic high-grade hypohedonia, neurocitism, and introvertism

DDx and Mx, anybody?

Celine Dion's concert

I saw The Diva singing live!!!!!!!!!!! Finally!!!!! I think one of the perks of being in London is that you get to see your favourite artist performing all year throughout.

Paid quite a lot for this concert...although I wouldn't mind paying more for the top-range seats after seeing what those seats gave you - a much closer proximity to Ms Dion. But then, when I saw the advertisment for her concert back in January, it was still time of the year when I financially restricted, so much I had to borrow from my friend the money to get this ticket. Cheapest (£50) tickets were already sold out, so I settled with £80. But minat punya pasal... I still paid for it. Worth it!

While the Linkin Park concert I went last January was extremely charged with energy and crowd enthusiasm, this concert was more of a chill-out-enjoy-the-vocal-prowess-of-celine-dion kind of thing. Nevertheless, the packed 20,000 seater O2 Arena was still filled with thunderous claps and cheers. The crowd went wild whenever Celine Dion sang her famous singles and she ended each of them with a blast!

She was very gorgeous that night, and her voice was wonderfully beautiful!!!!! She started with 'I drove all night' and ended the evening with 'My heart will go on', my favourite! The 2 hour concert also featured 'Power of Love', 'I'm your Angel', 'Because You Loved Me', 'Taking Chances', 'Eyes on Me', 'Alone', 'It's All Coming Back to Me', and 'Pour Que Tu M'aimes' (French song). I think there are couple more not mentioned.

A video clip of the final song for the evening. Superb!

Concert habis already. Splendid evening!

Elisa Toffoli - 'Dancing'