Hungry Ghost Festival Opera

Many Chinese believe that on the 7th month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar the deceased will be released from Purgatory to wonder on earth for 30 days. Hence, the lunar 7th month is also commonly known as the Hungry Ghost Festival or Zhong Yuan Jie in mandarin.

During the 7th month, Chinese families would offer food, burn hell money and paper gifts for their deceased family members and other wondering souls, hoping in return that the deceased will not cause any harm to their family members. In Singapore, you can also see lots of Operas and Getai (live stage performances) and dinner with auctions in the housing estates. Usually the first row of seats at the Operas and Getai are reserved for the members of "the other world" therefore no spectators would take the seats in the front row!

It's been a long time since I went to an opera. When my uncle told me there are one staging near his house, I decided to go and take some pictures. I met up with my uncle after work and took some pictures at the opera. Here are some shots from the opera to share. Enjoy!

Kites Festival Singapore

In the olden days of Singapore, many kids grew up flying kites and shooting marbles as a past time hobby. In that era, there were no computer games or Internet and a television set was to many families a luxury good!

As our nation progresses and our people becoming wealthier, luxury household items of the past have now become a necessity product in our daily lives. Our younger generation no longer grew up flying kites and shooting marbles. They prefer computer games, watching television programmes, and surfing the Internet.

Even though I was born in the sixties, I grew up playing Action Man, Matchbox cars, reading The Hardy Boys, riding bicycle, swimming in our own swimming pool and watching Super Heroes cartoon on television. I do not have the opportunity to fly a kite or play a game of shooting marbles. The closest I get to flying a kite was flying my remote control plane that I received as Christmas gift. I'm not born with a silver spoon but I was lucky to be living with a wealthy family!

I would love to experience the life of living in a kampong, flying kites, shooting marbles and climbing up coconut trees. Hence, when I read in the newspaper that NTUC is organising a Kite Flying Festival in West Coast Park, I decided to make my way there to take some photos.

I was delighted to see a sky filled with colourful kites when I alighted from the free shuttle bus at West Coast Park. As I made my way to the big open field, I was amazed to see so many people with all kind of kites. Some kites were obviously purchased off the shelves and others were home made specialties. There was a inter schools kites flying competition whereby the school children have to design and built their own kites and the kites must be able to take to the sky. There were also other events such as stories telling, kite making and dance performances to entertain the visitors.

I really enjoyed myself, watching and photographing the adults and children running around the field trying to get their kites into the sky and the happy faces of those whose kites were soaring high up in the sky. The kite festival is a great event for the whole family.

Here are some pictures from the Kite Festival. If you would like to see more pictures of this event, please visit my pictures website:
http://ctsm88.smugmug.com/My-Singapore/Go-Fly-Kites/9530473_PgWeL

Photofunia

Yesterday, my colleague Alfred Tan introduced me to an interesting website where you can upload a photo of yourself and it will automatically merged you into any template of your choice. For those with iPhone, you could also download the program to your iPhone.

You will need a head and shoulder passport size photo to begin. Next go to the website www.photofunia.com and select a template. Click on the Browse button to select your photo and click the open button to upload your photo. In a few second, you will see your photo merge on the selected template. You can then save the image to your computer or print it out.

Have fun! Here are some of mine photos.