The LambCutlet Disorganisation

So unique is this event that in the last 27 years I’ve been on this quirky planet, I’ve not seen nor even aware this cultural spectacular of Hong Kong existed! Better late than never, though first a little history:

Over a century ago (1880 in fact), Tai Hang was a (Hakka) village whose inhabitants lived off of farming and fishing. A few days before the Mid-Autumn Festival a typhoon and then a plague wreaked havoc on the village. While the villagers were repairing the damage, a python entered the village and ate their livestock. According to some villagers, the python was the son of the Dragon King. The only way to stop the havoc which had beset their village was to dance a fire dance for three days and nights during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. The villagers made a big fire dragon of straw and stuck incense into the dragon. They lit firecrackers. They danced for three days and three nights and the plague disappeared.

Pity fire-crackers are no longer allowed in urban Hong Kong though the Fire Dragon is rather mighty all by itself… Enjoy! :D

I would have literally just landed back in Singapore tonight, except I haven’t as I’ve decided to extend my stay in Hong Kong for a few more weeks and the new date for leaving the territory heading to Dubai via Singapore is now the 10th of November. Plus a week in Dubai, means I actually won’t be back in old Blighty till the 17th of November.

Funny to think I thought the extra few weeks at the beginning would have given me plenty time to sort out the various things I wanted doing in Hong Kong this visit. However, the combination of shitty weather and other various things have put a slight spanner in the works. I mean, something isn’t quite right when my application for an internal passport so I could go to mainland China without the need of a visa was actually one of the fastest things that got processed? :D

Today is the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese lunisolar calendar, so once again it time to celebrate 中秋節 (Mid-Autumn Festival)! The festival is better known to Westerners as 月餅節 (Mooncake Festival) and is not just a Chinese festival as it is also celebrated by Koreans and Vietnamese, known to them as Ch’usǒk (秋夕) and Tết Trung Thu (節中秋) respectively.

This day is the next most important holiday after Chinese Lunar New Year and a time for family and friends to gather together, feasting on food and admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon. The main delicacy of the festival are 月餅 (mooncakes), though aside from the food, the day will also see incence burnt and offerings such as fruit and whole steamed chicken offered to the gods.

Children get to have extra fun today as they are able to play out in the street, carrying fancifully made and brightly lit laterns, taking forms such as lotus, full moon and starfruit shaped ones to more elaborate ones of animal form such as 錦鯉 (Brocade Carp, “Nishikigoi” in Japanese), goldfish, horses, tigers, roosters, deers and so on. In 香港 (Hong Kong), publics places such as 維多利亞公園 (Victoria Park) will have huge displays of laterns and take on a carnival spirit with cutural performances and games stalls.

Anyhow, enough talk from me as long too long to go till a massive feast of food and then brave the holiday crowds, hopefully getting a few decent photos of the festival celebrations! ;)

For you sharper eyed visitors, you may have noticed changes on the sites hosted on this server. First being Inese Dūka’s with the addition of a contact form, useful for getting hold of her regarding various things, in particular if you need Latvian to English or English to Latvian translations doing.

As for here, I’ve implimented an AJAX based “Live Search” which I know works in Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 1.5+ (yes I know it’s beta for now), SeaMonkey 1.8+ and Opera 8. Firefox 1.0.x users are out of luck as I’m being a bit naughty and using innerHTML to add content to XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml, a code “fix” from the developers to bring it inline to Opera.

I will get round to sorting this one out (this site can be served as application/xml where this method rightly breaks), though a good number of Firefox users that visit here are more than likely geeks, they should probably be downloading Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 and giving it a good shakedown anyway. ;)

So whilst most of the updates across both sites are done, should anything look a bit broken (assuming you’re not using an ancient, crappy browser) then please force a refresh to pull all the lovely new & updated files! :D

In other news, 香港迪士尼樂園 (Hong Kong Disneyland) is now officially open! ;)

27 years old. Just 3 years left till the traditional milestone birthdays are measured by the decade: 30, 40, 50 and so on… bleh. That said, milestone birthdays using the power of 2 would leave most mere mortals rather stuffed after their 64th birthday, so perhaps using prime numbers would be more appropiate with the added bonus you don’t have to wait a decade each time?

Of course, 27 certainly isn’t a prime, however it is 3 raised to the power of 3. This means my age could also be expressed as 10003 or 1027 in ternary or septemvigesimal respectively! :D Anyway, excuse me whilst I get back to boogying (example when I was some 25-ish years younger)… :P