Celebrations In A Row

Sometimes it feels like life in Malaysia is one everlasting festival. Maybe it has to do with the fact that three nations are living inside one so the amount of celebrations is tripled.

I week ago we had the Chinese Mooncake Festival. We ate mooncakes and burned incenses under the full moon. Kim (woman in the red shirt) told me it is important to choose either one or three. I made my own prayer with three incense, number 3 being my lucky number after all.

The night was cloudy so the moon was hiding most of the time. One traditional part of the festival is sending lanterns to the sky filled up with wishes. We didn't make our own lanterns but big red ones were sent from the neighbor's house (the red dots in the picture).

Part of the traditions of celebrating the muslim Hari Raya is to have Open House -parties for friends and family during the following month. We had PT Foundation's open house this Sunday and as you can see from the pictures it was quite an success. There was about 400 people visiting the PT's estate.

The guests came in colors of rainbow from all the communities of PT (Pink Triangle, Positive Living, Sex Workers, Maknyah, Ikhlas -programmes). Workers, volunteers and friends sharing a chat and a festive lunch.

One of the customs of Hari Raya is to give little money presents to the young ones of the families. Here the chairman Hisham is giving out the gifts to children of all ages.

As you can see violet was the colour of 2009.

I invited Veera to come along and we caused attention being the two blondes in traditional Malay Baju Kurungs. Oh, the amount of photographs people wanted to take with us! But I must admit, this time being compared to Nicole Kidman, I was quite flattered.

Smiles, friends, poses and some more photographs.

The same day but few hours later we were invited to celebrate a more private party: Raymond's dad's birthday. Again it was time for a ten course meal in the Chinese restaurant with the attendance of the whole family.

This cute pink teardrop shape cake represents longevity.

But of course Birthday wouldn't be birthday without a birthday cake of it's own.

It's always good to end the blog post to smiling group portrait. Selamat everything!