Carnival Malaysia Day

The church has been abuzz with excitement for the past 2 months as we planned and promoted the TMC Carnival. We (the church) has bought a piece of land very nearby to our current premise and we wanted to raise more funds for the land purchase. So the idea of a food sale came to mind. But, instead of a regular food sale, our Pastor-in-Charge wanted to have a time where members can mingle and have fun. So, the Carnival was brought to birth. A carnival where there's lots of fun games, lots of sales, great music, laughter, cheer, unity and of course most importantly, lots of good food!

16th September finally arrived. A bright and sunny day. The entrance to the carnival was set with hundreds of baloons.

Programme kick start at 8am with Pastors (we have 4) leading a marching band (Boy's Brigade) + lady & youth dancers from Pelayanan Bahasa Malaysia (PBM) [SOooo PROUD of the ladies & youth group - HURRAAAAHHH!]

Followed by everyone singing the National Anthem - Negaraku [What a great touch to Malaysia Day I thought!] . I was actually very surprised that many sang along and knew this song by heart. Surprised because it's an 85% Chinese community and didn't expect them to be patriotic! I have indeed underestimated my fellow citizens! Followed by the PBM lady group cheering on the congregation and guest with a dance.

Then, praise and worship and Opening Prayer followed committing the Carnival for His glory.

We had tonnes (really... TONNES) of activities. And of course food. Here are some stalls we had...

Our own version of McD - MacDavid. Fresh burger. Noel's first meal of the day.

Local kueh and bao (pau). The ladies who sold really knew their products though they got the supply from others. Looks like they've done their homework in sampling the food for promotion :)

Even had a product from Thailand selling. Love that cute lil' pinky :)

The smell of local coffee brewing was heavenly. It was too hot by the time I found them, so I didn't sample their hot coffee (though it was much needed!). This stall also sold yummy goodies from Sibu.

The festive air was continuously filled with great music. Thanks to the team who were stationed at the Request Corner. Here's our Music Director singing Puff the Magic Dragon. Photo courtesy of Noel [he said he wanted to take Uncle's photo :)]

Bright yellow bananas. We were afraid to grab these as the bananas looked too... perfect! But we got some other fruit - apples and oranges which were available too.

The must-have bbq pit. I expected MORE bbq stuff quite honestly.

We had plants selling as well - I don't think many came for these though.

Nail painting and tattoo too (check out the little girl's tattoo on her arm!). This stall was attended by the youth. There's a guy who was doing most of the nail painting - quite amazing. They had face painting too - I thought they could have "sold" more of these as there's lots of kids around. They should have painted their face for promotion :)

I was surprised to see a wine booth set up. They had Australian and Chillean Wine for sale.

Blow pipe stall!!! This is a stall set up by our Pastors and this ended up being our fav stall. Fav as in, someone would rather stand here to cheer people on to try instead of sitting down to rest her tired feet! Great giveaways too - if you hit the devil's body, you get one can of soda. If you hit the eyes - you get 3 cans of soda. Highest record was... 5 cans in total. Noel got 5 cans in the 3 games he played. It being a really hot day, any can of soda is very much welcomed!

Here's the target of the pipe blowing. See the devil's photos?

Someone even put up a shoe polishing station - what an amazing idea I thought! Customers came to have their shoes polished while able to just sit and relax at the same time. Absolutely clever!

See how happy this customer is? [I can bet that this sentence is grammatically incorrect - help to correct me!!]

We also had a station called "White Elephant". It's where people donate items that they bought but never actually used and those items are re-sold. But looked like there's lots of 2nd hand stuff as well. People donated so many amazing items - from electical stuff to clothing to books to designer bags to souvernirs to shoes - you name it, you got it. The clothes started at RM3 per piece to RM2 to RM1 and at the end of the day even went to RM0.50 each! A deep fryer for RM25, a rice cooker for RM10, a Bonia handbag for RM30, a LV handbag for RM40 - Tsk! Amazing! One side was attended to by the wife.

And another side by the husband. Togou and I got heaps from this guy. He's quite amazing - as in, he looks at us and he knows what we like :) We got photo frames, photo albums, books - recipe, devotional. They were really cheap too. Good buys I'd say.

Of course, the star of the show would be these guys! This is the PBM group, seen here roasting themselves under the sun to bring out amazing pansuh - a local delicacy of either chicken or pork cooked in bamboo. My family (yeah, ko pun in this category) had to drag ourselves out of bed at 4.00am to go to the local market and to prepare the ingredients for these. It's great to see how these guys really put themselves into the action. It almost looked like they didn't mind the sun a wee bit! Yummy goodies which were gone by 9 in the morning! We also had bbq-ed corn - which for the life of me, can't remember why I didn't take any snapshots of those!

Here's the taukey and taukeynio giving the sales of the day to the representative of PBM to the carnival. Very good sale.

Here's a puzzling sight during the day. This boy wore soccer boots and long soccer socks - for no apparent reason. There was absolutely NO football games that day.

We left the carnival at about 12.30pm and head of to lunch at Jojo's Seafood. Here's food - for 3 adults and 1 child eating. Extreme? Obviously. But we didn't finish the food - da bao (tapau) -ed home some.

A great fun day. A day well spent. Exhaustion doesn't begin to describe how tired we were after the whole day. To my family, the day was made even greater by having dear Togou with us since Wed night :) Though we ended up with so little sleep, with body aching and with bloated tummy from the extreme food intake, I had a really superb time. Thanks Togs :) Let's do it again someday ya. Lots love.