Cultural Extravaganza

The Culture Extravaganza was over for more than a week. Sigh… I am posting “old” news again. I was checking out the City Street Parade on Feb 2 coz there were dance groups from Ireland, New Zealand, Poland, Scotland, Kenya, Spain, and Brazil joining the parade. To avoid traffic jam, I have arrived at 6:30pm, but the dancers arrived after 8:30pm, quite a long wait.

When they showed up, I walked around and snapped some photos of them. The Maori of New Zealand caught lot of attention. Whenever we took their pictures, they will stick their tongue out, making some funny expression, to greet us in their traditional way (see photos above). Lol… maybe I should greet them back the same way.

I love the costume of Ireland very much. It is so cute and colourful, like a toy, and each of them wearing unique design. The Kenya Safari Cats gave me very good expression. Despite their “wild” costume, they are very friendly and playful. The Brazilian dancers are the ones I really want to see, as they are one of the sexiest dancers in the world.

OK lah, a bit different from what I imagine, probably Malaysia is too cold to them, but their hot samba dance still can melt us. They are the center of the focus. So many people want to take picture with them…

Below are some photos for you to see. Not many coz I didn’t stay long. I left at 9:30pm to shoot pictures of Miss Cheongsam beauty pageant that evening. Hopefully next year we will have the same parade again. I want to recommend Hawaii to come, haha…

Click thumbnails below to see Bigger Photos:

The next day I went to UMS Chancellor Hall to watch their performance. Overall, it was a delightful experience. But the show started late and also ended late (8:30pm – 12am instead of scheduled 7:30pm – 10:30pm). Frankly, I am not interested in the Malaysian cultural shows. Not that I am not supportive, if the programme is too long, the organiser should remove them from the list. Under dim light, the camera flash from the audiences were quite disturbing. Not only it distracted me from enjoying the show, the strong light made my eyes very uncomfortable.

I also took a few pictures, but I have turned off the flash and preview LCD. I was nearly 100 feet away from the stage, so most of the pictures are blur. So I only pick a few usable photos and create a montage below:

Another funny thing is – 90% of the audiences have left before the show ended. When all the dancers came up to sing us a good bye song at the end, there were a lot more dancers than the audiences. Haha… I always think that Sabahan is the worst audience in the world. They are not “responsive” and they always disappear before the programme finishes.

Photos taken in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia Borneo