One tiring but nice weekend.

I've just got back from Tanjung Pinang, Indonesia, going there with my cousin, Hafizh, attending a relative's wedding. The relative was once the member of DPR of Indonesia and I guess that he would be doing his daughter's wedding not in a small scale.

I asked him, how many would be coming.

He told me he invited almost 4000 people.

What? 4000? In Malaysia, a 1000 guest is already a headache.

Anyway, on that particular wedding day, I guess the guest is not even 4k but maybe more. I guessed it maybe around 8k to 10k, based on what I was seeing that day.

So, a photographer like me will of course get really interested to shoot. I've been to one wedding in Tg. Pinang and it was colourful! I bet this one would be doubly colourful.

The wedding in Tanjung Pinang is of course, more 'Malayish' that what we are having. I bet Malaysian Wedding are a lot simpler and for some people the wedding processes should not be getting more complicated as the process of pre-marriage is already a burden and hassleful.

As I arrived there, the mom of the bride had asked me to shoot some photos as the assigned photographers is not there yet.

The wedding is started with the 'berandam' or 'bercukur' ceremony. It's a ritual that signing the initiation of the 'Berandam' proses. The process was just a mere shaving of the hairs here and there. It's a lil bit orthodox. The room was a bit dark so I decided to use the CLS for this picture. Nothing to be proud of, I mean the cls but good enough to light the room for that shot.

Then, we went to a relative's place and stayed there until 8 PM for the next occasion, which is called berinai.

In Malaysia, the so called berinai night has got nothing to do with 'Berinai', of which to apply henna powder to the fingers and toes, purposely to decorate the bride's fingers and toes. In Malaysia, the berinai night is done before the solemnization.

In Tg. Pinang, it's done the night before the solemnization. More special, the occasion does include special dances of which later the dancers will invite the members of the floor (I mean the guests) to come and dance with them.

One guest after another will do the 'menepung tawar'. The Master of the Ceremony will call them up one by one. Once finished, the father of the bride recites the Doa and the bride will later brought down and will be asked to lay down on a matress. The mak andam and someone else will apply the henna powder.

Once finished, the bride will be asked to stay on that matress all the way, till the henna is dried. Then I actually went back home as it's getting really late then.

Early morning the day after, I woke up early just to get all battery to be properly charged. As I have only one battery for my Nikon D200, I have to make sure it's fully charged everytime before a job or an assignment.

There's already a lot of people coming when I arrived there. Inside of the house, people has already gathered to witness the solemnization.

The most beautiful thing about the wedding in Tanjung Pinang is that, every conversation is done by rhyming the sentences. The malays call it, 'Pantun'. It is very surprising that these people can really Berpantun like nobody's business. There's no single thing that is not being rhymed in the pantun form.

The solemnization aqad was successfully completed only at one attempt. The father of the bride wishes to execute the aqad himself.

After the aqad, the groom went into the room on the bride to present the dowry to the bride himself.

Then the ceremony proceed as usual. There are more dances. More people coming till 7PM and I left at around 7730PM to check in to the hotel and get my rest.

The bersiram Occassion is on the next day of which I didn't attend as I was rushing back to Malaysia. I guess it's gonna be much more fun. Everybody has got to get wet!

Who says kid chan is the expert of malay weddings? :p

Waddap guyce?

I'm shrinking all my blogs as I'll also be managing my own website at http://www.izham-miyake.com

As you can see, I've already incorporated all my old (& lame) entries from my old blog (slash.tblog.com) to here. All the archive entries from February 2004 to September 2005 are the entries from the previous blog.

More mergers will be coming soon. I might be merging this blog with the my pojok blog as well.

It was purposely done that this blog is having a new look. Basically i was just changed the background, of which before I was using someone else's picture but this time, I'm using mine, which was taken using my previous Canon 400D.

Now I'm shooting more with my Nikon D200 even though I'm still keeping my Canon 40D. With Nikon, it is much easier for me to do the Nikon CLS, a lighting system that can be established using the flashes, which made the life so much easier.

And the pictures are super marvellous too!

Oh yeah, what's with the Nikon?

Nikon kick ASS! Here are some picture with the Nikon CLS!




And further, I've been appointed as the Assistant Pro Trainer for the Nikonian Academy. The academy has the role to become the Nikon Product Evangelist other than to educate in terms of providing training classes to people to find the best way of making use of the cameras.

Classes are rolling, and as for the time being, we are only providing classes for the DSLR users, the classes for the compact cameras are in the finalized stage, and will be in the rolling soon.

And for reference, the website is www.nikonian.com.my.

Please not that the classes in JB is selling like hot goreng pisang now! You may not be able to enrol so don;t waste your time to wait!

Call me and reserve your seats, no matter who and where you are. Nikonian Certs will be provided to all completing attendees.

***************************************

As for the time being, The nation is said to be unstable, caused by the effort by some people to make things right.

If things are right, it won't ignite such chaotic political scene as it has always been aired on the news, on TV.

I'm supporting anything that will get things right, as I know there's nothing left 'right' in the government now.

I've been waiting for that wrong person to do the right thing, then everything will get back to normal.

And we photographers can do job in more confidence. The economy is good, everybody makes money and be willing to pay your high price of good photography service!

Khir Toyo changed Profession after Botox

After the terrible opposition winning over the Barisan Nasional in the recent PRU12 (the 12th National Election), Dr. Khir Toyo was not only lost his Menteri Besar position, he was also passing on a few UMNO positions at the state level.

Being dentist by profession, I hope he can return to be a dentist and check out how hard it is to make a living nowadays. Then, experience how hard people had to deal with the officials. More about him can be found at Wikipedia

"QUOTE"

"Our bloggers are really not up to standard. When they put up something, it’s not something that they want to discuss in a very intellectual way. It’s more because of their anger - the language they use. Why should I read all this rubbish? When the standard of our bloggers is upgraded, then probably I will look at what is written. But anyway, they are a minority. My concern is for the majority." - Nazri Aziz, NST, October 28, 2007

Who are the majority now? What majority are you talking about?

So now they've seen it happen. The bloggers has changed the world, why not Malaysia? And now even Dr Khir has his own blog. Maybe Dr Khir was thinking that blog can really make a living then. Yalah, after losing the election, of course jatuh miskin aight?

FYI, Dr Khir Toyo's blog is drkhir.blogspot.com

Recently I met him and I find out something!

THE BOTOX WORKS REALLY WELL!

He has grown taller and bigger. No more white hairs and look so young and energetic as ever! The face looks so different nowadays and he even changed profession. He looks very much handsome too!

The botox even changed his career. He is now a photographer! And giving talks at the Photography Roadshows as in the picture below.

Believe it or not @ life.izham-miyake.com!

:P

Well, It's April Fool and of course it's a joke! Hahahaha!

Someone has mistakenly acknowledged Noorsham as the former Menteri Besar during having our dinner at the Pan Bakery Cafe, PJ. The street musician was asking money from me when he said this,

"Dah tak jadi Menteri Besar ke?"

I was wondering what the hell this fella was trying to tell me. When he turned to Noorsham, he again ask,

"Dah tak jadi Menteri Besar ke?"

And i burst with laughs! Now only I realized that Noorsham looks like Dr. Khir Toyo.

Of course that handsome guy is Mr. Noorsham, my sifu, who was giving talk at the Photography Roadshow in Plaza Pudu KL. More about it at my Website.

* So boss, jangan marah eh. Hehehe.. gurau je..