Karagattam - Folk Dance

Any village festival in Tamil Nadu is sort of incomplete without Karagattam. Until, my last trip to India, I never had a chance to meet and take pics of the dancers. This time round, we met a group in Namakkal, (Tamil Nadu, India) who were practicing for a competition! So I'd a good photo opportunity:)

Balancing the karagam - For SOOC and Shadow Shot Sunday 2

Yes, balancing this pot (Karagam) on top of the head without holding it and performing graceful, yet fast paced dance (attam) movements is KARAGAATAM!

Ready to dance

Until then, I used to wonder if they tie up or 'glue' the pot on their head and disguise with makeup! But now, for sure I know that it is purely an art of balancing the decorated 'karagam', which is most important to start the attam!!!

They dance with so much grace that it is hard to believe how the pot royally sits on their heads.

At times, as a challenge, they lie down on their stomach by few dexterous movements and pick up a small piece of wood or fruit from the ground, while balancing the karagam!!!

The dancers are called as 'karagattakaran (men) and karagattakari (women). The music is also very peepy and you feel like tapping your foot.

The man in white is musician of this troupe!

Karagattam should be highly regarded and encouraged. But, it is not considered as 'fashionable' among city dwellers, so, I feel that this form of art is under suffocation.

Who Cares?

Crying Calf - hungry?

Blissful Kittens -satiated!

Bulgogi - Meat on Fire

It was totally a new lunch experience with expat friends. Well, our Korean friends suggested that we go for lunch at Korean House Restaurant, in Bukit Baru Malacca.

Menu

As we didn't know what to choose, our friends (Korean) Sara, Catherine and Yong Mei decided on the menu and ordered for all of us. First, we were served with rice tea...

Rice Tea

It tasted like Chinese tea. After that a stove was placed on each table, so I was assuming that something like Steamboat is going to be served...

Bulgogi

Well, it didn't look like a steamboat and when Sara said the name of the dish, I heard it as wolgoki and was unable to pronounce it properly, so she wrote on paper as 'Bulgogi', where Bul = Fire and gogi = meat in Korean! So, it was meat (beef) on fire!!!

Bulgogi comes with an assortment of vegetables and meat, so our table was filled with lot of mini-plates:) Though am a die-hard vegetarian, I must admit that the meat dishes were aesthetically presented.

Bulgogi Set

Bulgogi has Beef as the 'king', followed by sides - fried anchovies, pickled shells, fish balls, omelet and steamed egg. Then few veg dishes - pickled cucumber and radish, fresh lettuce with thin slices of garlic, lotus root fry and salad with thousand island sauce. On top of it, a small plate of bean sauce was placed for everyone and it was reddish and resembled Malaysian Sambal or Indian kara chutney!

All of us were given a small box of rice. But, by then another plate of what looked like glass noodles was placed in our table and Sara and Yong Mei told that it was vegetarian. When I said 'I dun want rice, I'll just have this noodles', Sara insisted 'no no, this is a special dish we make only on occasions and you should eat it with rice'.

1st time eating noodles as a side dish for rice!

As the owner of that place was Sara's friend, he gave us two complimentary dishes...

Pancakes

They were Kimchi pancake with crab meat (the one on top) and Veg & egg pancake (the one @ bottom). I didn't try it, because they were not vegetarian.

Overall, I was surprised to see that I had quite a choice of veg-dishes! Especially I liked the way the Koreans eat the rice. Yong Mei gave a demo on how to eat rice...take a fresh lettuce, add a spoon of rice, followed by bean sauce and meat or any side. Now, fold it and eat! It was yummy:)

Shuttle Hope - Meet the Captian

We planned to stop over at Labuan Island (Union Territory of Malaysia), on the way from Brunei to Kota Kinabalu during our holidays in Borneo. It is a mere 1.5 hours journey by ferry from Brunei to Labuan and from there we had booked our flight (MAS Wings airline) to Kota Kinabalu. Since the day I visited the cockpit in an aircraft, I've been hoping to visit a ships' control room too.

Click on the images to enlarge

Shuttle Hope

Well, thatz exactly not a ship, but it is a fairly big sized ferry that we took from Brunei to Labuan.

Loading vehicles @ Brunei immigration - Muara terminal

The first thing that I noticed as soon as I boarded was this chained staircase, meaning restricted area!

And, the urge to go up and take a look was too high, so I asked the one of the uniformed crew members if I could go up. "Wait mam, will check with the captain and come", he said. Within minutes, he came back and let me go up...

First I saw the captain- was not sure if he would let me in...

The Captain seemed to be busy, so I was hesitating to enter, but just then he waved at me to come in! Captain Nurniwan was soft-spoken and was not fluent in English. We managed to communicate with his broken English and my broken Malay! First off he said that Shuttle Hope was made in Japan and the capacity of this vessel is about 200 passengers and can take 45 cars at a cruising speed of 15 knots. "Got 2 engines, so can bring cars/buses from one side and drive through the other side" said the captain and walked me to the other engine in the rear...

Rear engine...

When he knew that I was from India, he commented that before heading this 'ship' he was working in large ships and used to go to ports of Kozhikode & Calcutta in India! With his permission, I started taking pictures of the gadgets and cabins in this deck.

When the captain showed me the 'eye' of the ship, I was fascinated and asked him "what can it see?"

The captain opened the GPS like EYE and said, "Look at that ship, now this 'eye' can 'see' and tell the name and other details of that ship", and we learnt that the name of that ship was Oriental! He further explained that "see this radar, can show if any boat or ship come in my way, especially during bad weather, and the transducer tells me the depth of the water and with this wireless phone can communicate with other ships or with ports...""How safe is this ferry, that too if it rains heavily or...?" for which the captain said, "don't worry, no tsunami in this part of the region and it is quite stable". Satisfied with this I moved on to take a couple of shots of the Brunei Bay...

Passengers boarding a small ferry

In this kind of ferries, you will be cooped up throughout the journey!

Now, I moved on to the other part of the captain's deck...

The Crew's kitchen...

For a 9 member crew, the kitchen seemed to be small, but well this ferry goes only on short trips, so it should be fine!
Shrill sound of the ferry's whistle prompted that we were about to start our journey...so I decided to go back to the passenger's deck and to my surprise, the captain was kind enough to offer any help if I needed!

Passenger deck

Coming down to the passenger deck, I realized that, practically we had the entire ferry to ourselves! Towards the rear end, I saw this...

Emergency plan showing the vessel's layout...

'Not bad' I thought, thatz why the captain had commented earlier that Shuttle Hope was safe, with all this elaborate safety measures!

You might also like to read/see pics of my other Borneo experiences...Poring - Canopy Walkway Bridge
Aerial Views - Borneo
Water ways of Brunei - Air Kampung, Venice of the East
The Giant Flower - Rafflesia