PreGawai Celebration @ SMK Katibas

-
Last night, I attended my very first Hari Gawai celebration.
It was held in school.
Very interesting!

For those of you who do not know, 'Gawai Dayak' or 'Hari Gawai' means 'Dayak festival'.
'Dayak' is the collective name for all the ethnic groups of Sarawak.
Actual Hari Gawai celebrations begin from 31 May onwards.

My school student demographic is 99.9% Iban.
All the staff are Iban & a majority of the teachers are Iban too.
So it was natural for a dinner to be held to celebrate this wondrous occasion.

The turnout for the Dayak festival dinner was very encouraging.
People of different backgrounds attended & enjoyed the tasty food.

There was kari ayam, nasi pulut, rendang ayam & etc.
Everything tasted so great!

There was also the Iban 'Pansoh' which was
chicken + herbs cooked in bamboo.
The lightly-seasoned chicken pieces were so tender &
melt-in-your-mouth fantastic!

When Iban men get together, it is customary for them to drink.
There are 2 Iban brews.
They are: Ijuk (made from the bark of a plam tree)
& Tuak (made from rice).
They drank Ijuk that night.
Ijuk has a close resemblance to the sweet type of Japanese sake.

The Ibans love Karaoke!
As a new member of the school, I was 'forced' to sing too...
I sang a song in the Iban language & I had no idea what I was saying.
But I must have done something good coz ppl laughed & clapped at my awkward attempts at dangdut.

It was a wonderful event with great food.

I received invitations to longhouses for Hari Gawai but I had to politely decline because I'll be having a blast in KL by then!
But it'll definitely be something to look forward to maybe next year!
=)

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding The New SPM (2021) English 1119 Paper Format

-
Image
This outline & those of other SPM language papers were made publicly available on the Lembaga Peperiksaan Malaysia (LPM) website . I'm sure you've seen the above being circulated on the internet. But, what does it mean? How does this paper compare to the current SPM paper for English? Do we have to change our testing practices in Form 4? At this moment, information is sparse despite great public interest. As the head of the English panel at my school, my Form 4 colleagues will come to me for what to do & parents will ask me what this is about. Until we have very specific instructions from the ministry, this is what I will be telling my colleagues & parents based on the limited amount of information available to me from my intimate experience with the current SPM paper & second-hand information about the PT3 English paper. Let me know if I got anything wrong or if you have more detailed information.
Open Full Post »

What To Do When Your Unifi Service Suddenly Drops

-
Image
After finally putting my kid to sleep, I was about to settle into the couch with my wife & stream a movie, when my Unifi fiber optic internet connection suddenly dropped. When it didn't come back after 1 hour, I realized that I had to do something. Considering that I pay my bills promptly every month, it must be a technical issue. Here's what I did to fix the problem. It look me less than 20 minutes. 1. First, I checked my modem (the white machine). I checked the lights on the modem. When the modem is functioning properly, lights will be on for POWER, PON, LAN1 & TEL1. If the red light for LOS lights up, call 100 to resolve the issue. Also, I made sure that all the wire connections were tight. 2. Next, I checked my router (the black machine). Again, I checked the lights. When the router is functioning properly, lights will be on for POWER, GLOBE, WIFI, LAN1. My POWER light was blinking, so that means that there was no internet connection. Again, I made sure th...
Open Full Post »

How To Fix Logitech Options Not Loading

-
Image
I use a Logitech K380 bluetooth keyboard at home & love it to bits. Very quiet & the tactile response is just perfect. Also, it's super small so easy to put away when I need to pile exam papers on my desk. Still, there's one small problem though... It is a compact keyboard so the multimedia buttons double as function keys. I use the function keys A LOT & it's really cumbersome for me to have to hold the "fn" button every time I want to use them. I.e., try pressing alt+fn+f4 with one hand. Thankfully, with the Logitech Options software, I can default to the function keys. A few months ago, I was chagrined to learn that my keyboard had spontaneously returned to factory settings. "No problem", I thought. "I'll just change the settings in Logitech Options." Only to find that the app wouldn't load on my Windows 10 machine, resulting in the blank window you see screen-captured above. "Let me try reinstalling." Uni...
Open Full Post »

A Review of Mosquito Coils In The Market

-
Image
Mosquito coils = The first line of defence against savage jungle mosquitoes. Remember when there was completely no electricity at my school ? It happened during the dry season so the nights were really really warm & hard to sleep with the windows closed. Why close the windows you ask? Because if you don't close the windows, the savages from the jungle will climb in & suck your blood! Literally! I'm talking about swarms of mosquitoes gang-banging your skin & leaving you with clusters of chickenpox-like bumps on your skin in the morning! These guys even bite through clothing!! The itchiness that ensues will practically ensure that you never have a good night sleep. In order to keep those monsters at bay, I had to go really low-tech. I eventually experimented with mosquito coils. There are so many in the market & I thought that all of them worked the same since they had the same basic ingredients. I was wrong. They had different effects on the mosquitoes ...
Open Full Post »

Exotic Fruit: Buah Isu

-
Image
I've been teaching in the Iban motherland for more than 1 year now & I have tasted many exotic fruits exclusively available only within these quiet secluded timber forests. Now, don't you smirk at me! You perverted baskets I call friends are thinking about a different 'fruit'! There are no innuendos here. The exotic fruits that I'm talking about are REAL fruits. First, let me introduce you to the cousin of the king of fruits... Buah Isu Buah Isu resembles it's cousin, the Durian , but I was told that it is NOT in the Durian family. The spikes are longer & they are sharper. They are also very much smaller than the Durians. It's about the size of a man's palm. It has a pleasantly sweet fragrance which is not pungent like the Durian's. Because of it's size, it is easily opened with a cleaver. After opening my first Isu, I couldn't help but bounce off the walls in gay laughter. It was all too amusing to me! I though...
Open Full Post »