Archive for
January 29th, 2006

   

Stories

The Year of the Dog Comes to the Rest of East Asia

Jose Manuel Tesoro · 21:45 · East Asia

Big Red Lantern by Yining Zhang

“Da Hong Deng Long” (Big Red Lantern) by Yining Zhang

Blogs all around East and Southeast Asia have gone grey this past weekend as many, particularly those in the overseas Chinese community, celebrate the Lunar New Year. As part of Global Voices Online's continuing celebration of the arrival of the Year of the Dog, here's a quick sampling of celebratory posts around the Asian region, outside China, Vietnam and Malaysia:

Being Korean thoughtfully reminds us that although many people call the Lunar New Year just “Chinese New Year,” the holiday is also celebrated throughout Asia by non-Chinese. In Korea, the holiday focuses more on reverence of deceased ancestors on the paternal side. He writes: “lunar new year is a unique celebration here in korea and one that i feel is a shame that the legions of non-koreans living here have never had the chance to participate in or even simply witness.”

Kitjar Sukjaidee, a Thai of peranakan (Straits of Malacca-born) Chinese descent, describes on Thai-blogs.com how her Thai-Chinese-Malay family celebrates the occasion, which extends over several days:

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Pakistan: Blog-o-mobile

A small portrait of the translator Omer Alvie · 14:32 · South Asia

My new cyber transport

I apologize for not having posted for nearly a fortnight, but I have a pretty good reason for being MIA. The traffic on the internet highway has become so excruciatingly bad that it caused my trusted Vespa scooter to finally breakdown and die. I traded it in the remains for a more souped-up version of a Pakistani rickshaw (3-wheeled taxi), see above photo. Impressive isn’t it? It is turbo charged to maneuver through the narrow bylanes of cyberspace. I also had an ejector seat installed in it, except in this version (unlike James Bond's Aston Martin), it is the driver seat that ejects. It comes in handy when you are stuck in a proxy jam; you can just expel yourself from that agonizing experience and commit cyber hara-kiri.

This top-of-the-line rickshaw also comes with a built-in precision guided missile system which is rather useful when one wants to obliterate those offensive pop-up ads that crop up on certain web sites and blogs.

On to this week's collection of delightful links that reflect the Pakistani perspective. Suspect Paki highlights a frightening reality experienced by the Palestinian children; Teeth Maestro announces the launch of Desicritics.org; Windmill comments on the Kara(chi)film Festival; Fountainhead pontificates on fascism; Lightwithin praises the mountain Porters of Pakistan; Crow's Nest debates the rational of logic; and finally, I present my random thoughts for the day.

I better get a move on, as I need to pick up my customized licence plates for my rickshaw. Simply says “BLOG THIS!”

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