My New Year's Eve 2010

This year on 31 December 2009, unlike most years, I had to go to the city to send a relative and her family to a hotel.It was 8 pm, about four hours before midnight which would herald the new year. As all the hotels were celebrating the coming of the new year, it was difficult to find a quite place for dinner at around 9pm. So we settled for the Golf Club which did not have any celebration as the yacht club in front of it was already holding one complete with a buffet at RM180  (for members) inclusive of a live band  and they started the merrymaking at 6.30pm. Our guests arrived at the airport at 7.40pm.

                 The club's staircase decorated since Christmas.

It was a quite dinner as we were the only people besides a couple of Japanese golfers who were having a drink. Earlier on the way to the hotel we noticed traffics were snarling to a crawl. Normally the highway is quite fast. Then we saw on both sides of the dual-carriage highway, uniformed men from the Road Transport Department (RTD) were inspecting vehicles... what the heck! Why are they doing this on new year's eve? They might have done it in the past but since I never ventured into the city on such a night I did not know whether this had always been the practice. I just failed to see the logic though. Why set up the check points well before midnight? It was a definite killjoy as far as I am concerned.

I did not see this in Australia and neither did I see this in the UK. It was a strange way of doing their work. New year's eve is not everyday. If they were to set up the check points after midnight I would have understood as drink driving is dangerous and drunk motorists need to be stopped at all cost.

It looks to me  like  they have not done their enforcement work properly all year round so to compensate  for this they need  to catch as many motorists as possible on new year's eve as more of the latter tend to travel during that window period to celebrate the new year.To me this is a negative approach to enforcement work.

We ended up taking almost double the time to get in and out of the city. As our relative had a 13-month old child, we decided to finish our dinner early at about 10.30pm and sent them back to their hotel. By the time we arrived home it was already 11.30pm. There was a full moon and the music was blaring from a hilltop bungalow across the valley from our house. They were having a new year's eve party complete with a vociferous deejay. Last year was unusually quite. It appears that  this year is a lot  merrier.

The camera does not do justice to the Full Moon! 

My precious henna tree in the foreground.

The houses in the valley below mine. 

(My camera fails to capture the fireworks!)

We sat on the veranda enjoying the light breeze and the bright moonlight and observing the valley below. I was also busy texting happy new year's messages and replying those received on my handphone. As the clock struck at midnight, fire crackers were let off and brilliant  fireworks brightened the sky almost around 180 degrees. I did not see these last year. Has our economy really recovered? My spirits lifted seeing the marks of joy people exuded for the new year.

The music from the bungalow stopped while the party revellers were doing the countdown to midnight then they roared full of mirth accompanied by fire crackers and fireworks. Their loud music stopped about 10 minutes later. As neighbors we understand and respect their right to celebrate and enjoy themselves.

Sydney 2010 

(courtesy from Chef)

I went inside the house to  watch CNN news on the massive new year's celebrations from New Zealand, Sydney and Hong Kong and those beautiful fireworks were just spectacular and I imagined  the Australian Enforcement Personnel wishing every reveller they met a Happy New Year 2010 and advised motorists to drive carefully and not get drunk for everyone's safety while their counterparts in Malaysia were busy booking motorists for the slightest infraction and merrily spoiling the peoples' new year's moods. Suddenly sadness overwhelmed me. I blame it on my overseas education. While it has opened my eyes and made me more sensitive and I would like to think, more broad-minded, I am usually at loggerhead with the cultural lag in my country.

The ice-blended mocha chocolate drink from Coffee Bean had kept me awake till the wee hours.... Good morning 2010!