Earth Hour at KL and Spicy Hour in Bombay....

I was in UKM on Friday for my classes when there was some extra time before Prof Rohimi started his class on Third World International Law. Managed to sneak some time to clear out my inbox, using UKM's library PC.

Marianne, my favourite sister in law, forwarded me this e-mail from Astro, as Zuriana, her cousin works there.



Astro's pledge!

After reading this, I thot, well, I might as well take the opportunity while I am around in KL to experience the Earth Hour myself and write about it here later.

Well here's my take on it, eh?

Earth Hour is a global event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Earth hour was conceived by WWF and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney's lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008. And now in 2009, Malaysia is adopting it for the first time.

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region over an appropriately significant period of time. Climate change reflects abnormal variations to the expected climate within the Earth's atmosphere and subsequent effects on other parts of the Earth, such as in the ice caps over durations ranging from decades to millions of years. In Malaysia, it is evident by the unnatural fall of heavy rain in certain parts of the country.


The initial plan was to witness it together with Am and lawyerlyscrewed at Dataran Merdeka. But due to unforeseen circumstances caused by Snakebite, I had to brave it with KOKA only.


After our scuba diving course briefing at Berjaya Times Square, me and Am split up coz she had to go to her sister's place in UM, then back to lawyerlyscrewed's place, while I was sent by my father on a task to look for a pantun book for him. We tentatively agreed to meet up at Dataran Merdeka at 8.30pm to witness the 'lights-off' ceremony there.


But a few minutes before 8.30pm, Snakebite called and enquired about our dinner plans as we kinda forgot to inform him about our whereabouts that day when our earlier dinner plans did not fall in place. But I managed to get lawyerlyscrewed to deal with him on this matter (phewww!! Mamat ni kalau berleter, boleh tahan juga!) and the arrangement took a slight change. Snakebite went to pick lawyerlyscrewed and Am up at her place while I went ahead with KOKA to Dataran Merdeka to take photos of the event, then all of us were to meet up in Midvalley Megamall for dinner.


It was jam packed all aroung Dataran Merdeka when we arrived, just 5 minutes before 8.30pm. No parking space available, so KOKA dropped me off just between Dataran Merdeka and DBKL building, while he went in search of a parking spot. There were quite a turn out there at Dataran Merdeka, I would estimate about 2,000 people spread out all over the sprawling area.


DBKL building was the focal point for the countdown organised by WWF Malaysia. They had the stage in the middle of Dataran Merdeka and proceeded announcing the reasons, the rationale the efforts behind the Erath Hour celebration.


I was totally captured and engrossed by the beautiful graphics on the DBKL building.



The image of KLCC on DBKL's building!




Dataran Merdeka at 8.28pm. Still beautifully lighted!

The vibrant hibiscus graphics on DBKL building! My camera does not capture the real vivid colours of it!

And this is the countdown being displayed on DBKL's building. 6 seconds to go in this pic here!

And then it was all dark! I really mean dark, in contrast to the brightness and festivality a few seconds ago!

I was lucky enough to be snapping pics with my camera a few metres away from the switch box that was being manned by the TNB technicians who were instrumental in shutting off the lights to Dataran Merdeka and DBKL building.

KOKA managed to persuade them to pose for a pic!

Here is how it looked with the lights switched off.

Dataran Merdeka, bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad and bangunan Dayabumi sans the normal lights. Left on are only the security lights.

Me, in the dark!

Another angle of Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad without lights!

According to statistics from Wikipedia (sumber rujukan utama Snakebite!), last year, the Capital city of India, New Delhi's power demand fell by 1000MW. The “phenomenal” dip is attributed to the Earth Hour observed by Delhi while the Canadian province of Ontario, outside of Toronto, saw a decrease of 6% of electricity while Toronto saw a decrease of 15.1% (nearly doubled from 8.7% the previous year) as many businesses darkened, including the landmark CN Tower. Here in Malaysia, besides Dataran Merdeka, KLCC also darkened its building for this Earth Hour celebration. Its suprising that what we perceive as a 'little' gesture can actually go a long way eh?

After taking pics there, we quickly headed towards Midvalley Megamall to meet up with the rest of the gang (yup! we all sound like gangsters eh?). We arrived first at about 9pm, and we observed that basically the whole of Midvalley was lighted up as usual. But, there were a few outlets that took their intiative to observe the Earth Hour and joined in the spirit of 'going dark'!

Purple Cane Tea Centre and Eu Yan Sang doing their bit for our earth!

Auntie Anne's too, went dark for an hour.

Laksa Shack served their diners in candle light!

Apart from the main signboard, Sbread also observed the hour of darkness.

When the whole gang arrived it was just after 9.30pm. We ronda-ronda a bit and decided to go spicy at...

Bombay Spice!

Am and lawyerlyscrewed beaming their megawatt smiles for me!

KOKA and me! Note.... no peace sign from me! Very rare! Hehehe....

Their paper napkins were embossed with Spice of India when we are at Bombay Spice!

Then we only realised that Bombay Spice is an outlet affiliated to Spice of India that is located at level 6 Pavillion and level 4 of KLCC.

The menu wasn't very diverse in variety, but we went on and ordered some dishes to be eaten with our naan bread, paratha and tosei.

A pic of my mango lassi. Yummy and sour!

lawyerlyscrewed and snakebite. Janggut tu untuk bagi nampak dignified ke bila sitting on the bench nanti? Hehehe.... you can't fool us Snakebite!

Some of our dishes. Can't remember their names except for varuval chicken, masala prawns and palak paneer.

Am, with her tosei sebesar tikar!

Meal was the usual kutuk mengutuk session lah. Snakebite had to rectified the story about taking N#*%$h on his bike. N%$*#h as usual kena kutuk for her weird questions in class. Snakebite as usual try to diffuse all the bitching that was going around, while KOKA was a bit lost with our conversation coz he doesn't know the people we are bitching about, and Am was her usual blur as sotong self! Hehehe.... sebenarnya, Am ni muslimah sejati. Never say bad things about people except the Singapore Bar football team whom she hates wholeheartedly for planning a walkover against our Malaysian Bar football team.

The meal was fun coz basically its like makan berebut. At one point of time lawyerlyscrewed and me kebas garlic naan Snakebite sebab dia sebok duduk bercerita. Even the most basic of food becomes a sumptuos feast when shared with good friends!

Am and lawyerlyscrewed tried to persuade Snakebite to go watch Confession of a Shopaholic with them but ended up giving up trying to queue for tickets. I could've sworn Snakebite was relieved that they didn't get tickets!

The makan-makan gang!

After the dinner, as we were leaving, we saw the workers wheeling in their spices on a cart! Variety of spices used in their cooking!

I took this pic becoz mamat yang wheeling in the spices nih hensem macam hero Hindustan! Tapi hampehh tak boleh cakap English or Malay! Well.... with looks like this still need to communicate arrr? Hehehe.....

Kedai dah tutup, but I still insist nak bergambar! Hence the grill....

Sunday, was another story. I led the whole of the scuba gang on a wild goose chase looking for The China Emporium supposedly situated across the road from Sunway Pyramid. We trudged for about 2 km to looking for TCE to buy our scuba apparatus for our getaway this coming July. We finally found the outlet, only to discover that it does not open on Sundays. But the bright side is, they are having a warehouse sale till the 15th of April. Yeay! Meaning that we can get them scuba gear for a fraction of the usual price.


By the way, I promised Rafidah and Am that I will put it up on my blog that there's still 2 places available for the scuba diving course if any of you readers are interested. You can indicate your interest by leaving a comment and I will put you in touch with Am or Rafidah whore are co-ordinators of this trip.


My LL.M exams will be over by 4th of May and I'm embarking on another learning process already in the form of scuba diving course. Hehehe.... no rest for the brain yet eh?


I might just end up checking myself in for treatment here....