Mooncake Eve Celebration At UTM

The mooncake festival is upon us and the folks at UTM has decided to organise an event to celebrate just that. I for one had no intention of going, whatsoever. I had a feeling this would be one very dull and poorly organised event. Don't get me wrong, I had more important things to tend to like er.. ehm.. (opens up personal organiser, *flip*, empty, *flip*, empty, *flips to last page*, A note!: "Dear self, you have got to get a life").

So here I am at the UTM's Mooncake Eve Festival. Curse you past Ben. Pictures follow, click on them to enlarge.



We found this humongous contraption just as we entered the place. The idea is to get people to write their wishes and then stick them on it. I thought it was silly. I mean you're putting up your hopes and dreams for everyone else to see. What a silly thing to do! (Guy walks by: Can't believe some idiot pasted his blog address all over the top half of the contraption! It was Sew.. something!) ... Don't look at me like that, I bet you would do the same too.



It wasn't at all like I expected, there were A LOT of people there! In the middle of the venue was a huge stage where they had performances going on throughout the night, from choir groups to breathtaking taekwando showcases.

But the highlight of the entire night was what was going on AROUND the venue. They had like a funfair-like thing going on where there were a total of 15 games to be played. You can win yourself tickets and for each 4 tickets you collect, you can redeem them for one lantern. Best of all, it's totally FREE! So I tried my hand at a few of them:



Game 1: Squirt The Candles. To get a ticket, you'd have put out at least 3 out of 10 candles from a distance by squirting water out of a salt shaker.

Ben: [Desperately squirting] How is it possible that not even one candle was put out?! Did you see that, it dimmed a while and then lighted back up again! You guys are using trick candles. Booo!
Adrian: [Quick squirt] Not a candle left burning, ticket please.



Game 2: Fishing. To get a ticket, you'd have to fish out at least 3 tiny gold fishes off the pool. The catch is instead of a fishing net, you'll be using tissue paper stapled on a huge ring as your fishing tool.

Ben: [Tissue paper immediately breaks upon contact on water] This is ludacris! It's already hard enough to get one of them tiny critters with a fishing net, now we're supposed to catch 3 using tissue paper enforced nets?!
Gamesperson: This man (pointing to Adrian) caught 10!

My self esteem dropped so low, people were trampling all over it. I never liked funfair-type games. But on the whole, I'm glad I went to this small but eventful celebration. The performances were good enough to keep the crowd entertained and the games were exciting enough to KEEP the crowd, period (I spent a whole hour there).



CK, me, Normie & Kim. You might notice that my face and Normie's are painted. I forgot to mention that for every game, it's either you win a ticket OR you get your face painted. Mine was the worst. Adrian is not in this picture, he was off winning his 10th lantern. -Sigh-