Penang Cultural and Heritage One Day Tour for the Visually Impaired (Part 3)

After the mosque, we continue our tedious but interesting journey to another old but famous place, the Chiew Jetty. There was nothing much for a local like myself to see but for those participants that comes from places like Mongolia and Bhutan, this was definitely an unforgettable experience as there are no sea or beaches in their country.

What happened was, they gain an experience to walk on the wooden planks of the old jetty, to smell the sea in the air (smelly mud actually) and to feel the sea breeze blowing into their face.

As you can see here the gang are enjoying themselves sitting on the jetty and Tsengel was trying to feel how deep is the sea with his cane... Luckily no one fell or lost their canes in the sea hehehehe!

After that, we proceed to our last destination, the Fort Convallis.

Here you can see Mr Wong is measuring the height of the fort wall and some of the participants were feeling surface of the wall.

A group photo in front of the fort.

Some of the participants were quite interested in the bronze statue of Sir Francis Light so they are having a good time molesting him err..... I mean feeling the statue.

The weapon or canon balls storeroom

Some of the participants are figuring out what does a canon really looks like.

At the end of the tour, everyone was very tired but happy and satisfied with the tour. Many of the participants that I talked to express their intention of visiting Penang in the future and most of them were very amazed with the variety of food, races culture and religious practices that we had in Penang.

Penang Cultural and Heritage One Day Tour for the Visually Impaired (Part 2)

After the Hainanese Temple tour, we walked down the lane to two rows of pre-war shop houses near the temple. You might wonder, what on earth were we doing at the shop houses, going to any fancy cafe perhaps?


Answer is of cause not. There are not even one cafe around that area only an old Chinese style coffee shop far down the other side of the shop houses. Actually Mr Paul bought us there to show us the uniqueness of the architecture of old Chinese shop houses.



How is he going to explain or describe the uniqueness of old Chinese architecture to a bunch of visually impaired that comes from different parts of the world? Just imagine, how do you explain this...




to a visually impaired person plus not to bore them or make them feel out of place? Well Mr. Paul sure got his own creative idea and I really appreciate his effort in doing that.




Well he actually cut out the shape of the shop houses (2 dimension) from a cardboard and let each of the 'tourists' feel the replica while he explains it to them. I can tell you he is really knowledgeable like he has been living here in Penang for all his life and I was again feel like disappearing under the floor of the shop houses while listening to his brief but very informative explanations. He is sure a very knowledgeable person. ( That shows that westerners do lots of reading compare to us the Asians)

Mr Paul was showing and explaining to the participants how the houses look like. He explains to them about the windows, the doors, to the roof and so on.

Mr. Paul is explaining to Sisi about the house.

Delgerbayar is feeling the tiles of one of the old shop houses. Beside him Mr. Wong is feeling the carvings of the wooden door.

After making their hands dirty by touching the dust from the windows grill, wooden door and tiles of old pre war shop houses, we proceeded to our next destination, Little India.

Well, what is so interesting about Little India? For the sighted, Little India is a place which is full of many interesting fancy and colourful shops selling many things, from beautiful sarees and Punjabi suits, cosmetics, jeweleries, mystifying drawings and carvings to irresistible Indian delicacies. So what can a visually impaired possibly enjoy there since they cannot see the things around them?

Well, to a visually impaired person, Little India is a place full of wonderful sounds of traditional drums and musical instruments, the harmony sounds of Hindu chanting followed by the ringing of bells, the loud but energetic Tamil and Hindi songs, fragrance of fresh flowers and incense and the mouth watering aroma of various types Indian curries and briyani rice.

We marched down the Little India arm in arm with many curious eyes observing us and wondering what planet did we come from.

Stalls selling many types of Indian food along the street.

A stall selling lots of Indian sweets, candies and cakes.

The famous Hindu Temple

After the tiring marching under the hot sun around Little India, we proceed to another Heritage site, The Kapitan Kling Mosque. The oldest Indian Mosque in Penang.

The side part of the majestic mosque

Listening to the flowing water in the well where the Muslims wash their hands and feet before going into the mosque for prayers.

beautiful and clean compound of the mosque

Mr. Amir is explaining to the participants about how the Muslims pray in the mosque

To be continue in part 3....

Penang Cultural and Heritage One Day Tour for the Visually Impaired (Part 1)

Although the main focus of the Teruko Ikeda ICT Training is on Microsoft Office, Jaws, programming, scripting, XHTML, JAVA and others. It will be kind of boring and tiresome for the participants just to sit in front of their laptops for the whole 1 month. Especially for those in the Advance course who had to struggle with programming and Java language. If you put me in front of my laptop to do programming for the whole day, you will find me wandering in Facebook for half of the day!

In order to make life more enjoyable and the trip to Penang more memorable for the participants, (For most of the participants in the intermediate course, this is their first trip to Malaysia ) the coordinators Mr. Wong Yoon Loong and Mdm Christina Anne Lau, had creatively come out with an idea of 'One Day Penang Haritage Tour for the Visually Impaired' to promote the rich culture, religious beliefs and heritage of Penang to the participants.

Since most of the participants are totally blind, the tour must be of something that they can touch, hear, smell and feel so that they can have some picture or an idea of the culture, the people and heritage of Penang.

It was not easy to conduct such a tour but thanks to our volunteer tour guide Mr. Paul, from Belgium, (Ok, our tour guide is a "Mat Salleh" from Belgium but not me a local.... malunya... phai seh nia!) everything went well and it was really an eye opening experience for most of the participants... and even for me as a local.. ahem!

By the way, Ms. Jayanthi and I was invited by the coordinators to be volunteer guides to the participants on that tour, (That's why I say I am just a Kay po chee tagging along Hehehehe!)

Our first destination, starts with the Pulau Tikus Catholic Church.

The Advanced group with the coordinator and volunteers photo in front of the Church.

(The Intermediate group) Everyone is listening attentively to Mr Paul introduction of the Church (Except me, cause I am holding the camera).

The participants from the Intermediate group is touching and feeling the pew that they are sitting on.

Such a serene and sober atmosphere..... it feels so peaceful. Just close your eyes, empty your mind and slowly walk down the aisle and you will know what I mean.

The participants were guided along the aisle to the front part of the church.(Shown here were the participants of the advanced group) Like going for holy communion only hehehehe!

In front of the podium at the left side of the stage, there are some beautifully arranged pot of flowers. Some of the participants especially the ladies were quiet captivated by touching and smelling the fresh flowers. Therefore they asked me to take this photo (On the left, Delgerbayar, and Ariffin. On the right Minnie and Lanieta)

Next, we proceed to a Hainanese Chinese Temple somewhere along Muntri Street. One of the unique and interesting features about this temple is, the outer walls and front poles are covered not by paintings but carvings of animals and mystical beings from ancient Chinese folklore. Therefore it was really a great experience for the participants as they can touch and feel the rich architecture of the building rather than just listen to our descriptions.

Group photo in front of the temple.

Amrith from Bhutan was having a feel of a dragon that was carved on one of the front poles of the temple.

Mr. Paul was explaining and them about the joss stick urn. For some of them, this is their first time experiencing the smell of burning joss sticks.

Miss Evelyn ( one of the previous Teruko Ikeda instructors) Sisi and Ashoka were quite interested in touching this mystical lion. Paul was showing and telling us that in order to know whether the lion is male or female, we should look at the... (Having dirty silly thoughts is it? Hahaha!) front of the lion, A male lion will step on a ancient Chinese coin and a female lion will have a cub on its back. (Yeah! Shame on me.... it takes a Belgian Uncle to tell a Chinese like me about this!!!!)

Delgerbayar and some of the participants were quite fascinated with the carvings on the wall.

Sisi and Ashoka was again fascinated with the unique shape of a mystical beast's head door knob.

Mr Paul showing them the 'puak puay' two wooden crescent shape thing used by Taoist people during prayers.

Next Mr Paul bring them near the main altar and showed them the 'Chim See' or the oracle sticks used by the Taoist people when praying and asking for some guidance from the Heavenly Mother Goddess (Thian Hou Kong)

"Okay, everyone come and see what the Heavenly Mother Goddess had to say about all of you"

To be continue in part 2

A Volunteer for the Teruko Ikeda ICT Training

Somewhere around August, I was invited by Mr and Mrs Wong to be a volunteer (For me is more than a 'Kaypo chee') for the Teruko Ikeda ICT Training that was held in St. Nicholas Home for the Blind.

From my own understanding, Teruko Ikeda ICT Training is a 1 month ICT workshop for the visually impaired held by the Japan Braille Library. This programme is fully sponsored by the Teruko Ikeda Foundation (I got this info from NCBM Outreach dunno what issue) Another reliable source told me that this programme is sponsored by a rich and kind Japanese lady, so I assume that this kind lady must be the one who setup the Teroku Ikeda Foundation.

Currently the ICT training are divided in to 2 courses, the intermediate course and the advanced course (the advanced course is more on programming, JAWS scripting and XHTML language kind of things). The trainees for this workshop are usually selected from the third world nations like Malaysia, Myanmar, Mongolia, Fiji, Tibet, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and so on.

Here are glimpse of how the visually impaired use and work with computers.

(All these photos are taken by Ms. Christina Anne Lau)

The first batch (Intermediate Course) of Teruko Ikeda ICT training 2010 staff and participants

The second batch (Advanced Course) of Teruka Ikeda ICT Training 2010 staff and participants.

For a start, all trainees for this course will receive a laptop with window 7 Home premium 64-bit, a JAWS screen reader software and a set of headphones. (The visually impaired rely very much on the voice of the screen reader to read out what is on the screen to them when using the computer, so it is very important for them to use a good headphone or laptops with good quality speakers.)

The first batch. Some of the Intermediate Course participants with their instructor, Mr. David Hathaway from Japan Braille Library.

The second batch. Some of the participants from the Advanced Course with another instructor from Malaysia Mr. Amir Teh.

Some of the participants from the Advanced Course are busy working on their programming assignments. Seen here are Sisi, Fandy, Ashoka and Nara

Two heads and better than one. Aries is helping Tsengel with some programming task.

Besides learning to use Microsoft Window 7, the participants are also shown other OS and machines, such as I-phone, I pad and so on.

David is showing Yew Yi and Gayan the layout of Macintosh OS.

Ariffin and Yew Yi is having a first experience with I-pad

From my own point of view, this ICT training is very good effort in equipping the visually impaired from the under develop and developing countries with ICT knowledge and skills to enable them to gain a better opportunities in career or further their studies.

A Big Thanks and congratulations to the Founder of Teruko Ikeda Foundation and the staff from the Japan Braille Libraary that are involved in this project.

The 'Seen' In My Home

Last Chinese New Year, (ok this post is ancient but I am gonna to post it up anyway) something unbelievable and unpredictable happened in my house. And the wonderful thing was that I managed to capture it with my digital camera. Believe it or not, I managed to capture a 'Seen' (a kind of supernatural being in hokkian) on my digital camera!

As you can see, this is the one and only altar in my house. This altar is specially fixed for the Jade Emperor. During every first day of CNY, my mom will religiously put up some oranges, some tiny cups of chinese tea and a piece of sticky 'lucky' cake or 'Huat Kuey" as an offering to the Jade Emperor or (Ti Kong) in exchange for good luck and a prosperous year.

We usually put the offering until the third day of CNY. On the third day of CNY, we went out to visit some relatives and have dinner with my uncle and aunt, so by the time we came home, it was around 7 p.m. in the evening. My mom was the first one to enter the house and she straight away went to open the balcony sliding door. She looked at the altar and.....

Mom: Wah!!! Come and have a look!

Me: What? (went to the balcony to have a look)

Mom: Do you see what I see?

Me: Wow!!!!! Amazing!!!! A 'Seen'..... (Went to take my camera and take this pictures)

Do you see it? The "Seen Thang" (Lizard in hokkian) is clinging tightly on the 'Huat Kuey' and enjoying it.

Here is a closer look..... The "Seen Thang" still didn't want to let go of the cake even though I use my flash to capture its photo. Wah!!!! "Banyak cantik muka" can pose some more..... really celaka. Hahaha! (Wah! The "Seen Thang chincia pui") The lizard was very fat!

What? Did I say that I captured a "Seen" (supernatural being) on my camera? Oh! Thousand apologies I forgot to type the "thang' at the back...........