Class of CLHS 67/69 - 45 years on

Class of CLHS67/69 - 45 years after leaving our beloved high school, we were back to school and having a class photo in front of our school. The single storey building at the front block of the school is now a three-storey high block.

Condolence

I was full of sadness when I receive the news of the passing of our beloved classmate Vincent Yeoh. Vincent was my classmate from Chung Ling High School and a keen contributor to this web site dedicated to the CLHS Alumni of Class 67/69. My deepest condolence to all in his family. Vincent was very active in upholding the principles and teachings of CLHS as can be seen from his many postings.  This blog has just lost its shine with his departure. Vincent, we will miss you. May you be reborn into the Western PureLand. Amitabha Buddha.

61ST BIRTHDAY DAY GATHERING - 10TH NOVEMBER, 2012

TO ALL OLD BOYS of CL67/69

Greetings to you all from Penang......apologise for the silence for all these while, as i am still trying to update all your email address.....

When we are into the year 60s, from our primary school to Chung Ling High School, we make changes, we have to make new friends, adjust ourselves to the new environment, and now we are into the 60s also, but aging to 60s, same thing we have to adjust ourselves, changing our new life style, environment and making new friends also, changing of surroundings etc., etc.,

We all are very lucky bunch of old boys who are reaching this age, we have to congratulate ourselves, don’t forget we have nearly more than 20 old boys, who has left us and migrated to another world, they have no change to reach 60, so be precious and love ourselves, friends, family and loved ones, remember the friendship we have during our school days, whether its in primary or Chung Ling High School, our time is running shorter and shorter, year by year and day by day, so when we have any gathering, it’s advisable to attend, we don’t know when we will migrate to another world, to my record, averagely we missed our friend one every year....

So it will be fun again when we meet again on the following day:-

Saturday: 10^th November, 2012 or 101112

Time: 7.00pm

Venue: Penang Club, (just behind Citibank Penang)

Cost: RM50.00 per person, whether you come alone or with your spouse, it is only RM50

We hope someone like Hoe Eng Hock can take you again for a hike to Penang hill on next day, (11.11.2012) and make sure you are fit for that....

So, please tell your mates, for those who don’t have email contacts, we will try to call one by one, hope more boys will join in this time, our next BIG gathering will be only in year 2014, that will be our 45^th anniversary after our graduation from Chung Ling.

Regards

Goh eng wan A1114

CL67/69 (KL/PJ) Dinner @11 April 2012

Above are some photos taken at a get together dinner at  Golden Dragon City Seafood Restaurant in Paramount Garden. My sincerely thanks to Tat Seong for organising the lovely dinner  and all who attended. Glad to see you all. It was a memorable and jovial night.

Auckland Seafood Feastival 2012

This year's Auckland Seafood Feastival was held at Wynyard Quarter, Auckland, New Zealand on 28th, 29th & 30th January 2012 from 11am till 6pm. It was set to be bigger and better than ever before. Tickets were sold at $20.00 for adult and $!99.50 per person for VIP Experience.

The three-day extravaganza is a great place to enjoy a variety of unique and exciting seafood dishes. There are 120 mouthwatering dishes available, including more than 30 different species being served on the menu, eg crayfish, paua, oysters, scallops, scampi, mussels, crabs and more. For adventurous eaters, octopus, kina shots and sea cucumber were on offer as part of the wild challenge. Other than the sensational seafood, there were live entertainment, street performers, and recreational fishing.

The Electrolux Restaurant Alley where eateries Dine, Sails, Kermadec, Bellota, Marvel Grill and more showcased some of their top dishes and offered a selectionof mouthwatering seafood menu.

I went on the first day of the event with my wife. We were there about fifteen minutes before the gate opened. The queue was reasonably long at that time. However, we were initially directed to an incorrect queue where event goers have prepaid tickets. After ten minuts of waiting and further enquiry, we moved to another queue which led to the ticketing counter. The gate was opened 20 minutes later than the published time of 11am. By then the queue has stretched all the way to the raodside and it's about 300 meres long. The sun was shinning and there were plenty of food to go around and to keep everyone entertained, with competitions, live music from Hello Sailor and Avalanche City, and plenty of local wine and beer. Within the first two hours, it was reported 5,500 peoplr had walked through the doors of the Viaduct Events Centre

The Auckland Seafood Feastival supported charitable causes over the last six years. The principal beneficiaries this year are Kiwi Can, Sustainable Coastlines and Rotary.

The VIP package included entry into the exclusive and premium lounge with gourmet seafood cuisine, fine wines and beers, live band entertainment, and a celebrity guest speaker plus full access to all areas of the Festival.

The Seafood School returned again with cooking classes from top chefs every day, open to all visitors with no additional charge. And for 2012 the organiser introduced a Top Seafood Chef challenge for lucky audience members.

The Auckland Seafood Feastival is part of the Auckland Anniversary Celebration and was successfully held over the three-days period.


More photos can be viewed by going to the following link
.
https://picasaweb.google.com/113489760126918689196/2012AucklandSeafoodFestival?authkey=Gv1sRgCO7hhtGI8o-iag


Published by vincent h t yeoh

2012 Chinese New Year Dinner in Penang

TO ALL OLD BOYS,

please be informed that our Chinese New Year Gathering dinner will be held as below:-

Date/day: 25th January, 2012 Wednesday

Venue: Hotel 1926, Burmah Road, Penang.

Time: 7.30pm

Cost: RM50 per head

Please do not hesitate to let me know whether anyone of you is attending....

best regards

goh eng wan A1114

New Zealand General Election @ 26 November 2011

One more week, yes, the coming Saturday on 26 November 2011, the general election for Parliament and the referendum on the voting system will be held. The Kiwis will go to poll to decide which political party or parties will run New Zealand for the next 3 years and whether to keep the existing Mixed Members Proportional (MMP) voting system or to change to another voting system.

According to Wikipedia, the Parliament of New Zealand ( in Māori : Pāremata Aotearoa ) consists of the Queen of New Zealand and the New Zealand House of Representatives and, until 1951, the New Zealand Legislative Councils. The House of Representatives is often referred to as “Parliament”

The House of Representatives usually consists of 120 Members of Parliament (MPs), sometimes more due to overhanging seats. MPs are directly elected by universal suffrage. The form of New Zealand government essentially follows the Westminster system, and the government is led by the Prime Minister and cabinet who are chosen from amongst the members of the House of Representatives.

Parliament is physically located in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand since 1865 and is currently in its 49^th term. The current Parliament are made up of eight parliament parties, namely ACT New Zealand, Green Party, Labour Party, Maori Party, National Party, progressive and United Future. The present government is National Party in coalition with ACT New Zealand, Green Party, Maori Party and United Future while Labour party is the opposition leader.

An eligible citizen or permanent resident has to enrol or register as a voter by 26 October 2011 in order to receive an EasyVote information pack about one week before election. Most of the registered voters would have received their information pack by now. It consists of a personal EasyVote Card and all the information he needs to know. The EasyVote card shows his name, electorate and where his name is on the electoral roll. One interesting information which is printed in twenty (20) languages namely English, Māori, Cook island Maori, Samoan, Tongan, Korean, Chinese traditional, Chinese simplified, Somali, Farsi, Arabic, Vietnamese, Thai, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer and, Punjabi is “Show your Easyvote card when you vote & Vote at a polling place listed for your electorate”. This shows how multi-cultural New Zealand is and the fairness extended to each race.

Every eligible voter will be given two voting papers in the polling place – one orange and one purple. The orange one is the 2011 general Election voting paper used to elect Members of Parliament. The purple one is the Referendum voting paper.

Under the present Mixed Members Proportional (MMP) system, each voter using the orange voting paper has :

- A party vote where he chooses the political party resulting in the total number of seats each political party gets in Parliament and,

- An electorate vote where he chooses the MP he wants to represent the electorate he lives in.

The purple voting paper gives the voter the chance to have his say on the voting system he likes to use to elect his parliament in the future. The voter will be asked two questions :

- Whether he wants to Keep MMP or whether he wants to change to another voting system and,

- If New Zealand decides to change from MMP, which of four other voting systems he would choose namely First Past the Post (FPP), Preferential Voting (PV), Single Transferable Votes (STV) or Supplementary Member (SM).

If at least half of the voters choose to keep MMP, the electoral commission will review it over the next year to recommend changes that should be made to the way it works. However, if more than half of the voters opt to change the voting system, Parliament may decide to hold another Referendum next election ( in 2004) to decide between MMP and the alternative voting system that gets the most support this year.

Under FFP, each person gets to vote for one candidate in their electorate and Parliament is made up of the persons with the highest number of votes in each area. The most popular political party usually win a share of seats in Parliament that is larger than its share of overall votes. This encourages the formation of strong single-party government. Minor parties are often excluded altogether.

With PV, Parliament would also be formed from one candidate from each electorate. The difference is that voters rank the candidates and if no one gets more than half the votes the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. The second choice of those who voted for the eliminated candidate is then counted and so on.

Under STV, a number of MPs are elected from each electorate and voters rank the candidates in order of preference. A candidate has to receive a fixed proportion of the votes to win. If a candidate reaches the quota during the first count they are elected and the rest of their votes are redistributed according to the second preference. If there are still seats to fill after the first count the lowest polling candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the second choice. This continues until all the seats are filled.

The SM system would see 90 members of Parliament, each representing one electorate, elected on a first past the post basis. Voters get a second vote for the party of their choice and the remaining 30 seats would be allocated proportionally according to that.

Another interesting point to note is on 2 February 2011 Wednesday, the present Prime Minister, Hon. John Key announced the 2011 general election to be held on 26 November 2011 which was ten (10) months away then. He subsequently announced that he has no intention to run the new government in coalition with other parties after the 2011 general election. It appears that he was very confident to win the election with substantial majority. However, if the latest Herald-DigiPoll were translated into votes, National would be able to just govern on its own, with a small cushion of two votes from Act and one from United Future assuming the Maori Party, United Future and Mana keep their seats as reported in the New Zealand Herald dated 18 November 2011.

The teapot tape saga happened Friday last week has turned into a political storm. It arose from a meeting over a cup of tea in a café in Newmarket between the Prime Minister John Key and Act’s Epsom candidate, Mr John Banks. The cameraman claimed that the conversation was accidently taped but the PM thought otherwise and laid a complaint with the police. The cup of tea that was supposed to be a lifeline to Act has now left the party at the mercy of how the Epsom electorate see the tape and the comments. The cameraman has asked the Court for an urgent ruling on whether the conversation was illegally recorded in addition to asking the Prime Minister and National Party for public retraction and an apology for making comments he claims have destroyed his professional reputation.

It was reported that the conversation would cause embarrassment to both Messrs John Key and John Bank according to those who have heard the conversation from the tape.

The latest Herald-DigiPoll survey showed Mr Winston Peters' party (New Zealand First) on 4.9 per cent and with the potential, along with the Greens and the Maori Party, to hold the balance of power; this may have caused some concern for the National.

Well, let’s hope that the teapot tape saga will be resolved amicably or legally or….. before the polling day on Saturday 26 November 2011, meaning one more week to go.

Published by Vincent h t Yeoh on Saturday 19 November 2011.

Click on the photo to enlarge

Pasar Malam ( Night Market ) in Auckland

Last night, my wife and i went to to the first permanent and genuine night market in Auckland. It is held on every Saturday night at the carpark underneath The Warehouse, Westfield Shopping Centre in Pakurang . Pakuranga is about 30 km from where i stay and will take about 20 minutes by car on a Saturday evening when there is no traffic jam using North- west Motorway and Southern Motorway.

Saturday Night Market, starts from 6pm to mid night rain or shine as it is held in a covered carpark and has been running for one year and is hugely popular with anything from 8,000to 12,000 visitors each Saturday night.

It is similar to the pasar malam in Malaysia. It offers around 200 stalls with about 80 amazing food stalls cooking up tasty street snacks and delicacies eg satay, dumpling, Dutch pancake, roast pork bun, "yow-char-keu", noodle, spainish donut, seafood platter etc from many countries eg Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, Holland, China etc.... There are also crafts and arts, costume jewellery, hand bags, clothing, fashion accessories, cosmetic, mobile phones and accessories, fresh produce and vegetables,sound activated flashing t-shirt, body massages, spine and health check, live entertainment, cultural performers, clowns and kids rides, fortune tellers, foot massage and airbrush tattoos and more. A candyfloss man was making floss on a stick bigger than a kids’ head as shown in the photo.

A new Sunday Night Market, opened on 30 October 2011 with a bang, hiss and a roar with over 10,000 visitors. The Sunday Night Market promises to be just as popular as the Saturday Night Market. It starts from 5.30 to 11 pm at Westfield shopping Centre in Glenfield North Shore,

Please go to the below link to see a video of the night market posted on youtube by Asia Downunder which is a program shown on NZ TV1 every Sunday morning :

Tradition of the Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JDCWBj9vfiI&noredirect=1

Click on the photo to enlarge

For your info, there is also a Thursday Night Fish Market in Auckland CBD from 5.00 pm to 9.00 pm.