Penang State's 55th Merdeka Parade and Celebration (2012)

All for the sake of an assignment from Mandarin teacher to write a piece of short essay (写话) on Merdeka parade and celebration in Penang :) We thought it'll be super crowded but it's a reasonable-sized crowd. We parked at a food court's carpark and they charge us RM3. Not too bad, it's just a short walk to Esplanade where the Merdeka celebration is to be held. Even though it's stated to start at 8:30am and we're a little late, we still had to wait for the parade to start.

While walking to the main stage where the activity is, we saw that all the marching teams were ready, I think they were there since early morning. The final ones queued from the MPPP building until the first teams around the roundabout. Wow, in the hot sun too. If our children join school band or school uniformed units later in secondary school, maybe they'd be part of the parade :P Long time away but who knows. We didn't see the VIPs like TYT or our CM, but it's ok, we're here for the parade :)

Goofing away while waiting

弟弟 keep asking to take photos with policemen :P

The school bands were good, can see their discipline, consistency and sincerity. They were much better than some of the agencies :P Of course the uniform units were good too, just no music :)

Army teams and army fan

Some of the bands

Teams with mascots

The motorcyles

 See the guy behind 弟弟? He was lying on the road to take photos :)

The Proton cars (haha!) and emergency vehicles

While 爸爸 take good shots of the children, I was standing on a plastic chair at one of the tents for guests snapping away. Unfortunately none of them turned out any good. Wasted my 1 hour plus of standing :(

Since it's almost 11am, we went for brunch, again at China House. This time we tried the breakfast menu. We had their big breakfast and omelette. Both were very good! The cheese bread that is served with big breakfast is really good, yum! The rest of the big breakfast is good too. The children had roast plum & blackberry cake, and blueberry tart. But the cafe latte I ordered seemed stronger than what I'm used to, and I didn't feel well after having brunch :(

弟弟 was pouting as he felt his drawing is not nice :P

姐姐's finished plants drawing. The omelette is delicious!

The next day, we visited Book Xcess bookfair. The children attend the colouring contest there. The organizer provided 8-colour crayon and didn't allow the children to use their own. They were not used to the crayon given as its colour doesn't transfer well to paper, oops. But some other kids still manage to produce quite good results. Too bad 姐姐 and 弟弟 were not creative enough :P

弟弟 working on his colouring

Oops too dull :P

On Sunday, there wasn't much activity planned. We had one surprise during dinner. Unexpectedly we got 2 free kids meal with our pizza meal at Pizza Hut. 姐姐 requested for the spaghetti carbonara and 弟弟 got the kid's pizza. Well, he ate 2 pcs of it and hopped over to the new Super Pan Pizza with Cheese and Garlic Napoli Sauce.

Eat, eat, eat... so full!

They are just posing :)