My Family Showcase 2008 - Whiz Kidz

The upcoming My Family Showcase expo in now on its 3rd year and will be held in Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) on 4-7 July 2008. Admission is free.

This family event is divided into 3 zones:

1. Kidz zone

Education related exhibition, including kindergarten, education tools, e-learning, sports academy, swimming school, ballet academy and also music academy.

This zone is subdived into the following:

• Learning Section
• Creative Section
• Fun Section
• Intelligence Section
• Knowledge Section

2. Parents zone

This zone will showcase the FMCG products (eg. milk powder, napkins, confinement, etc), health products, nutrition, food supplement, slimming center, massage chairs, etc.

This zone is subdived into the following:

• Mommy & Baby Zone
• Food & Nutrition Zone

3. Family leisure zone

This zone will showcase the promotion of family leisure and holidays by Tourism Malaysia, as well as hobby and leisure products.

There will also be an Organic Garden activity area to educate the children on the growth of each stages of the vegetables.

Some of the highlights of this 4-days family event are:

• Free dental checkup for kids
• Free breast cancer checkup by National Cancer Society
• Sharing Session of World Vision Spokesperson, Phoebe Yap (菲比, MyFM DJ)
• Children fire escape workshop
• Children financial workshop
• Talks and seminars
• Interactive games and contests
• ... and many more

Click here for more information about this event.

Auspicious dates for wedding, marriage, moving home, etc.

Many people will look for auspicious dates for the important days in their lifetime, such as the wedding day, moving to new house, commencing new business, joining new company, etc. I have even heard that some will choose to register their new car on the auspicious date too.

I chose the auspicious date for my wedding, and also for moving to my current house with the Tong Shu (通书、通胜), which is originated from the Yellow Calendar (黄历) founded by Huang Di (黄帝) of ancient China around 2697-2598 BC.

The Tong Shu is a thick Chinese almanac book, which is very popular among the Chinese families since the Qing dynasty, but not so well known to younger generations nowadays. Some of its content also appear in those "traditional" Chinese calendar, which you have to tear one piece per day to show the current date information.

Luckily, in today's information age, there are online facilities available for us to search in the Tong Shu just with a mouse click. I used the facility in the Y28 Predictions website (http://www.y28predictions.com/program/template/year/tonesing.php) for my searching. This is a Chinese website. To help those not well verse with Chinese, below are the auspicious dates for wedding and marriage which fall on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, for the next 6 months. Those dates are generally auspicious for everyone, except for people and any parents born in the year represented in the Exception column.



The 14 September is considered the most auspicious day (mid-autumn festival) among them. The moon is the biggest and brightest seen from earth by that day. To date, I have already received 5 wedding invitations fall on that day. In fact, my own wedding was also held during the mid-autumn festival several years ago. (However, this does not imply that the mid-autumn festival for every year will be an auspicious date for wedding. It need to be determined on a year-by-year basis.)

If you want me to help checking for any particular date, you can leave a comment and I'll try to search and translate for you in English.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

For the list of auspicious dates for moving to new house in 2nd half of year 2008, read my other post here.

If you are looking for the auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in 2009, click here.

Are your wedding photos worth the spending?

Most of us paid at least a few thousands ringgit to the bridal shop for the photo album and a few framed enlarged photos to be put in our bedroom. Usually this is also the key area whereby the pre-negotiated price of the bridal service package gone up in the later stage. Some of my friends even have the price double up due to additional photos to include in the album after the commonly used "once in a lifetime" pursuasion dose was induced during the photo selection session.

I find that for most people (including me), those photos taken indoor at the bridal shop's studio as well as outdoor at some common wedding scenic places and compiled into a big nice album, will eventually be sitting quietly in the cupboard or store room since a few months after the wedding event. Now the question: is the few thousands spending on those photos really worthwhile?

In my humble opinion, real life photos of the actual event days (which are also "once in a lifetime") are always more valuable and memorable than the acting photos taken to produce the wedding album. It is wise to use the same budget or allocate more budget to emphasize more on the photo shoting during the actual event days, such as the engagement day, signing ceremony of marriage certificates (yes it is plural, because you need to sign at least 2 copies. I signed 4 copies - 2 original certs and 2 international transcripts), and the actual wedding day.

It is always a good idea to hire an experienced professional wedding photographer and/or videographer to take photo/video during those important days. The photographer should know well the procedures, always standby in good position to take the most natural shots of memorable moments. Those moments are really "once in a lifetime", and if you missed to capture it into picture or video at the moment, any retake won't be meaningful to you. The photographer should produce albums similar to the one done by the bridal shop as well, and give you all the films or JPEG images (for digital photos) together with the albums as the deliverables.

In fact, I find that studio bridal photography is not really "once in a lifetime". Some people who doesn't satisfy with the work at one bridal shop will just go and retake the photography at another shop. Even after the wedding, you can also always go to the bridal shop with your spouse and take the bridal photography if you want.

Therefore, you should put more emphasis, and budget more, for the photo shooting during the actual event days which are "once in a lifetime" and really happening (not acting), rather than the studio bridal photography. Then you'll feel the spending is worthwhile.