Today is Dongzhi, the winter solstice festival.

This is a very significant business -- more so than Chinese New Year to some people -- but to be honest it passed us by when we lived in Kuala Lumpur. This is one of the nice things about living here. One, we're out and about a lot more, so we spot what's going on at the temples. And two, as a friend told us today, Kuching is just that bit more traditional...

Anyway, Dongzhi represents "balance and harmony in life: the yin qualities of darkness and cold reach their height of influence on the shortest day of the year, but also mark a turning point for the coming of the light and warmth of yang".

Given that we're so close to the equator, there's only a matter of 10 minutes and 36 seconds between our longest and shortest days. Nevertheless, we certainly had an appropriate amount of cool, damp, and dark yin today...

During the week, it was as though the rainy season had temporarily retreated. Today, it was back.

In a "HA! I'm so BACK!" kind of way.

We woke to early morning thunder, and a downpour that made us call a Grab car to get ourselves to church for the last Sunday of Advent. As the choir's lovely harmonies drifted up to the red roof and white rafters of St Thomas's Cathedral ("the angel Gabriel from heaven came, his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame..."), the thunder continued to boom, and the sky wept torrents.


One of the traditional foods for the Dongzhi celebration is tang yuan, or sticky rice balls. The round shape symbolizes wholeness and unity, and the stickiness represents the family sticking together. People were handing them out in the supermarket yesterday. Soft, sweet, and peanut-filled, they cannot help but make life seem a little brighter.

We might not be fully into the yang yet, but we've been on fire this week...

Apart from our pink day and our temple day, we have:

-- Investigated The Gourmand at Gala City. This is a little supermarket out beyond City One Megamall. It's a little far away for normal use, but if you happen to be out in that part of town to watch a movie (we'd just taken in The Good Liar, which, by the way, despite its stellar cast, was a little disappointing), then it is definitely worth popping in, because they have a good selection of cold meats, including nice BACON!

-- Paced out a new variation on our old favourite Bukit Hantu circuit. This takes you down Jalan Rodway, and as you look around, and listen to the wall-to-wall zinging of the cicadas, you'd hardly know you were in a city at all...





-- Tried out two local coffee places that were new to us. One is the Car Bath (so called because it is next to a car wash...) The other is the Green Cottage, which has a pleasant garden setting, and offers Vietnamese drip coffee:





-- Found some cool rock formations in the Botanic Garden. Actually, they're the results of the weather shaping a pile of sand. But impressive, huh?




-- Finally visited Ah Ma Hu temple, which is close to us on Jalan Central Timur. I never tire of temples...









-- Returned to The Dyak, a Kenyah restaurant that we visited last year, and is actually now not that far from us. We had another great array of dishes, accompanied by a glass each of their fine tuak. Titum is a traditional way of cooking, in which (in our case) fish is wrapped in banana leaves along with chili, black pepper, and tepus (a kind of ginger). To go with this we ordered cucumber leaves (I never knew cucumbers had leaves) and tapioca leaves (we've eaten this before, and if -- as Nigel says -- you can get past the silage-like appearance, you'll find it's really delicious). A very nice experience again, and it will be worth returning regularly, as the produce changes with the seasons.