Aussies and Taiwanese turn on the fireworks

By Kimberly Johans
Published in The Macau Daily Times
September 23, 2007, page 3-4 (1,104 words)

This time around, the crowd at Macau Tower’s BBQ area was packed to the hilt, with every table booked and an expectant feel in the air, as the last few minutes counted down.
The one thing that let down the Australian team has nothing to do with them. Or some reason, the music that played to accompany their display was at such a low sound level that the beginning of it, the didgeridoo of the Aborigines, could barely be heard, despite the fact that nobody was speaking.
The colour to begin the show was red, in keeping with the image of days gone by, sitting around the fire.
This start was actually the slowest (in terms of display) and quietest of the teams so far. With the lack of volume from the music, it may well have been missed had spectators not been looking at the display.
But the tempo soon sped up, with fireworks that rose seemingly out of the water in an arc, exploding in colourful light.
Suddenly a stream of exploding silver light rose straight up, into wide-ranging red sparks that missed up gold, silver and purple. These fireworks were the biggest seen so far and seemed to explode across the entire expanse of sky.

Spicing up Macau’s culture

By Kimberly Johans
Published in The Macau Daily Times
September 23, 2007, page 2 (1,111 words)

Macau is widely known as being somewhat of a melting pot; a mixture of Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and African, among others. And for the past 26 years, the Indian aspect has come predominantly from Aruna Jha, whose restaurant is now the only Indian free-standing one in Macau.
It and she, have become as much an institution in Macau as the ruins of St Paul’s, whose cuisine can take you back to that former British colony and whose hospitality reminds you of sit-down family meals.
Aruna arrived in Macau in 1983 at the behest of the government’s cultural institute who requested she set up a program to teach students the Indian way of dance.
“I was told Macau was a place where no one knew about the Indian culture and that I needed to come here,” she says.
“My expectations [of Macau] was that I was here for three months, to teach my culture and go back,” she adds.
Her father was “a great dancer” so since the age of four, Aruna had been studying the art.
In fact all six sisters are dancers, with Aruna the fifth of nine siblings.