Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email After missing the launch of Malaysian International Fireworks Competition (MIFC) at putrajaya, where Team Malaysia put on a show (i thought it was at 10.30pm when it was at 10pm) and also missing Team Australia’s show due to UMIC’s treasure hunt, I was determined not to miss the performance by Team Japan right at the stroke of midnight 31st August 2007.
We arrived early (about 9pm) due to news that traffic was bad whenever the fireworks where held. Managed to park the car next to PICC’s entrance.
It was raining in the morning and evening so the place was quite wet and the earth soggy. We walked around the fun fair area to see what the hype was all about. Nothing much actually.
We finally lodged ourselves along the road in front of PICC, near the fun fair area, which provided a good view of the Gemilang Bridge (where the fireworks were shot from). It was about 300 metres from the launch site. Then was quite tired, but since i’ve been bugging her to come, she obliged.
The crowd grew steadily to about 1000 people just around our area. According to organisers and the papers, there were easily 100,000 over people on each of the nights. This being the eve of Merdeka, I suspected the crowd would be worse.
At 12am midnight, after Negaraku was played, Team Japan started their show. It was good. Among the highlights were heart-shaped fireworks and the final display which showed a bright yellow mass that grew and grew till it filled up the whole sky. However the show was marred by the amount of smoke that was generated. Some of the fireworks could not be seen properly.
The show lasted about 20 minutes and I’m sure the crowd enjoyed the show. However, the nighmare had begun. It took us 10 minutes to remove our car since everyone triple-parked. Then, another 1.5 hours from PICC to LDP, and I was damn tired of hitting on the pedals. The jam was bad as it was all the way from PICC to the Puchong LDP toll and beyond. The same occured on the LDP – Dengkil route. I managed to enter the road to Cyberjaya and from there made a U-turn and entered the winding road passing by Kg Meranti and the kampung areas. Still, reached home at 2.15am…and the next day is the parade! Don’t know can wake up or not!!!
On the way back, we were listening to PM’s speech at the Dataran Merdeka, which made me more sleepy. Probably he was tired of giving too many speech and moving around too much. Heard the the celebrations was quite grand at the dataran.
The photos were shot on lower aperture (3.8 – 4.2) and slower shutter (generally 1 – 2 sec). Sometimes i used timer to trigger the shot in order to avoid shaky images. Definitely need to get remote trigger, wireless hopefully! As i mentioned, the smoke made it difficult to get clear images and sometimes the view was blocked by the people standing around us. Enjoy the slides below and view the images at Picasa as well. Focus on the last 10 images which show the growing yellow fireworks.
