Selamat Hari Raya

Hello everyone! I just want to wish you selamat hari raya and happy holidays to all of you. May you guys have safe journey back to your kampung and safe journey back to UPMKB. Enjoy your holiday! :)


p/s: for those who going to kuching don't forget to go to Mr. Fakhzan house on 2nd day of raya ok?! He already promise us that he will feed us until our stomach going to burst! :)

Australian Indigenous People

Have you watched the movie "Australia" starred by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman? If you did, surely you would remember the adorable half-Aboriginal half-European child Nullah. Who is Aborigines? Aborigines is defined as the first or earliest known people in a particular land. At present, Australian Aborigines refer to to those indigenous people who were traditionally head hunters in Australia. Another group of indigenous people from Torres Strait Island who traditionally practiced agriculture are known as Torres Strait Islanders. Australia current main population consists of the descendants from colonial-era settlers and post-Federation from Europe, but Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders are only 2.4% of the total population in 2001.

Australian Aborigines

Torres Strait Islanders

Most scholars agree that humans had arrived in north-west Australia about 40000 to 50000 years ago before the European settlement due to the discovery of Mungo Man near Lake Mungo, New South Wales which is at least 40000 years old. Stone tools which were found near Lake Mungo are also estimated to have reached 50000 years old. They reached Tasmania, an Australian island, by migrating across a land bridge formed between Asia mainland and the continent during Ice Age. The inhabitants were then isolated from the mainland until the settlement of European when the seas rose about 12000 years ago, covering the land bridge.

Australian aborigines comprise of 500-600 distinct tribal divisions, thus they practise wide variety of cultures and customs. However, their cultures still share some similarities. One of them is their beliefs in the Dreamtime, the beginning of the world. They believe that the world was nothing at the beginning. Their ancestors then arrived mostly in the shape of serpent and formed the landscape and new lives in the world like animal species, water, sky and other things we see in the world today. They always sing the Songlines that illustrate the Dreamtime to inform them about about the creation and to preserve and conserve the land and everything it contains. The relationship between human and mother nature is the source of their tribal law. Their beliefs can also be observed through their art of storytelling, dances and diagrams drawn in the sand or the walls of the caves.

Human figure said to be painted by a Mimi spirit - from Kakadu National Park

Paintings are of food animals such as turtles, kangaroos and fish, and are thought to be a form of hunting
and fishing magic

Aboriginal Australian's storytelling

Aboriginal body's painting

If you have the opportunity to visit Australia, don't forget to check out on this unique tribe of Aboriginal Australians! : )

Body Art

Most people love art and have different way to express their creativity whether by portrait painting, dancing, or even by singging. Now, most people love to express their feeling, thought, moment of their life, and even portrait of someone that they love through doing body art such as tattoo and scarification.

Tattoo

Meaning
Tattooing has been practiced worldwide.Tattoo is a marking made by inserting ink into the layers of skin to change the pigment for decorative or other reasons. Tattoos on humans are a type of decorative body modification while tattoos on animals are most commonly used for identification or branding.

History
Tattooing has been a Eurasian practice at least since around neolithic times. Otzi the iceman, dating from the fourth to fifth millennium BC, was found in the Otz valley in Alps and had approximately 57 carbon tattoos consisting of simple dots and lines on his lower spine, behind his left knee, and on his right ankle.

Pre-christian Germanic, celtic and other central and nothern European tribes were often heavily tattoed, acording to surviving acounts. Various other cultures have had their own tatto traditions, ranging from rubing cuts and other wound with ashes, to hand-pricking the skin to insert dyes.

Purposes

• Decorative and spiritual uses
• Identification
• Cosmetic
• Medical

ear tattoo

Negative Association

In Japan, tattoos are strongly associated with yakuza, particulary full body tattoos done the traditional Japanese way (tebori). Some of the place in Japan often openly ban those who has bearing tattoes in attempt to prevent yakuza from entering the place.

While in United States, many prisoners use distintictive tatoos to indicates facts about their criminal records. A tear tattoo can symbolize murder, with each tear symbolize the death of a friend.

that's must be really hurt!

Procedure

Tattooing involves the placement of pigment into the skin's dermis, the layer of dermal tissue underlying the epidermis. After initial injection, pigment is dispersed throughout homogenized damaged layer down through the epidermis and upper dermis, in both which the presence of foreign material activates the immune system's phagocytes to engulf the pigment particles. As healing proceeds, the damages epidermis flakes away(eliminating surface pigment) while deeper in the skin granulation tissues forms, which is later converted to connective tissue by collagen growth.

This mends the upper dermis, where pigment remains trapped within fibroblasts, ultimately concentrating in a layer just below the dermis/epidermis boundary. Its presence there is stable,
but in the long term(decades) the pigment tends to migrate deeper into the dermis, accounting for the degraded detail of old tattoos. (Ouch! why do people willing to have tattoo?*sigh)

injection procedure

Scarification

Cutting in single line produces relatively thin scars, and skin removal is a way to get a larger area of scar tissue. The outlines of the area of skin to be removed will be cut, and then the skin to be removed will be peeled away. Scars from this method often have an inconsistent texture.But, when the skin is healed from the cutting the result will become more beautiful.

koi scarification

fern scarification (after the healing)

bamboo scarification

Having tattoo and scarification is very big responsible because you have to take care of it until your skin is fully recover from the injection and scarification (skin peeling). Tattoo studio also must be very hygienic with the surrounding environment to prevent infection after tattooing and scarification(skin peeling). Tattoo maker should sterilized their equipment before tattooing other people. Tattooing and scarification maybe very painful form of an art but most people said that "Beauty is pain"!