It’s funny how some bananas on this bunch are ripe and some aren’t.
Friday 17 September 2010
Sunday 16 May 2010
Monday 10 May 2010
Wednesday 15 July 2009
time to bitch
In today’s Star Metro Central on page M8 in the Sights & Sounds column (also found online), Xandria Ooi’s first sentence in her article entitled “Looking back to the past: It’s the imperfections that make things appealing” was: “Almost every one [sic] I know, has a Blackberry, an iPod or a flat-screen TV set.”
I know lots of people who don’t have either of those things. Some people are just overpriviledged and don’t mix around with lesser mortals like us. Tak malu ke?
Monday 9 March 2009
dibawah pokok demokrasi
Saya bukannya pakar Bahasa Melayu, bahkan saya mengaku bahawa saya tidak begitu fasih dengan bahasa kebangsaan kita. So I guess I’m no better, so aptly reflected in this sentence where I have to switch back to English once the discussion starts getting complicated. Perhaps it’s a symptom of how the national education system has failed me. All my years in school when I was using Malay on a daily basis, I never really needed to think or reason. I’m guessing most of my analytical skills were honed outside of school where the operating language was English in my case; which brings to mind, other than Bahasa Inggeris, all subjects in school were taught in Malay and yet my command of the language is still pretty pathetic, so I’m guessing that any improvement in English proficiency by teaching kids Science and Mathematics in English would be minimal at the cost of losing terms like janjang, pengamiran and persenyawaan ganda dua.
Getting back to Pokok Demokrasi, I guess it’s just a publicity stunt and I can’t expect too much from it.
Tuesday 24 February 2009
slumdog miracle
I like how Mukul Kesavan put it in his article “Lost in Translation: Slumdog Millionaire uses Hindi as authenticating décor” for The Telegraph, Calcutta:
“The transition from child actors who in real life are slum children to young actors who are, just as clearly, middle-class anglophones is so abrupt and inexplicable that it subverts the ‘realism’ of the brilliantly shot squalor in which their lives play out.”
Read the entire article here.
Thursday 25 September 2008
state of flux
Thursday 17 July 2008
another new toy
It’s waterproof, freezeproof, dustproof, shockproof, has a wide-angle lens, and it fits in my pocket!
Thursday 29 May 2008
my first online photo contest
I’ve entered this self-portrait for a Lonely Planet photo contest on Flickr. This is the fist time I’ve entered a photo contest online. I’ve entered a photo contest once before this; it was an internal competition for staff. This was the photo I submitted which didn’t win:
Wednesday 28 May 2008
Tuesday 20 May 2008
Saturday 10 May 2008
me and golden weeks
Finally, on my sixth trip to Beijing, I went sightseeing. The first time I was there, I didn’t have enough time to do any sightseeing. The subsequent trips before this were during winter and I didn’t feel like walking around in the bitter cold. This time around, the weather was quite comfortable. Unfortunately it was Labour Day Golden Week (a week-long public holiday), so I had to fight for space with billions of Chinese residents! The last time I went sightseeing in Mainland China was in Shanghai, it was the National Day Golden Week. So both my sightseeing experiences in Mainland China have been characterised by spectacular crowds of millions!
Sunday 4 May 2008
pink dolphins
The pink dolphins in Hong Kong are really pink! Whenever I read about pink dolphins before, I had always imagined them to be rather grey with pinkish undertones. The dolphins I saw were Chinese white dolphins (Sousa chinensis), also known as Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins. They are born dark grey and gradually lose their pigmentation as they mature. It was definitely worth the chionging straight after a fourteen-hour flight without sleep!
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