August 2006 Archives

I always enjoy the Merdeka season. It always reminds me of the days where I used to be part of the early morning celebration parades in Penang.

Anyways, now that Malaysia is another year old - I thought I'd compile a list of stuff that I'd like to see in the future.

Things that I want to see change moving forward.

- Lower crime, better police presence and higher Succesful-Crimes-Solved rate nationwide. People need to be able to feel safe.

- More slots and a fairer university application system for non-bumiputras. Enough of this Bumis getting priority for local university slots nonsense - if you are good enough you get the slot. Simple as that.

- Better road manners for Malaysians everywhere, and in super busy KL especially. There is no point having the best roads and best cars if people behave like morons and drive with zero courtesy for others.

- No more priorities for bumiputras for practically everything in business. Almost fifty years have now passed since independance. It is now a new era, a new generation. We do not need to practically spoonfeed anyone anymore. If you work for it - you reap the rewards.

I'm all for racial harmony - unless you are particularly benefitting from being spoon-fed, there shouldn't be much difference to our daily lives. I am not anti-bumiputra, in fact, some of my oldest friends are Malay. I am just a little tired of seeing discrimination - just because the law supports it. That's just not right, not in this day and age.

If you are feeling extra patriotic, here's Sudirman's 31 Ogos for you to sing along.

Download Sudirman's 31 Ogos (right click and Save As to your computer).

I was working on Tuesday when this email addressed to everyone in the company arrived. It was short and simple, but made me drop everything I was doing. It read "Anyone expecting the arrival of a saxophone?".

A box with "straight soprano saxophone" printed on its side had arrived for me, but unfortunately I forgot to mention to our new receptionist what my Chinese name was (which was on the box too).

So excitedly waiting for the end of the day, I brought the hard case which was in the box home.

Before going further, I must mention that I have wanted a soprano saxophone all the way from the time I started playing the alto saxophone back in high school (I was part of my high school marching band).

The Chinese Government must be the biggest bunch of propaganda lovers in the world.

They want to censor everything, they spread the 'love' so the people of China are loyal, and when it comes to news that they think 'dangerous' - rest assured the people will hear another version of it.

Their latest victim of censorship is non other than the good ol' Wikipedia.

From Asiamedia:

Maybe if wikipedia looked like this they might allow it.

Seriously though, why do they still do it in this day and age? I'm probably an ignoramus about it - but hey - enlighten me if you know, discuss it with me with some comments. I do want to know more.

Anyways - I'm rather intrigued by these newsboards they have around the streets.

Apparently, they are everywhere. I wonder how that would work out in Malaysia though. I think in probably 2 days, the glass would have been broken and vandals would probably have left some graffiti. You know the normal stuff you see in public toilets and public transport seats - e.g. "Talipon Aminah - 016 4469999, tentu seronok!".

They'll probably block my website next because of this entry.

"Work hard, stay cheerful and let love take care of the rest."

Here's another rather touching ad from Petronas that was aired in 2005. This one is voiced in Mandarin, but has English subtitles.

In case you can't read the sign board at the end - it actually reads "Ladang Poh Poh". Ladang is the Malay word for plantation.

The tradition of giving 'Ang Pows' (red packets) is practised every Chinese New Year - and is considered a token of luck for the year. Unfortunately many young people have taken this tradition for granted. Some are just more focused on how much money they can get, overlooking the whole objective of why people practise this tradition.

Ads like this reminds us of this great tradition and more importantly the love that is behind it - which has been practised for many years.

Seems to be the norm for Petronas to have this type of ads during Chinese New Year. Will be interesting to see what they have next year.

...Petronas for this advertisement aired around Chinese New Year this year.

I have searched high and low and have not found any better advertisement that touches on family. If you know of more please let me know.

This advertisement is in Hokkien - and the subtitles are in Malay. Basically - it tells of a group of old friends living in a retirement home (or old folk's home as it is known in M'sia) who are talking about their children who have already grown up and doing very well with money.

Kudos to the director of this ad - I'm not sure if it is Yasmin Ahmad or Al Isaac who did it. Very well done.

I think the important message here is - Don't forget your roots. No matter how busy you are, no matter where you are, do not forget about your elders and family members.

If you haven't spoken to your family for some time, pick up that phone and call them. Don't take them for granted.

If you don't understand hokkien - here's the English translation.

Cafe Quiet Earth came highly recommended from some guys in the WRX clube. I have also read about this place recently in The Age in an article about the best places in town for pizzas. So, we headed there for dinner on Friday night.

Where is it? This small pizza specialising place's address is located at 257, Carlisle Street, St Kilda East.

This cafe is not very big, but nice and cosy. There isn't much room for big groups, and ideally sits tables of 2-4 people. It took some time for the 7 of us to get 2 tables, but the waiter was nice about it and provided some pretty good service.

Here are the pizzas we ordered.

The pizzas were excellent, with my favourite being the Sweet Chilli Chicken. All the others were also excellent, the base was crispy and wasn't too thick (ala American style).

The pasta however, was very below average. Wouldn't really recommend it.

We also had some of their cakes for dessert, and they were served with a small serving of cream. The cakes there weren't bad at all - and the sticky date pudding was probably the winner.

What do I think of this place then? Ok - firstly for me, the pizzas were a little small in size compared to their slightly higher prices which didn't really register too well in my books. As a reference, the family size is like a large size in a place like La Porchetta. They had S, M, L and Family sized pizzas here and charged $1 for half and half orders.

However, the pizzas are good - nice and tasty with enough toppings, and if you don't mind paying a little more well worth it.

Couple that with the service from the waiter that was serving us - it was good enough to make me happy about eating there. I think it's the kind of place that is nice to try for a change.

To end, here's a group pic (minus me).

Mmm just found this video of me up on YouTube shot during the 2nd test of my Motorkhana on Sunday.

Richard was riding with me on this one.

Thanks to Adrian and Kevin from the WRX club.

If you haven't seen this before already - have a watch.

This is from a Japanese kids tv show called Pythagoras Switch. I found this very very entertaining and intriguing. If you have watched the Honda Accord Euro award winning advertisement you'll love this tv show as well - but that's another story.

This clip is a coordinated march with a rather cute + stuck in your head kind of song.

Thanks to Ben, Adeline and Horng Shii for sharing this.

Enjoy!

Went along for my first motorkhana event ever with the Impreza WRX club to the Huntingdale AutoClub's 38th Annual Interclub Motorkhana on Sunday (13th Aug).

The event was held at Moorabin Airport on grass - perfect for beginners as it does almost no effect at all to your tyre wear.

In case you don't know what a motorkhana is - it is basically a motorsport event where a participant is required to navigate his car across a series of 'tests' made out of witches hats or flags on various surfaces like skidpans, grass, concrete, etc.

I was pretty nervous during the first few tests, and Richard who came along to sort me out with some tips (like taping up the handbrake so it won't lock anymore) helped calm my nerves down a bit by being my navigator.

I was also a little scared of the flags which were mounted on wooden sticks at first, but I have come to realise it was pretty hard to hit them, and they really don't do any (I hope) damage at all should you run into them.

Richard left around lunch and Matt (a member of the WRX club) hopped in as my navigator for 3 more tests before Andrew, Su Yi, Ben and Adeline arrived. Thanks to them all for dropping by to lend me some support!

Here's me and Andrew at the last test.

'Sui Char Boh' (pretty girl in Hokkien) pose with my car - walao-eh!

Here are some of the other guys in action - not many opportunities for WRXs to do some drifting - so some of these guys were going all out for style points! (Images courtesy of Adrian from the WRX club)

Special thanks to the WRX club as well as the Huntingdale AutoClub for the best fun I've ever had with my car. All in all, I definitely learnt a lot more about car control today. Thanks to my friends who took all the pictures for me too while I was driving.

:: Enjoy the rest of the pictures here in my Photo Journey section. ::

Day 1

Started the journey at 3 am. I fell asleep and somehow got awoken by Andrew to ask me if this McDonalds coming up was the one we were meant to head to. Unfortunately being so groggy from sleep I said no, and it turned out to be the one we were meant to have breakfast in.

So minus McBreakfast, we proceeded straight to Falls Creek. Arrived early 9 am and proceeded to hire our gear. As for experience, Andrew, Su Yi and were first time skiiers, Ben and Adeline had taken skiing lessons before, Ben's brother Horng Shii was a first time snowboarder and SY and me had some previous experience with skiing. It wasn't until lunch time that we started skiing.

The conditions today were excellent, with snow being at about 43 cm, thanks to the fresh dump throughout the week! However it was very sunny, and affected some among us - tiring easily.

However our favourite Falls Creek trail - Wombat's Ramble was quite patchy towards the bottom, a clear indication that this season is definitely not a very cold one.

The girls weren't really feeling 100% though today, so we definitely didn't get a lot of skiing done. So everyone was pretty stoked when we headed down at the end of the day to check into our apartment. We had booked a place at Svarmisk - which turned out to be an excellent place to stay! Highly recommend this place if you are planning to stay at the base of the mountain at Mount Beauty.

Here's Andrew agreeing.

After having a crazy dinner of Adeline's home cooked fried beehoon and Andrew's deep fried chicken wings, fishballs, cuttlefish balls, beancurd, luncheon meat and baby fish (white bait) we went to bed exhausted.

For the first time ever, one of my works have broken the 1,000 views milestone within 1 month on deviantArt.com.

My latest Ayumi Hamasaki :: Loveppears desktop.

Well - maybe it's not that big a deal - but hey, still a first for me.

I'm just happy that there are people who are enjoying using my works (hopefully).

deviantART is a good source of desktop wallpapers and other graphic works from people all over the world. If you haven't been there before check it out. You won't regret it.

My profile on deviantART. http://harbx.deviantart.com/