My heart sings to me
Aug 23Image via Wikipedia 2am in the morning and my little heart is keeping me up by singing. I write with my heart. I sing with my heart. So I’m listening to it now as it achingly warbles a refrain in the middle of the night. It’s a funny, daft little thing. I’ve never pretended to have any control over it. My mind tries, sometimes, to tell it to be a little more...
Blogshopping 101
Aug 21
I’d always scoffed at buying clothes online. Where was the fun of trying things on? What if it looked way better in the pictures than on you? Then I found out they were selling a version of the convertible dress on The Pop Look thanks to Kim. Kim looks great in her dress but sadly despite ordering it in navy, I had to settle for the pink one instead because they’d run out of stock. I...
We’re journalists too
Aug 19Image by miss604 via Flickr One of my best friends made a career change from tech journalism to the politics beat. He’s never been happier. Yet each time he speaks of his ‘past life’ with derision and condescension, I get a little bit angry. There is this misguided perception that if you don’t cover hard news, you’re not a journalist. That if you don’t...
Destiny is being true to yourself
Aug 16“Choose life,” George Monbiot says in his essay to aspiring journalists/career seekers. (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/06/09/choose-life/). Yet too many people choose to do the opposite – doing what they don’t want to do and being who they don’t want to be. “To thine own self be true” is not a statement of necessity, it is sheer common...
Old school action: The Expendables review
Aug 14Image by Paul Lowry via Flickr The critics hate it, but audiences seem to love The Expendables and I’m on the ‘love it’ list. Obviously the haters came in with the wrong expectations. This is old school 80′s action, in the vein of Rambo and Predator. Plot? What plot? Watching Jet Li beat up on Dolph Lundgren is worth the ticket price alone. Now, back to the barely...
The grass might not be greener for you
Aug 12Image via Wikipedia “Shouldn’t I go, too?” That’s the question I get asked by youngsters who watch their peers migrate overseas. Even Patrick Teoh, stalwart of the arts scene, is contemplating just leaving the country. If you are eligible to migrate, the reasoning goes, then pack your bags and leave. Give up on Malaysia. Don’t put up with the corruption, our...
“Melayu ke?” – the heart of the M’sian problem
Aug 05As Mat Rempits surrounded my sister and brother on bikes, one of them asked a disturbing question. “Melayu ke?” In that one question, he encapsulated the mentality that is killing our country. Race divides our politics, decides our social class and financial positions. We live in a country of racist policies and where racism is so endemic we refuse to admit it exists. Or we have those...
A song for you, sayang
Jul 28Of all the lyrics I’ve ever written, these have to be the most personal. I wrote them for the theme song of A Light in KL City. The talented and genuinely nice Mia Palencia contributed songs to the play and it was my task to modify what songs could be used by writing new lyrics. I ended up repurposing her song Sayang from her first album. While the original was a sweet reassuring and...