Tunku, Writing and variegated whatnots
Yes, a break in the chain of QotDs! 'Bout bloody time eh?
Tons of shit to put in, so this'll be long.
Tunku & Acting
Tunku's in the 2nd month of rehearsals now, with us meeting 5 times a week (6/week next month!) for 30mins breathing, 1hr dancing and 2hrs singing (with minor variations). It's quite a change from Broken Bridges - a more sombre, more mature play. In fact it makes BB look like a silly hee-hee-ha-ha affair (it wasn't, but the many laughing memories of it stay) - it tackled father-son relations, the whole subject of old-vs-new, morality of who decides what's better or worse, filial piety, responsibility, etc. This one, so far, handles racism, the responsibility of power, politics and playing the "good public image" game. Very VERY much focused around race and politics, which sadly are underdiscussed issues in this wonderful country that's so dominated by these 2 affairs.
I got myself a chance to work with Tony Pietra again on a series called Dark City. See the next blog entry about it, I'm in the episode called Death Row showing this Wed 10.30pm on Astro Ria (yes it's in Malay). I don't say a word but a previous entry depicted how I end up. Halfway through the show.
Also got to work with some graduates of Joe Hasham's recent Acting for Beginners on a film called Unsecured Loan. Don't know too much details as yet but currently no commercial release planned, with the intention of entering it for some film festival. The fact that this damn film happened at all is quite miraculous (if you're of that bent) - or at the very least, demonstrates the sheer power of intention. Julie (hat's off to you!) finishes class, wants to do a project with her coursemates; posts entry in Kakiseni's audition page requesting for: actors (preferably Joe's graduates), scriptwriters, production team. Yes, it also reads as: I don't got nuthin', let's everybody get together and see what happens. Sheer poetry. Coincidentally, I end up working with an ex-primary schoolmate. Again (Horizons last year).
Lastly, in another play called Tari Canggung Hamidah. Yes, it's in Malay (eh my name IS Malay after all, innit mate?) and yes I do have lines in Malay, though thankfully few and straightforward. Thankfully because, even though I'd relish the challenge of upping my standard of Bahasa, the play runs in under 2 weeks. Yes, crikey bikey - 4th July at Shah Alam. Yes, wtf. It's for the Selangor Theatre Fest lah, so should be a good experience whatever happens.
Agel
A new product has come in for Agel from another network marketing company (starts with an S) and it absolutely kicks ass. Here's a quick video (2.5 mins) with the doctor who invented it talking about it. In short, it's anti-aging, a natural viagra, lowers cholesterol and is meant to build muscle. Watch it:
Books
Jack Canfield's The Success Principles. Kickass compilation of most of the best books out there. Packed into an easy-to-read volume divided into 10-minute chapters with memorable quotes and immediate action steps. Highly recommended.
Paul Zane Pilzer's The Wellness Revolution (revised edition)
is a great insight into an massively growing industry - what makes it especially great is that the 1st edition was written in 2002 and this edition was written in 2007, and updates the relevant issues that cropped up in between. Quite a number of chapters is US-focused, so doesn't quite make sense here. But his economist background and his experience and his brains (he's a damn smart fella) provides great ideas and perspective into upcoming opportunities in wellness. Exciting stuff.
David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man was a book I bought and read quite some ago, and for some reason (yes yes there's no such thing as coincidence) I recently picked it up again. Wonderful stuff lah, such
May 13th (read more) is a brave publication that really should be read by every Malaysian -
it provides an almost factual account of what really happened, with its main crux the drive for honesty, accountability and mature discussion about possibly the darkest event in our history. Can be quite dry at times, as its biggest feature is the documents recently declassified (under the Official Secrets Act in Her Majesty's government), which contains communiques from diplomats and journalists at the time of the event.
The Malaysian Journey (buy from Silverfish; comments from Amazon) has been republished and is an excellent read. Rehman Rashid is wonderfully witty, erudite and perceptive, and his observations are truly enjoyable. He basically takes us through a journey of his life and of his country after quite some time away and talks about his experiences. Highly recommended.
I really should start writing proper reviews of these books. An idea I've been having is to write up reviews and post up snippets of the reviews with a tag, "if you want to read the full review, please contact me for details on purchasing it" or something like that. Has anyone tried/seen it before?
Writing
Writing for Malaysian Today has been interesting so far - my first article should come up next week (it's about social networking sites). Interesting because it's all so bloody new to me - how it works is that I'm meant to pitch a headline (The Power of Racism!) with a standfirst (The Ku Klax Klan did it. Hitler did it. Here's an ultimate guide for the supremacist who wants to wave a keris in Parliament!) to the editor, who then provides feedback and a deadline. Irony is that I usually shake my head at some of our headlines and now I'm the one who'll be providing them. Also, I've never 'sold' my writing before so yes, quite out of my comfort zone.
Asset Trader, on the other hand, has been wonderfully smooth sailing. Editor really likes my writing and it tends to be he asks, I provide and there's little extra work to be done. First print's in August, looking forward to seeing how everything comes out.
An idea I've recently been toying with is doing boardgame reviews. Seeing as I've become a regular at The Mage Cafe (next to Atria in Damansara Jaya, again mentioned here [damn I'm still doing the same damn things!]) and they've a massive supply of these games, why not? I'm thinking of designing some kind of system to review such that regular readers can follow and get to know a lot of the game (and decide whether or not to buy it) from the review. Any feedback?
Gaming
Segueing into the next topic, I've had the chance to play hell of a lot of new boardgames - China, Puerto Rico, Caylus, Dis-X, Manila, HeckMeck (no board but dice & tiles [think domino tiles]), The Great Dalmuti (card), 
Ingenious and the madly addictive Settlers of Catan. Quick and dirty summaries:
China - battle for territories and connections between them. Strategic fun.
Puerto Rico - balancing the right strategies toward victory. Second-guessing what other people will do and playing that to your tactical advantage. Great fun.
Caylus - balancing the right strategies toward victory.
Many many factors to take into account make this quite a brain drain to play.
Dis-X - simple rules but quite a lot of fun. A numbers game that requires you to calculate the ramifications of your actions far ahead to play
well. I think... haven't discovered the nuances of the game yet.
Manila - very much a gambling game where every round hinges a lot on the dice. Good simple fun though.
HeckMeck (yes, also known as Pickomino) - no-brainer fun, very dice dependent.
The Great Dalmuti - a variant of Chor Tai Tee. Additional rules make it fun (in a silly way - loser has to wear a chicken hat and sit on the floor, that kinda thing).
Ingenious - another Mensa game (Blockus being the other) which has simple rules but complex strategies. Good fun without being too mentally taxing.
Settlers of Catan - brilliant game, there's a great reason why it's called a 'gateway' game. It's simple enough to entice non-gamers, yet complex enough to
keep people playing past their 100th game. Quite dice-dependent though.
Hooked on boardgames man. They're so superior to video games in that 1) they usually require
some brain power and 2) they require social interaction. I'm sure that the reason my mind has such an able grasp on strategic games was because I played boardgames when I was a kid (thanks Jee Koh). Parents, get some boardgames and start playing them with your kids! TV and videogames provide poor fodder for growing up! They might end up like me though.
Onto the PC (yes yes poor fodder but I'm grown up now, fuck off). There've been some interesting new stuff out - Supreme Commander, C&C3, can't remember what else. Been so out of the loop, haven't been playing much PC games besides the cybercafe usuals like Company of Heroes (which still rocks), Call of Duty 2 and Battlefield 2. In fact, what I'm currently hooked on are arcade games! Damn ridiculous, stuff from gamehouse.com like Fibre Twig (1&2), Alien Shooter and Age of Castles. Mindless nonsense but they're the most fun, aren't they? Not completely mindless lah... Fibre Twig requires & develops excellent pattern-matching and spatial visualisation skills, Alien Shooter... well, reflexes and hand-eye coordination, and Age of Castles... erm, stats, basic strategy and cause-effect measurement. And yes I'm still a fan of Spider Solitaire and Minesweeper.
Miscellany
On a whim, I decided to find out what the Sentul Link's all about. I've been passing it almost every day for the past year or so (it's just outside KLPac) and so, after a little exploration into Sentul, I took it. It goes straight onto Mahameru Highway, kickass! It comes out not far before the Jln Duta turnoff, the next turnoff after which is Sentral and Jln Bangsar.
The Sentul exploration, on the other hand, was quite an adventure. You'd think a left, left, left and left again would take you back to where you were, just some ways behind. That thought would be wrong again, again, again and again. I ended up in some serious depths of Sentul and at one point, got seriously scared. You know the point when street lights no longer function, it starts getting a bit jungle-y, houses start disappearing, it looks chilly... there's a bend ahead and you use the headlights and there's mist (and you're not on a hill)? Yeah that's when I went fuck this shit I'm retracing every fucking road I took at minimum 80km/h too. I tell you, there's loads of opportunities for adventure in KL.
And to conclude, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Bollywood style!
Tons of shit to put in, so this'll be long.
Tunku & Acting
Tunku's in the 2nd month of rehearsals now, with us meeting 5 times a week (6/week next month!) for 30mins breathing, 1hr dancing and 2hrs singing (with minor variations). It's quite a change from Broken Bridges - a more sombre, more mature play. In fact it makes BB look like a silly hee-hee-ha-ha affair (it wasn't, but the many laughing memories of it stay) - it tackled father-son relations, the whole subject of old-vs-new, morality of who decides what's better or worse, filial piety, responsibility, etc. This one, so far, handles racism, the responsibility of power, politics and playing the "good public image" game. Very VERY much focused around race and politics, which sadly are underdiscussed issues in this wonderful country that's so dominated by these 2 affairs.
I got myself a chance to work with Tony Pietra again on a series called Dark City. See the next blog entry about it, I'm in the episode called Death Row showing this Wed 10.30pm on Astro Ria (yes it's in Malay). I don't say a word but a previous entry depicted how I end up. Halfway through the show.
Also got to work with some graduates of Joe Hasham's recent Acting for Beginners on a film called Unsecured Loan. Don't know too much details as yet but currently no commercial release planned, with the intention of entering it for some film festival. The fact that this damn film happened at all is quite miraculous (if you're of that bent) - or at the very least, demonstrates the sheer power of intention. Julie (hat's off to you!) finishes class, wants to do a project with her coursemates; posts entry in Kakiseni's audition page requesting for: actors (preferably Joe's graduates), scriptwriters, production team. Yes, it also reads as: I don't got nuthin', let's everybody get together and see what happens. Sheer poetry. Coincidentally, I end up working with an ex-primary schoolmate. Again (Horizons last year).
Lastly, in another play called Tari Canggung Hamidah. Yes, it's in Malay (eh my name IS Malay after all, innit mate?) and yes I do have lines in Malay, though thankfully few and straightforward. Thankfully because, even though I'd relish the challenge of upping my standard of Bahasa, the play runs in under 2 weeks. Yes, crikey bikey - 4th July at Shah Alam. Yes, wtf. It's for the Selangor Theatre Fest lah, so should be a good experience whatever happens.
Agel
A new product has come in for Agel from another network marketing company (starts with an S) and it absolutely kicks ass. Here's a quick video (2.5 mins) with the doctor who invented it talking about it. In short, it's anti-aging, a natural viagra, lowers cholesterol and is meant to build muscle. Watch it:
Books
Jack Canfield's The Success Principles. Kickass compilation of most of the best books out there. Packed into an easy-to-read volume divided into 10-minute chapters with memorable quotes and immediate action steps. Highly recommended.Paul Zane Pilzer's The Wellness Revolution (revised edition)
is a great insight into an massively growing industry - what makes it especially great is that the 1st edition was written in 2002 and this edition was written in 2007, and updates the relevant issues that cropped up in between. Quite a number of chapters is US-focused, so doesn't quite make sense here. But his economist background and his experience and his brains (he's a damn smart fella) provides great ideas and perspective into upcoming opportunities in wellness. Exciting stuff.David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man was a book I bought and read quite some ago, and for some reason (yes yes there's no such thing as coincidence) I recently picked it up again. Wonderful stuff lah, suchMay 13th (read more) is a brave publication that really should be read by every Malaysian -
it provides an almost factual account of what really happened, with its main crux the drive for honesty, accountability and mature discussion about possibly the darkest event in our history. Can be quite dry at times, as its biggest feature is the documents recently declassified (under the Official Secrets Act in Her Majesty's government), which contains communiques from diplomats and journalists at the time of the event.The Malaysian Journey (buy from Silverfish; comments from Amazon) has been republished and is an excellent read. Rehman Rashid is wonderfully witty, erudite and perceptive, and his observations are truly enjoyable. He basically takes us through a journey of his life and of his country after quite some time away and talks about his experiences. Highly recommended.I really should start writing proper reviews of these books. An idea I've been having is to write up reviews and post up snippets of the reviews with a tag, "if you want to read the full review, please contact me for details on purchasing it" or something like that. Has anyone tried/seen it before?
Writing
Writing for Malaysian Today has been interesting so far - my first article should come up next week (it's about social networking sites). Interesting because it's all so bloody new to me - how it works is that I'm meant to pitch a headline (The Power of Racism!) with a standfirst (The Ku Klax Klan did it. Hitler did it. Here's an ultimate guide for the supremacist who wants to wave a keris in Parliament!) to the editor, who then provides feedback and a deadline. Irony is that I usually shake my head at some of our headlines and now I'm the one who'll be providing them. Also, I've never 'sold' my writing before so yes, quite out of my comfort zone.
Asset Trader, on the other hand, has been wonderfully smooth sailing. Editor really likes my writing and it tends to be he asks, I provide and there's little extra work to be done. First print's in August, looking forward to seeing how everything comes out.
An idea I've recently been toying with is doing boardgame reviews. Seeing as I've become a regular at The Mage Cafe (next to Atria in Damansara Jaya, again mentioned here [damn I'm still doing the same damn things!]) and they've a massive supply of these games, why not? I'm thinking of designing some kind of system to review such that regular readers can follow and get to know a lot of the game (and decide whether or not to buy it) from the review. Any feedback?
Gaming
Segueing into the next topic, I've had the chance to play hell of a lot of new boardgames - China, Puerto Rico, Caylus, Dis-X, Manila, HeckMeck (no board but dice & tiles [think domino tiles]), The Great Dalmuti (card), Ingenious and the madly addictive Settlers of Catan. Quick and dirty summaries:China - battle for territories and connections between them. Strategic fun.
Puerto Rico - balancing the right strategies toward victory. Second-guessing what other people will do and playing that to your tactical advantage. Great fun.Caylus - balancing the right strategies toward victory.
Many many factors to take into account make this quite a brain drain to play.Dis-X - simple rules but quite a lot of fun. A numbers game that requires you to calculate the ramifications of your actions far ahead to play
well. I think... haven't discovered the nuances of the game yet.Manila - very much a gambling game where every round hinges a lot on the dice. Good simple fun though.
HeckMeck (yes, also known as Pickomino) - no-brainer fun, very dice dependent.The Great Dalmuti - a variant of Chor Tai Tee. Additional rules make it fun (in a silly way - loser has to wear a chicken hat and sit on the floor, that kinda thing).
Ingenious - another Mensa game (Blockus being the other) which has simple rules but complex strategies. Good fun without being too mentally taxing.
Settlers of Catan - brilliant game, there's a great reason why it's called a 'gateway' game. It's simple enough to entice non-gamers, yet complex enough to
keep people playing past their 100th game. Quite dice-dependent though.Hooked on boardgames man. They're so superior to video games in that 1) they usually require
some brain power and 2) they require social interaction. I'm sure that the reason my mind has such an able grasp on strategic games was because I played boardgames when I was a kid (thanks Jee Koh). Parents, get some boardgames and start playing them with your kids! TV and videogames provide poor fodder for growing up! They might end up like me though.Onto the PC (yes yes poor fodder but I'm grown up now, fuck off). There've been some interesting new stuff out - Supreme Commander, C&C3, can't remember what else. Been so out of the loop, haven't been playing much PC games besides the cybercafe usuals like Company of Heroes (which still rocks), Call of Duty 2 and Battlefield 2. In fact, what I'm currently hooked on are arcade games! Damn ridiculous, stuff from gamehouse.com like Fibre Twig (1&2), Alien Shooter and Age of Castles. Mindless nonsense but they're the most fun, aren't they? Not completely mindless lah... Fibre Twig requires & develops excellent pattern-matching and spatial visualisation skills, Alien Shooter... well, reflexes and hand-eye coordination, and Age of Castles... erm, stats, basic strategy and cause-effect measurement. And yes I'm still a fan of Spider Solitaire and Minesweeper.
Miscellany
On a whim, I decided to find out what the Sentul Link's all about. I've been passing it almost every day for the past year or so (it's just outside KLPac) and so, after a little exploration into Sentul, I took it. It goes straight onto Mahameru Highway, kickass! It comes out not far before the Jln Duta turnoff, the next turnoff after which is Sentral and Jln Bangsar.
The Sentul exploration, on the other hand, was quite an adventure. You'd think a left, left, left and left again would take you back to where you were, just some ways behind. That thought would be wrong again, again, again and again. I ended up in some serious depths of Sentul and at one point, got seriously scared. You know the point when street lights no longer function, it starts getting a bit jungle-y, houses start disappearing, it looks chilly... there's a bend ahead and you use the headlights and there's mist (and you're not on a hill)? Yeah that's when I went fuck this shit I'm retracing every fucking road I took at minimum 80km/h too. I tell you, there's loads of opportunities for adventure in KL.
And to conclude, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Bollywood style!
posted by Jo at 3:43 pm
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