12 Symptoms of Tunku-itis

1. You think pork is the funniest dish served in restaurants.

2. You think laksa is the 2nd funniest dish served in restaurants.

3. You think being blind is a laughing matter.

3a. Colour. Blind.

4. You think hesitating for a moment is a good reason to break up with your other half.

5. You think being 4 minutes late is the other good reason, but redeemable by a song sung by 30 dancing people.

6. You think Negaraku should be followed by a rousing MER-DEKA (with an emphasis on "Mer", for god's sake, they pronounced it MERdeka back then, not merDEka like it is now, can you get it right or we'll just keep working on this song until you do!)!

7. You automatically sit up and pay attention when you hear Joe's voice on TV.

8. Hearing ordinary names like Syed, Malik and Cik Tan will get your attention.

9. Hearing ordinary words like "one moment ago", "he's coming home today" and "what a day" will make you repeat them in melody.

10. You think that Malay gangs are a real display of muhibbah-ness and Chinese gangs are selectively racist against lead actors.

11. You start associating certain cars with certain people.

12. You think Caltex is a mamak, not a petrol station.

Tunku the Musical

The Petra Foundation presents

TUNKU The Musical

co-sponsored by CELCOM & Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage

a production of The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac)

TONY EUSOFF DOUGLAS LIM

Syuk Ibrahim Evelyn Toh

Maria Yasmin Doreen Tang Zamil Idris

Executive Producer DATO' FARIDAH MERICAN

Music and Lyrics LIM CHUANG YIK & TENG KY-GAN

Musical Director MERVYN PETERS

Choreographer JOSEPH GONZALES

Costume Design DOMINIQUE DEVORSINE

Production Design PAUL LOOSLEY

Created & Directed by

JOE HASHAM

Date & Time: 11 August - 2 September*

(* private shows on 11, 14, 16 - 19 August & 2 September

** charity night for SID Cancer Welfare Fund on 15 August)

Time: 8.30pm daily except 3pm on Sundays (no shows on Mondays)

Venue: Pentas 1, KLPac (CLICK HERE for location map)

Tickets: RM80, RM60 and RM40 (students, sr. citizens & disabled)

"Merdeka, Merdeka, Merdeka, seven times the Tunku called. Seven times came the deep, excited response.

The last roaring cheer died away. A roll of drums, a hard metallic command,

and as the strains of the national anthem flooded the stadium the flag of independent Malaya was slowly raised.

Exactly as the flag reached the masthead came a crash of the first shot of the 101-gun salute...

and so marks the beginning of our 50-year journey."

Created and directed by Joe Hasham and written by the duo who brought you the award-winning Broken Bridges, Lim Chuang Yik and Teng Ky-Gan, TUNKU The Musical has all the colour, drama, excitement, anticipation, heartache, sorrow and uncertainty of that fateful Saturday morning 31st August, 1957. Aptly timed in conjunction with Malaysia's 50th birthday celebration, this is certainly one production not-to-be-missed!

BOX OFFICE:

(KLPac) 03-4047 9000 or (The Actors Studio @ BSC) 03-2094 9400

www.klpac.com

** To enquire / purchase charity tickets for SID CANCER WELFARE FUND, please call Soroptomist International Damansara - 03-2300 1988

Fishy Fots RIP

My fish is dead. Long live my fish.
After 7 months, my fighting fish (genus Betta splendens) has died. Possible cause of expiration of life is overfeeding, or the cardinal sin of gluttony - but I uphold his innocence, Your Highest Honour, for he apparently knows not when his hunger is sated. Yeah apparently he's quite dumbass in that he doesn't know when he's full so he'll just keep eating any food in sight. Interesting parallels to the world today, looking at the number of overweight and obese.

I underwent some agony in finding a suitable name - as a matter of course, anything I name must have a clever reason for it (no it doesn't always happen, if Pepsi, Tron and Fishy Fots are anything to go by) - and actually found one I liked. You see, it was a male Siamese fighting fish, that in the wild would live in paddy fields - so it had to be some kind of male warrior name, and Asian at that. Zhang Fei it was, but the name was far too big for my ickle fish (what, 5cm head to base of tail?) and I wasn't so sure about finding a suitable 'smaller' male Asian warrior name, so I stuck with "fish", "fishy" or, in a moment to alliterative genius, "fishy fots".

Farewell, matey. Sorry about the name.

Mini-update

Hooked on Robot Chicken - bloody funny stuff. Download it now! Only 10-minute clips, using manual animation (ie stop-start with physical toys) of action figures, dolls, play-dough and whatever else made up our childhood. Hilarious and random shit.

Poster and postcards for Tunku's up, will be posting it shortly. Just did a press conference today, went well (mostly, not counting 2 noticeable cock-ups). Rehearsals have ramped up, achieving more every day now. Ending's pretty awesome, very impactful. Saw the stage (Pentas 1) and set today, good to see it again.

Ask, and you shall receive

(Or Law of Attraction, or Law of the Seed, whichever takes your fancy.)

One day a couple of weeks ago, while showering, I look at my soap dish and think, "what are the chances of that getting knocked over and sending my soap straight into the toilet bowl?" I've been using this shower for nearly a decade now, with nary a such foolish thought.

A few days ago, while showering, I reach for the soap and proceed to whack the damn bloody soap dish off the ledge. Straight into the damn toilet bowl. Top half, bottom half, soap bar included. Sheesh.

Random shit

First up: how much is my blog worth? Apparently:

My blog is worth $7,339.02.
How much is your blog worth?

Hm. So I could sell it for about USD7k. But if I did... who'd update it?

It must be said that the Japanese are the geniuses of this generation. Absolute nutters, I think you just have to go to Japan to really understand what 'out of the box' really REALLY means. Check out this game of their's, which is like Tetris but with real people. Hilarious shit.

Next is the absolutely amazing matrix ping-pong. It's unbelievable, their creativity and imagination. This one's slightly different to the one I saw - this one's more real and live, with the one I saw a long time ago was probably edited for to make it more spectacular.


Okay real updates next entry.

Transformers the movie

With Michael Bay, I always know to "Hope for the best, but expect the worst." The absolute worst. Disappointingly, I was not disappointed. Apologies in advance, this is a rant. You might find it entertaining.

1 hour US propaganda, 1 hour love story, 30 mins Transformers. Of course, the 30 mins were the bomb. Yes, sounds like Pearl Harbour doesn't it? Wished his bloodline was bombed out by the Japanese 60 years ago - it'd save us from ALL THE FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!

It breaks my heart, it does. There are moments in the movie that absolutely rocks (yes all in those 30 mins). The intro to the transformers is waaaay cool, the fact that they took so damn long (in a bad, cheong hei way) to set it up made it all the more satisfying to see the US base get fucked over. The intro to Bumblebee kinda sucked, though the intro to his other incarnation's cool. The intro to the Autobots is very cool, and really made me feel all kiddy again. Note: the INITIAL intro was cool - the unnecessarily-dragged out intro sucked. The Decepticons' intro sucked because it was so damn brief.

Fight scenes rock, though the over-elaborateness of the robots made faster scenes confusing. Aaaaand that's pretty much all that's good about the movie. The damn robots, which was about 20% of the damn movie. I would NOT watch it again, I cannot go through so much cheese and crap to enjoy that wonderful 20%. A quick description of shitty 80%:

Love scene. Ugh. What the fuck is that all about. Sure, the girl is hot, that's the only thing that makes it palatable. The unrealistic scale is tipped over again by the fact that there seems to be little real chemistry - I didn't get it that he wants to fuck her brains out. Hello, she's hot, she obviously likes you, you've been in multiple death-defying situations; all you wanna do it touch fucking fingers?!?!? Fucking loser. Yes, I really hate unnecessary love scenes that contribute NOTHING to a movie except build further on a false belief that you can be a complete and utter loser and still get a hot girl.

Note that there IS another hot girl - an Australian blonde hottie working for the NSA, no less. She represents the best team of signal decrypters that the United States of America has. Note that she's just more-or-less graduated from college, and has a good friend who is a fat black man and is the best hacker she knows. Suspension of disbelief, OVERDRIVE ON.

US patriotism. Look Americans, the rest of the world (that's 95% of the population of the world) get it that you love your country and you think you rock your socks. We think that's quaint and sometimes cute, though we're quite sorry you have such low self-esteem. Multiple zoom-ins to "US AIR FORCE" on a plane (Nooooo really? Not TENTERA UDARA DIRAJA MALAYSIA??), slow-motion exits of US soldiers from various vehicles, a few scenes of US soldiers enjoying life and the company their multiracial compatriots, clichéd shots of US aircraft banking in perfect harmony, the good ol' helicopter rising in silhouette with a sunrise/sunset background. Christ Almighty, what a painful exercise in autofellatio.

Humour. For some reason, Mr Bay wanted to make this film funny. Everyone tried too hard, and that just makes it all fall very flat. Combined with the long drawn-out-ness of some scenes, I got restless and am not surprised that some people felt like sleeping.

So, question time (possible spoilers here if you're worried, the whole movie's a spoiler to me):
- if you were the member of an Arabic tribe near Qatar, what would you do if you saw a bunch of US soldiers running towards you? Yes, I would fucking gun them down too, and THEN worry about that big scorpion transformer behind them.
- if the US army could land missiles and massed gunfire on a target with such pinpoint accuracy that soldiers 25m away from the target did not even suffer a scratch, why do they keep blowing up their allies in wars?
- why IS there a scorpion transformer anyway, aside from being a convenient plot device?
- if US soldiers can last so damn many hours / days / whatever convenient timelength in the desert with absolutely no supplies and in full complete uniform, why send so much supplies to Iraq?
- where are the other Decepticons when one of them is getting gang-banged? What are they doing most of the movie anyway?
- what happened to all the extra robots created accidentally near the end of the movie?
- if the helicopter Decepticon has such kickass weaponry, why can't he just blow the fuck out of the boy anytime during the final fight?
- why did the boy run all that distance when he had the Autobots guarding him most of the way (1. "eh fucker, transform and lemme jump in!" 2. "eh fucker, pick me up, you run faster than me!" 3. "eh fucker, take this object that everyone wants and jump to the top of the building I'm running to!")?
- why did hot chick take Bumblebee for a nice drive around the block in the middle of a firefight?
- where were the US tanks that come out for every other movie?
- how come they didn't send Bruce Willis to nuke those fucking asteroids coming to Earth?

Gimme my 2 hours back.

What A Day...

Just had a rehearsal where my body went through a whole gamut of emotions. Partly from the songs and the latest orchestrations and directions, partly just letting go from the buildup of yesterday, partly a result of recent events, and partly from just missing the damn rehearsal room (though very much appreciating the time off though not technically time off).

Tunku the Musical. Much as we're still figuring out lots of things in terms of the production as a whole, it will absolutely kick ass. Musically we're working hard to fine-tune it, but some songs are so powerful and emotive that combined with the orchestra, one song or another will strike a chord in every heart of the audience. Visually we're still in the dark about how we'll look - what our costumes are (though we'll have a slight preview this Sat at the press conference) and what exactly will be the images projected on stage (part of our funky production). Movement-wise we're also still working it out, though I predict (as mentioned before) that most of us will be still with the dancers doing the bulk of the movement.

And yes I'm not impressed with the poster / picture thus far. It hasn't been explicitly said that this is it (unless I missed that) but I hope I hope I hope pray pray pray that this is NOT it. One of the writers was raving about it and frankly, he's off his head.


Sponsored someone new to Agel today. Happiness, it's been awhile and this month's looking especially good. Just in time for a training tomorrow as well as a PBR, which is as good a set-up as can be - and one more step towards building good residual income.


Yes, performed Tari Canggung Hamidah yesterday at Auditorium Museum Shah Alam (yes). Generally enjoyed it - I do love the stage. Personally thought I could've done more with my character, though I'm not sure what; the limited rehearsal period and the poor production team meant that we didn't have too much time to work well. My character has a lot of potential for humour, which is a most tempting demon (eliciting laughter is sheer joy) but one that should not be layan-ed unless necessary.

Overall I think people enjoyed the show, though the cast, the technical team and the stage management team were relatively inexperienced. It showed, with several missed technical cues, delayed entrances and underprojected voices. I did feel it was practically a one-man show (in terms of production, not the performance), so great kudos to Baem for shouldering such extreme madness. Bloody stupid thing to do but sometimes one has to make do with only the cards dealt them. We had only one technical run, with no full dress rehearsal - and even that tech run, the tech team weren't prepared for.


Lessons learned:

1. The director should not act in his play. Though there's no fixed rule about this (and apparently some directors can break this rule with great panache and aplomb), for most people this will be highly detrimental to the play.

2. Delegate to people and trust them. I do think that there were many underutilised heads there that could've made the production flow better but weren't used.

3. Stage management and technical should: a) know what they're doing, b) know the script, c) attend at least some rehearsals.

4. A production just needs so many people who know enough of what they're doing, and doing it. Teamwork gila.


The venue's so-so. Stage is decent, carpets need a very very desperate thorough clean. Acoustics seemed ok though didn't get a chance to really test it. Stage layout a bit silly, the rigging lines are just immediately behind the back wall curtain making it an unnecessary danger. Backstage layout also a bit silly, too many steps means added danger to movement (people and props). Only suraus on the floor (or maybe even building?) are next to the changing rooms, which means no privacy and disconnection between backstage and public. Poor maintenance lah, the real Malaysian malaise. I wouldn't mind performing there again but I'd not stage a production there myself.

Me? I think it was a good experience. More time on stage, in front of people never hurts. Having experience in a Malay play might help. Working with different people is useful. Exploring the Cina within is always fun.


Ok late already.

Quote of the Day

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.

- Anna Quindlen