ruminations
anti group think
Sunday, March 17, 2024
shringgit
Why do politikus fight over petty issues like food wars or names on socks instead of the more important issues like fighting inflation or factories shutting down after 52 years of operations or how to improve competitiveness of our exports when Europe has anti palm oil lobbies or India turns to cheaper sunflower oil or how corruption causes LTAT to have negative reserves.
New found passion
The world works in mysterious ways.that chance encounter with the urban sketcher led me to network with a group of passionate artists.Some have links to art like the architect,interior designer,digital animator n advertising legends.By chance i met Stan Lee and KC Lee the founder of KL Urban sketchers and his interesting artbook about his journey thro life and southeast asia.Stan Lees meeting is really karma at work as my elder sister,a graphic designer in her early career told me about her contribution to his first Malaysian comic Apazine.Stan Lee was really inspirational when i showed him my sketch book of a childs graphic novel. The boy from Pulau Ketam.He was so helpful and suggested the potential to turn the rough sketch into naive art and later introduced me to a naive art painter who uses acryllic.this has reignited my passion and creative juice to create another
manga story based on the supernatural so its a psycho thriller about the kumanthong n inspired by the hong kong news about a couple who kept their dead new borns in glass bottles.
Also it was a good mix of young and experienced creatives and im learning still about the potential of AI to create faster and more varied output but the prompts are entered by humans and the software will just do its master bidding in terms of lighting,colour or shading.i really like the informal talk .
the universe works in mysterious ways and chance encounters led me to new ideas.
i also attended the forum at Awesome art gallery which showcased Stan Lees artwork and listened to the forum on how Artificial Intelligence is both a pro and con in the advertising line,musicians composition and architectural3D renditions.yes technology is so advanced but cannot replicate
the speakers concept or ideational output of humans.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Busy Sunday
Sunday is my Funday.Started bright n early before it became hot with zumba at Taman Tun.Bumped into my regular exercise buddy with her hubby and cute toddler son who was fascinated watching us dance.then i joined the urban sketchers to do some drawings at another park.im really lousy compared to some good artists who drew really fast and painted beautifully.i really need to learn more from them like the type of tools n quality of paper.but i enjoyed it until the ants bit me and the sun was blazing hot so i quitted as i was dehydrated after finishing my bottle of water.the bloody fire ants really sting so must bring insect repellant next time
Friday, March 15, 2024
Workout at the Peaceful park
yesterday i took public transport or the LRT to go to downtown KL.It was more comfortable n easier than driving my car and getting stuck in long traffic jams downtown or getting stressed out looking for parking.i could nap in the LRT or play my phone which i cant do if im driving.the air con on the LRT is cooler than my car which feels like an oven under scorching sun.
But i made wrong move to walk downtown at 12 noon when heat is so intense on tiled pavements n concrete buildings are heat traps with reflected glass cladding emitting high heat.Although i spent 2 hours in Kinokuniya browsing the bookshop,i had a throbbing migrane when i went home.
this is the only Saturday i cant wake up for my favourite zumba class as my headache was real bad.
i pushed myself to get up,drank ice cold water n went to the peaceful park to workout.its fate that i came across a guy with hair longer than mine tied back in a ponytail sitting down by the side of the pond sketching with his sketchpad.the heat was so humid n stifling that he worked barechested.i made friends with him as im also a hobbyist artist and he introduced me to a group of artists who draw and paint live on the spot at scenic places.its the first time ive come across the urban sketchers.sounds pretty fun to mingle and learn from other artists new techniques of painting.The Chinese guy looks like a wild version of the environmental activist Kit Antares Leee
Mass/Mess/Hit and Miss communication
i had an interesting teacher in my form sx class Father Steven,a roman catholic priest who before he entered religious life studied film and movie making in the US.Many techniques used to narrate a novel cant be applied to a movie as one was in the written form whilst film studies has a visual and audio angle to it.
then there is the music,the costumes and the cultural baggages.
i like movies melding our heritage with modern day plots.One local playwright is kee thuan chyes the swordfish and the concubine uses annals from sejarah melayu to tell a timeless tale of political intrigue and how powerful people handle those who may threaten their position
Malaysians who use a local context to tell a message can appeal to international audience.A case is directors Chong keat aun The Story of southern islet which mixes the natural and supernatural especially diseases which are seen as due to not medical cause alone but interference by supernatural forces beyond rational control.so Mass communication hinges on creative storytelling as bhutanese directors kyentse norbu movies has universal appeal especially travellers and magicians which shows conflict between tradition and modernity .its great that director Chong uses local dialects like kedah malay,siamese and hokkien in his movie the story of southern islet.he can contextualise the humanity of his character by setting them in a tumultous period of Malaysian history like May 13 which saw ethnic Chinese victimised by institutionalised violence with the burial place of those missing unidentified and descendents unable to find closure in their lives.so its like the MH 370 missing aeroplane and the mystery leaves the grieving unable to heal.
Two black marks stain in our nations history that impacted the Chinese psyche and stamps on the generational memory is the Japanese occupation of Malaya ,the suffering inflicted,the communist insurgency of the Emergency and the May 13 incidents .It is a mirror that is a murky past.courageous of director Chpng Keat Aun to reopen old wounds that has left a scar on our collective memory.i like the inclusion of Malay tale like Raja Bersiong in his movie snow in midsummer as well as the use of classical chinese opera to tell his story.i know the censorboard will never give a permit for screening this movie as it is deemed too sensitive but im looking at the issue from a detached academic angle so i got kua kia soongs May 13 incident book and yesterday bought the book Life After an oral history of the May 13 victims and the survivors .i want to delve into the past because if we dont learn from it.as the saying goes history will repeat itself.i was 9 years old when May 13 occured.i remember the curfew,stockpiles n constant fear as our dads n chinese n indian friends form a patrol to safeguard the family n protect the property.we dared not play outside,there was no school and our family business was badly affected.we heard of bloodshed in kuala lumpur as relatives reported neighbours being slashed.my uncles family migrated to Singapore and dad asked my uncle to take along his only son, my younger brother to live in Singapore.
the ethnic Chinese suffering is creatively retold as novelists like tan twan engs the gift of rain and the garden of evening mist recollects the memories of the Japanese mistreatment of the Chinese in Malaya.Dr Sybil Karthigesu an Eurasian doctor and her family were
tortured by the japanese secret police the kempetai and her small daughter tortured by being hung upside down over a boiling vat of water
the same memory of suffering during the second world war is seen in Vanessa Chans debut novel The storm we made it mirrors the biography of Sybil Karthigesu book No dram of mercy in which the brave Eurasian doctor was tortured by Japanese secret police and she succumbed to her injuries after the war ended .
Another creative writer Dr Han Su Yin wrote about those who resisted the Japanese and started a guerilla warfare in the jungle in her novel And the rain my drink the resistance of Malayan Peoples Anti Japanese army hid in jungles which led to the declaration of the Emergency so i think politicians now should stop playing with fire by asking UNESCO that it declare Chinese new villages as heritage sites it is not a past we wanna commemorate as it evokes bitter memory of concentration camps .under Briggs plan chinese villages were resettled behind guarded entrances n exits n freedom of movement curtailed n food rationing imposed .Now its like the Jews asking that Auchwitz concentration camps be glorified as tourist hotspot!
Politician should focus on our present predicament like rising inflation,falling ringgit,increase of all kinds of taxes and relieve our cost of living instead of digging up a past thats irrelevant to our living condition now.understand the history before starting to make use of it to gain political mileage.we dont need Jaguh Kampungs now
im rereading some old books that are still relevant to our current affairs like the plays of kee thuan chye We could f@#$ you Mr Birch and the Big Purge.our drama scene had seen the loss of some brilliant people like Krishnan Jit and Huzir Sulaiman who migrated to Singapore.luckily Jo Kukanthas has remained a local theatre stalwart
Movie review of bestseller China movie YOLO
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