Tuesday 22 September 2009

My Latest (Unfortunate) Obsession :p



SO, I watched Wang Lee Hom's Heroes of Earth concert in Taipei on DVD with Priya and Yvonne on Sunday night and somehow managed to develop a MASSIVE crush on this Lee Hom dude.

Funny because now I feel like a silly, giggly, air-headed adolescent girl who's constantly squealing in delight everytime anyone mentions his name. I've already watched his MVs on YouTube a gazillion times and not to mention various other videos of him; I've chosen my favourite songs to (attempt to) memorize in Mandarin, no less; I've memorized his profile information (subconsciously of course) because I've read it wayyy to many times than I should have. And yes, I do realise how horribly pathetic I sound but a crush is a crush and this one just hit me like a Category 5 hurricane - with no prior warning, and at a VERY HIGH SPEED. I must say, I did not see it coming.

Oh well.

So now it is nearly 5 a.m. here in Melbourne and I've just spent the past hour shamelessly watching even MORE videos of Lee Hom on YouTube. Addicted much? Maybe I should start my very own Hom-aholics Anonymous - the first of it's kind ever. Yes, I'm desperate to get my hormones back in working order and continue with my life as usual. But I have a bad feeling that it's going to take awhile :p

See, the sad thing is that HE IS SO PERFECT (at least from what I've gathered from the internet) and so OUT OF REACH.

By the way, sorry if I'm being too liberal with my use of capital letters. It's a bad habit I've just picked up.

So I will stop ranting now and go to bed (and hopefully have a nice dream starring Wang Lee Hom?).

SAD.

Monday 7 September 2009

Random thought (that I had to postpone the act of brushing my teeth to document here):

I'm really glad that one day, I'll be able to look at this blog, re-read my old posts and reminisce about my past experiences and thoughts. Obviously not all of my life is written in this blog - but a good chunk of the things that matter to me are.

A friend posted this link on Facebook. It's about this man, Jamie Livingston, who decided to take one photo a day for every day of his life and did so for 18 years only to die at the age of 41 from cancer. Now his collection of photos have been put on exhibition for everyone to see. It is both inspiring and heart-wrenching at the same time. Check his photos out here .

Thursday 3 September 2009

Makes Me Sad (of cowheads and what not) :(

Studying in Melbourne, I've been slightly out of touch with the going-ons in Malaysia. So when on Saturday a friend told me about how a group of Malays from Shah Alam's Section 23 protested against the proposed relocation of a Hindu temple to their housing area by carrying a severed cow's head to the Selangor MB's office and stepping on it in a show of their protest, I was horrified!

Just a few thoughts that I need to get off my chest here:

We Hindus worship the cow as a sacred animal. I don't eat beef because I was brought up that way, as a mark of respect towards the sanctity of the cow. So of course I was offended when I read the article on the Malaysian Insider regarding the protest (here) and shocked and disgusted when I saw the pictures of the cow-head. Part of me was angry that these people had resorted to such a lowly form of protest - surely there are other ways to make their opposition heard? And part of me was horribly saddened by the fact that there are still Malaysians with practically zero knowledge of the other cultures and religions in the country, and no tact in the way they do things. Do they not realise how seriously insulting it is to Hindus to walk around with a cow's head like that? It's not the same as just carrying a racially provocative banner. It is so much worse.

I've read and heard comments asking how these Section 23 residents would feel if other people carried a pig's head to them instead (which, for the record, I do not condone). But I say, the impact is not the same. The Muslims don't worship the pig, they just aren't supposed to eat it. It would be an insult to certain Islamic practices, but it wouldn't be a direct insult to the very core of the religion itself.

I'm not a person who is ever big on the whole revenge thing. And I'm a firm believer in using diplomacy to settle problems. It makes me sad that something as simple as a temple relocation could be blown out of proportion in this manner. It makes me sad to see Malaysians behaving this way. It makes me sad to see the very rude and angry comments posted in response to this issue. Surely we have all been educated well enough to know better? To act better? To understand better?

And all this makes me wonder when Malaysians will ever be ready to call ourselves one collective Malaysian race and be patient and tolerant enough to accommodate for the vast cultural differences that make up our country. I know that we are getting there... But will it ever be possible to actually reach our goal of a 1 Malaysia?

Going back to the issue at hand, I looked up the video recording of the protest and found it on YouTube. I'm not going to post it on this blog, but the link to it is here if anyone who hasn't checked it out already wants to check it out. (This probably won't be viewable in Malaysia.) Grotesque as it may be, I think it is important for people to watch it and recognise that this is not how we want our citizens to act; not how we ourselves should act. And I hope that by reading the comments related to the video (though a select few voiced out some good points), everyone sees how useless and detrimental it is to be blinded by anger and hatred - about 95% of the comments on this video were absolute rubbish.

Also, I want to make clear of the fact that I am fully aware that this protest is not reflective of the general Muslim population in Malaysia, but just a small handful of misled, uneducated and intolerant people. And I would like to remind everyone else not to make this mistake of generalising all Malaysian Muslims in this manner.

Lastly, I wish the Malaysian government would do more to address this issue - to remand the protesters or even, at the least, to voice out their disappointment about the whole thing. But no. Instead, they attempt to emphatise with the protesters and explain their misled actions (article from the Malaysian Insider here). I'm sorry, but I have tried to see things from their (the protesters) point of view and I just cannot understand how they could bring themselves to do something as barbaric as brandishing a cow's head no matter how angry they were. Protest, I understand. But not the way they did it. That's just wrong :(

So anywayyy, those are my thoughts on this issue. Feel free to comment (but please don't be rude).

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Hungry for More GG

Gossip Girl Season 3 will be out soon!!! September 14 to be exact :)

Not sure how good it's going to be. Actually come to think of it, it'll probably be pretty bad as far as the acting and storyline go. But the designer clothes, New York's Upper East Side and Chuck Bass are gonna be AWESOME!! And we all know that EVERYONE watches it because they can't get enough of Chuck Bass ;)

The Season 3 preview is hereee:

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Lapsap...

So I've heard quite a bit about this Malaysian DJ duo which call themselves 'Lapsap' - Cantonese for 'rubbish'. Lol. Interesting name choice :p Didn't how good they were until I heard them for myself at the Merdeka Party at CQ here in Melbourne. Also, I was quite intrigued by the energetic jumping, arm-pumping and dancing of '5ft' - no prizes for guessing which one I'm referring to!

Found a video of them on YouTube which shows 5ft's dancing and also their (Lapsap's) cool DJ-ing :D