Archives for 2006

suanie’s 2006 blog awards: now everyone can win!

So I started the whole blog award thing last year because I thought these kinds of horse shit awards are… well, horse shit. If you have read my entry last year, I’d explained why it’s just a popularity wankfest.

This year I didn’t have a look at any on-line award thingy, because I don’t have time and because I really don’t give a shit. But I am lacking of things to blog and so it’s a good idea to recycle the Suanie Awards. Maybe I’ll make it an annual run. See my mood how.

Besides I wanna honour y’all.

So…

Without further ado…

Presenting…

THE (now) ANNUAL SUANIE AWARDS 2006!!!!!!

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, thank you. As usual, let’s skip the nominations and go straight to the winners, because it’s my awards show and I say so.

Freshie Blog of the Year goes to… MANUSCRIPTS DON’T BURN!!!!!

Freshie Blog of the Year

Congrats congrats, you lot are fighting a worthy cause and I like books and I want to free the books and that’s why you lot are so deserving of this award that comes with no money, no status, but with lots of moral support. That’s what’s important, right?

The Best Original Blog goes to… THE SECOND HAND WONDERLAND!!!!!

Best Original Blog

Congrats congrats, you’ve been the most consistent personal blogger I know, while the others change, fade and flicker, you remain the same. That’s good, keep it up!

The Cyah & Come Back Again award goes to… JAY SO RULES!!!!!

Cyah and Come Back Soon

Yeah I understand how and why you feel the way you do. But please reconsider, won’t ya? That’s why this is not a ‘Farewell Award’…

Best Malaysian Socio-Political Blog (for now) goes to… REDUCED AND RECYCLED!!!!!

Best Socio Political Blog

I always love your insightful posts (when you bother to update so take this as a hint kthx).

Best Reality TV Blog goes to… CULTURALLY PRECONDITIONED!!!!!

Best Reality TV Blog

Honestly I don’t know of other reality tv blogs, but if I had read more reality tv blogs, you would have won hands down anyway πŸ˜€

Down With The Man award goes to… OPEN MALAYSIA BLOG!!!!!

down with the man

Even though I don’t understand half of what is written, I still support whatever is written. Yay!

Funniest Blog Entry goes to… SULTAN MUZAFFAR‘s Misi Suara Mawi!!!!!

Funniest Blog Entry

It’s short, deathly sweet and I still get the giggles reading it today.

Satu Misi, Satu Suara, Terus ke Mawi Anda!!!!

Bestest Haiku Blog goes to… MADHAIKU!!!!!

haiku blog of the year

Again, I don’t read many any other haiku blogs, but you are so great that you outshine everyone else! When I grow up, I want to write haiku just like you! ph33r le haiku aura!

Bestest Puppies goes to… LAINIE!!!!!

Best Puppies

Normally I wouldn’t like to recycle my awards, but in this case you win hands down πŸ˜€

Special Achievement Blog Award goes to… HANTU BOLA!!!!!

Special Achievement Award

Honestly I don’t know what you guys have achieved, but whatever it is (define your own achievements here) it must be great! πŸ˜€

The two final awards go hand in hand.

The Bestest Blog Award goes to… YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bestest Blog Award

CONGRATULATIONS AND JUBILATIONS ALL AROUND! CONFETTI AND CORNFLAKES IN THE AIR!!! POP THE CHAMPAGNE AND [censored]!!!!!!!!! You are ALL so GREAT I could hardly catch my breath.

And with that, here’s another award for ya…

UPDATE, BITCHES

Yay!

Congratulations to all the winners πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€

I won’t be around for the weekend, knock yourselves out.

The Red Kebaya – a sentimental, contemporary Malaysian story

The Red Kebaya - poster

During Ramadhan, we were invited to dinner with the cast and crew of The Red Kebaya. Along with that came an invitation to the premiere at MidValley, for which I took the day off from my day job to attend.

Before the movie started, Sandra Sodhy (TRK’s PR and publicist) said a few words, with a few lines reminding viewers to switch their mobile phones to silent mode. Well obviously Malaysians are going deaf. No matter how many times we are reminded to put our phones on silent mode, or NOT to answer phone calls during the movie, or NOT to constantly kick the back of the seat in front of you, we NEVER listen. And this was a preview screening, by invitation only, with the producers, directors, actors in the cinema hall. But some dumb fucks just cannot show respect by NOT giving road directions to his geographically-challenged friend in the middle of the movie. Twice. Very smart. If this were my movie, I’d fucking tie you up and feed you to the Sarlacci.

/rant over

The Red Kebaya - Samantha Schubert, Suanie and poster
With Samantha Schubert:

And so the story begins…

The Red Kebaya - Production stills, set

Latiff (RAMLI HASSAN). Photographer. City dweller, successful fella. Orphaned. Blocked memories from childhood. Went ahead to take photos of abandoned buildings around Malaysia as part of his next project. Saw visions of two kids, one of them who was also…

Latiff (MOHD. AFIF), a little boy whose mother was…

Azizah (VANIDAH IMRAN), a hot divorced/widowed joget girl who encountered and fell in love with…

John (BOB MERCER), an English expat who loved everything about Malaysia (the food, the people, the culture, the heat etc) and of course, loved Azizah. John was unfortunately married to…

Davinia (SAMANTHA SCHUBERT), who hated everything John loved about Malaysia, including Azizah. When she found out about the her husband’s feelings for Azizah, ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ pretty much described Davinia.

The Red Kebaya - Production stills, people

Other notable names in the movie are: Patrick Teoh, Zahim Al Bakri, Elaine Daly, Paula Malai Ali, Sabera Shaik, Jo Kukuthas and Fauziah Nawi (who had a very short but most memorable role, that is if you could recognise her in the movie πŸ˜‰ ).

Because everyone likes lists, here’s one:

  • The Red Kebaya producers are Andre Berly and Ramli Hassan, and the director is Oliver Knott
  • The Red Kebaya was shot entirely in Malaysia. They did the dolby-dolby stuff and show prints in Australia. Post-production stuff were completed at ADDAudio, a Malaysian studio
  • Bob Mercer had just 3 weeks to learn all his lines in Bahasa Malaysia
  • Principal photography took 35 days
  • Initially the owners of the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion were reluctant to have their premise used for filming. But after a series of meetings and much persuasion that lead them to better understand the concept of the movie, they finally allowed it
  • Oliver Knott did not know what a ‘kebaya’ was prior to the movie
  • The budget for TRK is RM 1.5 million. RM1.5 million can buy you 202702 packs of fags, 150000 large Big Mac meals, 3000 sets of 21″ TVs.
  • RM 1,500,000 is also around USD$ 410,778. You need to top up that amount by 486 times to be able to make Spiderman 2.
  • I am guessing this is a privately-funded movie, as deliverance was mostly in English. But I didn’t ask for sure.
  • The producers/director set this movie around the 50s/60s, no specific time line, so they tried to create a suitable environment — visual and sound to suit that era. Was still pretty funny to see a bouncer in a black jacket outside a joget club though. Some things never change.
  • The nice folks at Rising Above will be hosting a dinner charity night on Monday night at BSC… hey, that’s tonight! Plus they will also get lots of underprivileged kids to go watch TRK on Wednesday, courtesy of kind people who donate to them, so yeah it’s nice of them to do that.

The Red Kebaya - Cast and Crew

My thoughts on TRK

Great poster. Excellent score/soundtrack. Beautiful cinematography. Beautiful use of locations. Some sound glitches but I understood that to be the cinema’s technical problem. Some performances were overly theatrical, don’t translate well to movies. Storyline is different from other local movies so far, which is a good thing. A couple scenes in the movie tak masuk akal; either continuity problem or just too plain odd to comprehend. Costumes were beautiful.

The Red Kebaya - Vanidah Imran with Suanie
Suanie: You should have worn the red kebaya lah..
Vanidah: Kenot, too sexy, later you all nosebleed.

Vanidah Imran was damn hot. Samantha Schubert was rather good as someone you would love to hate. Bob Mercer’s character was a bit of useless lembik bugger, he did it rather well. Sometimes you just want to shout at him, BE A MAN! Patrick Teoh’s role was nice, one that you would not really appreciate until the end of the movie. Some scenes just broke my heart. Some scenes weren’t supposed to be funny, but the audience laughed anyway. Some parts a bit too corny, slow and long. Some parts scared the shit out of me. Well, I am easily freaked out what…

OVERALL, The Red Kebaya unashamedly tags itself as a love story, and it is really rather different from other Malaysian movies — the concept, the execution, the delivery and so on till the end of Kudat. I quite enjoyed myself, it was a day off well-spent, and I urge you movie-goers to go catch this movie and make up your own minds on it so we could have a discussion (before the cinemas take them off the screens much earlier, as they often do with local movies). It’s a struggle for me not wanting to reveal more of the plot as not to spoil it for those who will watch it, but so dying to talk about the content!

I posed a question during the press conference, something about why did they choose the ending they chose instead of another version, which I’d thought would be much better for closure. Oliver Knott (the director) and Ramli Hassan (co-producer and lead actor) replied that they went through several endings, but decided that the closure that I thought was good would be too predictable. Besides that angle had been played to death in other movies (literally). I guess it was a nice decision to end the movie in hope and gladness.

The Red Kebaya - Samantha Schubert with Suanie
Samantha: Are we done with the fake dialogue yet?
Suanie: Why? Do they suck so bad? πŸ™

So if you want to know what the heck I’m talking about, go watch The Red Kebaya when it opens in Malaysian cinemas (GSC) on 23 November 2006. Be sure to catch it early, for reasons I have stated above.

Kate James (film editor and post-production supervisor) helped me to ask Andre Berly (co-producer) for permission to upload a couple of song clips from the soundtrack onto my blog. He said yes (thanks Andre and Kate!) and here they are, two songs that I really love. Very P-Ramlee Malaysian.

Joget Selendang Sayang – 0.55 mins
Mengharap Sinar Kasih – 0.34 mins

Music by S. Atan, lyrics by Nurul Asyikin, vocals by Sheila Abdul and Arifin Tioh.

If you would check out TRK’s site, you’ll hear a nice piano tune in the background. I absolutely love the melancholy composition, and sometimes I just leave the window open so I could listen to the tune while doing other stuff.

So, The Red Kebaya23 November 2006… GSC… go watch!

Other reviews (aka people who make more sense than me): Reta (and awaiting!!!)

So after the preview screening/ press conference/ excellent lunch, I was chilling at Starbucks to get something from J, and some of the cast and crew of TRK walked in, including Ramli Hassan. Our eyes met and he exclaimed, “I think I know this person!” and he came over and we hugged. We talked a little, then J helped us to take this shot.

The Red Kebaya - Ramli Hassan with Suanie
Ramli: How much you wanna pay me for the photo?
Suanie: How much are you worth?
Ramli: For you, free lah, as long as you write about TRK!
Suanie: Wah, you so cheap!!!
Ramli: Yah I memang cheap what!
Suanie: It’s ok lah, I also cheap one.

Didn’t have to fake that one πŸ™‚

Other reviews: Sultan Muzaffar

in search of friends and booze (sg)

A few years ago, I got to know Pinky from an on-line chatroom. We got along rather famously, and she is one of the reasons why I gladly refrain from generalising Singaporeans to be similar to a certain other pink blogger, ahem.

Then came one Saturday morning when I was in the office and rather bored. Out of a whim I messaged Pinky and asked her if I could bunk at her place if I went to Singapore. She said yes. So I took the afternoon bus and arrived at Singapore at night. Pinky was a fabulous host, I had a most wonderful and memorable trip, we became good friends since.

(She did burn my toast, but that’s another story :D)

To cut a long story short, I did the same thing last weekend. Still don’t quite know why, probably a sub-conscious thing about my expensively renewed passport sitting alone in the corner feeling useless and rather blank.

We had simple food for lunch, but the company was great πŸ˜‰

Pinky loves noodles

We then went to the city centre to begin an exhaustive search for Reese’s peanut butter cups. Gave up, had a break at Starbucks, then Pinky had to tend to a prior engagement. I asked my cousin who is studying in Singapore if she wanted to meet up. She said yes, and we had dinner at Bugis.

Cousin had an appointment with her manicurist, so I followed her for a bit.

Cousin doing a mani/pedicure

Quite scary, the chilli red fingernails. A bit like pontianak, heh.

Made plans to meet Dr. Buckaroo for booze. So I left my cousin to her nail thingy and took a bus down to the meeting place. The bus route was this straight road that was probably only a couple of kilometres, but it felt like the longest journey ever due to the many bus stops along the way, and the numerous traffic lights (along one single straight road!)

It was on the bus that I witnessed something amazing — when there was a bus in front of us, my bus driver stopped and waited for the bus in front to jalan first. Only then he’d go. SO MUCH PATIENCE!!! I mean, if this was Malaysia, my bus driver would have swerved sharply to go out and ‘cut’ the bus in front.

So polite = longer travel time = probably a hell lot safer.

Dr. Buckaroo was still as tall as ever. He also bought me beer. YAY WE LOVE DR. BUCKAROO!!!!! πŸ˜€

Dr Buckaroo and Erdinger

My cousin joined us later.

Suanie and cousin

She’s not underaged, but don’t even think about it πŸ˜‰

Dr Buckaroo and Suanie

Another amazing thing happened — the pub peps called for last orders at 12.40 a.m. At 12.50 a.m. the bill arrived. At 12.55 a.m. we were politely ushered to leave. That’s like bloody early, innit?!?

Ah well.

The next day, Pinky took me to VivoCity to continue our Reese’s peanut butter cup quest. There wasn’t any at Candy Empire (which incidentally stocks a lot of non-candy related items and not a whiff of Reese’s peanut butter cups, herro?!?!?!) but we saw this tall-ass pseudo snowman, which I christened tall-ass pseudo snowman.

VivoCity pseudo snowman

You could cross the river to get to Sentosa Island if you are so inclined.

Suanie and Pinky at VivoCity Harbour Front

Walking towards the MRT after dinner at Tony Roma’s, we passed by Balaclava, where I fell on my butt a couple of years ago. Never showed my face there again.

We made plans to yum seng with Edwin at Brewerkz at Riverside Point.

I had the sample set. Golden ale rocks!!! Anyone wants to import it here? Or open a Brewerkz in KL? I will be a faithful patron, I promise!

Brewerkz sample set

Suanie and beer at Brewerkz Singapore

Ed: Want to take photo of me ar?
me: Yalar, what else.
Ed: Wait I pose kawaii style, like Fireangel.

Kawaii Ed

Ed: Eh you tell Fireangel I love her blog. I’m a fan, okay?!

Ed and Suanie after beer

We walked past four steel doll thingies sitting on a bench by the pathway.

Me: What’s that?
Pinky: Art.

Ed, Suanie, Pinky at Riverside Point

Fun with art! πŸ˜€

Art is fun

Thanks, brudder for the beers! Will come back again next year to fulfill annual free beer quota, bwahahaha!!!

Drunk Ed

Blah damn sleepy now. Wanted to write about me wanting to go back to BP from Larkin on the first day of Raya but there weren’t any immediate busses for that, only to KL, and how I had to walk 500m to get to the Air Keroh highway stop under the hot scorching sun carrying heavy bags because the bus driver was a fucktard.

Never mind, cultivate tolerance.

Anyway thanks to my Singaporean peps. Call me when you are in KL, I bring you to makan!

i’m the single and looking blogger

Regulars to this blog would know of the shameless unadulterated self-whoring ‘Date Suanie‘ campaign that didn’t quite make it. It’s been more than a year, success rate is zero and that post serves as a painful lesson why no one should ever pimp themselves like that. Ever.

That is if you are really looking for a boyfriend lah πŸ˜‰

So when Audrey of FEMALE mag e-mailed and asked if I would like to be part of a feature yadda yadda bloggers yadda yadda, I of course took it up. I am not a blog-ho for nothing.

The feature was published in their October 2006 issue.

FEMALE-October-pg75-suanie

Haha, funny write-up. FYI, I didn’t write it πŸ™‚ Four other bloggers featured are Bunny Wunny, Jenn Tai, Oliviasy and Cynthia Foo.

Scanned pages. Click to enlarge.

FEMALE-October-pg74

FEMALE-October-pg75

FEMALE-October-pg76

Normally I don’t do this (i.e. scan stuff and what not) but for some reason I am finding the entire affair quite funny. So let me enjoy myself lah.

fare ye well

I’ve been so out of touch with what’s happening around the country (that’s what happens when you are cut off from the Internet — I don’t know how I managed to survive years ago), and didn’t know that the Venerable Dr K. Sri Dhammananda Nayaka Maha Thera had sadly passed away πŸ™ πŸ™ πŸ™

The first time I met the Chief Reverend was back in 1996. He had stopped by Batu Pahat, probably at the invitation of the Kg. Merdeka temple, and delivered a talk in English which was translated to Mandarin for there were many non-English speaking people present. He was quite funny — cracked several jokes which was unfortunately lost upon those who couldn’t understand English. Luckily I could, and I thoroughly enjoyed his talk and his light-hearted mannerisms. Quite a nice change from some of the other monks we had listened to.

I didn’t know who he was then, until my seniors informed me that he was THE Chief Reverend for both Malaysia and Singapore. He sure didn’t act like it — you would expect someone of such significance to be serious and uptight and all. Well I was young, and thankfully that view of mine was proven wrong, not just by the Chief Reverend but also by a couple other monks I would later meet and get to know.

A few years later, the Chief Reverend’s pictorial autobiography was published. I bought a copy, and had the good fortune to have the Chief Reverend sign my book when we paid him a visit at the Brickfields temple. In the meantime I had read up about the Chief Reverend. From what I learnt, he was instrumental in preaching religious tolerance and harmony, especially in Malaysia when we faced so much troubles before (and still do, but a slightly different set of troubles now, I think).

The Chief Reverend himself wrote many books; I believe the most popular one is What Buddhists Believe‘. There are a couple of others that I also enjoyed, such as “Why Religious Tolerance?”, “The Buddhist Concept of Heaven and Hell” and “Life in Uncertain, Death is Certain”. You can download his free publications here.

I particularly like his logical approach to certain issues that I seek answers to, and his works were very helpful during the ‘finding-myself’ days. He was one of the reasons why I believe that Buddhism is the one religion I could most understand and relate to. I don’t claim to be a very good Buddhist; really I am far far far from it but imagine — if there wasn’t Buddhism, I could turn out worse?

Sad day for Malaysians and all of humanity indeed.

Wesak Day @ Buddhist Maha Vihara, Brickfields 2005 - 16 portrait of Ven Dr K Sri Dhammananda

May the Chief Reverend attain parinirvana. If not this life, then surely the next.

i am a wtf monster

Suanie is a monster

(Obviously the horrific — or at least I’d like to think so — photo above was inspired by Kim)

Behold, world! I am now one of the few moNSTers soon to be taking over the world and its limited oil supply! BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

Burp.

Monsterblog is a collaborative effort between NST (News Straits Times), JARING and a few bloggers to take blogging to the next step. I don’t know what that means, but it sure sounds good. Don’t mind me, I just invented that sentence out of nowhere.

Introducing MONSTERBLOG.

Monsterblog logo

The bloggers currently involved in the project are:

Monsterbloggers - original line up

There was a feature on us last Saturday:

Monsterblog in the papers

Monsterblog in the papers (2)

I’ll talk about this more soon. Right now it’s lunch time, and I am a very hungry monster. RAWRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

Once again, it’s MONSTERBLOG.COM.MY πŸ˜‰

Btw some bloggers posted about this too, check them out:

KY — KY @ Monsterblog.com.my
ShaolinTiger — All About My MONSTER!
Kimberlycun — I am a hot moNSTer.
Sultan Muzaffar — MoNSTer blog mucul!
Peter Tan — Monstering Around
Memoirs of a Chocoholic — [vvv] Malaysian Monster Mash [vvv]
Jeff Ooi — Welcome to moNSTer
The Sensintrovert — The Malaysian Blogosphere Sandiwara
The Asian Tiger — MonsterBlog
Asia Business Consulting — Newspapers in the blogging world
Mooiness — First there was STOMP, now thereΓƒΒ’Γ’β€šΒ¬Γ’β€žΒ’s MONSTERBLOG

i lost a sister and gained a brother

We were back home in Batu Pahat to hold the bride’s family Chinese wedding dinner. Also had a tea-serving ceremony, where me as the younger sibling has to serve tea to the newly-weds.

Sister's wedding - Suanie serving tea

I know I am chinless. Shut up.

Check out teh l337 body art thing going on…

Sister's wedding - bride and groom

And blue liquid….

Sister's wedding - blue liquid is weird

My folks were happy…

Sister's wedding - newlyweds with parents

I love my sisters…

Sister's wedding - sisters!

There’s another one this weekend. But my job as the n00bish amateur photographer is done. They are hiring a pro, maybe because I couldn’t stop drinking the red wine…