Muhibahnya kita

Sepet dan Gubra : Pencemar budaya Melayu?

Budaya Melayu, jika tercemar, orang-orangnya sendiri yang mencemarkan.
Bukannya kerana, atau diburukkan lagi dengan Sepet dan Gubra.

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SMS to Visitor yesterday morning :

"There he was making such racist comments on national TV last nite, and here I am a tudunged Melayu SMS-ing a cina guy while making small talk to another cina (rather cute oso!). He'd have a heart attack!"

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Syukurlah dulu aku turut satu kelas dengan para-para Tham Keen Fung, Yuvarajah, Ng Say Seong, Loretta George, Nithiyaletchumi dan Pam Ang Mei Li sama, bukan hanya dengan para-para Massabrina, Aida Hani, Khairil Sazlin, Nadiah, Ahmad Azwan dan Iskandar Dzulkarnain saja.

P.S - jika kau kenal semua nama-nama di atas, email aku!

kritikus jumpa pembikin filem

Last night after persistent SMSes from the Visitor I finally decided to attend the Bicara Filem event at Akademi Seni Kebangsaan. We arrived quite late, the screening of Dato' Rahim Razali's much-acclaimed Matinya Seorang Patriot was already well into the second half of the film already.

The panelists for the forum were filmmaker Dr. Mahadi J. Murat and Berita Harian journalist (journalist kan?) Akmal Abdullah, and the title was "ANTARA KRITIKAN DAN PEMBIKINAN FILEM: DI MANAKAH TITIK PERTEMUANNYA?.

What I learnt :

1. To be a critic, one needs to have at least some knowledge of films. Anybody can give a review, and anybody can try to be a critic, but it takes a good knowledge base for one to become a real critic.

2. A critic is usually influenced by his own experience and school of thought, as well as the time he lives in. Therefore a critic in 1980 might say one thing about a film made in 1980, and another critic in 2006 could watch the same 1980 film and could likely have a different opinion from the first.

3. Critics should first and foremost be eclectic in making up their opinions, and not based on one pre-set specific theory or principle.

The surprising thing was that we, the audience found what a couple of members of the audience had to say were more interesting and engaging than the panelists'. Well, of course but then it has to be noted that members of the audience who had their say included Mansor Puteh and Pak Hassan Muthalib :)

But hats off to Dr. Mahadi who nicely played along to Akmal's off-the-track comments and very nicely tried saying "Dude, what I think about Y is such and such, but then again the forum is supposed to diccuss about X" (of course lah he didn't say it like that, but I think that's what he meant). But the other panelist seemed to fail to (or pretended not to?) realize that people thought he's about a mile off track already.

Just for thoughts - is it possible for a film reviewer-critic to jot down whole pages of notes about narrative of the film, the storyline and his thoughts on what this and that meant bla-bla-bla, and in the process forgot* the name of the MAIN CHARACTER as well as the love interest? Okaylah, the love interest I can kasi chan, but to have no idea of the main character's name for God's sake?

I realized while driving back that I wanted to ask this question-

"Through the internet as an alternative medium to existing media channels, with the emergence of self-acclaimed film reviewers cum critics in self-made sites as well as filmmakers with blogs/websites themselves thus enabling two-way interaction between the filmmakers and the critics as well as Joe Public - could this be seen as a positive contribution towards the so called 'meeting point', and are these self-published individuals actually worthy to be reckoned as film critics in that sense?"

Maybe I should email the question to Akmal and Dr Mahadi? Anyone got their email addresses?

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Rujuk * di atas - Aku tak rasa kejam bila aku katakan pada Fadz aku fikir dia patut tembak** aje kepalanya.

Rujuk ** di atas - Okeylah, sebagai seorang yang baik hati, tembak dengan lastik getah aje.

Ted, millionaire

Picked up a book at MPH today while waiting for a movie to start. It was such good stuff that I finished almost the whole book - hurray for bookstores that allows free reading!

According to The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach, these are basically the only things you need to do in order to become a millionaire and retire comfortably around 50+ :

1. Pay yourself first every month before paying everyone else i.e. put aside a certain amount of money from your monthly salary into your retirement investment. At least 10% or more depending on the lifestyle you want. (Here we got EPF already, well, add another investment to that. ASB, ASW 2020, money market etc).
2. Buy a house as soon as possible and pay it off quickly! Get a home loan that allows you to make payments every two weeks instead of monthly, there's a great reduction in total loan term and amount that you'll have to pay if you do that.
3. When you finished payment on the first house, buy a second house. Live in one, rent out the other.
3. Don't live on debt. Credit cards interest rates are such a killer to your money.
4. Identify you Latte Factor* and do without it. Add that money to your retirement investment (in item 1) instead.

On top of that, items 1 & 2 should be done AUTOMATICALLY (hence the term 'Automatic Millionaire') i.e. through automatic deductions by the company you work for and by your bank. Therefore you don't need to be disciplined about it anymore as it is taken out of your hands and done for you. You'll get used with the lesser amount and make do with only the balance as that's the amount you'll get to spend. Nak harap disiplin tiap2 bulan masukkan duit dalam bank? Heh... duit dah dalam tangan.. bye-bye la selalunya, ada aje benda yang nak dibeli, kan? Kan? So after the money is taken out of your hands, you can spend how you like it without even having a budget. BUT spending freely means only the cash in your hands, NOT the cash you don't have! That means NO CREDIT CARDS.

So the biggest hurdle here actually is item 4 lah where you got to put some effort in. He suggested if you have many credit cards now, pay it all off (beginning with the account that you owe the least) then cancel the cards one by one. Maintain just one account to be used for things you need, but make sure you can pay it off at the end of every month!

I'm on my way to become an automatic millionaire. Are you?

* Latte Factor -
the small stuff that you spend money on regularly (maybe even daily) without realizing you don't really need it, and that over time, the total money spent on it is really a lot. E.g. the fancy RM10 coffee you buy everyday before you start work (when u could easily make your own), or that two-pack-a-day cigarette habit (which also kills u slowly in the process), or that three-times-a-week pizza, or that full package Astro subscription when you hardly watch the Sports and News channels etcetera. Something that you don't need but still spend money on, something that you could do without, without compromising your lifestyle. You don't even need to do TOTALLY without it, having less of it also can lah - only two days buy Starbucks, make your own coffee the other three; smoke only a pack a day; cook or get nasi campur two times out of three; get only the Astro package with channels you really watch.

Could you count at least a RM100 savings monthly if you do that? With compounding interest, an additional RM100 invested monthly starting this month would become an additional RM59,000 for your retirement in 20 years time at a modest 8% annual return. Which one sounds better? Those weekly pizza dinners and full package Astro, or RM59,000?

Surirumah terdesak

At 3 a.m. this morning, me and my mother were still watching Desperate Housewives on DVD. Season 2 (Lynette succeeded in getting a child-care centre set up at the office).

That's one of the things we do when we're left just the two of us on the weekends - watch DVDs or go catch a movie at a nearby cinema, then maybe go shopping for groceries, send our cars to the workshop, cook something simple or get takeaway chicken rice from the kedai makan at the back. There was this one weekend that we became total couch potatoes and watched TV from morning till night for the whole day.

It's a fun thing to have a mother that loves to watch stuff like Desperate Housewives, Lost and C.S.I. as much as you yourself do.

But I'm still the only one in the house who adore The Simpsons. D'oh!

[image source]

Planning to watch GUBRA? Read this first.

This post is in whole from Mr. Visitor's blog (with permission) to spread the word.
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TO ALL WHO ARE GOING TO SEE GUBRA, PLEASE READ THIS:

As they say, "kuch kuch hota hai". Something, something, is happening. Yasmin wrote on her blog that several friends, including her producer Elyna, had gone to the cinema to buy tickets for Gubra but was told that the show they wanted was sold out. But their friends who had managed to get tickets for the same show went into the hall and found it half empty.

Now, this is extremely odd. Unless there were some massive coincidence, it wouldn't be that every single one of the booked tickets were uncollected.

Read about it here.

Yasmin found out later that someone has been making large bookings. She says:

"What's been happening is this. Someone, or some people, out there have been making false bookings in large numbers. However, only half the seats are available for bookings. which explains why the screenings are very often exactly only half full.

"I don't know what can be done about it, but that, it would seem, is what's been happening."

Strange, isn't it?

Anyway, no one wants to speculate, and certainly no one wants to make any accusations. But what we want is to make sure those who want to see the movie are able to do so.

So, here's my suggestion:

DON'T MAKE PHONE OR INTERNET BOOKINGS. GO STRAIGHT TO THE CINEPLEX COUNTER AND WAIT UNTIL HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SHOWTIME. THIS IS WHEN THEY RELEASE THE UNCOLLECTED BOOKINGS. BUY YOUR TICKET THEN.

I think it should be alright to buy tickets at the last minute, because the first 10 minutes of showtime are usually ads and trailers.

So, here's hoping we are able to rectify the problem from now on.

Tell all your friends about this, SMS them, send emails, get the message through. Blog about it.

SPREAD THE WORD!
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So yeah, like Mr. Visitor said, we don't want to speculate or accuse anyone of anything. It's just that, if you're planning to watch Gubra, and was told it was fully-booked / sold out, it's worth your while to wait and try again to get your tickets half an hour before the show starts.

Terengganu

'Twas a working trip. I swear.

Bos Aku

Bos aku.
Bagi paperwork
banyak.

Bos aku.
Selalu suruh aku cari sendiri
macam mana nak selesaikan kerja,
"Belajar", katanya.

Bos aku.
Membuatkan aku merungut
bila aku pressure
dengan tugasan yang tak siap-siap.

Bos aku.
Tunjukkan cara menyelesaikan masalah yang besar itu.

Bos aku.
Betulkan kesalahan aku
dalam kertas kerja yg nilainya berjuta.

Bos aku.
Belikan aku nasi
apabila aku tak ikut mereka keluar tadi
kerana kakiku terseliuh.

Bos aku.
Tahu
kewujudan
blog ini.

Bos.
Aku.

Hehehe.

tikettikettiket

organizing a movie 'togethergether' online for 90+ people is definitely not rocket science, but it's no simple matter either. there's one who books for 10 persons, one who hasn't even arrived in malaysia yet, one that keeps changing the number of people in his party etc. etc.

i hope everything goes well and we'll manage to get tickets for everybody.

to tell the truth, erm. better not, haha. you may be one of those who's gonna go.

okay, to tell the truth. we're still not 100% sure of
1) what time it's gonna be (hope my 9-ish guess is correct)
2) the meeting place (duduk depan ticket office nanti orang ingat ulat tiket pulak?)
3) whether we'd be able to get the good seats

and i gotta be away for three days starting monday. haha.

thank god for the the friends i have with their bigger-than-big networks (social and otherwise), which comes very very much handy at times like these.

ted, go out and get to know more people!