Use wikipedia much? Then this is for you, dearies.

If you go to Wikipedia page today or any other day, and notice a header seeking for donation, I do urge you to give something...even as low as RM10. Surely most of us can afford RM10, right?

Compared to how much Wikipedia has assisted us in our search for all sorts of information, trivial and otherwise...how many times have we wiki-ed for information, those times when we heard of something for the first time and needed more details, when somebody asked you something and you knew it once but may have forgotten, those tip-of-the-tongue moments, and so forth.

I would say RM10 is in fact, too little.

So, why should we donate to Wikipedia if after all, we google for information all the time, and Google is free, right? (Google make tons of money from advertising btw, wikipedia has no ads).

And we already paid for our whatever-speed-it-is internet!

Well, read below, which are the words of Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Your donation covers not only your own costs of using Wikipedia, but also the costs of other Wikipedia readers.

Like the retired farmer in upstate New York who's using Wikipedia to study the science of sludge, and the student in Kuala Lumpur who's researching organic chemistry.  The British mechanic who, after he broke his back in an accident, used Wikipedia to retrain himself as a web developer.  The civil servant in Finland who set up an offline version of Wikipedia for a small school in Ghana. And the father in Mexico City who takes his little daughters to the museum on weekends, and uses Wikipedia to help them understand everything they're seeing there. 

Wikipedia's job is to bring the sum total of all human knowledge to everyone around the world in their own language. That's a pretty audacious mission, but with 30 million articles and 287 languages, I'd say that thanks to you and people like you, we are getting there. The fact that you are helping to pay the costs of running Wikipedia means it can stay ad-free and independent of bias, focused solely on helping its readers.   

Exactly as it should be.

So would you like to give back ? Click below :)

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en

p/s - Yes, I'm starting to blog here again. Whee!

Hello, again

Wow. It has been so long.....so, so long.

I think I shall be writing here again :)

Cubaan

This, is a test for blogging via the blogger app.

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

The concept of affordable memory erasing, so far, are only in movies.

Inadvertently though, over the weekend I found another way to replace those memories you wish to erase.

By : creating new memories of similar nature, somewhat, but with new elements.

And thus now should someone mentions road trip, I carry the freshest memories and let it run over the old ones.

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AM, IH, NIG, ZMN, II, F, and even 'Ayoh'

They don't know it, but they've made me a much happier person with the memories of their antics.

Terima Kasih Cinta @ Istana Budaya

"cinta, tegarkan hatiku

tak mau sesuatu merenggut engkau

naluriku berkata, tak ingin terulang lagi

kehilangan cinta, hati bagai raga tak bernyawa"

Cinta. Love.

L-O-V-E. That four-letter word that makes the world go round.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to catch the preview of Terima Kasih Cinta (TKC) at Istana Budaya. TKC is basically a musical adaptation of the 2006 movie CINTA by Khabir Bhatia, portraying five perspectives of love; with different facets, relationships and backgrounds. We have :-

• the married couple whose veneer of perfect marriage are shattered by their flaws
• the brother and sister who are at odds over their respective life choices
• the rich magnate and the bookstore help with the wide chasm of their socio-stand in way of love
• the carefree girl with a weighty baggage and the dorky nice guy who's fallen for her
• the forgetful gentleman lost in his past and the sympathetic lady who found a place in her heart for him.

As I've watched the movie version (and enjoyed it SO much!), there's no escaping the comparisons and expectations. Ya la, I'm only human kan. Since it's been quite some time, frankly I've forgotten some parts of the movie and thus was still able to relish in the more minute details of the whole story, as well as excitement/happiness/relief/wonder/sorrow of finding out what-happens-next in some of the scenes.

Anyways, as a musical theatre of its own, TKC has its strong points especially technically (crafty set, amazingly creative use of lights to intersperse several scenes at one go, cool change of props, beautiful play of colors, a very enjoyable song repertoire) - but where it really counts as a theatre performance, I find it just so-so. The main cast featuring a mix of well-known names and newcomers gave a mixed performance while honestly none of the couples really shone prominently above the others. Chemistry between them feels mostly a tad unnatural, forced even sometimes. Moments of raw emotions that I expected were few and far in between. I also found the narrating by supporting cast during certain scenes a bit irritating and unnecessary - I feel those 'nuggets' of information could've been weaved into the storytelling without having to resort to the somewhat childish and tacky 'announcements'.

Perhaps CINTA is just not meant to be made into a musical theatre. For me, theatre performances are supposed to sway you in the flow of the moment, from one scene to the next, building momentum until the climax and either end with a bang or..NO, theatre should ALWAYS end with a bang and leave one going, WOW. wow. oh. wow. oh.

Having five separate storylines means that there are FIVE different endings which proves to be a hindrance to the solid wow factor, which i suspect is the main reason the fulfillment fails as the audience will get a bit of each story, pause, next story, pause, next, pause, rinse and repeat. Although in the movie version the formula works fine, on stage this time it goes down a different way.

Perhaps my expectations were just too high.

Of the 10 main cast, I found Toni Eusoff (Harris) and Deja Moss (Dian) to be the most convincing, while the most not-believable (as in aisey macam fake sungguh) would have to be Aryana-Taufik (Nadia Aqilah & Vince Chong). The rest falls somewhere in between. Also watch out for members of the supporting cast, where there are a few attention-stealers and colorful characters that are sure to amuse.

What I would like to see in local theatre productions at Istana Budaya, of which lately seem to be invaded by the musical la-di-da bug ever since Puteri Gunung Ledang was such a hit, are theatre performances where people actually deliver their lines out loud while acting in characters that do not need to break into a song or dance at every 10-minutes interval. The kind that will make me leave my seat deep in my thoughts of what I've just seen or swayed by emotions from a solid wow-bang ending, where when the curtain call comes I'd feel that a standing ovation is aptly deserved, rather than because the audience were only being polite in some cases. Yes, Malaysians can be polite that way.

Ah well, I'm digressing.

Terima Kasih Cinta runs until 6th March 2011.

For tickets and more info, go to http://apps.gua.com.my/terimakasihcinta

On Twitter at http://twitter.com/TKCinta ; and tag as #terimakasihcinta http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23TerimaKasihCinta

yet another new beginning

Formally received the good news today at work...alhamdulillah.

Just did some 'digging' and realized that it's EXACTLY one year (to the day!) of my first day starting duty at the current office, ain't that such a nice coincidence?

Truthfully, I did have some doubts when I was first informed of moving here. Which was to be expected due to leaving one's comfort zone for uncharted waters, what more in my position where I've been more or less quite out of the loop of things due to my previous postings and line of work. Lots of things in my mind that time, but as always I will gamely take on when faced with new options, especially those that promises bigger and better things at the helm. Hey, who wouldn't?

I'll have to admit apart from the initial minor hiccup, things have been going quite smoothly and in fact I daresay much better than expected. Which I owe a lot of to the people around here, as well as others in my life.

Work, studies, home, family, friends - makes the schedule of a Ted so, so full and exciting.
Some days more than the other. Some people more than the rest. Heeee. Just the way I like it.

That's how it's been for the last 365 days.

Moving onwards.

lucidity check

I dreamt that it was freezing. Perhaps it was winter. Bundled in a heavy jacket, I was still so cold and he offered to warm me up. He assured me that he meant well and took my icy hands in his.

Later I headed to a play, which turned out to be canceled under really absurd circumstances.


Manifestation of daytime thoughts can be quite amusing.