Let's Rock4Yvonne

Since it's all for a good cause, I'm doing my bit for one of my favourite ladies. Frankly, I'm a bit embarrassed. This charity should have zoomed past its halfway mark in less than six months.

I got my ticket from the Canaanland bookstore at Centrepoint, where publicity for ROCK4HOPE at this site is virtually non-existent. No posters or even a handwritten notice to grab the attention of passers-by. Is it any wonder ticket sales were slow? Considering the poor penetration of Internet media in the country, even this post will do jack. But I'm giving it a try anyway.

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ROCK4HOPE

Performing Artists: Deja Voodoo Spells and A Day At The Zoo
Venue: Sunway University College, Multi-Purpose Hall
Date: 9th September 2006
Time: 7:30pm onwards
Ticket Price: RM20 only.

The concert's all about Yvonne's condition. There are other ways to help her out. Ticket sales details follow.

Get Your Tickets At:

• Fantasia Music Studio
  32-B, Jln 20/16A
  Paramount Garden, Section 20
  46300 Petaling Jaya
  Tel: 03-78738991
• Jaq's and Jan's
  (next to Victoria Station or Jake’s Charbroil steak house)
  Very Near Bangsar Shopping Center
  (so near in fact, you don't need to call)
• Attributes
  No. 8 Jln SS 13/6
  47500 Subang Jaya
• Canaanland (PJ Branch)
  F14, (First Floor), Centrepoint
  Lebuh Bandar Utama
  47800 Petaling Jaya
  Tel: 03-77260461
• Canaanland (KL Branch)
  8th Floor, Menara TA One
  22, Jalan P. Ramlee
  50250 Kuala Lumpur
  (Opposite Petronas Twin Towers/KLCC)
  Tel: 03-21662601/03-21662602
• Canaanland (Damansara Perdana branch)
  Unit 2-15, Perdana The Place
  No. 1, Jln PJU 8/5D
  Bandar Damasara Perdana
  47820 Petaling Jaya
  Tel: 03-77264233
• AYA Cafe
  No. 34B, Jalan SS 15/8
  47500 Subang Jaya
  Selangor
  Tel: 03-56378737, 603-5637473

So it's only RM20. Where else could you possibly get rock concert tickets for that price? You probably won't see me there, because I can't guarantee my presence at that date. What's your excuse?

Would It Be Wrong?

Picture this entirely hypothetical scenario: It's late at night and I'm having a shower when the lights go out, and - by a fluke of nature - the water stops flowing. I'm left in the dark, covered in shower cream, my hair glued to my scalp by shampoo and I can't see my hand in front of my face. It might be nth hours before everything is restored.

Can you imagine the pain? The discomfort? The terror? Would it be wrong, seditious or treasonous to call the ten Biblical plagues upon the heads of all I would hold responsible for my predicament? Are such outpourings considered threats to security and harmony as well? Will blogging it land me in jail?

We don't know. Nobody's saying anything.

I couldn't have put it better than Jeff Jarvis, who ended a related post thus: "Blogging was a helluva lot easier when all we wrote about was our cats."

No shit.

Bourdain on Beirut

Safe at home, Tony B finally put down his feelings on the aborted Lebanon shoot for his No Reservations series. A full excerpt is available here, if you find the original ad-riddled article at Salon.com a bit tedious.

There is no overwhelming anger towards the warring parties. He does not point fingers, or issue any clarion calls. Just pangs of regret at not being able to party, mingle, eat yummy Lebanese food, shoot it all and tell the world to drop by and get a taste of what might have been a great Lebanese adventure.

Along with the senseless fighting and loss of life, it's really among the saddest things about the current Middle East situation.

What's In A Name?

This journalist, like many others, fervently believes the hand poised on the Made-in-Iran Launch button is connected to a brain with sub-code wiring. The proof is in statements like these.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday.

— Associated Press (AP), via Yahoo! News

Drastic, yet absurd measures to preserve the purity of the national language from the onslaught of corruption by foreign influences. By golly, it sounds so dreadfully familiar. But the prospects for comedy are good. I look forward to the day when I can yell, Roti liat, satu! (One "elastic loaf", please!) at my neighbourhood mamak stall, while enjoying a "short talk" with whatever friends I have left after twenty-odd years of separation, and mulling over the building of a "small room" somewhere in Langkawi.

I'm sure my "elastic loaf" would taste great, too.

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And why didn't I hear of this in the local mainstream news? Is this the reason why the Government has its entire digestive tract in Gordian knots over unfettered, free-for-all reporting via online media? Checking the related news sidebar on the BBC page, I'm starting to see a pattern, and for once, I can't blame them.

What takes the cake about this ban is that the names of animals, insects, fruit, vegetables or colours are involved. If this piece of legislation is actively enforced, it presents a particular dilemma for a certain minority. Words like huang (yellow), lan (blue) or ma (horse) are used as Chinese surnames, while long (dragon), feng (phoenix) or lin (unicorn) are powerful names for those with high expectations for their offspring. There are other words like feng (bee/wasp), hou (monkey), or ying (firefly).

No matter. As this post demonstrates, creativity is boundless.

If You See Red, Don't Go Green

Will Greenpeace See Red?
I've always been ambivalent towards green groups like Greenpeace. Over the years public sympathy and funding have morphed them from a free-floating fringe group into something akin to a political party. As everyone knows: When a group professing altruism becomes political, things invariably go wrong.

I remember an old Readers' Digest article about how their "Save the Seals" campaign, led by that witch Brigitte Bardot, ruined an Inuit community by depriving them of a livelihood. Today, the Inuit are hunting seals again, as well as - what I regard as a slap-in-the-face for Greenpeace - Canadian fisherman, who partake in an annual seal slaughter to eliminate the competition for cod, pollock and salmon, while earning a profit doing it.

How long will it be before they cross over to the dark side and employ the terrorist tactics so favoured by loony legions like PETA and various animal welfare groups, who pick the easy battles and ignore the good fights?


Life After Whales
It confounds me that Japan, a well-spring of innovation and improvisation, is in no hurry to find a solution for the sword of Damocles hovering over dozens of fishing communities who supplement their income by killing or capturing whales and dolphins: "What the hell do we do, once we drive them all to extinction?" There's one Japanese fisherman who has given up whaling and dolphin hunting to organise whale watching tours. Others may not be as receptive to the radical idea that a live whale is just as valuable as a dead one.

Maritime patrols would be a good career path for former whalers. Pirates? Terrorists? Straying North Korean vessels? Suicidal Greenpeace pontoons? Imagine the large metal shank of a harpoon several feet long protruding out of the eye-socket of some stubborn captain of a trespassing ship. What other "Don't Bleeping Mess With Us" message could be more straight-to-the... -point?

Being Real Sports

So they're dumping RM490 million into a sports complex in the UK? The lifestyle changes brilliantly proposed by the Government must be working; they've saved enough for another prestigious monument. Personally, I don't think it's necessary, since we've already got the infrastructure and training plans in place.

Don't believe me? All the runarounds the civil service and government departments put us through has the whiff of a secret exercise regime. Once the wild goose chase ends, you'll feel the after-effects of an entire Iron Man race, complete with the mental and physical agony. We do, after all, love our flatbreads and sweet pulled tea.

Our Government cares. Really.

Whale Safari, Redefined

Whale-watching tourists in Norway were given a first-hand look at the country's whaling industry when an animal they were watching was harpooned. The carnage was not taken well by the tourists. I wonder if any children were on deck at that moment?

The blood flowed and it wasn't a pretty sight. This really wasn't what we came to see.

— Leontien Dieleman, Dutch tourist

No shit, Leon. Whale-watching-slash-whaling tours, while economical and possibly educational, will never catch on. Not until the nasty bits of the business are resolved, anyway.

While Japan stoops to bribing poorer countries in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for control over whaling restrictions, Norway doesn't even bother with politics or pretensions. This, however, goes beyond "rubbing it in your face".