Hilmyworks

Jehane Noujaim told the people at TED her wish: “I wish to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film.“

And the people at TED chose her wish as one of the wishes they will help make true.

Pangea Day is the fulfilment of her wish. On May 10 2008, six cities (Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro) will be linked by videoconferencing to create a broadcast of 24 short films along with live music and talks. This broadcast will be shown on participating TV channels and on the Internet.

While the local channels and cinemas may or may not pick this up, you can watch this event on the Internet, or attend any nearby place that is hosting the event by showing the broadcast. You can even host the event yourself and let the site know so that others can find your site.

In fact, if you’re an MMU student, the Hosts locator reveals that MMU is one of the sites that will host a broadcast.

A colleague brought a really cool device to work; a portable guitar amp. With no external power needed (I still wonder what kind of batteries it’s using), a guitarist can play an electric guitar with just a guitar, amp and headphones, and just be portable.

What made it cool were the reactions it got from people. All those without headphones could only hear tame acoustic strumming. The one with the headphone was hearing excellent electric riffs, and the ‘wow‘ on their faces showed how worthwhile the difference was. Cool beans.

A billboard with 3D rocks each larger than a person. Sighted at Pusat Bandar Damansara.

It ain’t there anymore, but some of you might have been lucky enough to catch the Mini Cooper hanging from the side of a building at Bukit Bintang.

If you explore the nook and crannies of Bukit Bintang, this alleyway example is still around.

Yeah, I haven’t blogged for a while. Plenty of distractions.

I don’t take the Monorail a lot, so it was a surprise for me to discover that the rail moves.

The multi-segmented track swings one way for incoming trains, and once the train has parked in the single-rail station, it swing the other way for an exit.

I keep thinking how delicate the balancing is - gotta make sure only one train reaches the end and given enough time - and how cool the wheeled pillar design is. Yes, this geeks me out.

PingMag, a website that reviews Japanese arts, design and sometimes design from around the world, reviewed a Melaka-based seal-engraver named Ze-King Tham, or Mr King. He does the usual Chinese seals, but also creates seals in other languages (quote: “English, Thai, Japanese, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Javi“) and in other designs as well, like pictures.

However, it’s the opening paragraph to the article that got me.

“To get you in the groove first: Malaysia is an amalgamation of ethnicities and cultures, a many-sided die making up a distinctive society. This manifests itself when one is walking down the street – in one instance, we found ourselves at an open-air food stand, inhaling impossibly cheap and delicious roti and dal under the benevolent gaze of the South Indian hawker. Sharing our plastic picnic table was a mixed group, all eating the same fare – a Chinese face, a Malaysian face, a headscarf-wearing Muslim woman – all chatting together and passing the bread basket.”

YEAH.

A friend related to me a statement posed by a married man with kids: “Our parents were able to raise a number of children without problems back then. Why is it harder for our generation to raise more children?“. It’s an interesting question, since it implies that there are external factors that has changed from our parents’ time to our time.

Wired has a geek’s answer, looking into how nature usually handles the problem:
“It turns out that animals have evolved a balance between offspring and effort. Some can even adjust how many offspring they produce, depending on whether they are under stress or live comfortably. Ruth Mace, an expert on family size at University College London, argues this week in the journal Science that humans are governed by the same kinds of rules. When the standard of living goes up, the cost of living goes up too. It takes a family in Addis Ababa (the urban capitol of Ethiopia) a lot more money to raise an additional child than a family out in the Ethiopian countryside. That may be one reason why the population is exploding in rural Ethiopia, while in Addis Ababa it is actually shrinking.”

So, if a country moves on to become more advanced (like being in a “developing country” state), then the cost of raising a kid grows. This makes sense; the things a kid has to be able to accomplish just to be considered ’standard’ gets higher and higher. Even if we have more resources now than our parents did, it has to be balanced with rising costs. Wired points to an article on “only children” in New York as an extreme example of what happens in a highly-advanced society.

So, finally, if an inquisitive relative asks about the number of kids in plan, we can say “it’s relative to the state of the country.”

I stayed home on CNY Day 1 for a good rest. Felt restless on Day 2, so took off in the morning to check out Bukit Bintang. It’s one of the places in KL that’s most likely to have a lot of shops closed, so it’s worth checking out. Read the rest of this entry »

Jusco Equine Park on a Wednesday. These shops were open 7 days a week, and now they’re closed on Chinese New Year’s Eve. It’s always been rumored that KL literally shuts down during this festival, so it’s fun to observe this in action.

Note that the mall isn’t closed; the Jusco grocer is still open. It’s just individual shops, which implies that some malls could be partially open on CNY. That’s worth checking out.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you go to the Pasar Seni LRT Station, check out this impressive sight: a long wall of graffiti alongside the Klang River. I noticed this more than a year back, but it was suprising to see how far it has grown. I’d really love to know who came up with this, coz it’s awesome. Read the rest of this entry »

Dark chocolate is supposed to be good for your health if taken in small quantities. The key is in finding chocolates that doesn’t have extra stuff like vegetable fat, but it’s not that easy finding chocolates with a minimal ingredients list.

Marks & Spencer held a surprise. They were selling this for rm6.90 as a special offer. The cashier accidentally tallied it up to rm13.90 until I pointed out it was a discounted item, so I’m guessing that’s the original price. It’s an interesting package; not only it boasts a 72% minimum cocoa solid content, it bears a ‘FairTrade‘ mark which claims a better economic deal to the source countries.

What got my attention was the ingredients list.

Shortest list I’ve ever seen.

Taste-wise? It was bland, but to be fair this is the closest I’ve ever got to tasting pure chocolate. While chewing a chilled version doesn’t give much flavor, it does get good once it warms up, so methinks the rule is to keep it cool, not cold. For something that doesn’t encourage you to finish it in one go, it works fine.

The weird part is when trying another chocolate after this on (Pastilles, 75% cocoa solids, a minimal list as well) I actually thought the Pastilles was bad. I find it hard to believe that my taste of chocolates have refined just after one Marks & Spenser piece, so I’m gonna try some others first to be sure.