tentang A.P.I. - Pelita

this is a song called 'Pelita' (Pelita is a malay word that means 'lamp') by A.P.I. an indie group i guess. have no idea who they are. a pretty nice song. i like it

the song is a soundtrack for the movie Hooperz. don't look like a pretty unique film. maybe just another Gol&Gincu type of movie. girl power! yeah that kind of stuff.

but hey i like the song. press play, have a listen.

tentang Vintage Ads Malaysia

what makes an advertisement effective is that people will still remember it after even 10 years. and i hope we remember it because of the good things not the bad.

so i spent some time (and my limited download limit) to look for the ads that i remember and hoping that someone somehow did upload the vid on youtube or anywhere of equivalent. the first few titles were easy to find.. proves that the advertisement is indeed memorable and successful. the last few were unfortunately not available but i'll list it anyway.

so here's the ads that i remember most
counting down to my most favourite vintage malaysian advertisement (that i can find online):-

5 - Fernleaf

4 - KFC - 'Thats Where I Want to Be'

3 - Maggi

2 - Axion

1 - Trojan

it was a little hard to chose between the Axion ad and the Trojan ad but i decided that i love the Trojan ad better and i remember the words better than Axion's.

the ads that i tried to look for online but did not manage to find it are :
i) Follow Me talcum ad
the one where this guy was in his room (VO 'ku merindui mu') and his girlfriend came over to his house,rang the doorbell *dingdong* and his mum answered the door and says something like 'something.. something dah datang' can't remember the names. do u remember that one?

ii) KFC - Lets Go to The Zoo
yes that song. Lets go to the zoo, there's lots of things to do........ i think that's what is says.

iii) Malaysia Airlines ad
i don't remember when and any VO of it. neither the song. the only thing i remember vaguely is this massive futuristic looking plane (or a mothership? floating island?) the shape of MAS logo. it that a real advertisement or just a fraction of my imagination? i don't know




anyway, a quick thanks to those people who uploaded these wonderful ads. especially the person or people behind the channel 'abangcantik' (*facepalm). i am very grateful of all the vintage ads you uploaded

^^

tentang Life Seem to Stop Without BloggerUnited.com

oh the site have been having a problem this week. and the service have been down for a few days now without knowing when it will be restored. now i realized how much i rely on the service, not necessarily because it is effective, but because i really love the atmosphere and the functionality of the site

"will be back soon" is all she said.
but soon seem to not be soon enough.

bloggerunited.com is possibly the place that makes me feel like a proper blogger. now not having BU, i feel like a writer without knowing do the things i write really reaches people. probably like flying in a cloudy sky and not see earth and land, and feel kinda lost.. but keep flying and to trust the intuition. except that i don't and can't fly.. so that metaphor could just be a silly attempt to sound cool

but anyway, i do hope BU will be back soon. and real soon too. i miss them bloggers i frequent that i don't have their feeds and did not bother to remember their URL because they seem to always be on BU.

if i make a chart about how i do my daily blog visits, it would roughly look like this one.

60% of it are blogs from BU
30% of it is from nuffnang's innit
30% of it are blogs that i linked to, and then i'll just 'walk' from the links i find

so imagine how much this BU issue have effected my daily routine. sigh. but thats life. i hope BU will be back real soon tho ^^

tentang How To Train Your Dragon (2010) Thoughts

possibly, the best movie i've seen this year. hands down. highly recommend it if you are looking for a fun movie to watch.

we planned to watch the 3D one but cancelled the day before and just decided to watch the normal one. figured the story will be the same so why spend much much more money? (we are saving up for a trip in July). but now having seen the movie, i think we should've gone to see How To Train Your Dragon in 3D

the movie is awesome!!! action packed, great story line, cool design, awesome animation, witty script, what else can i say.. if you plan to take your kids to see this, i think even the parents will enjoy this.

the character maybe a little too stylized at times. but not too much that makes you feel it is too illogical. still rather cute.

the only thing that i did not like about it is that feeling when the movie is over and i feel like watching more. the movie is only about over 90 mins length so it is not too long.

SPOILER ALERT - skip 2 paragraphs to avoid reading something you wish to not know yet!
to those who don't know what the movie is about, How To Train Your Dragon is a story about a viking boy who lives in a viking village that is constantly under attack from dragons (if you don't know what a viking is, a quick wiki/google search will give you an idea).

then the boy, Hiccups, is not like the other vikings, he is not as big as the other kids, not as strong and not as fearsome. se one day he found a dragon and befriended it and from there, things get wildly out of control.


i have new found respect for Dreamworks Animation. all their animations before this have been entertaining but i never really enjoyed it and a lot of them i find too immature for me. i know.. it's a cartoon, they tend to be immature. but i think it is better to have a 'smarter' kind of cartoon then nonsense. but that's my preference anyway.

but this movie is different. it is heart warming like Disney's animations, a bit less drama then Pixar's latest films, a lot more awesome (and cooler) than Dreamworks' previous animations.
my wife and i had so much fun watching it. and she isn't someone who enjoys cartoons all the time.

i'm waiting till Toy Story 3 comes out and to find out if How To Train Your Dragon is still my favourite movie in 2010 :D

tentang An Animation Book Worth Reading

we went to this book store in adelaide a few weeks back and there was this book about animation that was on sale.

i think it is an extremely interesting book to read.. if you are an animator that is.

Drawing for Animation is a book about the things we didn't know about (probably did not learn of at animation courses) in animation. things that the 'experts' see when they animate things. this book is about traditional/classical animation which is in other words, 2D animation. but the concepts are generally similar.

if you are like me, studied 3D animation and have deep interest in animation, have a read. i don't know how much and where to get it in Malaysia. but it's available at amazon.com and so far, amazon.com is very trustworthy.

this book have given me some motivation to finish my animation that i'm currently working on (at snail speed) but yes i have made improvements since reading that book. and i'm planning to get another book on animation by the same publisher. i'll write about it later :D

tentang When Halo Goes Bollywood

this is IGN's april fools trailer. they do this every year. of course it's not the real thing. but it is funny as hell and something pretty good to share.

and the amount of work they actually put in it to make this pretty decent looking video is awesome.

^^

tentang Quit Smoking for 364 Days and Get a Brand New Alienware M11x!

(if you just want to know how.. just skip a few paragraphs and read after the Alienware image)

people always say smoking is bad for health and will cause problem and your hands will have to be cut off and your lungs will be filled with tar etc etc etc..... and etc. even on the packaging itself is printed, normally in large bold letters, that smoking is hazardous to you health. some countries, they even print gruesome images of what could happen to you

most smokers would just ignore it. right?

i say smoking or not.. we don't know how we will die. smoker or non-smoker, you can still die from just about anything really. so.. smoking does not necessarily make u die a horrible death. it could.. but not necessarily

i don't smoke. tried it back in high school but didn't get hooked. didn't really like it anyway. i bet a lot of smokers start the same reason that i did when i tried it.. to impress friends. a pretty sad excuse for a pretty huge addiction huh? but yeah i don't smoke.

(image from Dell.com.my)

back to the title.. how do i get this Alienware M11x? the answer is in the title.. Quit Smoking! (or at least don't buy it for a year).

lets do the math shall we..
i'll assume the average price of a pack of cigarette is RM10 just to make it easier to calculate.
if i smoke a pack per day, i'll spend ............................................. RM10/day
if i smoke a pack every day for a year.......................................... RM10 x 365 = RM3650 (roughly!)

with that kind of money, you can get yourself a new Alienware M11x (RM3499 at Dell website)

Alienware M11X full spec (Dell Malaysia website)

if you have not heard of Alienware, it is one of the best gaming laptops around. and being a gaming laptop, it is made for gamers to play games on.. and not those facebook games either. it is made for playing high-end 3D games. but you can also use it as a blogging laptop, why not? you won't complaint about slow pc anymore (but for internet connection you need a better ISP la).

i sure am glad that i don't smoke. the price for a pack of 20s is around $10-ish i've been told. wow!
oh just to clarify.. this is a challenge to smokers out there. and no i'm not paying for the new laptop! use the money you save to get yourself the laptop ok :D

tentang 25 Hour Day

oh what n00b i am. i actually just realized that today is the end of daylight saving in SA. it is quite funny when you think it's 6.00pm but actually it is 5.00pm because we haven't turn back our clocks and watches 1 hour back.

omg this is starting to confuse me. this few years back, i'd watch the evening news and things like this wouldn't have been missed. but these few days, there were a few farewell gatherings for our dear friends who are going back to Taiwan. not for a short holiday, but our friends have completed their studies and went back to their home country yesterday. Taiwan is a long way from Australia.

not knowing when we will meet our friends again is a funny feeling. not that we don't care, but we know that we can always know what everyone is doing anyway via ,of course, facebook. so farewells seems a little unnecessary nowadays.

but yeah.. saying hello to a friend on facebook is definately different from a wave of the hand and a nod of the head in front of them.

so today we live our lives here, in australia, in taiwan, in KL.. wherever. but while people in malaysia still have 24 hours today, we in SA have 25 hours. HA!

tentang Shameless Fools That We Are

here's a quick research abt April Fool's day that i did.

i did this because i noticed A LOT of people say us Muslim acknowledging and 'celebrating' that day (like i did) is committing heresy. and that April Fools' Day is actually the celebration of the fall of Al-Andalus. i'm a sceptic. i am. i think it is just a day to pull friendly pranks for fun.

so i did a, though very improper, quick wiki search about 2 things- April Fools' Day history and history of Al-Andalus. a quick one. just to find a date.

why? because sources and articles (on blogs) about the issue just say that the Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus fell on 1st of April. no details about what year whatsoever.

here's some facts i uncovered:
Al-Andalus (711 - 1492)
Earliest recorded April Folls' Day (1392)

The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of January 1 as New Year's Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday, but this theory does not explain earlier references.

- Wikipedia

(that was me.. shocked)

there is a 100 year gap. hm.. 100 years is a very long time IMHO. if a celebration originated 100 years ago it is already a long time by today's standards. Malaysia's Independence Day celebration is still less than 100 years.

get my drift?

so hate me. but the truth could be a little different. and check your sources PROPERLY will ya?!



EDIT:
hate me moar!

found this article. if sources on internet blogs are perceived as facts, then have a read on this explosive article
http://www.themodernreligion.com/misc/hoax/april-fool.html

This story is a clear example of how willing many Muslims are willing to make a "boogy man" out of others, rather than face the fact that the Loss of Spain was due to the corruption of the MUSLIMS who fought amongst themselves, as is often the case today in the Ummah.

this article includes an email written by Yusuf Estes, and in it i found the fact that i have been looking for.. the date.

he wrote:-

..let us consider the historic fact that Muslim Spain ended on the 12th of January in the Christian year of 1492 A.D.

wow that was precise. if you ask who he is, have a read at wikipedia. i'll post some things about him here tho

His Islamic activities have included:
Volunteer Imam in a Texas military installation.
National U.S. Chaplain for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, starting 1994.
Delegate to the United Nations Peace Summit for Religious Leaders in August 2000.

- Wikipedia

Yusuf Estes is THE delegate to the UN. not some collection of online articles by some supposed religious teachers (with unknown motives).

i have read blog posts saying us who acknowledge April Fool's Day as idiots, stupid people who don't know history, ignorant, some label us as heretic (lancar nye ko melabel orang ye). now did you check your sources properly before you decide who is the idiot?

tentang Leaked Alternate Eclipse Trailer

we can find awesome things on youtube.. especially when we weren't looking for it. so today i found this pretty cool vid. who knew they have such a cool soundtrack!! the trailer starts like the official trailer that is released but some things probably kinda looked too like a fanmade video.

but like all leaked video, this one could be removed if more people complained and try to get it removed. so watch it quick before it's gone guys! ..i mean gals!

Supposed Leaked Trailer-



so what do you think? :D