It's Reading Time!

The things that I am starting to appreciate here in Malaysia after a stint overseas, besides her cheap food, are cheap books. I have long made a list of items that I am going to bring back to Sydney in February in my head, and without a doubt books have always remain on top of the list.

Attention: To those of you who are looking for cheap new books, especially fictions, head down to Section 14, PJ. Times Bookstores are having their end-of-year clearance sales. But be quick, it ends on the first day of January.

I got myself two new books at the clearance sales which are Thomas L. Friedman’s award-winning The World is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century, and Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World by Hugh Miles. I have been craving for the former for more than a year already and nearly bought it at Sydney last month for a price of AU$26.90. These two, I got for an unbelievable RM12 each, or slightly more than AU$4. Nevertheless my heart sank upon looking at Jared Diamond’s Collapse which I could not resist from buying six months ago auctioned for as little as RM15. As for the second book, Al-Jazeera, I did not really plan to purchase one and was actually looking for some other bestselling titles. But what can you expect from clearance sales. Though any book on Al-Jazeera is actually on my long wish list, I only decided to go with it after a long futile search of other titles. As for now, this book will sit for my bookshelf for awhile, since I believe I do not plan to read it anytime soon.

Next I went to BORDERS, The Gardens with one clear thing in mind; that I will use BORDERS’ 15% off coupon to get Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist as well as Tun Mahathir’s celebrated The Malay Dilemma. I stepped out, however, without The Malay Dilemma. The thing was as soon as I got in I was greeted by BORDERS’ routine 3 for 2 offer, and this time around they coincidentally included The Undercover Economist, along with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, another non-fiction in my wish list. Both books basically revolve around a same topic, and I actually thought of getting Freakonomics sometime later but try I might, I just could not resist the offer. To complete the trio, I picked up another book, this time a fiction and gifted it to my sister.

I am still midway through Collapse as of now, decided to give myself a break and have since started George Orwell’s 1984 and Dr. Ang Swee Chai’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, both being illuminating reads. For the record, I am huge fan of Orwell’s Animal Farm but have not managed to get my hand on 1984 until now, which is a shame. From Beirut to Jerusalem meanwhile is a personal account of Dr. Ang, an orthopedic surgeon who volunteered to help the Palestinian exiles during the civil war in Beirut, who also become an important witness to Sabra-Shatila massacre in 1982 and pioneered the mass Palestinians aid movements in Britain. I first heard of the book from this website, make sure you give it a look.

I should finish 1984 very soon, and will then proceed with The Undercover Economist. At the moment there is no particular preference order for other books I have bought, but surely another 239 pages of Collapse will have to wait. In the meantime I will definitely try to get The Malay Dilemma before I leave this country, and that shall complete the list.

Movies I Watched

I watched a couple of new movies recently. The first one was I Am Legend, which I watched together with Nageb and Ayob- both of whom came all the way from Kangar and Tanjung Malim respectively to give me a surprise visit merely two days after my arrival- while the second one was National Treasure 2. I watched National Treasure 2 with two primary schoolmate buddies. Browsing through my blog archive, I realized that there has been only one entry on movie so far– that was Do You Remember the 20th Day of September, not even a commercial one- so I thought why not I share my personal reviews on these two new Hollywood flicks.

Let’s give it a kick start with I Am Legend, directed and played by Will Smith. I think overall the movie is OK, end of story. I was quite surprised to be frank that critics from the newspaper I read gave two thumbs up to this movie, categorizing it as a well-presented one. I have always thought that while lack in dialogue can be easily replaced by excellent play-acting and growth in plot, the same case for characters and scenes, which is happening in I Am Legend, is not quite acceptable and only makes a perfect recipe for disaster. Nevertheless as I look back, the story depicted in the movie itself- about the last man left in the New York City- is what makes it a movie and there is certainly no way to have it rectified to give ways for the two components I mentioned above. Probably by looking at it this way only we start to appreciate the works done by Will Smith and his crews; since there is simply no room left for them to improve.

Anyway as I mentioned earlier, the movie revolves around a doctor/scientist played by Will Smith who happened to be the only man left in New York trying to find a cure for a human-plagued disease sweeping over the entire human lives. Contrary to the movie tagline, there were actually other human beings on other part of the planet- a point which I found later into the movie but let’s forgive the director for that for the time being for that is not the main point. There were only five percent of people of the earth found to be immune to the disease, but the bad news was a large proportion of the five percent turned into Dark Seekers, brutal creatures who crawled out at night in search of human flesh. The doctor embarked on his journey with his dog into the empty street of the Big Apple on the day, sent out a moving radio message to the entire world by noon in search of anyone still alive, and came back home at sunset to continue his research for the cure in his underground laboratory as well as to hide from Dark Seekers. Perhaps this film scores a good point at portraying New York City without its people, as well as the occasional tense felt by the main character for being the only man left made worse by the pressure to save other human beings whom he believed were still alive. Now, if any of you are planning to go watch I Am Legend soon but do not want me to spoil the whole plot, perhaps it is a good idea to stop reading now. I could not help but being left frustrated by the ending- the doctor managed to find the cure just in time before he was attacked by the Dark Seekers, a complete cliché.

All in all it was a decent 2-hour entertainment I would say, go and watch it if you have an extra RM10 to bury but just do not set the bar too high for this movie, it certainly does not belong to potential Oscar Award Winners group.

Moving on, now let’s have a say at National Treasure 2 starring Nicolas Cage and Diane Kruger amongst all. First and foremost, I am not really into this treasure-hunting, Sherlock Holmes type of movie, so my review might not be of doubtable credibility to its fans out there. I also did not watch the prequel to make matters worse but thankfully, from my judgment one could easily grasp the idea brought by this second movie sans watching the previous one since you cannot really say they are mutually related.

The story centralizes around this one guy, played by Cage, who is desperate to clean up his family name who was accused as responsible for the famous murder of former US President Abraham Lincoln. His journey brought him to Paris, Buckingham Palace at London and The White House among them, and eventually he and a few others managed to find a secret place dubbed as The City of Gold, left by an ancient civilization once occupying the American continent. As always, the twist and turn here and there make the journey far from easy, but in the end he managed to reach his goal as many of you might have expected.

What I found most upsetting in this kind of flick though, is the way the director kind of forced the audience into thinking about his main character as someone close to perfect, by means of getting him to solve brain-teasing puzzles and problems in a matter of second, with a right answer. Alright, so the main character is an experienced treasure hunter/investigator, but there is nothing wrong with the director trying to instill a little sense of logic in the first place. Just let the hero make one or two mistake along the search, that will make the story a lot more interesting and more importantly, plausible. Apart from that I think National Treasure 2 deserves a B grade; good, but again is unlikely to land one or two awards. Oh yeah, I also do not really quite like the idea of the US President easily fooled into being kidnapped, though if you ask me, I cannot actually think of an alternative way of improving that scene.

So that is it, I guess between the two, I prefer I Am Legend for it offers something different to the viewers but then again as I look back, it must be down to my lack of interest to the theme offered by National Treasure 2 as I claimed earlier. Here I am leaving it to you to make your own choice, and whichever it is I am wishing you a good time.

Our First Disabled Senator

There are not many actions in the country nowadays that get my praise. However, yesterday’s historical appointment of Prof Datuk Dr Ismail Md Salleh as the first disabled senator certainly made my day.

Blind since he was 13, this academician cum economist’ story of ascension from deep ashes straight to the top will inspire many others, and certainly there is no better reward for him than to be conferred as a senator. Of course, this will also further garner more respect to the disabled in the country, which will eventually translate to greater attention and care given to this unfortunate bunch of people.

Hats off to you Dr Ismail, you have certainly proven that there is no barrier in life and what are needed most are sheer determination as well as the willingness to work hard. The country needs more people like you especially in the people’s representative posts, there is no doubt about that.

A Blessed Land Indeed

Sorry for the lack of updates. First it was the excitement of going back to Malaysia, and then there was also the need for recuperating and self-pampering back at home.

Let me share with you some of many first sights I encountered in the hour after I arrived. Well, my family picked me up from the airport. They looked great; there was not any distinct difference in them after the ten-month period since the last time I saw them. Personal life aside, we later headed back home that is in Shah Alam. It was already Maghrib by that time, and fretting that we could not make it in time for the prayers, the family decided to stop at an R&R by the name of Hentian Dengkil.

With the exception of the airport and the highway, that was my first sight of this country I love and its people after a long period overseas. People thronged in what was clearly an array of thriving business of a food court. They must be all selling halal food, I thought instantly. And cheap some more, at least compared to the ones I have in Sydney. What a pleasant first sight it was, to see that we are still blessed with every opportunity to get easy access to the thing we need for living. It was not long before I realized that it was already past seven o’clock, during which the time majority of business Down Under already called it a day.

I headed straight to the musolla after that brief moment of observing and comparing. They had this very nice musolla, adorned in a modern style with a somewhat vast praying area fit for at least 150 men at one time in my thought. Even the ablution department was very stylish that I was tempted to guess that they were mostly made up of imported tiles and stones. Looking at the lavish praying place, I could not help but recall my very own experience of praying in the middle of nowhere, at the strangest of places for a number of times because of the rarity of proper praying facility. It was awkward at first, trying to hide from public eyes that look into religious life so differently but with the flow of time, I got used to it. The fear was almost replaced by the sense of proud for being able to perform the obligation obediently. Still, finding some praying space in an open park or a parents’ room of a shopping store or a corner of a building was never easy. I finished the Maghrib prayer with a sense of relief knowing that whenever I got stuck away from home anywhere in probably the next two months or so before I fly back to Sydney, I can rest assured that a convenient praying area is just a short distance away and is not difficult to find.

We are living in a blessed land indeed my fellow friends, so blessed that sometime we just could not care to give a good look and appreciate it until we lose it. Let‘s remind ourselves to always be thankful to Him for this wonderful life we are enjoying. Have a great holiday everyone.