Archive for the 'Musings' Category

Gambling & Astrology

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

It suddenly struck me as I was lying on top of the bed and gazing out of the window, listening to the thunder in the distance, that both gambling and astrology are actually quite closely related. Memory is the thread that binds these two aspects of human culture together, or more precisely selective memory.
Let’s take [...]

Malaysian short stories

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

I couldn’t help but notice that I sometimes get visitors to my blog who are looking for Malaysian short stories. Write Out Loud is well worth a look and has fiction by very talented Malaysian writers. It is an honour to have my short story in the same volume alongside such superb stories. Silverfish is [...]

Wanna see something amazing?

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

About the video: Featuring the Dvinsk Clan with parkour skillz!
I was amazed by this art form called Parkour, as featured in the above video. Parkour is the art of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using the abilities of the human body as the primary mode of movement. Any [...]

Glasgow 1868

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

I have no idea where I got this pic. Presumably it is in the public domain (and if not then it jolly well should be). It is apparently an image of somewhere in Glasgow in 1868 - and couldn’t you just tell! Doesn’t it just draw you back into those bygone times…? Actually, come to [...]

One Laptop Per Child

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

I’ve blogged about this before, and undoubtably I will blog about it again. The one laptop per child is a fantastic initiative which aims to make $100 laptops available to children in developing countries. It seems that the organization behind the device have listened to the general population (my self among them) and will be [...]

Bollywood & Kollywood (better than Hollywood)

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

Bollywood is name of the popular Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in India. Westeners often use it to refer to the whole of Indian cinema, not realising of course that Bollywood is just one part of the Indian film industry. There are others many others: Assamese cinema, of the state Assam; Bengali cinema which dates as [...]

While on the subject of clouds

Friday, September 7th, 2007

Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently!
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Pol. By the mass and ‘tis, like a camel indeed.
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale.
Pol. Very like a whale.
– Shakespeare - Hamlet, [...]

I wandered lonely as a cloud

Friday, September 7th, 2007

Kuala Lumpur has some magnificent sunsets, the clouds just seem to soak up different shades of colour every time the sun dips down towards the horizon. I’ve seen everything from hellish oranges, to cotton candy pinks, vast clouds swept across the sky in great shapes prickling at our human sense of gestalten revealing to us [...]

Night Markets

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Kuala Lumpur has lots of night-markets. Every area has one, and they happen on different nights. I was at one earlier, or rather since it’s 3:35am here for me now, I was at one yesterday. This isn’t a photograph from that trip, this is one I took last year at Bangsar night-market some time ago [...]

A busy month!

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

Well here we are, already 8 days into the month, and what a month it’s been. At the end of last month we just got back from the rain forest world music festival in Borneo, and so I was a little behind schedule with my novellas. Of course it was worth it really; Borneo is [...]