A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
I had a quick dip in the hotel pool before we had our buffet breakfast and started the long drive back to KL.
The landscape on the way back was beautiful. There were huge jungles on both sides of the road and step mountains covered in trees. The roads weren’t too busy so we made really good time, at least until we got into KL where their city motto is, the town with Traffic. ;) J/k.
But what a fantastic weekend! I am so lucky to be here!
This morning we drove to a nearby resort and checked in. After that it was a nice relaxing swim in the South China sea followed by lounging around pool-side eating ice-cream cones and another dip in the hotel pool. Not only was the weather great, but everything was great.
For supper we found a nice Malaysian style place and had (I’ll just describe it since I can’t remember what’s it’s called) egg covered fried rice with chicken, manta ray, and fish. I love the spices they use here and really loved the meal. The ray wasn’t nearly as scary as expected – in fact it wasn’t scary at all; it was extremely tasty.
What a great weekend!
We didn’t stay at the birthday party as late as I would have liked because we had to get up early the next day. I slept over at Jon’s place and after less than 6 hours of sleep we were heading to Quanton for a video shoot.
We went to a mall to pick up some clothes for me to where during the shoot – which, by the way, brought me to one of the worst bathrooms I’ve ever encountered. I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say it was very wet, very dirty, and VERY smelly. I’ve been in some smelly bathrooms, but this one was by far the smelliest.
The shoot was for an up-and-coming IT Company that is opening a new retail store called “The IT Life Shop”. I got dressed and pretty soon we were shooting. As those in my acting fundamentals class can attest I have some serious stage fright issues. Not so much fright as a plain lack of ability to recite lines when the camera is rolling. On the times when I got the dialog right, I would forgot to get my body movements right, and when I got the motions right, I would accidentally change the lines slightly. On the rare occasions when I nailed it, almost certainly someone or something outside would create a loud noise ruining the take. After more takes than any of us would care to remember we finally finished up the shoot.
I had a good time being the host, but I felt bad for not being better at it. I have to say being an actor, even in something so simple as a corporate video is not nearly as easy as it looks.
That night we all went out for Chinese food and I had some of the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life. I also really enjoyed the other dishes. Afterwards we went to a “really happening club” and danced to some pretty good live music. A little smoky and a little crowded for dancing, but I think every one of us had a good time.
I had a meeting at Channel V today. JC and I went down to discuss some new TV ids and some other projects on the go at GXM.
Tonight we went out to the top of the Pan Global building to celebrate Jon’s friend Shawn’s birthday party. The Pan Global building is right next to the KL Tower and from the roof we could see both the Petronas Towers and where we were yesterday – the KL Tower.
Tonight I went to the KL Tower to see “Pixels and Wireframe”, Multimedia University’s forth year students’ final presentation.
The tower itself is quite something to see. Standing at 421 meters from base to antenna mast it is one of the tallest concrete towers in the world. It is also the fourth tallest telecommunications tower in the world. From the window where the private function was held, we could see the city for miles around and we also had a particularly nice view of the Petronas Towers (or KLCC as it’s sometimes referred as).
After a brief introduction and a small snack served buffet style, we watched the top 20 final animations from MMU’s forth year students. There were some really great showings there. My favorite was about a group of seniors in a home that wanted to stay up late watching Mission Impossible. The nurse has other plans for them, and through their imagination the group goes through their own impossible mission as they try to get back into the TV room.
GXM Studio was a major sponsor of the event and as such was given a couple of copies of the nights presentations. Jon was nice enough to give me one of them.
I received an email a couple of months ago from Michael R., and thought I should share it. Those coming here from my backmasking page may find it interesting. Michael writes:
I saw Simon Singh, author of ‘Big Bang’, use your Stairway to Heaven backwards lyrics in a lecture to make a point about how the brain imposes order on gibberish when it expects to find order, like words, where there is none. I am an ophthalmologist, and specialize in glaucoma. This is exactly the same thing the brain does when a glaucoma patient begins to lose peripheral vision. They are not aware that they have blind spots in the periphery of their visual field because the brain fills in the blank spots by continuing the pattern in the area surrounding the blind areas. This pattern completion is a lot like what goes on in interpreting the backwards Led Zeppelin lyrics.
Thanks Michael.
The suspicious man from a few days ago approached me again today. This time he was alone, but again he asked me what time it was. I told him I thought it was weird that he kept asking me for the time and that he should stop asking, especially since he has a watch. I knew his watch worked, but it’s not polite to just accuse someone of outright lying, so I tried to catch a glimpse of what time he actually had.
He told me that he “forgot…” (was he implying he forgot how to read it? I’m not sure) which really isn’t the case because when I tried to look at his watch to see if he really had the wrong time he covered the watch’s face with his thumb and then finally he moved it enough for me to read his watch. He asked if it was quarter to nine. It was. I looked at him incredulously and then walked away.
The whole sequence of events struck me as very odd and so I thought about this guy and what he could possibly want. I ran the scenario through my head, “What time is it?” and then it struck me. 4:20. Answering 4:20 is code signifying that I want to buy weed.
That’s the only logical scenario I can come up with, but could it be? The penalty for selling drugs in Malaysia is death. Why would anyone put themselves at such risk?
I read about a girl from Australia the other day that got caught with four kilograms of pot in Indonesia (that’s 8.8 pounds). She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She’s going to appeal but it doesn’t look promising. Why anyone would take that big of a risk is beyond me.
Sometimes things just don’t go the way you’d like them. This morning for breakfast I apparently failed at getting my order across. I wanted to get a plain roti with butter (just like a scone) some scrambled eggs, and a nice glass of cold water. Instead I got some half boiled eggs still in their brown shells and liquid inside, and some toast with some marmalade like jam. The toast was good anyway but there was no way I could possibly even crack the runny eggs. I thought it was funny that even the ice water that I ordered was hot and particularly sans ice. Apparently if you order water and they don’t hear the “ice” part, they think you want to use it to make tea.
This evening I finished reading my book, “Canadian History for Dummies“. Don’t worry I’m well aware of the irony in coming to Malaysia to learn about Canada. But wow, what a great look into Canada’s astounding past. Some of the things I remember hearing about in school, but most were new facts that I either wasn’t interested in, in school, or that the curriculum didn’t cover.
I found the roles Canada played in the first and second world wars very interesting, and particularly eye opening was the sequence of events involving the French and their huge part in Canadian history and their consequential feelings of being jilted by the rest of Canada. It made a lot more sense when you have the whole story and not just what I remember from the news during the Lyin’ Brian Mulroney years. The true story is a lot more complicated than this idea I got growing up in the west that “French Canadians are just hard to get along with” and “they refuse to be bilingual just on the principle of the matter.” I’d get into it more, but it’s a long story that involves broken promises, back stabbing, political maneuvering, and an attempt by the British to eliminate the French culture from Canada.
I highly recommend this book for anyone with a remote interest in the history of not only Canada but the whole continent of North America. There is a lot of shared history between Canada and the United States. It’s full of things that will make you laugh not to mention a lot of darker history that makes you want to cry. It’s all in there.
Today I had the chance to go to Channel V with Jon. As I’ve mentioned before Channel V is south-east Asia’s music channel. It would be like going to Much Music headquarters in Canada. We presented the latest changes that GXM has made for channel identification spots. It’s pretty cool stuff and it made me wonder how hard it would be to try and make some channel identification ads for Much Music. I’ll look into it when I get home.
On my way back to the residence I finished Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (audio version). I had heard that it wasn’t as good as Douglas Adams celebrated novel, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but on the contrary I found it to be just as good and recommend it on the same level.
I took a ride down south to the ancient city of Malacca this weekend. We left Saturday afternoon and stayed overnight. There are some really beautiful and historic things to see. The city itself is very old and the old churches and mosques seem that much older with their thick stone walls and missing ceilings.
The monument pictured here was constructed on behalf on Queen Victoria. The inscription reads: “Victoria Regina 1837-1901 Erected by the people of Malacca in Memory of a great queen 1904”.
The church on the hill used to have a bell tower to warn the village/city of impending attacks via sea. I believe it was built some time in the 1600’s. It had a tunnel leading to another building on another hill. Here is a panoramic view from inside the church.
On Sunday we raced back to KL and caught up with the group (we were a little late but luckily they waited for us) and headed up North to see the fireflies. This trip to see the fireflies was already paid for and we had a nice meal before heading out on the river in a really quiet boat. It was quite dark and the fireflies looked a lot like blinking Christmas lights. They congregate around a specific kind of tree and blink in unison. It’s quite something to see. Unfortunately there was no way to photograph them, at least with my camera.
Today at work I helped flesh out the basic script for a corporate video scheduled for shooting in the next couple weeks. I really enjoy working at GXM and am lucky to be able to work here.
I went for a little treat in the Sunway mall yesterday. I was thinking about taking in a movie but instead enjoyed a Maple Walnut and Raspberry Vanilla Sundae at Baskin-Robins instead. Definitely an expensive treat (especially by Malaysian standards) but oh man was it ever delicious.
I almost stepped on a rat on the way home. It startled me, but I’m pretty sure the rat was more scared than I was. He did an instant 180 and slipped back under the fence from whence he came.
Time is going by very quickly now. I’ll be home in 18 more days, I’m both excited and saddened by this fact; I love Malaysia.
