Now that the election fever is just something to look forward to in the future, my life has been like a river - it only gets exciting when it reaches the rapids. Here are some of my rapids.
Alvar Aalto exhibition, One Utama.
The layout of this exhibition is the first thing that puts me off. It's like some pameran kempen kesedaran anti-dadah; white walls and halogen spotlights.
Some of the items on display were pictures of Aalto's houses and the ones he designed back in Finland, printed on polyester-like fabric, which had very subtle touches of Modernist / Prairie-style to it. I expected some sweeping roofs and spiralling corridors but that's just because I had an Eero Saarinen vision in mind.
Other interesting things to look at were scaled down models of houses encased within black rectangular boxes, emotions of timber translated into forms of furniture and fluid-like themed glassware.
Random road trip, Hulu Yam-Serendah-Rawang-Klang.
One lazy Sunday, after a heavy buffet breakfast at the club, my mother, brother and I took the MRR2 to Batu Caves and drove on a road leading to Hulu Yam. Along the way, we passed by the Sungai Batu dam and several recreational spots.
Deep into Hulu Yam were very arid bushlands and several rows of old-school shophouses. I thought of checking out this yuppie retreat called Sekeping in Serendah, but didn't get a positive answer from those whom I have asked for directions. We then visited this residential area called Antara Gapi to check out empty houses [you might have heard of this place from watching their vague commercials on the TV].
On the way to Klang was the town of Rawang. I've heard of many people working in KL lives here, and I feel sorry for those who have to commute to KL everyday using the crappy KTM Komuter service.
Several hundred kilometres later, we arrived at Klang, known as the royal capital of the state of Selangor. And all Indians know that it's the place to shop for Deepavali festivities. The shops look really interesting, and same goes to this gallery of the Sultan's possesions, which I photographed while waiting for my mother to withdraw some cash from RHB.
I've seen pictures of the gallery in the newspapers and they look very tastefully-done, but we didn't have enough hours to spend looking at the Sultan's collection of Raleigh bicycles. I'd definitely give it a lurk the next time I am in Klang.
Klang is a town of country's most important seaport. So naturally, seafood restaurants are abundant [but directions from the town to these restaurants are nowhere to be seen]. We had to drive through lonely container yards to get to the seaside. We got to this restaurant but it only opens from 6 p.m. onwards, which was way too late for us to wait.
When you look at seaports in Europe [like Hamburg in Germany], you'd imagine super-nice fishmarkets, trams taking you to a seafront of salmon bars, pedestrian-only streets and scenic jogging tracks by the beach... but Klang is the upside down of all that.
About a forty five-minute drive away from Klang was where we had dinner at South Sea Seafood Restaurant. This was not my idea, but my mother wanted her seafood since that we got none in Klang. Six hours of driving and we end up eating at a place that's fifteen minute-drive away from our houses.
Helvetica screening, Olé Café.
This underrated food outlet in the tourist-friendly street of Changkat Bukit Bintang was the location of the free screening of the greatest typography film ever [but that's only because I've never heard of any other typeface being told into a full-length movie], hosted by Kakireka. I thought there would be like, a hundred movie-goers, judging by its guest list on Facebook but sadly, it was just a small group of graphic designers and perhaps students from MIA. Drats, I thought I could enjoy the sight of trendy design enthusiasts and fanboys who condemn Arial to the max.
Soon the movie started off with a demonstration on the use of... er, the movable type.... thing [my typography knowledge has gone rusty ever since I ended that one graphic design course]. The movie showed a satisfying amount of Helvetica goodness, ranging from the NYC subways signs to the now-bankrupt parmalat [once produced the tastiest juices] to the greatest bag company in the world. I couldn't help but getting my faced steamed from the secretion of excitement juices in my brains from watching the way the bagmaker cuts the tarp and washes it in an industrial washing machine, and spelling out 'HOLLAND' in Helvetica across three messenger bags. There were loads of street scenes, with Freitag-utilising pedestrians, cyclists of Amsterdam, Stefan Sagmeister reminding me how thick his German accent is, amazing type artists spilling a drop of their life on pencil and paper [and not to mention, PowerBooks].... and by watching Helvetica, I am assured that the modern European countries are the best to be in.
After the movie, about a quarter of the audience left, thus missing out on the 'exciting' group exercise of spelling 'Kakireka' in a freestyle manner. I was grouped with some happy people which may have very little in common with my view on typography. Here is our boring 'artwork'.
Some club night and fashion sale, Zouk and Palate Palette.
I was urged to join JK and friends to check out Steve Aoki on the turntables last Saturday night. I had all the reasons to avoid this [way past my ideal bedtime, air pollution coming from other people's lungs, no chance of having intellectual communication with other people, not-that-great club music] but I thought that my I Got Shot was in need of an update, so I paid the RM 40 entry fee and danced about wearing my terrific gas mask and being the most WTF person at the club.
Sadly, no pictures of outrageous clubbers were taken because the room was packed like ketupat, except this one.
The next day, I took some time to see what's on sale at this Junkyard Sale at Palate Palette. Steve Aoki and his Cobra Snake friend were selling stickers, hoodies and t-shirts [just three hours into the sale, they had to go topless because the air-conditioning was 'teh suck'].
I am again disappointed for not taking anyone's picture because all the trendies stayed upstairs where there's hardly any space for photographs.
Seapark Brickhouse.
There was one night when I was searching for driving directions to Sekeping on its official website, and was led to Seksan's latest project called the Seapark Brickhouse, located at the edge of Taman Paramount. I gave it a visit on the very next day, but remained outside of the secretive corner-lot terrace house.
A week later, I invited JK to check out the house at night. We were greeted by a Nepalese caretaker who was watching Hindi music videos on Zee TV. We were free to explore the rooms, and took photographs.
The Seapark Brickhouse aims to be an alternative to hotel accommodation, away from busy commercial areas, traffic and into suburban neighbourhoods where you can smell someone next door cooking salted fish for lunch, maids walking over-styled dogs, kopitiam patrons spending their last years and the old newspaper van honking regularly. Also, a good place if you're up to no good and avoiding the JAIS and getting 'tangkap basah'.
JK and I had a little fun with the bicycles, where I had Skeppshult/Monocle bikes and New York messengers dreams.
Argh. I need to get that foldable bicycle.
We watched some old-school Bollywood movie clips involving cleavages and shaking bellies with the Nepalese guy for awhile before leaving for dinner.
I visited a multi-million Ringgit mansion several weeks back but that is saved for another post because this post is getting too lengthy.
Bonus information: GOOD magazine is now available at the current affairs magazine shelf in Borders, The Curve. It will teach you a way of being somebody who is responsible and aware of everything that surrounds you. For me, I am waiting for it to be half-priced at my favourite back issue magazine stores.
Every tasteful person's favourite t-shirt store, graniph, is now available in English. Go ballistic!
And I wish I wore this to the screening of Helvetica [details in the following post] but my Freitag is better than everything else [those who have watched Helvetica can nod together].
Check out these amusing t-shirt descriptions:
The meaningless line drawing which depicts hands squeezing something, the American-cartoon-like onomatopoeic word, and the rainbow-like coloring. This graphic T-shirt is full of American's happy-go-lucky pop taste.
Many fingers are pointing on the middle. For the observer it seems that the wearer wants to be always in the center. It’s a very humorous design.
This T-shirts has a weird and crazy impact. Spitting the brain from it’s mouth, one can feel the gallimaufry of the guy with his fingers in his ears.
The three mushroom brothers are all poisonous. But they are somewhat cute.
Now shipping all over the Earth.
Early in the morning, I woke up and had breakfast with my mother at Strawberry Fields, PJ State to power up before going to Bukit Bintang Boys' School, where my mother is set to vote. Unlike what I saw on the television, there were no snaking queues coming out of the school.
Before a voter enters the room where they are supposed to dump their votes, they have to check their name on the SPR's [Election Commission] database to make sure that you only vote once. Then, the voter gets to go to a classroom, where they are called upon to receive a ballot paper, go behind a cubby hole to cross their favourite candidate, and sticking the paper into a transparent case.
I wasn't allowed to be near the classrooms, so I went to the back of the classroom and secretly shot some pictures [not really exciting].
The whole deal ended within five minutes, so my mother and I had a short look of the cars that act as a shuttle, going from houses to the polling station.
From Petaling Jaya, we drove to Pantai Dalam, the place where the KeADILan ceramah happened two days before, to check out the scene there. My mother wasn't really digging on the fact that buses couldn't get into the roads leading to the flats, and old people struggling to climb up the sloping roads to get out to vote. In a predominantly Malay area, it was baffling to not see a single mosque there.
Somehow we got to this place behind the New Pantai Expressway, a very kampung place. Note that this area is still under Lembah Pantai, and while Bangsar has a large share of million-Ringgit bungalows, this area is way underdeveloped.
We reached a school that was right under the highway, and I was attracted by the loud kompang beats played by a bunch of young people.
And just across the road was KeADILan's tent.
This place had a festive feeling, and people were queuing to vote.
Right after I took the picture above, the guy with the jacket told me that it's not allowed to photograph someone who is in the cubby hole.
I announced to my mother that we are visiting Kampung Baru in KL to check out the voting fest there. We took several rounds in the village, checking out old-school houses, seeing Dr Lo'Lo's [the candidate for the area, known as Titiwangsa] face everywhere, PAS flags flying, and surprisingly, a brand-new landscaping for the famous food street on Jalan Raja Muda Musa. Near the polling stations, there were many ladies waving green flags with a moon in the middle, and I gave a 'thumbs up' sign to them. I didn't take any pictures while we were in that area, except this boring sight of DSLR chicks somewhere near Stable Steak House.
I had a brilliant idea of visiting the Jalan Ampang Muslim Cemetery, behind Hotel Maya. It's a great place to de-stress yourself, and think about death for awhile.
Reading tombstones is an effective way of getting the imagination running, and..... hmm. It all depends on how you look at death and where life will take you.
Performing arts guy Zahim Al-Bakri was there, and I smiled at him. Unfortunately, he didn't think the smile was for him, so he just walked on.
I asked guy [who has been working at this cemetery for 20 years] to show me the grave of legendary and multi-talented artist / songwriter / film maker / everything P. Ramlee. He was massive back in the 1950s and 1960s and acted and directed classic and comedy Malay films, which still brings people to a laughing seizure to this day.
His grave wasn't as elaborate as I thought, and right beside his plot was A.R. Tompel's grave, P.Ramlee's sidekick back then.
And a step away was P. Ramlee's wife's grave, singer and actress Saloma. To this day, nobody has a voice that's parallel to her's. Have you heard of anyone else who can sing Selamat Hari Raya better than her?
This is how it looks like on the way out of the cemetery.
I got back to my mother who was chilling at the car, and headed to our last destination for the day - a primary school in Bukit Damansara. There was a van selling rojak and cendol parked a few metres from the school's entrance, where we had our lunch. After that, I went to check out how Bukit Damansara residents vote.
Bleh, nothing exciting. But it was fun to lurk about the classrooms and bulletin boards to see what's going on with the students.
And the day ended there, and my mother and I returned to our quarters for some good Election Day nap.
If I am still living in this country during the next General Elections, I'll make sure to travel to the hot areas where poster wars include dummy bunkers, sharks and helicopters, fanaticism and bigger crowds in ceramahs, collect more election paraphernalia and visit Tok Mun in Kuala Terengganu to help her campaign.
How did you find the first part of my General Election in review? A bit of a pro-BN, eh? I don't mean to be that way, so in this post, I am going to focus more on the activities of the Opposition, which includes KeADILan and DAP [I didn't get the chance to travel all the way to Kg Baru to check out the ceramahs by PAS]. Be sure to read all the way down to watch a video of Anwar Ibrahim speaking in Kg Limau, Pantai Dalam.
Campaigning with Nurul Izzah - 01.03.08
One wonderful Saturday, first of March, I was summoned to KL Sentral by JK to see Nurul Izzah, a candidate for Lembah Pantai, campaigning around Brickfields. I followed a group of blue hijab-wearing ladies...
and found Nurul Izzah, her husband and her manager shaking hands with shopkeepers, pedestrians, lunch-eaters, goldsmiths, vadai stalls... you name it.
Ah... isn't she excessively pretty and graceful?! Haha, back when I was 11-12 years old, I had a deep admiration for her, just a year after her father, Anwar Ibrahim, was sacked from his Deputy Prime Minister post for corruption and... sodomy charges [to this day, there is no evidence that those allegations were true (I think)]. Around that time, she appeared on the cover of Newsweek [?] magazine, and she was posing with a bicycle at her home in Bukit Damansara in the feature article. There was a part in the interview where she stated that she LOVES Radiohead and picked up the guitar to know how to play 'Paranoid Android'. Ten years later, I finally met her and mentioned about her fondness of Radiohead. And to those who find this relevant, she still listens to Radiohead! Then she goes about their new album which is only available online, which, according to her, "is a pain". Haha, but the conversation ended there because she had the entire Brickfields to chat with.
Harhar, I decided to be KeADILan's flag-bearer for a few moments. The guy with the loudspeaker is Nurul Izzah's manager, who went, "Salam sejahtera dan selamat menjamu selera. Mengumumkan kedatangan Nurul Izzah Anwar Ibrahim, calon parlimen Lembah Pantai" or something like that.
Nurul Izzah was given a bunch of chrysantemums, a garland of purple flowers which totally matched her outfit, and a pack of ball-point pens...
Oh! Ten pictures on just Nurul Izzah alone! I better get to my next agenda.
DAP ceramah at Jalan Aminuddin Baki field, Taman Tun Dr. Ismail - 02.03.08
My mother, brother and I had lunch at Shalome on the second of March, and as we exited the parking lot, I spotted a pickup truck with DAP flags sticking out of it, and annoucing to everyone that DAP will be having a ceramah near a school. I followed the truck, which lead me to a field nearby Penang Village restaurant. I made sure with my mother that we will attend the ceramah tonight.
We got to the field at around nine p.m. which was the time when Teresa Kok, DAP candidate for Seputeh and Kinrara, was talking about hot stuff like the VK Lingam tape, corrupted politicians and, you know. The whole lot. She's a good speaker at that. And the crowd was massive!
And just when Teresa Kok passed the mic to another speaker, it started to rain. I rushed back to my car, hoping to find an umbrella, but only found a cheapo raincoat that can't withstand the heavy rain that had got some of the spectators running like cockroaches being sprayed with insecticide. My mother was at the speaker's tent, and got the chance to hear Raja Petra speak. I just waited for my mother at the car and after about a half hour or so, we both went back home.
A General Election Forum organised by The Star - 03.03.08
Penang-based press, The Star, gathered several good speakers, Dr Chandra Muzaffar [who was said to have bad-mouthed Anwar Ibrahim], Prof Syed Arabi, Kam Karim Raslan =), Rita Sim, Dr Dennison Jayasooria and moderator Wong Chun Wai for a round of political analysis.
Kam Karim Raslan started it off with his comment on the rural folks and their undivided support for Barisan Nasional off his notebook, then Dr Chandra Muzaffar gave in his thoughts. Well, whatever they said was interesting, but when it was time for the last speaker to talk, who was Prof Syed Arabi, things got a little sleepy. Luckily there was a Q & A session. One member of the audience took this chance to tell long stories about his life and didn't stop when Wong Chun Wai keep telling him to head straight to the question. There was also a time when Kam Karim Raslan thought about the illegal immigrants [predominantly the Indonesians] issue in this country, and he concluded that "we should all accept them into our country because we all came from the same place and we originated from Indonesia when we [the Malays] came here". Dr Chandra completely disagreed.
Blargh, I had to leave before the discussion ended, which means that I have more time to think of what to say when I meet Kam Karim Raslan for real.
DAP ceramah at Taman Petaling - 05.03.08
The last DAP ceramah I attended was wrecked by the rain, so I decided to check out a ceramah held closer to my area, somewhere near the foot of Bukit Gasing. I discovered that there was a pasar malam going on in that area, so while waiting for the guys to set their equipment [while playing DAP's theme song 'Just Change', sung to the tune of the Pet Shop Boys' 'Go West']...
I took a walk around the pasar malam to see what's cooking.
There were some interesting stalls that cannot be found anywhere else, but I am not going to fill in half of this post on this pasar malam, so I'm saving the report later.
I learned that just 300 metres away from the pasar malam, there was an open house organised by Dr Lim Thuang Seng from BN, complete with fancy canopy, those drape things, free food by some restaurant called Wendy & Mike's [or something like that]. People were eager to have free dinner.
Back to the pasar malam site, where there are more people listening to several speakers from the Opposition. I can't recall their names, but one of them was the Petaling Jaya Selatan candidate Hee Loy Sian.
And a video of a guy singing a rhyme to end the ceramah...
The only reason I was there is to see Nurul Izzah speak. She was 'rumoured' to be coming, but at the end of the ceramah, the guy announced that she is speaking at another place and couldn't make it for the night. Fleh.
Before I returned to my residence, I took another lurk at the BN open house, which was probably one of the most boring speeches I've ever heard. I was made to listen to this lady's qualms about the struggle of the conservation of Bukit Gasing on the KL side, which made me want to run away.
Shahrizat's ceramah at Bilik Gerakan Lembah Pantai - 06.03.08
There was another BN ceramah held at Lembah Pantai candidate Shahrizat's 'fortress' in Bangsar on the sixth.
Tony Fernandes, CEO of low-cost carrier Air Asia was there to tell us his story on how he became so established, bringing in Richard Branson and hanging out with Bill Gates.