Friday : Mid-Valley
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- Went to careers fair to support Selva. The Normal commercial distortions, ideally what you expect is a load of companies looking for workers, but exhibition company tries to sell as many booths as it can, so half of them are market stalls, another load are companies doing promotions like cellphones satellite TV etc then there's a handful of government departments who don't need to be there, but have swallowed the exhibition companies salespersons patter, then even from the real companies the people who make the real decisions are back at the office. Also the main focus of the real companies is cheap young graduates. So all in all it's difficult fishing.
- At the fair I picked up a copy of a Forward news magazine, the February issue report AB has a 86% approval among Malays and 71% among Indians and another article
says what a quality car a Proton is. Well they did have a few liberal articles as well.
- as usual in Malaysia there were lots of free giveaways. I don't need to buy coffee for a month and I got a new backpack, whose straps were already broken an hour later.
| Walking
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I had time so I took the train half way and walked the 6Km back. Salak Selatan is like Sungai Besi an old trading area this time Chinese which has been ignored while the rest of the city has been developed. But more run down than charming, but the other side of the tracks are new Singapore type apartment blocks with service shops underneath. Then I walked to the lake park near HUKM which is nice place for a picnic at the huge amphitheatre. Good kids area, but the forest walks are nothing.
- I see Tesco have gone to all the trouble of building covered parking in Cheras, yet a few metres away is a huge freeway flyover with completely empty space beneath it, which would make a good covered carpark as you can't use it for anything else.
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Contradictory Malaysia
Not In a Hurry
- going to the train no one ever walks on the escalators
| In a Hurry
- but on the platform people can't wait to storm onto the train, not allowing enough space for people to get out
| Not In a Hurry
- people walk so slowly | In a Hurry
- as soon as they are in a car they drive like maniacs
| Convenience
- for drivers there are freeways, flyovers, tunnels, more new roads etc | Inconvenience
- It seems like it's a serious crime for achitects to make life easy for pedestrians
| Goody bags
Every event you go to they give stuff away, half the time it's government departments | The Government hasn't got enough money to maintain the streets or the education system properly..they charge the kids to go to schools for Pete's sake !
- and when you buy the commercial companies products there are often rip-off prices.
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- It would be the easiest thing in the world to have a tunnel going from the basement of Times Square Shopping directly to the basement of Plaza Low Yat Shopping, but instead you have to walk up some steps to the LRT then immediately down some steps to get to the bridge level.
- There are countless places where you have to walk down steps to exit the LRT and then back up steps to cross the road when they could of just built the roadbridge 10m longer so that it goes directly to the train platform. - What they should do is give a rates tax deduction to building owners who build bridges and tunnels, cos they are saving the government money.
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Saturday - Japanese film @Jalan Ampang |
- I met up with Rana again. There was a free Japanese film show. It was surprisingly off the wall with subtle humour and wacky characters like a Hot Fuzz (British off the wall film about village cops). A bored housewife wh's husband works ove seas is recruited as the perfect sleeper spy as she is so ordinary everyone ignores her. Then when a dead foreigner is found in the sea, the Japanese "men in black" turn up.
- They are moving the shows to the incovenient location of Finas.
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Saturday - Kampung Baru|
- There was a British Council free video art show so while we waited I took Rana to see Kampung Baru. Actually the area is disappointing these days. There was a small night market and I found very good tapei, and the cafe up the road sold tapei ubi (ubi= cassava).
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BC Free video show at Zouk |
- We were unlucky finding a taxi, and we needed to hurry as I expected the event to be crowded as it had been widely advertised and it was a free show with free beer. We met up with Rana's brother Javad, actually it wasn't packed. - I have seen a lot of innovative film shows before, which have been quite good. In this one they had got a grant travelled around 11 Asian cities and were attempting to build a story of why people move to cities, but they didn't do a good job it was dull !.. another waste of time for me. And then we had to run before the transport finished.
| Monday- Platform (An open Mic for theatre) at KLPAC
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- Unfortunately this time no one was previewing scenes from upcoming productions, there were only 2 short pieces that students were working on. So it was a long way to travel for not much entertainment value.
- This is a great idea is a great idea
- for the artistes it provides an opportunity to test the work with a rehearsal in front of a live audience and get feedback. And promote upcoming productions
- For the audience they get the opportunity to preview new shows for free and maybe find out a hot new thing before anyone else.
- Original Works Style - I guess what performers do is play around with a story ideas and characters and try and craft them into something which is an interesting performance for an audience to watch. So yes at the beginning one can start off with anything, but in the crafting it has to acquire, some meaning, entertainment value and believability to have value to a paying audience.
- I would relax the rule against no singing if I was him. And use structured feedback cards.
| Wednesday - 58 Tedious Films
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- Project 59, 59 59s videos. They were universally crap art student rubbish.
- Well one was OK where a guy got a 59s wish to be Sinatra. - Look we see 1000 1 minute videos every day commercials, trailers, promos, and programme intros these videos were nothing compared to this. The Rapid KL bus advert where the baby boy says he will have a big car with a driver ..so now he's got it .."the bus" is a 100 times better than the stuff from last night !
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