Skip to main content

Vetri Nichayam.

I don't like Samy Vellu. But when he takes time off to launch a writer's book, I'll resist the urge to poke fun at him.

From The Star:
WRITERS should produce literary works that provide ideas for the socio-economic development of the people, Tamil Nesan quoted MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu as saying.

He said a positive and right frame of mind was needed to improve one’s quality of life.

In this context, writers could help contribute such ideas for the betterment of society.

One’s success in life would be more meaningful if it also benefited society as well, he said.

In this respect, writers should be broad-minded and far-sighted to help uplift the people’s socio-economic status. They could share constructive ideas in their writings, he said.

Samy Vellu praised Tamil writer P. Sundarapaadiyan for possessing such positive traits. He was launching the writer’s Tamil short story collection entitled Vetri Nichayam (Success is in Our Hands) in Sitiawan, Perak, recently.
Wonder if there are any plans to translate Success is in Our Hands into English?
Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown5/10/06 2:14 pm

    I saw that too in the paper.

    I was wondering whether he will one day write his own memoir. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Mahsun5/10/06 2:23 pm

    I'm sure a lot of ghost writers are willing to help him out when the time comes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous8/10/06 2:22 pm

    I don't like Sam Vello either. But he does have a point there. I guess even the most @%&% politician still makes sense at times...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ted Mahsun8/10/06 3:51 pm

    Yeah, wish he'd make sense the rest of the time too, but hey, you can't have everything.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm going to Clarion West!

So yeah! I'm going to Clarion West this year! If you didn't know, Clarion West is a really awesome science fiction and fantasy writing workshop that runs for six weeks in summer every year at Seattle and is usually taught by a faculty of award-winning authors and editors. Many students who attend this workshop also go on to have illustrious writing careers of their own too. I've been meaning to attend this workshop (or its sister workshop, Clarion UCSD, which is the original Clarion workshop but runs in San Diego around the same time) for years now but never had the courage to apply. Many reasons as to why: didn't think I'd have money for the most part, didn't think I was good enough, didn't think I could leave work long enough, didn't think I could leave family behind, etc. But something sparked inside of me late last year. I felt I should at least give it a go this time round. So I did. They requested a sample of my best work and an applicatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dedicated by Burgess.

I've been wanting to blog this for ages, but I've never managed to make the scanner work properly... that is till now. Some years back, my dad was browsing the shelves of NovelHut, Ipoh's best second-hand bookstore, and found a copy of Anthony Burgess's Time for a Tiger . Price? RM2. (That would be approximately USD$0.60 or GBP£0.30). Did I mention it was a hardcover first edition? Here's the dedication page, with the famous dedication written in Jawi. Jawi is the Malay language written in Arab script, a norm early last century. Nowadays, Malay is written in Romanised form. The dedication says: " Kepada sahabat-sahabat saya di Tanah Melayu " which translates into "To my friends in Malaya." On the opposite page, proof this is the first edition. A first edition is probably valuable by itself. But this copy has something extra that makes it even more special--a personal dedication by Burgess himself to a friend: If you can't make the writing out...
15 comments
Read more

REVIEW: Confessions of an Old Boy by Kam Raslan

Kam Raslan's right. In the preface for his new book, Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures he writes that we've known Dato' Hamid all our lives. Seeing as my own dad is an old boy of MCKK, the people I get to meet when he drags me to an Old Boy function and the people he tells me of, reflect the characters found in Kam's book. It really does feel like I've known Dato' Hamid all my life. Dato' Hamid is a civil servant of the Tunku Abdul Rahman generation. He is the sort of person you rarely see nowadays, a fine example of the anachronistic Malay. This generation, groomed in the ways of the colonial British would be out of place not just in 21st century Malaysia, but in Britain too. And yet, Dato' Hamid, in all his snobbishness and patronising ways, is essentially a Malaysian. Without people like him, our country would probably never exist at all. At least not like we know it now. I'm glad that Kam Raslan decided to capture this ...
5 comments
Read more