Ted Mahsun

(Those who don't follow Doctor Who can just skip this post, thanks.) Woohoo! I am totally stoked about tomorrow's episode of Doctor Who, mostly because it features an infinite library! Shades of Borges anyone? While I'm on that note, I think Donna Noble is excellent as a companion. Who would've thought? I found her absolutely annoying in that one Christmas Special, and before the current season started, would have preferred Kylie Minogue staying on as companion. Alas! It was not to be. I don't have any opinions about Martha Jones because after Rose left, I was left very upset and decided to boycott the show...only for The Master (played by that cool bloke from Life on Mars !!!) to return in that season's finalé! So yes, I regret that now. Nvm! I just hope the Doctor's daughter returns in style. (If I was bothered to update my twitter account, I would probably type in: "is humming the original synthesized Doctor Who theme.")

It used to be that Haruki Murakami was very shy with the press, especially the Japanese press. But in recent years that shyness must have cast off a little. It looks like he's in the news every other month now. While I won't be surprised if he gave a comprehensive interview to a foreign newspaper (it's outside the shores of Japan where he's celebrated as a literary sensation, while he's seen as more of a hack within), it does surprise me that Murakami would give such a long and interesting review to a Japanese paper–the interview spans 5 webpages over 5 days. (Personally I've been hopping with glee with all this Murakami news pouring in!) I guess times must have changed? There's a lot of new and interesting nuggets spilled by Murakami in the interview, which discusses his work translating English classics into Japanese, his next novel(an epic worthy of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle !), how English literature and translating English literature influences his wri...

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Fellow blogger and pal, Swifty , has had his short film, Chicken Rice Mystery , become one of the finalists in the BMW Shorties 2008 competition. I've seen it and I think it's an enjoyable watch. Combining elements of noir and several bits of comedy, which to me is very reminiscent of Chow Sing Chi's work in the Nineties, Chicken Rice Mystery is about a boy whose mother used to make really good chicken rice, a dish that everyone in the family remembers with great fondness. But ever since he was born, his mother stopped cooking it and now his father has grown to miss that particular chicken rice. But then there's that issue of his mother not really being able to cook very well... So how is it that his mother was able to cook this magnificent dish that everyone seems to praise? He then takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of why his mother doesn't make her particular brand of chicken rice anymore. The movie is only about ten minutes long but totally worth loadin...

Before I get my new hard drive though let me show off my haul from the KLAB. 10x10 : 100 Minutes to Change the World - The Winning Plays of the Kakiscript Playwriting Competition (free, but had to fill in survey form and give up my private and personal details) Colonel Sun by Robert Markham (a pseudonym of Kingsley Amis; free, but obtained via Bookcrossing so will have to pass it on when I'm done reading) Cerpen-cerpen Terkemuka Akutagaw a (free, but obtained via Bookcrossing so will have to pass it on when I'm done reading, but at least I can say I read Akutagawa in the original Malay) Vox by Nicholson Baker (free, but obtained via Bookcrossing so will have to pass it on when I'm done reading) Ask the Dust by John Fante (free, but obtained via Bookcrossing so will have to pass it on when I'm done reading Bruce Chatwin by Nicholas Shakespeare (free, no strings attached) The Malay Peoples of Malaysia and Their Languages by Asmah Haji Omar (free, no strings attached...

So even a blogpost needs a teaser? Naw... it's just that I took a lot of photos and even several videos of the KL Alternative Bookfest that I'd like to upload and post on the blog but I seem to have run out of space on my hard drive. Only 300megs left! I'm going out to buy a new drive tomorrow so I'll blog about KLAB then. Other things to get tomorrow: a Mawi haircut. All this long hair is driving me crazy!

I've only recently jumped on the Battlestar Galactica bandwagon. Until recently, I didn't watch a lot of TV and due to recent changes in my life I finally got round to watching some good TV shows (What? Watch them on terrestrial TV? You must be joking!) thanks to the internets. One of the shows I finally got round to watching is the very much acclaimed new version of Battlestar Galactica . I've watched the first four episodes of season 4 already and so far, I like what I see! (I haven't got round to downloading the rest of the episodes but will do so once I get a new hard disk drive for the PowerMac.) The story so far, as I understand it, includes a certain very interesting character by the name of Gaius Baltar. Throughout the series he's been a politician (namely the President of New Caprica), and now, he's becoming some sort of prophet promoting a monotheistic religion, very much in contrast with the more popular polytheistic religion of worshipping Roman-styl...

Yesterday was hotter than I thought it was. When I came home from work yesterday--yes, I was working on Labour Day; we had an exhibition launch at the gallery--the studio room where I house my computers and book library was like a greenhouse. This has happened before of course and I've never had problems with my two computers overheating or anything like that before. The only things overheating were the puny humans inside. I'm lucky the PowerMac has smart internal fans that rev up when they sense the CPU is above a certain temperature, usually 60˚c. With the Windows PC, I wasn't all that concerned about it overheating either because the huge noisy internal fans are blasting away all the time anyway. And yet a strange thing happened yesterday. I had some extra time on my hands yesterday, so I took it upon myself to install the new SP3 update for Windows XP on the PC. The install went smoothly. And then it asked for a reboot. One reboot later, and Windows booted up into SP3, ...

We have new information on the Murakami Diary 2009 but still no clear idea what it actually is. Why do diaries need book teasers anyway? If it's just a plain old diary, just say so. We don't need the hype.