NARCISSISM IS NECESSARY

A photography contest is being held in conjunction with World Lupus Day on May 10, 2008. Called “ANYTHING Butterfly Photography Contest“, this photography contest aims to raise public awareness about Lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause severe damage to body tissues and organs and in aid of Persatuan SLE Malaysia.

The shortlisted photographs will be exhibited from May 10 - May 18, 2008 at 1 Utama, First Floor Oval. For you shutterbugs, there’s no excuse not to enter! If you have a camera, must enter too! All proceeds from this event goes directly to Persatuan SLE Malaysia.

Please download entry form here: http://www.shutterasia.com/files/WLD_EntryForm.pdf

TO ENTER:

Complete the entry form and send it with your donation of RM10 (cheque/money order) payable to “Persatuan SLE Malaysia” to the address:
Persatuan SLE Malaysia, 3rd Floor,
Bangunan Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah,
No. 16, Jalan Utara, 46200
Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

or

Bank in your donation of RM10 to: Persatuan SLE Malaysia, CIMB Account No: 1266-0000638-054 and fax the completed entry form and bank-in slip to fax no: 03-7957 0407. You may also e-mail them to pslemhq@gmail.com if you prefer.

Contest Form Submission Period runs from May 1st - 7th.

Photos must be submitted by May 8th.

Photo exhibition of winners will run from May 10th - 18th in 1 Utama First Floor Oval.

For more information and terms & conditions please click here.

First Prize:

Organised by Shutter Asia and generously supported by Nikon, 1 Utama Community Corner, Epson Trading, Akitiara Corporation, Grand Prix, Pumpkin Design, EventsXpert, Tung Colour Separation, Nuffnang and Frank & Francois Communications, this contest aims to unite everyone with a camera (be it a professional DSLR, compact camera or camera phone) to raise funds for Persatuan SLE Malaysia and also heighten the profile of Lupus disease.

Don’t let your photography talents go to waste!

World Lupus Day ads are finally up on Nuffnang, Asia’s largest blog advertising network. Thank you Nuffnang team! (You can see the ad on the right of my blog). Some of you who are bloggers may be affiliated with Nuffnang and we gently urge you to go to your Nuffnang dashboard, then Blog Manager and change your Ad Preference to “Show Charity Ads”. This only means that the charity ad banner will appear if you have no paid ad banners at the moment.

ANYTHING Butterfly is the first of many pro-bono projects under KimKomm and I want to thank all the sponsors for making this possible. I admit, when I picked this project up, I had very little understanding about Lupus and I did not know of anyone with the condition. Only when I’ve started to spread the word about this event that I’ve discovered that I have friends who are living with Lupus, whether affecting them directly or their loved ones. I’m really honoured to be part of this event and hopefully more people will know about this illness after.

Giddy happy feeling hehehe

I’ll probably get even more flak for writing this but I have to get this off my chest.

This month is really a bad time for people who are not voting. Day in, day out, they’re being bombarded with questions from friends, family and acquaintances on whether they’re voting or not, whether they have registered to vote, which party they’re crossing for and many other politically related questions.

Being a person who has not registered or intend to vote this year, I feel that these questions are starting to become a little offensive. Just because you have filled out some forms at the post office and “exercised your democratic right”, doesn’t make you fit enough to chastise and insult those who have chosen not to do so. Do you even know these people? Do you even understand what goes through the minds of these people who have chosen not to vote? So stop making assumptions and leave them in peace. Leave me in peace for goodness sake.

I can’t help but feel that lately, the left wing has sort of become the trendiest club in town. Everyone wants to be a left winger. People who can’t even tell who is the current Prime Minister is a friggin left winger. Left wingers will keep the government in check…yay, we’re better than everyone else. Well, piss off.

Someone told me that I shouldn’t complain about the government if I don’t intend to vote. Hey, I absolutely agree with that but you know where does that put me at? It seems that I can’t complain about anything at all, because EVERYTHING bad is caused by the government. Wah roti canai so expensive…..it’s the government! Tiu my client pay so late….it’s the government! Urgh, my period so pain this month….it’s the government! So first they insist that I have to exercise my democratic right, then they take away my right to complain whatever the hell I want? That’s armchair left wingers for you.

I understand that some of you may be very passionate about the political situation in this country and would like nothing better than to convince someone to vote and make a change bla bla bla. I understand that because I also understand that politics determine almost every aspect of our social and economic growth. But I also understand that there are some of us, the cynics, the paranoids, the self-preservationists, the ignorant, the fence-sitters, the i-dont-give-a-flying-f*-am-leaving-this-gawdamn-countrys, heck even the lazyasses don’t sit very well with the idea of voting.

Seriously, stop it already. Enough of the “one vote also makes a difference” story, the check and balance story, the conspiracy theories and all those other yap yappity yap that I’ve heard for the hundredth million times. I’m not stupid and so stop implying I am before you even care to listen to MY story.

The thing is, I don’t even feel like telling you. Why would I jam my opinions and beliefs down your throat when I expect the same from you? So yeah, give me and other like-minded people a break.

In my opinion, it’s already suffice to ask “What do you think of the coming elections?”.

If you’re faced with the “I don’t like to talk about it…lets talk about other stuff”, don’t be a stupid shit and asked why. Just stop the nonsense, give someone his or her privacy and talk about something else.

On the other hand, if that someone responded with an enthusiastic analysis of the voting system, well good on you!

The peril of getting older and jaded? I found myself in the same situations I was several years ago, but in spite of getting angry and frustrated, I sighed a deep breath and closed the windows. I read about BERSIH rally with interest but I lacked the sort of ferocity I would have say, 5 years ago. A part of me was grateful that there were so many out there who were willing to sacrifice time and money, put their lives at risk for a better country but another part of me just didn’t really care. When I saw the scores of videos of people getting sprayed with chemical water, my heart ached and I felt sick in the guts. 10 minutes later, I continued on with work and secretly wished they wouldn’t pull something like that in the middle of my event or work meeting in the future.

Have I truly become apathetic?

A good friend of mine, who is Indian, asked me about my opinions on HINDRAF. I told her it’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. It was over MSN and I couldn’t gauge very well but I think she was somewhat taken aback. Thank goodness for 6 years of friendship, she was willing to hear me out. I told her that going by HINDRAF’s logic, chinese would have to start digging their ancestors’ graves and reprimand them for boarding the junks across South East China Sea to Tanah Melayu. Of course knowing the chinese, they would probably keep the jewelleries adorning the corpses first.

I also told her that the HINDRAF movement reflects really badly on them. Whoever that was involved certainly was not fit to be called a Malaysian. The act of seeking monetary compensation from a foreign country for the unfortunate luck of being a Malaysian is not only appalling but also reeks of selfishness. What about us!? (Just kidding). Perhaps they felt that going through the proper channels in Malaysia would not bring on any improvement. Which is true, our government certainly do not have USD 4 trillion to go around. And even if they do, they have to start compensating 60% of the population with USD 24 trillion not including 7% interest rate. HOW?

I understand the essence of HINDRAF struggle is probably for fairness but damn those ka-chings have really made the movement seems a tad too dodgy for me to be serious about. And to be honest with you, what would fairness do to this country? Being the so-called “marginalised” race, I only feel like anything remotely fair in this country would mean that I have 80% of the Malaysia’s population to fight with.

And in all seriousness, I’m really actually pretty happy with the current situation now.

++Update++

They’re using water cannon and tear gasses already!

Closing up the city so that they can batter people up with no one watching?

++/Update++

Was thinking of going to KL for some shopping but read this.

Motorists in the Klang Valley found themselves caught in traffic jams on Saturday because of roadblocks and traffic diversions.

Motorists going to work, running their usual weekend errands or returning home from the Deepavali holidays, found themselves crawling on highways and roads in Kuala Lumpur and surrounding areas like Petaling Jaya.

According to PLUS Highway, traffic from the north along the North-South Expressway has been diverted to the Kota Damansara and Damansara exits as the Sungai Buloh-Jalan Duta stretch has been closed. At press time, no reason was given for the closure.

Meanwhile, police confirm that roadblocks have been set up at various major roads leading to Kuala Lumpur for security checks.

Source: The Star

It’s a peaceful rally for goodness sake. They could have used the security measures for other things like stopping the menace of mat rempits and kids from getting raped .

More the reason to march on!

Was walking to my car after work. It seemed strange because at that hour the car park is usually pretty quiet, but today there were a few people pacing around. As I was about to enter my car, a girl from that group of people approached me. In her hand was a stack of printed envelopes.

The envelopes.

She told me that her company was having a promotion and asked me if I were interested to participate. I told her I wasn’t interested but she was very persistent, kept saying that if I participated I might get 50% off from some electrical items. I couldn’t get her off my back so I humoured her by agreeing to it. She handed me one of the printed envelopes and told me to open it by tearing off at the perforated line. Before I did it, she also showed me some opened envelopes with a big “THANK YOU” printed on them. According to her, if my envelope said “Thank You” then it means I wouldn’t be eligible for the prizes and she’d take my envelope back. Fine, I thought.

If it says “Thank You”, give it back.

So I quickly tore of my envelope (was rushing to beat the jam), so quickly that I didn’t quite tear at the perforated line…more like half of the envelope. When I opened it, it says “RM 1,500 000″ and some kind of disclaimer on it. So I gave the envelope back to the girl and asked her what it was.

W00t, instant millionaire?

She exclaimed in surprise that she had never seen anything like that. She was like “EH??? EH??? WHAT IS THIS? I HAVEN’T SEEN THIS BEFORE? EH??”. First of all, homegirl has got the worst acting ever. I could instantly detect her fake surprise. I told her to buzz off cause I was not going to get scammed. Some more, she had the cheeks to ask me what I’m talking about and don’t I want to win RM1.5 mil. I told her, no…and that it’s a scam and I’ve read about shit like this in the papers and I’m going home right now.

Bad actress.

When I closed my car door I almost clipped her head cause she was peering into my car. Stupid bitch! Wanted to inform the car park attendants but they were nowhere to be seen so I just left hoping nobody got scammed after me. Probably not, the girl would have to first brush up her acting, seriously.

Then again, don’t know why some people still get conned into stuff like this. C’mon, anything that sounds too good to be true is exactly what it is, too good to be true.

I say, whatevsssssss to these scams.