Poor Little Spongebob Squarepants from Bikini Bottom

Published by simon on November 7, 2006

Apparently, a Spongebob Squarepants book has been banned in Malaysia.

(image from Wikipedia. Avert your eyes if you’re under 43 years of age.)

Yes, that yellow sea creature, who lives in Bikini Bottom with his pet snail Gary. I thinking he’s banned because some people think of him as a gay icon, like that evil Teletubbies (which one was it? Dipsy? Tinky-Winky? Laa-Laa? Po? Oh no, did I just name all of them…?).

By that reckoning, they should also ban other gay icons like Village People, N’Sync, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (yes they do show it on 8TV). And not to mention Winter Sonata, because the guy looks so (and that makes 4 times, anjali*…!)

Or maybe that book was banned because of the name Bikini Bottom. Oooh, the horror of hearing our kids say ‘Bikini‘. Coli, cawat, spender, thong, whale tail, G-string and seluar dalam, all okay. Bikini, that one counter-culture.

No?

Maybe it’s because poor Spongebob is boring and does not add any educational value to Malaysian kids, like say, Keluang Man or the Cicak Man. Telenovela Latin Amerika all can, with the adultery and bitch-slapping, but Spongebob and his lovable pal Patrick tak boleh…

I dunno.

I better stop my kids from reading any Winnie-the-Sh!t books, too. Just to be safe, you never know.

Technorati Tags: books, SpongeBob Squarepants, Bikini Bottom, whale tail, Teletubbies

OMG, It’s WINTER SONATA…! Again!!!

Published by simon on November 4, 2006

Let me get one thing straight. My wife’s the one watching WINTER SONATA, not me. She didn’t watch it the first 35 times they showed it on local TV, so she’s catching it on 8TV daily.

Since I can’t get to watch my Seinfeld re-runs, I have to sit through it being shown on the idiot-box while I do my work or read.

What’s there to know to about the great and much-talked-about (although a little old) WINTER SONATA? Okay, like i said, i dun really watch, but from what i gather:

– ITS BLARDY SLOW. There are lots of scenes where the actors and actresses are talking slowly like trying to repress all their anal retentive emotions (prolly as a result of staying in a Antartica-like country 365 days of the year) or try to emote with their faces. One whole episode can pass without anything serious plot advancement, except like for the last 3.5 minutes, of a cliff-hanger. Which turns out to be an anti-climax the next day.

- THEN THERE’S THAT ANNOYING SONG. Yep, that famous song. Played at the start, and throughout the show (on a piano). I assume it’s a SONATA, although if Mozart where to hear it, he’ll probably think he’s in an elevator. My ex-colleague (a middle-aged Malay woman) has a 10-year old son who can play that song on the piano. Poor kid can’t speak English, but can sing the song verbatim in Korean. Although sometimes my colleague thinks he’s just swearing in Hokkien.

- DID I MENTION THAT IT’S BLARDY SLOW? There are, like, what, 295 episodes? And the storyline is like 4 paragraphs long, if they were to summarize it.

- SPEAKING OF STORYLINE - not mucho going on here. Boy gets accident. Possessive mother brainwashes amnesiac pretty boy son. Boy meets girl. Falls in love with girl. Finds out she may be his sister. Still wants to get married (to ‘protect’ girl’s feeling). Geez, I bet their kids will have to go to special school. Anyway, it turns out not to be, all with the drama of the meddling parents. Then there’s the conniving ex-girlfriend and pathetic spineless ex-boyfriend. I must emphasize again that there is a lot of emoting and crying in the show. By the girls, too. BWAHAHA. I love that joke. The guys cry like some disgraced Malaysian politicians the losers on Akademi Fantasia.

- DID I MENTION IT’S COLD THERE? Yes, yes, WE KNOW it’s called WINTER Sonata, not HYUNDAI Sonata. So expect lots of wintry scenes of naked trees and characters with heavy coats. Besides, watching it makes good promo for the Korean Tourism Board, a.k.a. Oh-My-Gawd-let’s-go-for-the-RM12,564-Winter-Sonata-packaged-tour. What global warming? Antartica isn’t the only place with minus 43 degree weather all year round, you know? Oka fine, i know winter doesn’t last all year round in Korea, but at the pace the show is going, you’d think they’re living in Siberia.

- THEN THERE’S THE CAST. Oo-ookay. I can go on and on about this. But let me keep it short.

This is the main couple in the show. Or as my wife and i call them “Guy #1” and “Girl #2“. The first photo is the hero (“Guy#1“). The guy is supposed to be some heartthrob that made this show SO popular in Malaysia, but seriously, he looks like any East Asian dude. Except with ghey looking hair. Come to think of it, he looks like one of my classmate back in uni. That guy ghey or not i dunno lar.

The girl, hmmm. Reminds me of one of the Malaysian Astro Chinese International Pageant contestants. Please SMS MACIP 67 to 33888. Now. But i tell you thing. This Korean girl really knows how to cry, man. On the average, 3.4 scenes every episode, which works out to be 2.1 buckets.

This is the scheming ex-girlfriend, or as we call her, Girl #2. She’s quite pretty, though, and i’m definitely sure she can kick Girl#1′s candy-ass if they were to get into a catfight.

And this, is the ex-boyfriend of the heroine, which we call, yes, you guessed it – Guy #2. He likes heroine, but heroine likes hero… This guy is SO LEMBAB and prone to tears it makes me want to bitch slap him everytime. Apparently, it might turn out that he and the hero might turn out to be long lost brothers. MY GAWD, this is GOOD TV, man.

Boys and girls, our next topic for your assignment: Which is more deserving of a Day Time Emmy – Winter Sonata or Jewel in the Palace? Discuss.

Technorati Tags: Winter Sonata, Korean, South Korea, drama, Jewel in the Palace, Bae Yong Joon, Choi Ji Woo, Park Yong Ha, Park Sol Mi, 8TV

I Can’t Believe it Has Been A Year Since The Last Nanowrimo!

Published by simon on November 1, 2006

I can’t believe it has been a year since the last Nanowrimo!

Well, actually it has been only 11 months, it ended on 30th November. But yesterday, being the 1st of November, was the first day of Nanowrimo 2006.

For the uninitiated, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is held every year in November, where people are encouraged to finish a 50,000-word novel in the 30 days of the month. It isn’t a competition – there are no prizes or anything of the such, you ‘win’ by completing the novel past 50k words, if you don’t, you just don’t ‘win’. In return, you get a virtual certificate, and the warm glowing feeling that you have completed an actual novel (however unreadable and superfluous it is). And if by some stroke of luck, you manage to get it published, you be alongside the ranks of folks like Dan Brown . J.K. Rowling and er… David Eddings.

Nobody reads the novel if you don’t want them to – you just send your completed masterpiece in text format to the website, and a bot will count the number of words and send the verification back to you in a matter or seconds. That is, provided, you complete the freaking novel, and not stop at “Once upon the time, in a land far, far away…”.

I finished my novel last year, got the cert, and basked in the warm fuzzy feeling of euphoria – all 5 seconds of it. For those not accustomed to writing seriously, let me tell you this – 50k is A LOT OF WORDS. Let’s put it into perspective – a blog entry like this is about 200 words. So Nanowrimo is roughly about 250 blog entries in a month. That’s like 8 or 9 blog entries per day. Not simpler no-brainer entries like this one, a novel has to have detailed plot lines and characterizations. In short, it’s a lot of work.

I remember when working on my novel last year, I spent almost every available minute of my spare time writing – lunch hour, after 5pm, at home in the evening, during the weekends. While I was driving, I was constantly thinking of the plot and continuity, and sometimes also when I was trying to sleep at night. You have to bear in mind that I’m a person without much free time. I have a full time job that takes up more time than the average Malaysian, a full-fledge family, and commitments to my church, SG and Young Adults Group. Not to mention the three blogs running full time. And the number of books I go through a month.

I worked out that I had 25 days out of the 30 to work on the novel, the other five being the days where I had no access to my notebook or was traveling. So that came to 2000 words a day. Every few hundred words, I checked my progress with the word count.

After completing the whole shebang with one day to spare, I spent the next 10 months going “No way am I going to do that again…!”

But in the last one week, I was sorely tempted to try it again, even without a shred of a plot to work on. But when it came down to it, I still decided NOT to do it – I have even more commitment than I did last year (including attending a class), plus I’ll be traveling a lot more. It’s disappointing, but yeah, I won’t be Nano-ing this year.

There was a pre-Nano gathering last year, which I attended at MPH 1-Utama, but it looks like there isn’t one this year.

Anyway, if anyone is keen to try their hand at writing, go for it. It’s only the 1st of the month today. Still lots of time…

(For more info on Nanowrimo, you can check out the official website here, or read my posts on it last year here, here and here).

Technorati Tags: Nanowrimo, writing