Marsha Maung:: Freelance graphic designer and writer - ramblings

Penerbitan Filem Negara Malaysia

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 18:48:44 +0100

I am like….Oh My God!!! I was watching 8tv a moment ago and then you know what? I saw this ‘message’ from the Government of Malaysia produced by Filem Negara Malaysia educating people about how to prevent snatch theft and it was OH SO EFFECTIVE. The police who went on air was an officer by the name of ‘Mohamad’ (don’t even think it’s his real name) and he was like looking into the camera, looking at the script, looking at the camera, looking at the script, pause, look at script again, look at camera….

Sad to say, the quality of the clips or films produced by Filem Negara Malaysia (FNM) sucks to high Heaven. I know I am using a lot of religiously sensitive words but this blog is categorized under ‘ramblings’ and I can ramble on, right? Don’t read if you don’t like swearing. :-)

I mean, they’ve had all those years to improve. Even the Malaysian film industry have changed…they’ve progressed. We pay taxes and they get loads of money from the government, right? Where’d it all go? Can’t they like….do SOMETHING….ANYTHING to improve the quality of the film they produce?

Honestly? It looks like something even I can do, you know what I mean? You have that Windows Movie Maker on your computer, right? I bet you can come up with something better. With a better actor, of course. Try training your kids to do it. I believe they can do a better job than that Mohamad guy.

And besides, all they (that Mohamad guy) said was to carry as little money as possible (we have credit cards these days), don’t show your money to other people (OF COURSE, duh???) and keep your handbag or purse very close your personal self (aaarrrrggghhhh!!!).

Oy, make some sense, can or not? If you want to educate people about how to prevent snatch theft, tell us something useful, something we don’t already know. GET IT????

Rambles on

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 03:40:53 +0100

Judging from writing style, you will understand why I say I am fighting for every single second in a day. Every single second counts. Sitting down, lying down doing nothing, dreaming and surfing around aimlessly on the Internet is out of the question. Absolutely so. But….

Lydia made me do it. Tried the “Desperate Housewives’ test although never watched it before. No time. But I am technically now partially (most of the time) a housewife struggling to find time to fulfill my business obligations…so, why the heck not??

RESULT:

You gave up a great job for this? No one really appreciates you, and yet you slog on, with very little sleep and very little thanks. Who can blame you when you occasionally lose it? Hang in there. Just lay off the Ritalin.

How true, how true. But….what’s Ritalin. Might want to give it a shot if it helps. J

Wanna try the quiz yourself? Go here…

http://abc.go.com/primetime/desperate/quiz/index.html

On familial front….

Jared fascinated with sunglasses – he’s a vampire, you see. He’ll hide under my shirt whenever we go out into the sun. We found old his old sunglass and he decides to wear in everywhere he goes. Night time, I told him he can’t wear it because if he did, he wouldn’t be able to see where he’s going. He said, “But mom, I can use my mind”. Absentmindedly I said, “I can’t use my mind to see, honey” and he said, “Oh, mom, you can use MY mind. I can see with my mind, mom”

What a laugh I had.

In the meantime, Joshua is going through this…’ghostests and monsters are hiding under my bed’ phase. He’s never had this problem before…well, ok, he occasionally is scared by stuff (like me, easily scared and overactive imagination and all that) but never this bad. Well, thanks to Scooby-dooby-doo. He’s watched it a couple of times with his cousins and now he thinks red-eyed skeletons with sagging green skin is hiding behind every door and translucent hands are going to come out from mirrors.

He’s never going to watch that show again. EVER if I had it my way.

Got in, no out! What kind of stupid intelligent machine is THAT?

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 08:25:00 +0100

I am sort of…no, right off the bat fuming because of a so-called intelligent vending machine provided by TIME Kontact. I’ve never, in all honesty seen a dumber vending machine. Ok, for all of you who are not familiar with TIME, TIME is a Telecommunications company offering a large variety of communication services from Internet to telephone services. Since I am not particularly happy with their services at the moment, I’ll stop right here. Don’t want to give them free advertisement.

Anyway, TIME provides a sort of vending machine that dispenses prepaid cards for our mobile phones. My maid wanted to reload her mobile phone air time and there just so happens to be one of those vending machines beside my Condo’s admin office. It said there, “Please insert exact amount. Does not return change”. Fine and dandy. This happens all the time everywhere, right? So, since my maid wanted to purchase a RM10 reload card, we placed 2 RM5 bills in (new ones, the glossy type) and the notes were instantly rejected.

That’s stupidity No. 1 – How outdated can a vending machine be when it doesn’t recognize Malaysia’s latest legal money format? TIME doesn’t even bother altering their vending machines?

Never mind, we placed a RM10 bill into the machine and then we realized that the lights on the machine were very dim. And we can’t see the ‘SOLD OUT’ beside the reload coupon that my maid wanted to buy. DAMN!

That’s stupidity No. 2 – You expect your customers to only buy your reload cards in the night time, is it? If that is so, place another warning sign there….”PURCHASE ONLY AT NIGHT. DIM LIGHTS ON DIM MACHINE!”

OK, so, since they are not going to return the money to us (can go in, cannot go out, right?) so, we have to buy something. So, I decided to purchase a reload card for MY phone this time. We carefully checked the lights and saw that the ‘SOLD OUT’ sign beside the reload card that I want to buy is off, so, good news there.

Aaahhh…but the bad news is that I want to buy the RM50 reload card and we already have RM10 in pits of this stupid machine, right? So, I need to place 4 RM10 notes into the machine, right? But the problem was, I didn’t have 4 RM10 with me. I had RM50 notes with me. And they didn’t take RM5 notes, remember? I sauntered sweetly into the admin office and asked them to break my RM50 into 5 RM10s. They did.

I came back out and checked the small little screen and it says there “Credit: RM0.00”. What in the world…..???? What happened to the RM10 we placed into the machine? My maid and me stared at each other in befuddlement and confusion. We contemplated….did we or did we not place the money into the vending machine. The kids were running around making a heck of a noise outside the admin office and maybe we forgot that we took the money back. Erm…but that’s not possible because there’s IN for the machine and no OUT.

Logical explanation would be, the money is still inside.

At this point, one of the admin staff in the office walked out and asked us if the money swallowed the money AGAIN? And we were like….”What? This is what the machine usually does? Eat money?” She smiled and nods forlornly.

“After you insert your money into the machine, you must quickly select the option. Otherwise, the machine will just take your money. End of story”, she explained. “Lots of people complained about this machine and we are getting the people to come back and take this machine away instead of causing so much trouble here”.

Stupidity No. 3 – Inactivity for certain period of time = donation. Heck, if I wanted to donate money, I would donate it some poor fellow who actually deserves the freaking money, ok? For cripes’ sake, what kind of a stupid machine is this?

First, it doesn’t return change. Second, it doesn’t recognize Malaysia’s latest notes. Thirdly, the machine operates completely right only in the night because in the day time, you have to, like, cup your hands beside your face and squint into the machine to see whether the SOLD OUT sign is lit or not. Fourthly, they take your money if you don’t act quickly enough! So, slowpokes should not buy from TIME vending machine.

TIME is doing brilliantly in pissing people like me off, man! Buck up or you’re going down for sure, TIME.

Irony hits man on the head

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:55:00 +0100

I was reading the papers today (which is rare because I think newspaper is a bearer of bad news) and read something that struck me as ironic. Remember the song ‘ironic’ by Alanais Morisette some eons ago? That song about how you find a fly in your Chardonay, rain on your wedding day, a man who was afraid to die die in his first plane ride…etc?

Well, today, a cancer patient died on his way to the hospital. It’s probably like God telling him, “Hey, here’s a gift from me to you. Die quickly instead of slowly”.

Cancer, as we know, is a very slow and cruel killer. If one was to die, one would rather it be quick and relatively painless. Well, for it to be completely painless would have to mean that you die when you’re already dead. Make sense? No? Too bad. But the thing is that if human beings had a choice between dying of cancer or dying in a car accident, I suppose many would rather die in a car accident. Choi Kor Lei Tai Kat Lai See (Cantonese Touch Wood)…I know.

But suppose this man had a chance to live? I wonder what the report would say after the checkup? Would the doctor say, “Mr. so-and-so, sorry but we made a really stupid mistake. There’s nothing wrong with you. The report we gave you belongs to someone else”.

But I guess we’ll never know now since he’s dead before he made it for the checkup. Ironic, eh?

Much ado about lion dances...

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:55:00 +0100

Forget the mandarin oranges, they stink up a car or lift. Forget the ang pows, they’re nothing but $2 worth of red paper meant to be thrown away, anyway. Forget about the cakes and cookies, they make you fat.

Now, lion dances…. THAT’s what Chinese New Year is all about. I don’t know whether I’ve written about lion dances before or not…like last Chinese New Year but every year, they awe me. These young blokes dressed in tight shirts, long baggy pants looking all prancy and loose are something. They’re really something.

The Lion Dance dates as far back as the Ching and Haan Dynasties and they are performed to bring ward off the evil, bring good luck, prosperity, health and happiness to the people who gather around to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at them. I have to admit that I am one of those who gasp when they perform something tricky. I am also one of those who clap loudly and cheer like a kid when their leap is as high as a two-storey building! No kidding. I mean, my sister-in-law was telling me that last year, the front guy into the air and the head of the lion hit the bottom of the second floor bridge and both fell off the poles. But thanks to their Kung-Fu training, they know, better than anyone else, how to FALL properly.

The grace and agility of those lion dancers are absolutely magnificent. There’s nothing easy about the way they leap from one pole to another, balancing like a ballerina (only more masculine, rougher and faster) crouch and STILL remembering to move those ears and eyes. A lion dance is more than just a display of agility and strength. It’s drama too. The lions express fear, apprehension, anxiety, happiness, jubilance and anger. The lion dancers skillfully and artfully control the lion’s actions without forgetting where to jump to next.

Many people were busy throwing ang pows at the lions and picking up mandarins when I saw a few of the troop members come up with extra boxes of mandarins behind the dancer on the back. They were running out of mandarins to throw out. So, these members pass the oranges to the back person and the back person passes it on to the front person. And the front person throws the mandarins out of the lion’s mouth!

And did you know that there are different types of lion dances? I didn’t but I DID notice that some lions are different.

<the Southern Lion>

The Southern Lion Dance and the Northern Lion Dance. I personally like the Southern Lion Dance better. Although it’s not more realistic but because of the way the lion is shaped and designed (with as few restrictions to movement as possible), the performance is always more amazing! The Southern Lion may ‘look’ more realistic (I don’t know about that – I’ve never SEEN a dragon before, have I?) but the Northern Lion merely prances around and is often have limited capabilities. And they’re just not as pretty.

<To the right, the Northern Lion>

My favorite part of the whole Lion Dance performance is usually the time when the Lion is trying to grab (albeit, eat) the choy cheng. That’s the payment for the lion dance, by the way. For those who are unfamiliar, among all those poles, one of them has some vegetables and red packet containing money (payment for the performance) in it. The Lion will take the payment by ‘eating’ the vegetable (and the payment). Hee hee! But that’s not what I am interested in. I am more intrigued by the drama that leads to the ‘eating’. The Lion will climb the poles and see the ‘chow cheng’. And then approaches the ‘choy cheng’ very carefully and apprehensively. Many times, the lion will stop and look around, wonder if it’s safe or not to take the ‘choy cheng’. It will hesitate, look around, turn around, jump back, come forward again…etc, just to be sure that the ‘choy cheng’ is safe to take. And then the Lion will perform a very special ‘3 star’ routine to be sure that no one is there to take the choy cheng from it, ward off others who may be nearby and then grab the ‘choy cheng’.

Such drama. I love it!! There’s one at my new condo tomorrow. I won’t miss it for the world.

Things I recently learnt living on my own

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 08:50:08 +0100

Things I learnt after moving out of the safe confines of in-laws’ home and my own home.

1. When using plastic gloves to wash dishes, you lose the use of your touch (feel) faculty. Use eyes when washing dishes.

2. Dust is not only on your PC. Dust is EVERYWHERE.

3. Ants are hateful creatures. Worse than vultures! And worse yet, they are also very vengeful. Kill one hundred of their brothers (or sisters), a thousand of their kind will come raid your kitchen and dustbins. Thankfully, ants are not very smart creatures. They don’t know and can’t remember what a mortein (insect killer) can looks like.

4. It takes so painfully long to cook, and very short time to eat (spill, throw, stuff in fridge)

5. Each component in a cuisine (albeit dish) is delicately handcrafted by an art master. Read: Have to cut carrot, potato, onion, garlic, vegetable, and whateverelsethereisinthedumbdish each one individually one meh? Cannot cut all at one go?? Someone should design something like this.

6. There’s a very important reason why knives are made sharp – they CUT!!! Wash and use carefully.

7. Clothes don’t wash, dry, fold and return themselves to closet without human intervention

8. The toilet don’t flush, wash and clean itself. Keep soap at safe height.

9. One can actually get bored of canned food. (amazing discovery here. I thought we could actually feed the kids canned food until they are 18)

10. Food doesn’t grow in fridges and freezers.

Mom, why English is so hard?

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 02:05:00 +0100

It continues to bug me, despite my best efforts, that my kids are not avid readers. It bugs me BIG time! How come, how come, how come? You see, ever since I was very young, I’ve always read a lot and if you can’t find me, it’s because I am hiding somewhere reading my novels at high speed fantasizing and immersed in my own world of princes and princesses, thanks to a heavy dose of Enid Blyton. I sincerely believed that, at one point in time, if I wished hard enough, I could actually make a bed fly and whoosh around. I honestly thought that goblins and fairies DID exist. Oh, the countless times I sat outside in the wee hours of the morning looking out of the window wondering if a fairy was slumbering under closed flower petals.

And yet, why oh why can’t my children find the same joy I did when I was a kid.

It seems that Joshua (in particular) is a very visual person. Ask him to sketch something out and he would, without much hesitation, ink out a picture of whatever it is that you’ve just mentioned – be it flying dragons or triceratops-robot-cars, whatever! He’s very cartoon-ish in his drawing as well – with those tell-tale signs of clouds behind someone who is running very fast, and bubbles around wrongly-spelt words to show that the character is thinking or talking.

English. A very funny language indeed. With Chinese, you recognize the character once and for all – and that’s that. No two ways about it. With Bahasa Melayu (Malaysia’s national language), B-A is Ba (as in goat and sheep Baa Baa), P-U is Poo, T-O is Toe…etc. But with English, it’s a little bit more different.

You see, it’s hard to explain to a kid how come things are different all the time. Sometimes you have double Ts and sometimes not. sometimes you need two Ss and sometimes you don’t. sometimes Chair and Mare rhymes but they are not spelt the same. How come you add a T at the end of ‘Go’ and it’s not ‘Goat’. This is the problem I have with tutoring Joshua.

It’s sad because, as a writer, I am thinking to myself, ‘Teaching my own kids to read and write in English should be a breeze because I am like such a PRO (Cough! Cough!), right?’ PRO-fectly wrong. I am not a PRO, of course, because I make so many mistakes in my grammar and writing that I wince, sometimes, after writing some stuff for my clients. I am particularly bad with punctuations and I think it will be a challenge in the future if I decide to pursue this tutoring thing with my own kids. I am not the best English teacher on the planet – no, wait. I am not teacher material – period.

Or maybe I am a good teacher (because I used to tutor other kids and did a credible job at that) but just not to my own kids.

Or maybe it’s best that I just teach whatever I DON’T like or have NO passion for…like maths instead of something that I like so much – the English Language. Bah, I think I’ll just teach my kids how to enjoy life, have fun, live with wild abandon and shun responsibilities. Hhhmmmm….I think I won’t have a problem with that at all.

Woe the holidays

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:55:00 +0100

I wonder if I am the only one on the planet that feels like holidays are…such a complete waste of time. Admittedly, I am one of those workaholics who cannot sit, stand, lie or squat still for a very long time. No, not a hyperactive person, but I do like being useful or doing something.

Therefore, holidays are always a bore to me. Strangely enough, when I was in school, I would end up going to school just to play or practice something. You know, in school, we always have this extra-curricular stuff going at one point or the other. And when I was working, I would end up spending more hours in the office during holidays than during the normal working days! Strange creature…me.

And it’s no different now that I am a mother and freelancer.

Having the kids home with me all the time is god-send. I mean, this is what I want – to have them with me and I have all the time in the world to spend with them, tickle them and play catch with them, enjoy their laughter and also to break up their fights. But heck, when in the world is the holiday going to end??!!! I have to get them out of my hair soon otherwise, I am never going to get any work done at all!

Sadly, even during the Chinese New Year, when just about every single Chinese in the world is taking a holiday or enjoying themselves, I am here, mulling over websites, articles and brochures!

Am I the only person in the world who doesn’t like holidays?

In fact, I spend so much more money during the holidays because I have to take the kids out all the time – they get bored pretty easily sitting at home, it seems. So, there we go strolling aimlessly around every shopping mall nearby and breaking every see saw and swing in every garden we find, stuffing our faces with pizzas, spaghettis, lasagnas and other out-of-the-budget food during the holidays is….well, something I can do without.

I can’t wait for school to start so that they can have their life back (they might disagree with me) and get off Astro Playhouse Disney and Cartoon Network and I can get some things done here. Otherwise, my clients are going to have my sorry behind for dinner!

Mom of boys

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 14:00:00 +0100

First, read this. It’s an excerpt from Sure Signs you’re the mother of boys by Sharon O’Donnell. I am quite picky about who I like as a writer and for me, Sharon O’Donnell has this way of writing that either touches you or tickles you. Everything that she writes about parenting and being a mother is so true that it makes you want to cry!

Excerpts from: Sure Signs You’re the Mother of Boys

by Sharon O’Donnell

you find Power Ranger parts under your sofa. Sometimes your vacuum cleaner finds them first.

your weekend schedule includes more total hours of little league sports than it does sleep

they think PMS is the new Play Station video game system

you have to chase down the playful family dog to retrieve your son’s jock strap

the most romantic movie you’ve watched in the last five years is DieHard II

you have to arrange two weeks ahead of time to take a bubble bath – and then must lock the door and scream “I’m in the tub – ask Dad!” every three minutes.

I not only find Power Ranger parts under the sofa, I find it in my underwear drawer, in the fridge in the wok and many other unimaginable places. And I have not been able to find the time to sit down to plan the next five minutes….a bath? Out of the question!! The only bath I get these days is in the condo pool. And I don’t think they allow red wine there….

Sand Paper hands

noreply@blogspirit.com (marshamaung) — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:35:00 +0100

It’s been…what…6 days since I moved out of the safe confines of my in-laws’ home. Gone are the days where you sleep until there’s food on the table. Gone are the days where you surf the net until someone tells you it’s time to fetch the kids. Gone are the days of peacefully working behind the computer while the kids entertain themselves with other cousins.

I have spent 90% of the time in this new apartment washing one thing or another. It’s amazing! Every time I finish washing something, there’s something else to wash. The kids have this radar thing going too – when the floor is clean, their radar spots it and they run around in the clean area until it’s dirty again.

My fingers are coarse like sand paper and no amount of lotion is going to repair this!!! My back aches. My nails are chipped. I call out ‘Joshua’ and ‘Jared’ in my sleep. I’ve pissed off at least 6 clients because of this house moving thing that has taken FOREVER!!! And I almost poisoned the whole family with overnight ikan bilis (anchovies) broth left wrongly in the refrigerator instead of the freezer!

So far, everything’s really…..swell?