Historical Events That Happened On 31st August. The Reliability Of History Books.

And thus, National Day has arrived. To Malaysians, 31st of August is a day of joyous celebration and display of bandwagoning patriotism. Celebrate of what? Independence? Independence from what? The Brits?

Ironically, a day of joy in Malaysia happens to be a day of sorrow of our former rulers as 31st of August also marks the day of Princess Diana's death eight years ago. The birth of a nation, the passing of the princess of hearts, both on the same day.

Curious to know what other historical events have happened on this day, I went to Wikipedia to seek answers. And here are the more interesting ones:

What Will Happen If Malaysian Independence Was Never Achieved?

A thought-provoking conversation left me curious, and perhaps an idea for an alternative reality novel or a movie.

My desired film adaptation of the Hang Tuah vs Hang Jebat folklore

Two days away from National Day, I shall join the patriotism bandwagon keep with the flow and make the entries of the next few days Malaysian-centered even though I am in foreign soil.

I've always wanted to make a Hang Tuah movie because they are accessible to Malaysian audiences. After all, anyone who didn't forget about their secondary education can definitely remember this guy, and the release of high-profile Puteri Gunung Ledang last year helped too (though by how much, I don't know). So yeah, the most effective method for me to sell out is to make a movie about this famous folk hero. To those who are unaware of Hang Tuah, here's his info from Wikipedia.

This is my 'Malaysian Dilemma'

National Day is drawing near (31st of August), so it's obvious that the lovefest for Malaysia is going strong in the blogosphere. Definitely the best moment to display your inner patriot, aye? Many people have been blogging about social problems faced in our country recently, really big, heavy, major stuff that involve politicians, the trends of the nation and the mentality of people nationwide.

I am still at Perth, so I've not been following the Malaysian news that much. (over here in Australia, people are more concerned with er, Corby) So what can I say about Malaysia to display my sheer patriotism? Join the bandwagon and diss Xiaxue for dissing KL? Oh puh-lease, I don't even consider her important enough to be bothered by her opinions.

So I shall tell you a tale of what happened to me not too long ago.

Fantasy-genre bandwagoners...

It's funny how many people are reading fantasy books these days. Who should we thank? Harry Potter? Or Frodo Baggins? Whenever I was at a bookshop back in Malaysia, I see a group of people gathering before the Lord of the Rings books, explaining the history of elves and dwarves, then exchanging insults in Elvish.

Revision of Kirksman87's "A Hundred Dollars"

My comments in bold. Kirksman87's in regular text.

The brilliance of Yasunari Kawabata

At first glance, Yasunari Kawabata wouldn't seem to fit the conventions of a Nobel-prize winning author. He doesn't overreach for big themes, he doesn't make grand pronouncements about the human condition or the inevitability of war and discrimination; and his prose style (at least in English translation - I've tried reading the original Japanese and it ain't easy) is lucid and free of fancy diction. None of his books are intimidating, plus-sized tomes crammed with psyche-penetrating monologues and dissections of the spirit - far from it, in fact: you could read most of them in a day, or a couple of hours if you're fast. There are few large, decisive gestures: Kawabata's characters don't embrace life so much as stand outside of it looking vaguely perplexed and distant.

T.M. Umar's "avant-garde" tale of revisiting Malaysian Independence through time-traveling

On Thursday, August 25th, 2005, Edmund Yeo sent me T.M. Umar's script-story "The 50's Project" with the intention that I would edit and/or critique it. I set to the task with aplomb, only to find that the text consisted of nothing but implausible dialogue in the service of some kind of time-travel plot to discover the origins of Malaysia. There was nothing of narrative or grammatical interest. Faced with my assignment yet unable to continue reading, the only thing I could do was apply William S. Burroughs' cut-up technique to the text, interspersed with any random observations that Umar's subliterate nonsense prompted in me. The results are as follows. T.M. Umar's text is represented in regular font. My comments are represented in bold. The original text is presented mostly in excerpts, as to inflict its full length on readers would be an unpardonable offense.

Amusing incident while watching Pang Ho Cheung's AV

AV stands for adult video, which is pornography. AV is also the name of a HK film this year by Edmond Pang, who is part of the HK New Wave responsible for such wonderful black comedies like 'You Shoot I Shoot' (about professional killers trying to film their tasks for the entertainment of their clients) and 'Men Suddenly In Black' (adulterous husbands trying to cheat on their wives, filmed like a slick suspense triad/cop thriller, with the husbands being the gangsters and the wives being the cops).

Creative works that made me want to LIVE

It has come to my attention, mostly through the previous post, that Eliar Swiftfire has been suffering from the ever-traumatic post-creative depression. Being familiar with this myself, I have decided to alleviate the condition by posting a list of all the creative works that have ever made me want to LIVE. Seeing as I'm a pretty negative guy, it's taken a while to get this much. If any of disagree with any of this you probably have bad taste (kidding), but prove me wrong by posting your own shit in reply.

A wave of melancholy...

The wave of melancholy that assaulted me since I've finished my short film, 'Forced Labour', continues.

After Sending My Short Film To Tokyo, I Suffer From Painful Post-Creativity Depression.

Post-creativity depression is a painful feeling. You feel empty and depressed because you've finally completed something you've been working on for ages. I had this feeling when I finished the first version of Forced Labour almost four months ago. And that lasted for almost a week.

What Nationality is my film?

Okay, I've pretty much finished editing my short film, 'Forced Labour', the only thing giving me fits now is the end credits. Having some problems as I realized that most of the characters (in fact, all but one) are nameless, so how the hell are audiences going to know if I put the names of the characters (yeah, they have names in the script) next to the names of my cast members?

Or perhaps I'll just stick with a simple 'Featuring', and then followed by names of my cast members? Decisions, decisions.

Have to get this done as soon as possible so that I can send it to this Internet film festival in Japan, followed by numerous other film festivals I can think of. However, there has been something that's been bothering me for quite a while.

Which country is my short film representing?

Is it a Malaysian film? Or is it an Australian film?

An Amusing Email Regarding Fanfiction.net's New Rule. The Uselessness Of Online Petitions.

I received this email yesterday.

My Very First Acting Audition

It was a quarter past two, Swifty wandered down the empty corridors of the Education and Humanities building in his university, searching for 'TELEVISION Studio B', the place where the audition was going to be held. He was not nervous, even though this was the very first audition he had been to.

WEDDING CRASHERS

It has been two weeks since I last saw a movie at the cinemas, two long weeks devoid of movies, leaving my soul hungry and empty. My soul craves for movies, and without movies, it withers.

Yes, I'm STILL A Filmmaker. Check out New Screenshots Of FORCED LABOUR

Yes, I'm still editing my last short film, Forced Labour, which was originally finished 3 months ago, but due to my Wong Kar Wai-ness, I totally remade the thing from scratch again while adding a new scene. I'll show two screenshots of the main characters, and er, someone bleeding.

The sort of film reviews on blogs that annoy me

Me Swifty, me watch movie and me review now.

(Insert movie poster here)

Console RPGs I Completed Throughout The Past Decade (1994-2005). (Part 3)

Now that Blogathon is over, it's time to continue this before the list that resides in my mind slowly fades away.

So yes, let's continue from the Playstation RPG I've completed, it's quite a huge list considering how many years I had it:

A COTTAGE AT THE END OF TIME (a novella written in 24 hours)

30th of June, 2012

Almost 7 years ago, my friend Yuan-Yue and I participated in Blogathon 2005. A charity event where bloggers were to post (at least) two entries every hour in a span of 24 hours. (which means that by the end of the day, 48 entries should have been posted on the blog. A significant feat during the pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter era)

Both Yuan-Yue and I turned 21 that year, we aimed to do something ambitious.

Each hour she would come up with an illustration in a blog entry and 30 minutes later, I would post an entry with writings based on her drawings.

I ended up writing a novella that had some fabulist, fantastical elements, but at its core, it was really a tale of lost love. (A theme that would characterize many of my film works in subsequent years.) I named the novella "A COTTAGE AT THE END OF TIME", a few chapters were guest-written by former guestblogger and current published author Justin Isis. This novella existed before I actually became a filmmaker.

I left all my Blogathon entries on this blog for many years, until I recently realized that all of Yuan-Yue's wondrous illustrations had disappeared with the image servers hosting her stuff.

Thankfully, I've long kept the entire novella in PDF format, so I've decided to upload the PDF here instead so that you can read the stories and view Yuan-Yue's works in a more convenient manner.

Hope you'll enjoy this.

A COTTAGE AT THE END OF TIME by Edmund Yeo with illustrations from Chin Yuan-Yue

Blogathon Is Just 10 Hours Away. (BTW: Ligers exist!)

Right. It's 11am over here at Perth (which has no time difference with Malaysia and Singapore). Blogathon is just 10 hours away from now. Beginning at 9pm, Lune will strike her first blow with an artwork, and I will counter with a piece of writing. If you want to see us pooling both of our talents to create something extraordinary, remember to come here tonight and hurl insults at us! Oh, and cheer us on as well.

I have tried getting as much rest as possible, but the usual 7-hour sleep is enough for me. Probably gonna take a nap later to conserve more energies.

I do not worry too much about my personal stamina since I HAVE endured that before whenever I was rushing through assignments. However, the internet connection on my flat MIGHT be my downfall. I am mildly worried. Hm. But there's nothing Swifty can't solve. So yeah, I think this will be the last entry I'm posting before Blogathon.

Oh, and to those who have seen the film, Napoleon Dynamite, do you know that ligers really do exist (Google it)? Of course, they are bred through human intervention, and one of them is being displayed at a zoo in South Carolina. Usually, they are bigger than either a tiger and a lion, in fact, a liger is the largest cat in the world. Ah. The joys of using Wikipedia.

A Tragic Tale Of A Guy Who Was Hospitalized After Self-Circumcision

Some people are so stupid that you'll end up feeling sorry for them, and thus giving you a sense of awkwardness when you are forced into a conversation with them. How would you deal with people like that when you know that they are infinitely dumb? Personally, I tend to ignore them, because their stupidity annoy me so greatly that I fear that by continuing my interaction with them will inflate my already massive ego even further because I get to witness a being of such stupidity, so inferior to my incredible intelligence that I feel even more awed by my personal greatness.

Book Aid International is the charity I choose for Blogathon

This is wonderful. I have received an email from Madeleine of Book Aid yesterday after telling them about our campaign. Here's her email.

Lune making her first ever guest appearance in this blog

It does make your head feel lighter to be a guest on someone else's blog. It's as if I'm one of those Backstreet men, or Tom Cruise doing a heart to heart with Oprah, with the exception of tears or monkey antics, but I wouldn't be so sure after that long 24 hours on a drawing sprint. I might even rival Tom's vulgar outburst, shed some tears of joy, trash my room. Who knows? The excitement is buzzing in blogland, and I am estatic to be part of it. It's just one of those crazy things that one has to do before turning 21 (in Eliar's case, he's already reached the big two one, so that doesn't count).

CRASH by Paul Haggis

For reasons I cannot comprehend, I have fallen in love with the feeling of wandering by myself in the city late at night, when the streets are almost empty, and all the shops are closed. In the distance, Northbridge, also the place where the tiny Chinatown is situated, comes alive with its colourful pubs and their patrons. The newsstand remain opened, but empty without customers, a place for me to buy the latest issues of Inside Film (a magazine for filmmakers), Empire (a film magazine) and Electronic Gaming Monthly (video game magazine).

The finest writers are those who read a lot

Oh well, the last movie I saw was 'Crash', I'll write a review about that soon, also, I'll attempt to continue that feature about the console RPGs I've completed thus far (which is a much arduous task than originally envisioned).

Found a partner-in-crime for Blogathon!

Yes, I have decided to participate in Blogathon as well, and I've dragged a partner to suffer through this with me. The charity organization we want to blog for will be Book Aid because both of us love reading, and we feel that more people around the world should be given the chance to read as well. According to the Blogathon website, 'Book Aid International works in partnership with organisations in developing countries to support local initiatives in literacy, education, training and publishing. We provide relevant books and information to those in greatest need–to enable people to realise their potential and contribute to the development of their communities.'