Feng Sui Fraud

Feng shui, sometimes defined as an ancient Chinese system of aesthetics uses the laws of both Heaven (astronomy) and Earth (geography) to help one improve life by receiving positive qi.The practice is still popular among Chinese all over the world and often, charlatans posing as learned Feng Shui masters prey on unsuspecting victims as in the case of a 36-year-old architect who bought a house at Lakefield, Sungai Besi in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His girlfriend had recommended that he consult her feng shui master who had then told him that he had a spell of bad luck which needed to be turned around for a fee. The man promptly issued a cheque for RM29,260 to cover the feng shui expenses . After conducting some rituals , the master did not just tell the man to keep mum on the matter but had also demanded RM15,000 for an amulet which would protect the man and his girlfriend. Then, when the girlfriend said that the amulet was broken and asked for another RM30,000 to replace it, the man started to suspect both the master and his girlfriend.He did not just refused to pay but ended up separated from his girlfriend of five years. In a press conference, he had proclaimed I won’t believe in feng shui any more after what had happened. Now, does this make you wonder here if it is the art of Feng Shui, the unscrupulous master, the questionable girlfriend or the trusting man himself that is at fault?

Sekinchan's 31Billion Dollar Man

When DAP’s Sekinchan assemblyman Ng Suee Lim accused Selangor's former Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo of having spent an estimated RM24mil on a palatial home in Section 7 Shah Alam the other day, it was the word Sekinchan which rang a bell. Sekinchan is a small town in Selangor, Malaysia and is one of the major rice producing areas of Malaysia. Unofficially, an acquaintance of mine claimed, the little town had in fact, surpassed Kedah, the official rice bowl of Malaysia, in producing the most amount of rice in the country. My room mate and university mate when I was staying in Section 17, Petaling Jaya was from Sekinchan too and boy, wasn't that eons ago! Today, as I browsed through my e-mails, there among the forwarded messages was news on one of the brightest sons that have come from that little town - Pua Kien Seng, a former student of a Chinese primary school SJKC Yeok Kuan and Pin Hua Independent school. This son of Sekinchan had later pursued an engineering course in Chiao Tung University in Taiwan and had since been putting up base there as the President of Phison Electronics Corps. The guy was reportedly the inventor of the world's first USB removable disk or what most of us called the pen drive. And that had earned Taiwan 31 billion dollars! So, who need Lee Major aka the 6 million dollar man, I wonder...

Story of a Small Town

Forget the popular Taiwanese movie of the seventies, The story of a Small Town starring Taiwanese Lin Fong Chiao and Hongkie Kenny Bee or its evergreen theme song which bore the same name, sung by the late Theresa Teng. This small town with a big Chinese population, Bagan Api, is in Sumatra, Indonesia. A resident there, Ang Geok Tin said that the town started over a century ago when the Chinese from Fujian, China, trying to escape the war back home, set sail to Sumatra. In a dream, Kiew Ong Yea, a Chinese deity, told the people to land at a place with light. One night, the people just saw the jungle lit up – with fireflies - and Bagan Api was born...

Celebration at Bagan Api, Sumatera...



Story of a Small Town... instrumental...



The story of a Small Town.... song by Theresa Teng...

A Romantic Love Story

A few years back, a singer from China came to town. The singer must be fifty something and the buzz around town was it was Liu San Jie or Third Sister Liu. Of course, Liu San Jie or Third Sister Liu was just the name of a popular 1961 Chinese movie from Mainland China. The movie contains many popular folk songs of Guangxi Zhuang minority from southwest Guangzi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The movie was supposed to be based on the local tale about the beautiful and talented Liu San Jie who was born in a village along the Liujiang River of Guangxi in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). At the age of 17, Liu San Jie who was adept in singing folk songs, fell in love with a handsome young man who was also a good folk singer. The pair of lovers swore never to separate. Unfortunately, a village hooligan was interested in Liu and on a moonlight night, tried to take her by force. Liu and her lover who were sitting on a big rock at the riverside to enjoy the beauty of the moon was suddenly surrounded by a gang of hooligans. Having no way of escaping, the lovers, hand in hand and with no hesitation, jumped into the roaring Liujiang River. Nowadays, on March 3, local people will gather along the riverside of the Liujiang River and organizea folk-song competition to mourn Liu San Jie. The teenager playing Liu San Jie in the movie, Liu Shi Long, at fifty something still amazes fans but what should amaze more perhaps is the thought that Chinese lovers from the Tang Era could just laze around and stare at the moon. That, I think, is terribly romantic!

Liu San Jie, the movie (excerpts)...

A Taiwanese Drama

Cheng Teik loaned me some DVDs the other day and encouraged me to watch You are my Destiny, the Top Taiwanese TV series in 2008. The romantic comedy starring Ethan Ruan and Chen Qiao En came by other names such as Fated to Love you, Sticky Note girl and even Destiny Love. Taiwanese series, I remember, used to be a bore. The storylines often have much to be desired and they just dragged on and on and you'd wonder when the story will end, that is if you are patient enough to sit through the entire series. That perhaps was in the 80s. Then, there were few good Taiwanese series. Koo Sin Lian which was based on hit Japanesese series, Oshin; and Yi Jian Mei or A sprig of Plum Blossoms were shown in TV then and both seemed to be popular among the Chinese population in Malaysia but those series, I suppose were not as good as the TV series from Hong Kong, most notably the Cantonese series from TVB. You are my Destiny was first aired on March 16, 2008 in Taiwan and has constantly achieved good ratings. The show was dubbed in Tagalog and was popular in the Philipines and sitting through the entire 40 episodes, I suppose I understand why. It was a great series with a great storyline and a great cast and now wonder Cheng Teik had watched this Golden Bell Award winner for Best Drama eight times! Taiwainese series had indeed come a long way!

The Theme Song from You're my Destiny...

Tagalog version...

Green Post: Take care of your birdie!

A professor at Durham University, Britain,Stephen Willis said that there is bad news for birds like the Whitethroat, a common farmland bird. Birds will face a big challenge, bigger than the Pleistocene era as temperatures rises and habitats change. Climate change will force birds migrating to Europe from Africa to log extra mileage and this could possibly bring devastating consequences.To complete a voyage that could be thousands of kilometres, birds have to fatten themselves up to twice their normal weight. Some even shrink their internal organs to become more fuel efficient. Additional distance definitely will takes its toll on the birds.Give our birds some thoughts!

Chinese Holocaust

Steven Spielberg's 1993 box-office hit, Schindler's List about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jewish refugees was set during the Holocaust, a term generally used to describe the genocide of Jews during World War II by Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler. There was a Chinese holocaust in Nanking, China on December 9, 1937. Known as The Nanking Massacre or The Rape of Nanking, this merely six-week period following the capture of Nanking by the Imperial Japanese Army saw the Japanese soldiers committing atrocities such as rape, looting, arson and execution of both prisoners of war and civilians. Chinese are often termed the Jews of the East for their business acumen and here, I suppose lies another similarity. Just that, here they were bullied in their own country!



Nangking, being raped...