My PS2

So my DVD was stolen. There's a silver lining in every cloud, you know. I now could buy a better DVD player. One that had a fast processor and a great graphics card attached to it.

That's right, I bought a PlayStation 2 to compensate for all the stress I got when I was burgled.

I'm not sure if I got a good deal, but people tell me it's not so bad: RM970 for a modified PS2, two 'regular' controllers, an 8MB memory card and 15 games. There are cloned versions available for as low as RM500, but you really don't know what you're getting with them. I wanted to be sure that the DVD component worked fine, so I want for the 'original' version.

Many thanks to E for getting the ball rolling by buying me the Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King PS2 game. On Valentine's day, no less. "So, does that meant that there is a PS2 waiting for me at home?". Of course not - all I had gotten her was a couple of pieces of red thread and cardboard, so it wouldn't have exactly been a fair swap.

Now the games - I haven't really had much of a chance to play them, but here's what I've tried so far:

• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: Purchased because somebody really wanted to play with Legolas. Nevermind, the grahics look good, and it's fun running around killing things, even if you can't really see what's happening. If you've seen the movie, you get a fair impression what's in store. The only problem? When I try my Gimli Super Dwarf Killing Blow on an Elf, it doesn't work. Just goes right through him. Damn you, cooperative play!
  
• Gran Turismo 3: Beautiful. Really beautiful. And I mean everything. Thi is the racing game with the graphics, the play, the cars, the fact you can tweak them, change their colours, play it like a dolt on automatic or try a higher challenge, all those unlockables, dual play. Absolutely beautiful. I love it to bits. And I get to drive a Mini Minor.
  
• FIFA 2004: A franchise that I've loved from first sight. How couldn't I? Real-life players, real-life clubs, getting the satisfaction of beating Manchester Utd at something.
  
• Winning 11: If you play FIFA because it's pretty, you play Winning 11 because it's got great gameplay. There are tons of nifty moves you can execute and a truly skilled player can play the beautiful game as it should be played: with stylish one-two moves, overstepping and exhillirating dribbling. Us amateurs stick to playing the ball down the flanks and crossing it in.
  
• Tekken 4: If you ask the shops how long do the "non-original" joypads last, they'll shrug and say "six months - if you're playing fighting games, two weeks". And amongst the better fighting games out there is Tekken 4. The controls are simplicity itself, with four directional keys and four punching/kicking keys and that's it. The trick is that these eight keys combine to give you more than sixty attacking moves per character. A beginner gets excited when he hits the right killer move by mistake; a pro revels when the right six button-combo is pulled off. All this (and the good lookin' capoeria-fightin' woman) make it a great button-bashing, joystick-breaking, adrenaline pumping game.
  
• Super Bomberman: Okay, sometimes you play the game because it looks good, other times you play it because it's challenging, and then, there are those times you play because it's just plain silly. Super Bomberman is one that needs another human player to get the most out of it, and another three will be better. Four cute sprites run around the screen dropping bombs in a maze which explode some time after they appear. That's all there is to it really. That and the screams as fellow players try to trap one another (my favoured phrase is "buggerbuggerbuggerbugger").
  
• NBA Street: This game exagerrates all that's great about basketball, with all the jammin', alley-oopin' and hot dribblin' that you can get. It is completely unrealistic, and completely fun. You actually get points for showing off and nothing beats a vibrating joypad when you pull off a stunning off-the-board reverse jam. Fun, pure fun.
  
• PuyoPop: Remember tetris? This is a little like a head-to-head version of that game. With cute characters. And instructions that look Japanese->translated via Rumanian to->English. I don't really know how the game works, but there is a fair bit of strategy in it all. And it's addictive. Play it often enough, and you end up dreaming about falling blobs and cute noises.
  
• James Bond: whats-that-title-I-forget: This is one of those very pretty first-person games that look good and play fairly well, but I doubt I'll finish it because it makes me nauseous. I used to be quite a Quake player in my day, but for some reason, a FPS on a 34" TV screen gives me a whopping headache. And a feeling of wanting to throw up. Shame, really.

Some of the more observant of you may notice that this is nowhere near fifteen games. This is because I have not tried every single one yet. Where on Earth do kids find the time to play?

ELECTIONS - PART III

I met Chew Mei Fun the other day. She's the MP for Petaling Jaya (North), and she seems a fiesty, independent woman who knows what she wants and fights for what she believes. Residents in my area were having a dialogue with the police about how to lower crime in the area, and the local MP dropped by for awhile.

By "awhile", I mean relly "awhile". All of thirty minutes at the most. She did the following:

• Introduce herself and shake everybody's hand. (10 mins)
  
• Agree that crime is high in the PJ area and tell us that the police have too few resources. (5 mins)
  
• Explain that it's our duty to do our best to help the police by doing our part. Like getting to know our neighbour. And being observant. (5 mins)
  
• Explain that she has spearheaded a "Zero Crime Rate" campaign and booklets are available for free. She also said that she occasionally spoke in Parliament about this matter and she would like to think that she had some hand in the establishment of the Royal Commission for the police. (5 minutes)
  
• Finally, that she has another appointment and must leave now, before we could ask questions, so sorry, bye bye. (5 minutes)

Now, I'm registered to vote in a different constituency, so I actually have no choice whether I would vote for her or not. But, even if I did, the choice would be simple: give somebody else the chance.

For what she demonstrated that rainy night, in front of nearly a hundred residents, may have been leadership. And it may have been commitmment to the cause. But I don't think that she was representing us. Not once did we get a chance to provide feedback. The policemen that we talked to later were more amenable to listening to us.

Sure, she may have been in a hurry, but she could have just said what she needed in five minutes and then opened the floor to questions. But she didn't. Instead, she nagged us, lectured us, tried to educate us. I almost wanted to stand up and say, "So why aren't you fighting for more money for the police?". But my better angels were shouted down by the devils of self-consciousness.

On top of that she had the cheek (yes, I use that word instead of termacity, because its juvinility), the cheek to tell us that she had a hand in establishing the Royal Commission. So let's add to her habits of nagging and lecturing one of taking false credit.

ELECTIONS - PART II

I suppose it's time to update this. Yes, if you're in Malaysia, you're more than a little aware that elections will be held this weekend, 21 March 2004.

(I'm making use of the excellent wikipedia to provide background reading material on the Politics of Malaysia, as well as other links.)

• A short history: Barisan Nasional (BN) is the current ruling coalition. PAS, DAP and Keadilan are the current main opposition.
  
• In a nutshell: Both these elections and the ones held in 1999 seem to be about one thing: How do the Malays want Malaysia to be run. On the one hand, we have the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), the backbone of BN, who preach unity for all, and on the other we have PAS, who preach Islam for All (seriously, they have that on their campaign posters). Throw into this mix allegations of corruption in the current government, as well as memories of the Anwar affair, and we have a split in the Malay vote. Of key interest are the districts with >75% Malay constituency.
  
• One reason why Barisan Nasional will win overall: BN component parties talk to one another. Opposition parties disagree with one another.
  
• Another reason why BN will win: The feel-good factor generated by the new Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi or what I like to call the "He's-Not-Mahathir" argument. He's been cleaning out the government by setting the Anti-Corruption Agency on some high-profile people.
  
• Yet more reasons why BN will win: A campaigning period that is only eight days long (compare to eight months in the US). Holding the elections on a Sunday which is a public holiday in all states except the hotly contested states of Perlis, Kedah, Terengganu and Kelantan. And a nifty bit of gerrymandering that affected several districts won by by thin margins in the previous election. My favourite? The district of Pekan that was won by Najib Tun Razak in 1999 by a majority of 241 votes. Then he was UMNO vice-president and Minister for Education. Now he's the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence. The redrawn district includes an army base of 2,000 personnel.
  
• Any other potential embarassments for the government? Overall, if BN does not do better than they did in the last election, it would look bad for them, even if they get their two-third's majority.
  The state of Kedah seems to be up for grabs - if BN loses it, along with Kelantan and Terengganu, it will show that the polarisation between the Malays has actually grown.
  
• Which way will I vote? Well, seeing that the candidate in my distrct won handsomely last time around, and that the opposition have put up a fairly junior candidate, my vote is unlikely to make a big difference.
  
• Yes, but which way will you vote? I have yet to see a manifesto from individual candidates.
  

Script Writing

Can you believe it? I spent fifteen minutes typing up an entry in Blogger about scriptwriting and it failed to save it as a draft. It's out there somewhere in cyberspace, probably transiently sitting on a router, words never to be exactly recalled. It's like watching your scripts being polished by your producer.

I wanted to say a little bit about my experiences as a scriptwriter. It was a result of fortuous coincidences which are unlikely to ever happen again in my life, but when opportunity knocked, I grabbed it by with both hands and dragged it in kicking and screaming.

A friend of mine is a TV producer. He's actually been doing this for years, but apart from an occasional "good show" comment, we never really talked about it.

One day, he sent me a pilot script for a new series he was doing, I made a few disparaging comments about it and I decided to back up my words with a spec and offered to write him some scripts.

He said yes.

I have never ever been paid for professional writing work before this. Never. I'm not counting the reams of business reports I've done - I'm talking about fiction.

It's now been a month since he made the offer, and I am proud to say that I have been paid money for not one but two television scripts. Whether or not the final product bears any resemblance to my writing remains to be scene.

(I now pull out one of my writing tricks and reproduce bits of email that I've sent to other people on the subject)

It's a bit of a surprise, the kind of series that I'm working on. It's actually an English-language sitcom without a laugh track that focusses on a couple and the difficulties of a new relationship. It's a little bit like Sex in the City meets Mad About You, except without sex or Helen Hunt. The sex I don't mind so much, but Helen Hunt would have been a nice thing to have (and I shan't say what I think about sex and Ms. Hunt together). Oh well.

The writing has actually been quite easy, overall. I don't have to do a West Wing type of fast, intelligent banter, nor do I have to write dialogue that is too snappy. In fact, I've been asked to Malaysianise the English a little bit more and to bear in mind that the lead actor's accent isn't too hot.

And thus we come to the down-side of this whole experience. I am just short of selling myself to the devil with this project. The Great Satan I am talking about is Ponds Skin Whitener. There was an ad campaign last year where a pretty girl said that this boy in college never noticed her until she used Ponds Skin Whitener and then all of a sudden he did, so he took her out on a date to the movies and then he stuck his hand in a popcorn box and when she reached over to get the popcorn she got his hand and was pleasantly surprised and then things went brilliantly after that.

Now, Ponds are paying good money (some of which will hopefully trickle into my pocket) to produce a 12-episode series that carries this story along.

However, I am a big, big, big opponent of skin whitening products (why? Why? WHY? I ask), and the only saving grace is that I don't have to write lines like "It was a tough day, but at least I have Ponds Skin Whitener on my face". Product placement is someone else's burden.

The other problem is that the two lead characters were selected to look pretty in the ad, and not with acting ability in mind. The guy isn't too good in English (I had to break down his monologues after I was told that) and the girl has an extremely tight schedule (so there's one episode I've written that doesn't include her at all). However, they are good looking bods and if bad South American soap operas with pretty actresses can sell in Malaysia, then this has a fair chance.

Anyway, I hope that this puts a frame on what I've been doing lately.

I Feel A Fever Coming

Some of you out there may be aware that it's almost election time in this country. There's speculation, of course, on everything, ranging from when parliament will be dissolved to who is contesting which seats.

And when you see a storm coming, the smart ones out there prepare for it, so I give you my list of things to do before the election breaks:

• Register to Vote Here's a surprise: As of this moment, 1.7 million people have not yet registered, with 450,000 in the Klang Valley alone.
  
  • How do you check if you have been registered? Well, you can use the Internet or SMS. I do have some words to say about an Internet system that doesn't seem to be up and an alternative SMS system that charges RM1 per search. Also, the fact that by entering an IC number, you can get hold of somebody's name. But these things belong in another article.
    
  • If you find that you have not registered, all is not lost, as the current registration ends on 31 March. This is of no use if elections are held before 31 March 2004, and the Election Commision themselves will only be ready to hold them in March, but if they are held later and you didn't register when you were given a final chance then I hope your apathy bites you in the butt and you be banned from all teh tarik political discussions for the next four years. Incidentally, the excellent jeffooi.com reports that the average turnout is about 70%.
    
  
• Know who you're voting for Once you know which districts you're registered for, it's time to learn more about the candidates. Of course, technically you won't know until they are announced, but you can find out who your current main man is.
  
  • In theory, you can get all from the Parliament website, including who the Dewan Rakyat are, but for some reason when you try to browse them by district, you get a "Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource" error.
    
  • All is not lost. There is a webpage that contains all members of the Dewan Rakyat as of 2000. From there you can get the name and browse in the Parliament website.
    
  • For example, my area is Segambut and my fella is Dr. Tan Kee Kwong (BN). He even has a website of his own, although officially it isn't - it's meant to be for all of Segambut.
    
  • Check out how he did in the last elections. My man won by a majority of 8586 in a constituency of 60,110 from a turnout of 41,266. Close-ish, but not that close.
    

I'll be posting more stuff as they come along. Until then, Happy Electioning!