Today is kind of a happy day for me because I have finally figured out how to purchase books and stuff from Amazon.com! I know I'm a bit late on this. I always prefer to buy books "offline" but sometimes there are certain books, especially old and used ones, that you can't find it in any of the local bookstores. I've been meaning to buy cheap second hand books from Amazon.com for years but the problem is that Amazon doesn't ship books to Malaysia! But thanks to VpostAsia.com and comGateway.com for providing the solution! How it works is that the moment you register with any of the two websites above, you'd automatically be given a US address (e.g. Portland, Oregon). So whatever books or stuff you buy from Amazon or any US-based online shopping site, it will be shipped to your US address first before Vpost or comGateway ships it off to your local address. Basically that's the theory. I haven't tried making any purchase yet. But I have read ...

When I signed up to Last.fm 6 years ago I never thought that one day I would find it useful or at least something that I can blog about. So, thanks to Last.fm for keeping my music statistics for the past 6 years. Today's blog post is about my kind of music. I'm not so good in explaining about the kind of music that I listen to for the past decade or so. Some of my uni friends find it a bit odd that I can listen to songs from Siti Nurhaliza to punk rock. In attempting to answer myself, I think the reason lies in the fact that I'm not a fanatic of any genre, though I admit that while growing up, especially in my early 20s, I was heavily influenced by punk rock, emo (eg Dashboard Confessional, The Used, Taking Back Sunday, The Early November etc), indie rock (The Strokes, The Hives, The Postal Service and most other "The" bands), post-rock and a little bit of melodic hardcore (e.g. Alexisonfire and Atreyu). Punk rock bands like Mxpx, Nofx, The Ataris, New Found Glor...

Malaysia is probably the most politicised nation state in South East Asia today. I dare say that we are even more politicised that our fiery neighbour, Indonesia. They probably beat us only in having more street rallies, bombings of religious sites and (Malaysian) flag burning demonstrations. And by virtue of that statement, Malaysians are probably the most politicised people in South East Asia. In other words, we are becoming more Machiavellian than we ever thought! If you don't believe me, just read through the political tweets in TwitterJaya or Facebook postings by the Barisan or Pakatan activist/cyber troopers. By saying that, I am not accusing people who hold a Machiavellian political view are all bad and wrong. The issue here is that sometimes people tend to accuse their political opponents as practicing Machiavellian politics without them realising that they too are "guilty" of adopting the same Machiavellian tactics. For example, we have become more partisan than ...

"There's always two sides to a coin", or so said a popular English proverb. Like everything else in the world, the same goes for history. But sometimes, there are not just two, but dozens of differences and interpretations of history. No this is about Mat Sabu, Bukit Kepong or Mat Indera or the Communist Party of Malaya, no. That's old news. I've debated and argued (or rather tweeted) about it long enough already on Twitter. So to those not in the know, this year marks the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Sultanate of Melaka (I prefer the Malay spelling for Melaka), and the beginning of Portuguese colonial rule in Tanah Melayu. What caught my interest to blog about this is partly due to an article in The Star (see image), the Melaka Chief Minister Ali Rustam was reportedly to have remarked that "Melaka had prospered as a nautical haven since the arrival of Alfonso d' Albuquerque" on August 24 1511. Hang on a second there, YAB. Are you serious? I...

I hate to admit this all the time but the reality is that I've been spending so much time on "free" Twitter and Facebook and leaving this "paid" blog almost unattended. So what I would like to do today is to post some of my selected tweets here. The issue of Palestine has always been close to my heart. So when the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided to go to the UN to seek for the UN's support for statehood or independence, I naturally became excited. Excited at the prospect of finally seeing freedom and justice for the Palestinians who are suffering from the Israeli occupation for almost three generations.And tweeted my thoughts and shared quite a number of articles on Twitter and Facebook, except here. While the majority of the international community are solidly behind the establishment for the state of Palestine, Hamas has been rather disappointing to say the least. Instead of showing solidarity with their fellow Palestinians, they ques...

This is a test Sent by DiGi from my BlackBerry® Smartphone

So this is my first blog post via Blackberry. I know there's nothing much to shout about. And no, if you happen to reach here searching for a Blogger for Blackberry app, this is not the place. I've no idea why Google hasn't come up with Blogger for Blackberry app yet. Hoping to post more blog entries soon. Salam Ramadhan 1432.