I didn’t turn my lights off during Earth Hour
& about plastic bags at Klang Valley bakeries

I didn’t take part in Earth Hour. That’s not really a cool thing to say, is it? Especially since I hang out with some greenies (aka those environmentally conscious people). Well, the thing is
this ….

I live alone. So when Earth Hour was first announced this year, it was like, yeah, right! No way am I going to do that. Whgo is this mad person who thinks I’m going to sit in the dark in a city where desperados think nothing of chopping off your fingers to steal your RM250 ring?

Then came the explanation that we should just turn off the non-essentials. Hellooo …. I already do that! I have also switched to using energy saving bulbs.

One e-mail had suggested that we get together with young relatives, proving to them how it is possible to have a good time without consuming electricity. In retrospect that was a good idea. Admittedly, I should have done something along those lines for my friends who don’t seem to give two hoots about the environment. Undeniably, Earth Hour is a good start for those who don’t bother or know the consequences of our bad habits.

But I digress. What had triggered off this piece was my trip to the bakery last night. I bought four buns. Of the same type. The cashier started to put them into four clear individual plastic bags, after which she would put the whole lot into a bigger bag. Is that really necessary?

All the Klang Valley bakeries do it now. You buy ten items, the young helpers put them into ten different clear plastic bags. I wish I knew which idiot started this trend.

If people can sit in the dark for an hour, can’t they just open their mouths to say, “No, I don’t need so many bags.”

Mind you, at this point, I’m not even asking anyone to take their own plastic bags to the bakery. Just explain that you don’t need so many bags.

Alternatively, bakery owners could train their staff to ask customers if they want their stuff packed individually or not. I bet that most customers have no problem with putting together, for instance all the buns into one, those yellow egg tarts into another, etc. It’s such a small step but it would ultimately mean a lot.

That’s not too much to ask of customers or bakery owners, is it?

A chick flick …. for young chicks

I thot that Confessions of a Shopaholic would be an ideal way to chase away the blues.

So, I marched into theatre no. 5 at the Pyramid at 2.45 pm sharp on 26th March to catch the trailers (I can just see Mr Ramamurthy’s daughter rolling her eyes at this – she has no respect for trailer obsession).

What took me by surprise was that the place was fairly packed for a matinee on a weekday. Within five minutes the seats were taken up by many obviously young chicks eager to catch the show on Day 1.

However, that’s not the reason why I say this movie is for young chicks.

Though it is a fairly fast paced movie, I did keep waiting for something more to happen. You know, something unexpected in the storyline, a surprise, something you haven't seen in a million other movies. Like the stuff Spongebob does. Sorry, can’t think of anything more profound right now. Besides, the yellow fellow makes me and my nephew James crack up.

“Should I watch it?” you ask impatiently.

The answer is yes, if you just want some lighthearted entertainment. More reasons include: it will make you laugh, most women will be able to really relate to the needs to shop, cringing in the dark as the credit card bits come on, the hero is yummy, young women will just wish they were the Cinderella in this piece, the hero is kinda good looking, it gives you hope for the future, the hero is every girl’s idea of prince charming, and … did I mention the hero is visually appealing? It would have been nice if he were a bit older as he looks like a pup out of school, way too young to hold the high ranking position of a financial magazine. Or anything else. another reason why this movie is surely for young chicks.

By the way, this movie didn’t have the same effect as Slumdog Millionare did on me. You see when the credits rolled on for this chick flick, I didn’t want to dash out to buy the book. Or maybe if I were a younger chick I would. I should have asked the girls seated next to me.

Anything else you want to know?

By the way, this is a special message for Mr Ramamurthy’s daughter. If you’ve made it to the end of this piece – I’m sorry this is all words, and that there are no pix yet. Yeah, right!

Do you dare?
Are you one of those gung-ho individuals ready to take on the world? The kind of individual that says, “Damn the economy. Nothing’s going to stop me, I’m surging ahead with my plans!”

The sort that would be eager to take on a challenge of being disciplined enough to consistently doing one particular task each and ever day. In this case the challenge thrown out by one writer on the net was for others to write a story, a day, ever single day for an entire year.

The story goes that the person who initially sparked this off had challenged himself to write a poem a day, for an entire year. He succeeded though some of the poems turned out to be relatively short. But the important point was that at the end of the year he had enough to publish a book! Wow!

Impressed and inspired, in 2008 I was determined to follow suit with my own set of short stories for children.

I started out in January, slacked off somewhere in April, recommenced in June, slacked off …. See a pattern there? Obviously, I wasn’t as tenacious as that guy.

BUT, the point is that when I flipped through the stories last night (March 2009), I liked some of the stuff I had produced. Maybe there is something in that idea after all. It did produce results, encouraging me to take it up again.

Hmm …. This definitely goes into the “something to ponder on” list. Why not throw yourself a similar challenge? Fill the blanks below and, ……. I won’t say “Good Luck”. Cos with or without it, I know you’ll succeed!

For the coming 12 months, I will spend at least 15 minutes a day ___________ . This will help in my efforts to ___________.

Wishing for Creative Powers


I failed art in Form 3. I had begged to be allowed to drop this paper for the SRP (now referred to as PMR). I remember another girl in the form – Harry an ex-Assuntarian who is no longer with us, wasn’t going to sit for the art paper. I so desperately wanted to follow suit.

As usual my mother totally turned the decision over to my eldest sister who decreed that I had to sit for the dreaded paper. What she never bothered to find out was exactly how good (of course, in this case it was how bad) my art skills were. No one who resembled an adult ever took my views and thots seriously ( and the answer is – yes, I’m still in therapy for being a contributing member of a dysfunctional family.)

Today, I chanced upon an interesting website, where a guy replicates the Mona Lisa using the grease from burgers. It's a good lesson on what goes into your body when you munch on one of those babies plus how you can make use of anything to be creative. Catch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orjALWsyaR4. I was just so impressed by how creative people can get. I wish I had some of his skills.

His website had more gems. See http://www.philinthecircle.com/amoment.html. A picture of Mother Theresa is constructed using 24 different shots of dandelions. Bruce Lee is painted by hitting the canvas with paint covered hands (how appropriate) and get this- Lance Armstrong was formed as the ingenious artist rode a tricycle around the portrait.

As I sit here trying hard to think up of an interesting concept for a new project I’m working on, I can only admire his ingenuity.

Not another slum love story!

I kept putting off watching Slumdog Millionaire. You see, I’m an Indian who grew up on a staple diet of prancing heroes and heroines on the screen. The thot of yet another love, story even though this was mainly in English, put me off.

What about the awards, you see? Geez, I stopped trusting their judgment eons ago. There have been many a time I’ve wanted to bill those guys for my pricey cinema ticket, parking, petrol for cruising around looking for a parking lot, time wasted snoring through another crappy movie, etc. all thanks to their seal of approval.

When my sixteen year old nephew from JB said he wanted to watch Slumdog Millionaire, I was quite taken aback. He wanted to watch a “love movie”? Plus he’s at that stage when he tries to portray a cross between being cool and macho. Surprise, surprise. When you only see your nephew once in a very blue moon, you tend to be very agreeable to whatever he wants to do (at least most things).

Quite frankly, the movie took me aback. Perhaps it’s my age showing. After a while (or a long while in my case) you pay scant attention to reviews and don’t really bother to read up the usual battery of promo pieces that appears in the local papers. So, I didn’t know what the movie was really about.

I admit that I was captivated by the storyline. Weaving it in and out of a famous game show was pretty remarkable. The two little rascals who played the lead for half the movie were simply captivating. They were spot on portraying young lads who snatch as much pleasure out of life as possible. I could imagine many a boy in their situation making the same sharp, observant comments that reveals their acceptance of their current station in life, yet there is that spark that says they are not willing to stay down for good.

The bit that I wasn’t too crazy about in the movie was the whole beggar part . I had shut my eyes and cringed when they used the spoon to ….. If you don’t know go find out.

The whole portrayal may be true to some extent but I felt this “beggar syndicate” theme was suddenly being overused. Reason being I had recently just watched another movie (Tamil – Nan Kadavil) that used way too much of violence to depict how the totally heartless beggar syndicates work in India. But then, there are certain people who enjoy these scenes.

What about the love story, you ask. Well, that was, in my opinion, just humdrum. I’m willing to forgive them for making me watch that bit as the rest of the movie was good.

The love aspect just proves what an obsessive individual the hero is. It was pure infatuation all the way. As for the heroine, in retrospect, her lines weren’t that terrific. With or without her, the movie would have been great. On another note, the directors would have had my respect if they had had the guts to use a woman who was not half as attractive. I’ll just continue to dream on.

There is a short dance number that comes on just as the credits are rolling. My knowledgeable 12 year old nephew says it was highly rated by Mat Salleh standards. But he didn’t think so. By my Indian standards, it was a real yawn. Thot both hero and heroine were stiff and the moves were so terribly common. Did they get someone off the streets of Bollywood to teach them that one?

Am now wondering if I should read the book on which this movie was based. Has anyone got any recommendations?

A warning about "bodoh" maids

“Why do I always get the lousy maids?” one pampered friend had moaned in the past. “She can’t do anything. I’ve got to
teach her every single thing. So bodoh one!”

Helloooooo! If she was all that smart, she’d be your boss. You’d be working your butt off for her, not vice versa.

And after the bone chilling (feel free to further qualify that with “horrifying”, “gruesome”, “Stephen King like”) incident of the maid trying to kill her boss up in Penang, I say, better to have a bodoh (stupid) maid, than a psycho gleefully plotting to finish you off with whatever sharp instruments she can lay her evil hands on.

Here’s another thot. Should you be the sort who has absolutely no sharp instruments around, GOOD LUCK! You can bet your last sen she’s going to bludgeon you with something blunt until her mission has been accomplished. Ugh!

But that’s not the reason why I started on this piece. I wanted to write on “bodoh maids”.

What exactly do employers expect when they hire a scrawny maid from Indonesia / Cambodia / Vietnam / India / Sri Lanka?

Don’t these temperamental employers know that some (I said some, not all) of these hapless maids come from terribly isolated villages? You know, places that require you to get onto a boat, go to the nearest village, wait for half a day for an ancient van to fill up with passengers before heading out to a bigger town. I kid you not.

So, when one of these maids hand washes filthy floor mats in the same pail as your stylo office clothes, don’t scream bloody murder. “Maidless” me can only imagine your frustration.

During that first incident, how about trying to keep in mind that the “bodoh maid” comes from a place where they probably cannot even afford to use well-worn clothes as floor mats. Every item she sees may be a luxury, making her treat them all alike. Plus, don’t you think that in her home, the focus would have been on survival with nary a thot on hygiene?

In cases when a foreign maid diligently shoves three day old food back into the fridge instead of chucking it into the dustbin (aka the Malaysian way), try to look at it from her perspective. Your homesick maid may be crying on the inside as her mind turns to her family going without food. Scarcity in one’s life makes one treat things taken for granted by others with much respect.

I could go on with more stories of maids doing unexpected / idiotic / bodoh things in Malaysian homes. I just wish that the next time these over demanding employers would take a minute to view it from the uneducated maid’s perspective. It’s all about perspective, isn’t it?

Please pay for my Masters .....

Please pay for my Masters ……

At a time when the we’ve been warned that the economy can only get worse, the RM60 billion stimulus package provides “aid for 10,000 students to pursue their Masters and 500 others to do their PhD” (see theSun, page 2).

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

There will be people who will get up in the mornings, worried to death about their jobs, about the shrinking value of their RM, about how they are going to feed their children, much less ensure they get a proper basic education.

It looks like it’s just more important for others to get a Masters degree. Whatever happened to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Is it time to revisit what Abraham Maslow had to say?

Sigh! I just don’t get it.

Years ago, it must have been in the early 1990’s, there were some fresh graduates who appealed to the public via national newspapers to sponsor their studies. It made my skin crawl. They had basic degrees which should have procured them a decent job. Surely they could pursue graduate studies at a later date? They could have emulated the million other working adults who scrimp, save and take out student loans to do so.

If the basic degree wasn’t good enough to even get you a job, something is terribly wrong. What guarantee is there that a Masters (local or foreign) is going to help you? I did my Masters locally at UPM. Did it guarantee that I could perform my job better? In all honesty – NO.

I gained a whole lot of interesting information. Plus there was a certain amount of emphasis on research – something that is more suited for the academic world than the dog eat dog business world. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it. Then and again, I’m one of those persons who enjoy reading, conducting research and picking up new knowledge.

Now, did it really contribute to my working output? At that point of time (2001) - no.

So, should this be one of our priorities at this point of time? Perhaps we should change gears to focus on providing financial aid for primary schoolchildren or secondary schoolchildren.

Doesn’t your heart ache when you read of kids who have had to drop out of school due to lack of money? Think about it.

Know what you do?

Short effective answers to
“What do you do?”

So, what do you do? I’m sure you’re asked that all the time. You know, when people seize you up at gatherings, wondering if they should spend their precious time chatting to you or just give it a miss.

Now, initially, when I first started out on my own, I was a wee bit flummoxed by it. “Ah, ummm, I write and I ……”

Strange, isn’t it? You’d think that being in my line, I would do a better job of it. My brains really should not have behaved like a scrambled egg. Or did it just split like a banana?

Bad jokes aside, what I read one day had a profound effect on me. One woman’s organization had taken it upon themselves to train budding women entrepreneurs on how to tackle this. Imagine that. Something that seemed trivial required training.

To put it in a nutshell, when you are casually posed this ever so important question, you should be able to respond (eloquently, mind you) in a few short sentences that cleverly encapsulates your daily activities that bring in the mullah. Cos that’s more or less how much of time someone that you meet is going to give you. Try to remember that you are having a natural conversation, not in the midst of a one hour presentation on your outstanding skills.

So what do I do? “I write non-fiction. That includes copywriting and writing for the school market. I also conduct training and carry out public relations work, focusing mainly on media work.” Is that clear enough? Well, I can’t put everything in, can I?

Much later, as I was perusing a heavy tome on presentation skills, something struck home. The book insisted that each time we open our mouths to speak, we are in the act of persuading the listener to do something.

Hmm … that made sense. So each time I introduce myself, I want them to use my services. Think of guys who are constantly climbing the slippery corporate ladder. You know, the sort that picks up the phone to say, “I am sorry I didn’t call you back sooner. It’s just that I was so tied up with this RM1 million deal. I’m glad it’s finally all done.”

He could have stopped at the first sentence, couldn’t he?

But no, he drove home the point that he had been busy with a colossal deal that’s going to make the big guns grin from ear to ear and add even more glitter to his dazzling CV.

So, the next time I’m asked, “What do you do?”, I’ll be saying, “I write copy that compels people to buy products, that makes viewers sit up to watch videos attentively. I write books for schools that enthralls students and short stories that leave kids clamouring for more. My training sessions arm participants with work skills that change their lives. As for the media work that I do, well, let me just say that I did increase media coverage by as much as 80% for a local college.”

Hmmm… is that jazzed up enough? I’m sticking to new cardinal rules here: forget about being humble, forget about not boasting and forget about letting my work speak for itself. I’m going to do all the shouting I need in these challenging times. I’ll keep you updated on the reactions to my new intro.

By Sheela Prabhakaran
Write Thot Solutions
March 10, 2009