From wikipedia: Zee Avi (born Izyan Alirahman, also known as KokoKaina; b. 1986) is a Malaysian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and ukulele player. She was born in Miri, Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. She moved to Kuala Lumpur when she was 12. She studied fashion design at American InterContinental University in London.
Avi posted a video of her first song on YouTube for one of her friends who had missed her first performance in Kuala Lumpur. The friend convinced Avi to leave the video online even after he had seen it, and soon she received positive feedback. This inspired her to put more videos on YouTube. After being featured on the main page of YouTube, she was discovered by Patrick Keeler of The Raconteurs, who passed the link to Ian Montone, the manager of The White Stripes, The Shins, The Raconteurs, and others. Montone passed her music on to Emmett Malloy, who signed her to Brushfire Records, a record company which is partly owned by Jack Johnson. Her song “No Christmas For Me” is featured on Brushfire Records’s 2008 Christmas album This Warm December: A Brushfire Holiday. Her single “Bitter Heart” was first to become available on the US iTunes store, and her full self-titled debut album was released on May 19, 2009, co-produced by Brushfire Records and Ian Montone’s Monotone Records. On the day of her album’s release, YouTube featured her on the front page in Spotlight: Music Tuesday. From June–August 2009, she toured the United States with Pete Yorn. The final concert on her first U.S. tour was at the Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood, California on August 27, 2009.
Setia Alam is new township and is barely more than 5 years old. It has its shares of issues. But one thing I noticed is that the residents there are quite friendly and helpful. I guess we’re also blessed to have wonderful neighbours.
Personally, I’ve been quite involved in Setia Alam. No, I do not work for the developer, SP Setia. Besides the SARA website, I’ve also been involved with MPP Zone 21. MPP stands for Majlis Perwakilan Penduduk and it is a committee formed by the local council, MBSA. Shah Alam is divided into different zones and Setia Alam comes under Zone 21.
MPP’s role is to organise activities on behalf of MBSA and be the liaison between MBSA and the local residents. My project for this year is to organise a series of gotong-royong. The first was held today. While the turn out was not as good as I had hoped, it was still good. I was particularly happy to see kids joining and having fun! These days, it is uncommon to find a gotong-royong event, what more in an urban area… So, many kids don’t really have a chance to join and have first hand experience in this activity called Gotong-Royong. I’m glad things are different in Setia Alam. I guess that’s also because the residents here are different and care for the township…
Just wanna share some photos taken today…
From what I could gather, those who helped out at the gotong-royong felt it was too short. Many felt there were more that could be done and achieved. If only we had more time and more volunteers. I felt the same too — Just too many things to do. And there’s a lot that can be improved… And things will definitely improve when we have the next one in January 2010!
Pregnancy is an amazing ‘thing’. Well, I’m not referring to the process of getting pregnant here… Grrrrr…
What I’m talking about is ‘watching’ life grow inside someone and develop into a human in nine months…
In the first trimester starts off relatively ‘quiet’. Usually when one realises about the pregnancy, it’s already about 4 weeks… And if you’re ‘unlucky’, that is also the time when morning sickness probably starts to rear its ugly head. Mrs Tai was unfortunate is this sense — she suffered quite bad morning sickness in both pregnancies. And it went on even longer than just the first trimester.
But then again, first trimester just seems to pass so quickly.
Then the body starts to change. For some, you can probably start to see the tummy… The pregnancy starts to show. During the second trimester, visits to the hospital becomes more fun. If the doctor does an ultrasound scan, you can actually ’see’ the baby. Well, at least that’s what everyone says… I’m no expert. Most of the time, when the doctor points out and says something like “That’s the head…”, I just nod in agreement. Hey, the doctor’s the expert…
Towards the end of the second trimester, you can probably start to see the baby moving around in the tummy…
Third trimester… Tummy grows even bigger… It gets more difficult to move about… The baby’s movements becomes even more obvious… You can sometimes see bulges coming up… Then moving all over the tummy area…. It can be quite fun watching the sporadic movements… And when you look at it and think about it, you realise… This is such a marvelous, amazing and ‘miraculous’ event…
I was talking to a friend this evening on my way home when she asked me when is the baby due…
I told her it was something like another 4 more weeks… Then I did a quick check and realised… That’s not right… 4 more weeks would put me at 20th November…
It’s more like 2-3 more weeks to go! Yikes…!!! I am soooOOOooo not ready!
But I know Mrs Tai is… She’s already packed her bags and will go on maternity leave starting next week.
Didn’t have a good sleep the night before… I thought it was just a case of indigestion, but I guess I was wrong. Anyway, doctor advised to just rest… So I spent the whole day sleeping…
I like to be involved in community projects. And recently, I took up the challenge of organising a ‘gotong-royong’ for my place community, Setia Alam. I even have a ‘theme’ for it — Health. Part of the plan was to distribute health flyers to the residents. Dengue has always been a concern, so I thought I’d distribute dengue awareness brochures. And since A(H1N1) is the ‘IN’ thing, I thought it would be good if we could also include A(H1N1) flyers.
I was sure the Ministry of Health (MOH) would have printed lots of flyers, posters, banners, etc… I was quite sure MOH would be happy that we would help them distribute the flyers to the community. So, I made a few calls…
Boy, was I very disappointed. MOH said they can’t give me the 20 000 brochures I requested (10k for each). They can only give me a few hundred and I’ll have to photocopy or print the rest… Aw, common… How come businesses are willing to spend some money to print advertising pamphlets for everyone in Setia Alam but the MOH is unable to do so? How much would 20k brochures cost anyway? I know loan sharks can afford that. Hypermarkets can afford to print booklets! So why can’t the government?
I find this to be really disappointing. It seems like a really half-hearted effort by MOH. On one hand they want to raise awareness, on the other hand, they are not willing to spend money. And it would seem our goverment prefers to spend money on other needless things like…
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