Great Music, Worth to listenHave you ever seen Asians doing rap? I mean like Asians who really live in Asia? Well I’ve seen couple of them, and sorry to say, they’re suck. Well not all of them, some of them are OK, but the others are trying too hard to “copy” the style of American rapper. And yes they’ve done a good job, in term of appearances, you know, Bling Bling kinda style, but in terms of the quality of the musicality, BIG ZERO man.
So I was kinda pessimistic about Asian rappers, because like I said before, they didn’t have their own style of music. Not that I against any of American rappers, of course not, I grew up with hip hop and rap music, and most of them are American. I mean if I want to hear American kinda rap, I would listen to American artists for sure.
Until one day I listened to this song on the radio. The intro was a Malay kinda traditional music, which was kinda weird to me, and then followed by the standard drum loop and bass and scratching and stuff, and followed by couple of guys rapping in English. And I said to my self “who the hell are these guys?!!” the song was really good. I like it since the first I heard the song.
And later on I found out that the title of the song was “Anak Ayam” or literally chick in English (really weird huh for a song title) sang by the Malaysian duo called Too Phat. I was so interested of these guys, and one of the reasons that, the fact that they were coming from Malaysia. I never heard any of Malaysian rap artists before, and once I heard one, it was damn good!!
So I started to search more information about them, and bought their album. The album was good. It has kinda “Asian Flavour”. well not entirely, it also has “American aroma” too, in fact they managed to ask Warren G to took part in one of their songs called “just a lil’ bit” and I really like the song.
I’ll put a little bit of their biography from wikipedia below. You can also go to their website, but when I checked, it was under construction, but this is the address
http://www.toophat.com.my/ and yeah you can hear their song “
Just a Lil’ Bit featuring Warren G” just click on the title OK?!
Ciao
Too Phat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Too Phat is Malaysian Top Hip-Hop duo that has brought Malaysian Hip-Hop scene to greater heights. The group consist of Joe Flizzow (Johan Ishak) and Malique Ibrahim.
The Duo
Joe and Malique's first recorded collaboration won so many fans that the producers quickly began work on a new and better album Plan B. At last count, Plan B had sold 45,000 copies and garnered a double platinum award. Recording label Positive Tone, a subsidiary of EMI International, saw it fit to produce a re-issue of the album. Called the Plan B Platinum Edition, the CD pack includes a music video CD featuring home video footages and two new songs "Clap to This" and "Last Song". The lyrics of the songs have also been included in the Platinum Edition.
The first time around, they weren't. For good measure, Too Phat has thrown in never before released photographs of the boys. Meanwhile, cellular communications operator Maxis has taken a chance on this very new concept of rapping Malaysian style. The company has linked its prepaid service Hotlink with Too Phat's latest music, "Just a Friend". The video that debuted on ntv7 is contemporary, slick, bold and relevant. It was innovative to have the collaboration of Maxis Hotlink, and cameo appearances of artistes M. Nasir and Fauziah Latiff, track hero Watson Nyambek and singer Ferhad on the music video. Brave because for the first time on Malaysian video and on national television (with scenes shot at locations in Kuala Lumpur) the issue of homosexuality was addressed.
It is bolder than the strong hint of a gay relationship in Spinnin
g Gasing, Malaysia's first English language movie. The audience received the hint of homosexuality in the movie with rip-roaring laughter. How sad. It begs the question what people are actually laughing at; the slapstick antics of the parties in the relationship, or the relationship itself. "Just a Friend" is brave but admirably tactful, smoothly nonchalant, yet entertaining. Kudos to Pegasus Film's Sean Chan, whose directing gave a sensitive portrayal of the two young men's frustration over the complexities of love. No derogatory remarks or insinuations were made on that other relationship. Just hair-tearing disappointment for the supposedly hip Joe and Malique when they discover that they've been had.
At the video launch, Joe and Malique's stomping enthusiasm elicited guffaws from the audience. Having broken new ground by dealing with a controversial issue, Too Phat must now prepare for the feedback. Fans and industry watchers appreciate their audacity. Even critics may want to consider the refined manner in which Too Phat has presented a facet of life. If their brave approach is accepted, Too Phat will ride the crest of popularity to untold heights.
Would You Rather Own Google or Indonesia?
Just for information, I’m an Indonesian. And I will post something more about my home country later on.
So do you think the title above a little bit intriguing? Well so did I when I first read the article. It’s a title of an article written by William Pesek Jr., a columnist for Bloomberg News.
Well I leave you guys with the article, and write me a comment with your pick or your opinion about the article.
Ciao
Would You Rather Own Google or Indonesia?: William Pesek Jr.
Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Faced with poverty, surging oil prices and terrorist threats, many of Indonesia's 235 million people probably never noticed the milestone. Ditto for global investors, who care more about such things.
In April, Google Inc. surpassed Indonesia's entire stock market in value.
Think about it. A seven-year-old company that produces no physical products is now more valuable than the equity of Southeast Asia's biggest economy. Indonesia is an archipelago of some 18,000 islands holding natural resources --including oil -- that make the world's richest nations salivate. Google is, well, an Internet search tool.
It raises an intriguing question, and one Mark Matthews, a Singapore-based director at Merrill Lynch & Co., posed this week in a sales note to clients: Which would you rather own: 100 percent of the Indonesian equities market or Google?
A bit existential perhaps, but a question that focuses the mind and gets at a bigger point. Matthews' take on it? Indonesia is the clear winner.
``Indonesia is a hairy asset to be sure,'' he wrote. ``It has African levels of corruption, thousands of islands spread out over three time zones, Islamic extremists. But judging by the market's ability to withstand the most recent mini-crisis and Bali bombs, this is in the price. So there is upside if they can eventually get it right. And it is something real.''
Today's Cotton Gin?
Matthews can't help but wonder if Google will go the way of inventor Eli Whitney. ``The cotton gin changed America,'' Matthews wrote. ``It revitalized the South and boosted the British textile industry, and had a thousand other effects. And this earned the inventor, Eli Whitney, almost nothing.''
What's all this got to do with Google? ``That's sort of where Google is today,'' Matthews wrote. ``Google has a small lead over a pack of competitors, all eager to fight for one of the few remaining high-margin zones left in tech-land. Does Google management know that the supply of advertising space on the Internet is unlimited?
Google's market cap is $92 billion and last year it had $3.2 billion in sales. Indonesia's stock market is valued at $72 billion and its gross domestic product is $258 billion. PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, the nation's biggest telephone operator, alone had sales of 33.9 trillion rupiah ($3.3 billion) in 2004. In other words, one company that's just 14 percent of the Jakarta Composite Index had more sales than Google.
Indonesia's Pros and Cons
Matthews' basic conclusion is this: Folks who buy Indonesia at current prices may do better than those who buy Google.
In 1998, for example, Microsoft Corp.'s market cap was bigger than South Korea's. Now Microsoft's is $272 billion and Korea's is $530 billion. ``If I could take a 7-year view on them, I would long Indonesia and short Google,'' Matthews says.
Aficionados of the information age may fear Matthews is spending too much time in the tropical sun. The stock of the most- used Web search engine rose 62 percent this year alone. Clearly, people are making some serious money off Google. And how many companies have seen their name become a verb?
Google comparisons aside, Matthews raises some interesting points about the state of the world's fourth most-populous nation.
The aftermath of the deadly Oct. 1 bombings in Bali hasn't been what their perpetrators might have expected. If the hope of the suicide bombers who killed themselves and 19 other people was to shake confidence in Indonesia's economy, they failed miserably.
Bonds Tell the Story
That Indonesia's stocks are still up nearly 10 percent this year is one sign. A more important one is that Indonesia drew excess demand last week for its biggest overseas debt sale, and that it plans to sell more 30-year bonds in 2006.
If investors viewed Indonesia as a basket case -- which many did following the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2003 attack on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta -- would they really have placed $4.25 billion of orders for the $1.5 billion of 10- and 30-year debt it sold? That demand prompted the government to increase the sale by 20 percent.
While the yields Jakarta is paying are higher than those offered in April, they were at the bottom of the range marketed to fund managers. The demand reflects confidence President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is making progress toward reducing Indonesia's budget deficit, protecting currency reserves and attacking corruption.
Subsidy Gamble
Risks indeed abound in Indonesia, an economy whose only real consistency is its ability to confound investors. The place has crushing poverty, terrorist threats and chronic inefficiencies. And those are just the concerns investors focus. Any Asia-wide outbreak of bird flu, for example, could hit Indonesia hard.
Yudhoyono says he's tackling the problems that cost Indonesia the foreign direct investment it needs. Earlier this month, he almost tripled kerosene prices and more than doubled diesel tariffs to cap fuel subsidies and reduce the budget deficit.
While a tricky maneuver for any leader, that's a particularly perilous one in Indonesia. In 1998, the removal of subsidies fueled violent protests that toppled President Suharto. Yet Standard & Poor's on Oct. 3 said Yudhoyono's move was ``encouraging'' and will spur investor confidence.
It's a reminder that in any Google versus Indonesia debate, Asia's No. 7 economy may not be as bad a bet as you think.
To contact the writer of this column:
William Pesek Jr. in Tokyo at wpesek@bloomberg.net
random songs on my current playlist
these are random 20 songs from my current playlist
*The Strokes – Last Night
*Kula Shaker – Tattva
*Human League – Together In Electric Dreams
*Dashboard Confessional Feat. Michael Stipe – Hands Down
*Myslovitz – Song Of Solitude
*Ben Folds Five – All Is Fair In Love
*Stone Roses – I Wanna Be Adored (funny thing is, it sounds like “I wanna be a door” Haha)
*Soundgarden – The Day I Tried To Live
*Earth Wind & Fire – Sunday Morning
*DJ Spiller Feat. Sophie Ellis Bextor – Groovejet (If It Ain’t Love)
*Maxwell – Whenever Wherever Whatever
*Maroon 5 – Sunday Morning
*Lightning Seeds – What If
*Joe Satriani - Home
*Fourplay Feat. Phil Collins – Why Can’t It Wait Till Morning
*Candlebox – Simple Lessons
*Boy George – Crying Games
*My Chemical Romance – Helena
*Venus Hum – Soul Sloshing
*And song of the day : ASH – Shining Light
Click here to listen to the song
General Strike in Belgium (yeah..)
Yesterday (Friday, October 7th), I experienced the first strike ever. Some major Unions called their workers to do this, to protest the government policy to raise the retirement age to 60 years from 58 years. It was a general strike, almost all of the workers from transportation sectors, shops, schools (well, long weekend for the students), and even from hospitals (poor patients) were joining the strike. The good thing is they made couple of days advance warning regarding the strike.
Click here for more information about the strike.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/10/07/belgium.strike.reut/For me my self, I wasn’t very affected by it (thank the Lord) because luckily I live near the company’s bus stop (just for the background, the company provided us with shuttle bus, that starts at 7.30 and 8.30 in the morning, and leaves at 5.10, 6.10 and 7.00 from the office in the evening). So the absence of trams, metros, trains could not be my alibi to skip work, since there were a lot of people did that :-) . Well I can’t blame them. My office is in the suburb area. And most of its employees live in Brussels. If you don’t have car, and you live million km from the bus stop, trains will be the only alternative to reach the office. And since they were on strike, what could they do, walk? I don’t think so. So yup they were calling a day off yesterday.
Like I said, I wasn’t very affected by the strike. But I had a 9 AM meeting yesterday (according to the invitation). Normally I would take the 8.30 Bus, because it only takes around 20 – 30 minutes to reach the office. But I was trying to play smart (which is a rare activity for me to do :-) ) I was thinking the traffic would be very pack because of the absence of the public transportation, and the bus would be overcrowded because of the spill over from the trains. So I made the plan to take the first bus, and I was encouraging my friends to do the same with the arguments I had.
And they would thank me for saving them from the deadlock condition of the streets (yeah right :-) )
I never a big fan of early bus, I rather stay late then come early. But the idea of spending hours in the street was not really fit my plan to spend the morning. So I managed to catch the bus. It was easy, I used to wake up early. But it was quite an experience for me, because I left the house when it was still dark. Well it’s autumn already and the sun was suppose to rise at 7.52 AM. And it was sooo foggy. I had this funny feeling that I was in one of the episodes of twilight zone or some kind. And it grew stronger when I was approaching the bus. I could barely see the bus from the distance because of the darkness and the heavy fog. And it was kinda spooky you know, just like a haunted bus in one of those horror movies, that would take you away to different dimensions and you will lost forever. LOL.
Anyway, I was expecting that the bus would be crowded, and people would be talking about the strike, how the traffic was terrible or something. But all my predictions were wrong. The bus is very empty (only 10 people from 50 people capacity), and the traffic was relatively normal. I arrived around 7.50. Crap!!
And then at 9.00 my friend arrived. And he’s a regular company bus user like I am. So I assumed that the traffic was normal because well he was on time. And I asked him about the bus, and he said it wasn’t crowded at all. Crap again!!
And for the meeting, it was postponed
F**k !! :-)
NB: 11.5 Hours left for the Concert
One Big Happy Family
Do you believe on racial profiling? You know, one race this this this, one race tends to that that that, bla bla bla, whatever. Well I’m not buying the idea. I firmly believe that people can not judge other people by their race, or skin color or whatever. Well now you can ask what should people being judge to. Well I don’t know. It’s different topic, but not their race for sure.
And some people said that, “I’m not a racist, for sure. But I do believe that we should maintain the purity of our race” I respect their view, but I disagree. Read the article my friends. It turns out that we’re one big happy family walking on the face of earth.
Peace...
An article by Mike Salovesh, Anthropology Department, Northern Illinois University.
As far as I know, there just aren't ANY human populations separated by as much as 40,000 years.
Let's see now: European and African populations have been interbreeding directly for a VERY long time. Hannibal's army, of course, came from Africa, and those Africans left more descendants in Europe than Hannibal's animals left elephant flops. Yes, I know, Hannibal's Carthage was in NORTH Africa; so? There's a long, almost continuous record of North African populations interbreeding with those of central Africa. (There are also reasonable records of people in classical Egypt interbreeding with dark-skinned peoples whose origins were much farther south than the farthest reaches of pharaonic rule.)
Whatever the populations of Europe may be, they surely haven't been genetically isolated from people of central and even southern Africa for millenia. Hannibal's armies are just a passing example of the long history of breeding contacts. You don't even have to buy the "out of Africa" hypothesis of the origins of anatomically modern humans to conclude that Europe and Africa have NEVER been the homelands of totally separate breeding populations.
All right, let's look to the east. I usually mention Ghengis Khan in this connection: thousands of very fierce warriors emerging from Central Asia and invading to the heart of Europe. They left direct linguistic evidence of their presence in the languages of Finland, Hungary, and Turkey. How likely is it that they did not impregnate one helluva lot of local women as one of the rewards they gave themselves for their conquest? That, of course, was only one of many waves of European invasion from the east over several centuries.
My examples deliberately take off from that comment about "predating the European expansion": they are examples of non-Europeans expanding into Europe. I may have rushed to some kind of prejudgment of what you're saying, however -- I just sort of assumed that the European expansion you were talking about began, more or less, in the fifteenth century with, say, the Portugese under Phillip the Navigator.
Perhaps you meant the expansion of Rome. In that case, try looking at an old, old popular book about classical archaeology: "Rome beyond the imperial frontiers". (I don't feel like looking up author and publisher; I think it was by Mallory and the edition I read many years ago was a Penguin paperback.) It certainly is clear that Rome was engaged in direct trade with China. Well, you may have heard the old saw, "the flag follows trade"; in this case, it also is clear that interbreeding did, too. All right, drop back a little farther in history and you'll come across Alexander the Great and his "Drang nach Osten". His armies actually made it to the Indian subcontinent. Of course, his father's old enemies, the Persians, did a lot of interbreeding with Greeks at one end of their empire and with peoples of Afghanistan and Inner Asia at the other.
Once more, whatever the populations of Europe may be, they surely haven't been genetically isolated from people of central, southern, or even southeast Asia for a very long time. Asia and Europe probably never have been the homelands of human breeding isolates of any more than local and short-term significance; they certainly haven't been for the last three millenia or so.
The two populations we think of as most separated from the rest of Homo sapiens once were the sole occupants of Australia and the Americas. But the inhabitants of Australia never were completely cut off from breeding with the rest of humanity. Recent archaeology in Australia turns up more and more evidence every year that there was lots more contact with the rest of the world than we used to think. The evidence now goes back 50,000 or more years. That's close enough to the date we used to accept for the origins of modern H. sapiens sapiens for me to say that, effectively, the Australians have ALWAYS had significant reproductive interaction with the rest of humanity.
Gosh, that only leaves one group that might fit your comment about a human population that has been separate for 40,000 years. Well, I don't want to get into a side argument about when humans first entered what Eurocentric geography calls "the New World". I don't think that kind of date matters much in this discussion. What counts is the other end of the entry of humans to the Americas. As far as I can see, whenever that movement started, serious scholars all agree that there was substantial migration from Asia into the Americas via some kind of Bering Straits land bridge something on the order of ten to fifteen thousand years ago. (I'm deliberately sloppy about my dates to avoid getting sidetracked into discussing exactly when that major population movement ended or exactly how long it lasted. That's irrelevant here.) Thus the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere were doing close interbreeding with Asian populations at least as recently as 15,000 B.P.: their ancestors were parts of those Asian populations. There's no room for 40,000 years of separation there.
Personally, I would argue that the Americas and Asia have never been reproductively isolated from each other. The breeding links are most clear with the Inuit and various Alaskan groups; it is at least arguable that the Athabaskans provided their own links back to Asia. Then there's the peculiar anomalies of such plants as sweet potatoes moving west from South America to the southwest Pacific area. If cultigens were being moved by ocean-crossing humans, I'd bet the farm that when those travelers got to their destinations they had some pretty good celebrations that MUST have left some biological descendants.
There's no sense in looking for the biological or genetic results of 40,000 years of separate development of isolated human groups before European expansion. That separation simply did not happen.
We are a single interbreeding species, and we have been at least as long as our ancestors have been fully anatomically modern humans.
That doesn't deny that specific hereditary human traits show distributions along geographic clines. Of course they do. Those traits, however, still are subject to independent assortment. The clines exhibited by two independent traits cannot be expected to be exactly the same.
The facts of variation in human herditary traits are interesting, and they can have important consequences. I'm all for studying them. But I don't expect that we'll get very far if we assume a priori that the distribution of those traits must coincide with the breeding boundaries of isolated populations.
Once more, the clines overlap, but they do not duplicate each other. No human population -- NONE !!! -- known to the archaeological and historical record has ever maintained itself in reproductive isolation from its neighbors for more than a few centuries.
In biological terms, it's a fair conclusion that there are no "pure races" in Homo sapiens AND THERE NEVER HAVE BEEN.
Jamiroquai live in Brussels
Well, 4 days left to the concert. I’m excited of course. My friend told me that his friend watched their concert in UK, and he said it was GOOD. Well, it has to be good, I paid quite a lot for the ticket.
I’ll be posting some materials regarding the concert later on. Hope I’ll get good pictures from the concert.
Song of the day:
Together in Electric Dreams by Human League.I downloaded it yesterday. It’s an old song, 80s electronic monotone beats kinda song from one of the legendary British bands ever exists.
I watched their gig in Leuven last August. Man, they were fu**in’ old. :-) but what can you expect, the band was formed in 1977, of course they're fu**in' old. Let's do a simple math here. Let’s assume they were 22 years old when the band was formed. So currently they are about 50 years old (22 years + 28 years from 1977). Man.. Awesome.
Well, not much for the first posting, I will continuously post “the song of the day”, so at least I have something to write on :-).
Human League Live in Marktrock 13 August 2005.
Click here to hear 'Human League, Together In Electric Dreams'
The first time around, they weren't. For good measure, Too Phat has thrown in never before released photographs of the boys. Meanwhile, cellular communications operator Maxis has taken a chance on this very new concept of rapping Malaysian style. The company has linked its prepaid service Hotlink with Too Phat's latest music, "Just a Friend". The video that debuted on ntv7 is contemporary, slick, bold and relevant. It was innovative to have the collaboration of Maxis Hotlink, and cameo appearances of artistes M. Nasir and Fauziah Latiff, track hero Watson Nyambek and singer Ferhad on the music video. Brave because for the first time on Malaysian video and on national television (with scenes shot at locations in Kuala Lumpur) the issue of homosexuality was addressed.
g Gasing, Malaysia's first English language movie. The audience received the hint of homosexuality in the movie with rip-roaring laughter. How sad. It begs the question what people are actually laughing at; the slapstick antics of the parties in the relationship, or the relationship itself. "Just a Friend" is brave but admirably tactful, smoothly nonchalant, yet entertaining. Kudos to Pegasus Film's Sean Chan, whose directing gave a sensitive portrayal of the two young men's frustration over the complexities of love. No derogatory remarks or insinuations were made on that other relationship. Just hair-tearing disappointment for the supposedly hip Joe and Malique when they discover that they've been had.
At the video launch, Joe and Malique's stomping enthusiasm elicited guffaws from the audience. Having broken new ground by dealing with a controversial issue, Too Phat must now prepare for the feedback. Fans and industry watchers appreciate their audacity. Even critics may want to consider the refined manner in which Too Phat has presented a facet of life. If their brave approach is accepted, Too Phat will ride the crest of popularity to untold heights.
