Ask Me Anything

Life Documentary 60 Comments

kennysia.com was taken offline for about 4 hours Thursday night.

Hi,
We’ve had to block web access to your site due to high loads. Your site had over 900 connections simultaneously and was preventing other sites from functioning. Do you know why your site would get so much activity today?
If you have any further questions or experience any problems, please let us know. Thank you.
Regards,
xxx Thapa
System Engineer
Site5 Internet Solutions, Inc.

Thank you smart arse. The problem I’m experiencing is this – my website is down, and my question is – when will it be back up?
900+ actual people visiting my site at the same time? Impossible.
Maybe the whole of China decided to check out kennysia.com at the same time after hearing what I wrote about their beloved Furong Jiejie.
Or, maybe its the sealions who protested and launched a simultaneous attack on kennysia.com after I compared them to Furong Jiejie AND my readers continued to mistake them for walruses.
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*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Today is Blogathon day. There will be no updates on kennysia.com because I’ll be updating over at BloggersAreMorons.com.
Now here’s the deal. The six of us will be taking turns updating the site for 24 hours straight. I’m doing the graveyard shift.
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Saturday night when everyone is out pubbing, I’ll be at home blogging.

I’ll be online from 1am to 5am, posting one entry every 30 minutes, blogging non-stop for 4 hours straight, all in the name of charity.
But here’s the problem: I have absolutely no freakin’ idea what to write AT ALL.
I know its for charity, but blogging continuously for 4 hours is crazy man. Its impossible to blog non-stop for 4 hours, its impossible to eat non-stop for 4 hours, its impossible to fuck non-stop for 4 hours. What the heck is there to write? I can’t even write ‘coconuts’ for 4 hours straight!
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I’d rather watch them dance for 4 hours

So here’s what I’ll do. I’ve seen others did this before and it looks fun, so I’m copying the idea.
Ask me anything.
Here’s your chance to ask me absolutely anything you’d like to know about me, or anything else not related to me.
You can ask me about me, like “What’s your name?” (Kenny)
You can ask me about blogging. “Why do you blog?” (For the love of coconuts)
You can ask me about your relationship problems. “I like my bf a lot but he’s got a wife in Malaysia, a gf in Singapore, a mistress in Hong Kong, a sugarbaby in Africa, a gay partner in Holland, and he goes to Thailand 5 times a week. So how?” (Dump him)
You can ask me about my habits. “What’s your favourite position in bed?” (Lying on my back with the pillow underneath my head and the duvet covered all the way up to my neck.)
You can even ask me about your homework. “What is x + 1 integrated over 0 to 2?” (4)
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Hopefully I’ll have enough content to last 8 posts in 4 hours until the sunrise.

Feel free to post your questions on my comment box or on the tag-board. So long as I see it I’ll answer it. Just to be fair, try to keep it reasonably clean (questions like “How long is your dickonosaurus?” will not be entertained) and stay within a maximum of three questions per person alright?
So ask me anything.
I’ll TRY to answer everything and put them the answers on BloggersAreMorons.com from 1am tonight. I might not have answers for all, I might even choose not to answer some (if I find it offensive or too personal). But at least you might find out a thing or two about me that you might not know, and who knows? I might even find out something about myself that I never realise. 🙂
Go ahead. Shoot me.

Shal Sagan

Distinctively Kuching Event Coverage 70 Comments

Shal Sagan is an independent music artist homegrown in Kuching, Sarawak.

I wrote about meeting her and her mate Brandon Juan at the Rainforest World Music Festival some time ago when JoyceTheFairy was in town. Prior to this I have heard of her though I never had the chance to listen to her music. Coincidentally, I bumped into them again at Bing the Coffee House last week. Brandon invited me to come to her gig on Sunday, so I figured why not.

For a 22-year-old, this fair-skinned beauty sure has accomplished a lot for herself. Shal Sagan has got some serious talent and I mean that in every sense of the word.
Get this – Shal doesn’t just sing. She wrote all her songs, composed all her songs, plays lead guitar, co-produced them, and on top of all that, started her own record label Shzogawa Records to distribute her music. And she did all these when she was just 21 years old.
When I was 21, I was still sitting in front of my computer play The Sims.

The gig was held at Somerset Gateway as part of a charity carnival. The bands performing that day were great but too bad the event was poorly organised. For some silly reason the organisers put the stage right in front of entrance to the condomnium, which means every now and then you get residents walking behind the performers to get to their suite, as you’ll see in the video clips later. Its very annoying.

It’s then Shal Sagan’s turn to go up there and do her thing as I readied my digital cameras and did my thing.
Halfway through her performance, I encountered a Freaky Fan Incident. Yes, I encountered it, not her.

A middle-aged man in his 40s or so (shown in this picture here) emerged from inside the building, walked past the stage and handed me a small folded note.

I looked at him quizzically and he smiled at me before walking away.
Now I don’t know if he’s the one reading my blog, or if he’s just playing messenger and passed me the note from someone else. But, guys! If you do happen to bump into me, there are less freaky ways to let me know you’re kennysia.com reader you know? Like, for example, “Hi Kenny, I read your blog. Nice to meet you!”

That guitarist bears an uncanny resemblance to Linus Chung from the movie Sepet.

Anyway, back to Shal Sagan.
Shal and band performed 4 songs from her debut album. They opened with Death’s Fatal Kiss and finished with a Green Day/Good Charlotte-inspired Newsflash, both of them uptempo rock tracks. In between, she sang a slow alternative track Message in a Bottle (think Smashing Pumpkins) and ballad track Just Fine, my favourite song from her album.

“These chicks don’t even know the name of my band… But they’re all on me like they wanna hold hands…”

Shal Sagan sounds a lot better live than my camera can apperciate, but here are the videos anyway (in MOV format, Quicktime Player required).
– Death’s Fatal Kiss video
– Just Fine video
– Message in a Bottle video
– Newsflash video
Samples of her songs can be downloaded from CD Baby. Pay attention and reflect on the lyrics as they are often the best parts to her songs.

Shal Sagan, Kuching’s Rock Princess and Kenny Sia, Kuching’s Rock.

Shal Sagan was nice enough to give me a copy of her CD. To show her my appreciation, I created for her a music video of her song ‘Just Fine’. Try to spot my Freaky Fan in there.
Download music video of Just Fine, crappily produced by kennysia.com
– Low Res (17MB, WMV)
– Hi Res (33MB, WMV)
– Hi Res (alternate link) (33MB, WMV)
If you like what you hear, you can purchase her album from Tower Records if you’re in Malaysia, buy online through CD Baby, or just e-mail Shzogawa Records directly at orders@shalsagan.net.
Support our local indie music industry. 🙂

Kenny Sia Replies To Furong Jiejie

Favourite Entries The Blog Culture 283 Comments

I hate disclaimers, but since people insist…
Disclaimer: This entry was initially written under the assumption that Furong Jiejie had a part in the writing those entries on her English blog that attacked XiaXue and insinuated that I sent her those photos. This entry was written in response to those actions.
There is no concrete proof to conclude either she has or doesn’t have a part in her English blog. There is a possibility her English blog is a work of an impersonator. Her original Chinese entries on Tsinghua and Beijing Universities’ BBS are still not available. From newspaper reports, it is clear that her new blog on BlogChina.com is NOTHING like her old entries on BBS.
I repeat, this entry was originally written under the assumption Furong Jiejie had a part in the writing those entries. An assumption valid at the time of writing.
kennysia.com is not responsible for ANY comments not made by him on his entries or on his tag-board.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
If you don’t know who Furong Jiejie is, apparently she is mainland China’s biggest internet celebrity. Biggest ego, that is.
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This delusional 28-year-old peasant from the Shaanxi province gained notoriety on the internet after posting so-called “provocative” photos of herself on Tsinghua and Beijing universities’ bulletin boards almost daily. Accompanying those vomit-inducing photos are descriptions like “To men, I am the sweetest flower. They love to drink my nectars.” *read in chinky PRC accent*.
Furong Jiejie claims she’s under 45kg. I think that’s probably just the skin on her face.

Nobody, not even sociology experts, can explain why she is so popular. At first glance I thought she’s somewhat of a lame joke. How could someone like HER turned into China’s most talked about internet persona? She is a little bit like me. Not only is her writing a piece of shit, her face is a piece of shit too.

Would you like to drink my nectars?

Yet, each day hundreds and thousands of people from the second largest internet-using nation in the world log on to those sites to see Furong Jiejie make a complete and utter fool out of herself. Rampant opium use in China the last millenia must have fucked up their brains worse than I thought.

Watch my picture and desire me in your mind-heart. How good I feel with you.I know you desire me.”

Furong Jiejie’s vanity and narcissistic streak earned her constant comparison to XiaXue. To me, the difference between them is just too obvious.
– XiaXue makes it clear she’s joking. Furong Jiejie shows no signs of that.
– XiaXue is at least sometimes funny. Furong Jiejie is just… sad.
– XiaXue looks above average. Furong Jiejie is an insult to the word ‘ugly’.
But make no mistake about it, Furong Jiejie IS indeed the most talked about Chinese blogger on the Internet.
I searched “Kenny Sia” on Google and I got 26,900 hits.
I searched “XiaXue” on Google and I got 87,800 hits.
I searched “芙蓉姐姐” (Furong Jiejie’s Chinese name) on Google.
685,000 freakin’ hits.

Camel Toe sighted in China

What’s more? Movie studios are seeking after her. The Chinese government wants to ban her. Fan/hate sites continue to mushroom all over the internet. Furong Jiejie’s ascension to fame is as staggering as it is mind-boggling.
Just last month, Furong Jiejie started her English ENGRISH blog site. It isn’t doing as well as her Chinese-language sites. Lately, she’s been seen trolling around the Singaporean blogosphere in an obvious loserish attempt to gain hits from outside China. She made her first move by challenging XiaXue on her blog.

XiaXue, of course, didn’t budge an inch. Why should she waste her precious blogging time on someone like her?
Then out of the sudden for some obscure reason, I came into the picture. Original link here.

THAT BITCH HAD THE AUDACITY TO CLAIM THAT I SENT TOPLESS PHOTOS OF XIAXUE TO HER!
I don’t even have topless photos of XiaXue lah! Even if I have, what makes you think I’ll simply send them out to you? Must pay money one you know?
GAN that Furong cheebye! THE NERVES!
So, I happily angrily clicked on the link because I wanna see XiaXue topless to see if what she said is true. To my absolute disappointment amusement, this picture popped up instead.

I laughed so hard my left coconut fell. That’s SarongPartyGirl, not XiaXue lah!
As soon as I saw that pic, two thoughts crossed my mind simultaneously.
1. Poor SarongPartyGirl. She can’t even drink a glass of milk properly without spilling it all over herself.
2. Poor Wendy Cheng. This is the SECOND TIME people mistaken SarongPartyGirl for her.

Remember THIS?

There’s only one clear thing coming out of that post: Furong Jiejie is riding on Xiaxue’s popularity like she wants me to ride her “like donkey in my brain”.
The worst thing is, Furong Jiejie wants ME to print out this picture and hang it over my bed tonight.

…
Excuse me while I vomit my dinner out.
Ugh.
I don’t know what to say.
Thank you Furong Jiejie for your “sexy picture”.
But I’d rather hang this picture over my bed tonight instead.

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Kuching Festival Fair 2005

Distinctively Kuching Event Coverage 91 Comments

The Kuching Festival Fair is a month-long food, trade and cultural fair held annually at the Dewan Masyarakat (Civic Hall).

The event has been going on 17 years now. I remember I used to attend the event as a kid together with my late grandmother. I vaguely recall the dimly lit footpath, the wide range of local food, the hustle and bustle of the crowd that’s so characteristic of the Festival.

But that was 10 years ago. For 8 of those years I’ve been attending the very boring and expensive Perth Royal Show instead, so when I heard about the Kuching Festival happening I dragged my saliva-soaked ass there as soon as I could.

“Can cut food. Can cut wood. Can cut brick. RM20 for one, buy two get one free. CHEAP!”

The fair at the Dewan Masyarakat comprised of a food fair, a trade fair and a forgettable garden show. There’s also a stage for performances, but those performances are more like visual and aural torture for me.

He’s so hungry he could eat a microphone.

They actually introduced this guy as Kuching’s Dong Li Huo Che aka Kuching Train Station. Hopeless!
The trade show is very typical. Blenders, cleaning agents, blenders, knives, blenders, CD repairer kits, blenders, blenders, more blenders… However, I did notice a few interesting items on display, such as the most kiasu hi-fi system in the whole world…

Don’t play play, Mercedes hi-fi system. Pay RM1,500 for this set and boom your neighbour away.

A model recruitment agency…

The competition between modelling agencies just got a whole lot… bigger.

Ah Lian fashion at its best…

Guess? What Guess? We have GUEES!

There’s a lot of stalls whoring credit cards, all offering free annual fee, free gifts, free entries to competitions and so on.

Sometimes you wonder how they actually make money off credit cards.

I signed up with all of them and bagged their free gifts just for fun. Let’s see how many credit cards I’ll have after 3 weeks.

If this guy sold peanuts in Singapore, he’d be a freakin’ BILLIONAIRE right now.

The main attraction of the event is obviously, the food. I wasn’t disappointed. By my estimation there’s probably about 200 food stalls and 1,000 different menu items, all at very reasonable prices.

“Help! My food is on fire!” – Man cooking oyster omelette (‘Orh Chien’)

Let’s take a tour and look at what’s on menu shall we?

This is salad yew-tiaw. Yew-tiaw is some sort of deep-fried bread that’s crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. This version here has sesame seed sprinkled on top and is served with mayonnaise. Its good, though its not the best.
The best one is right here.

Yew Tiaw also got king one.

Declaring themselves ‘king’ in front of 200 other stalls is a pretty bold move. They’d better be able back it up. And lucky for them, they did.
JUST TAKE A LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING.

HOLY MOLLY! Those yew tiaw are almost as big as my dickonosaurus! But mine is still bigger okay.

Kuching sio bee enjoying a sauna.

This is sio-bee in Hokkien or siew-mai in Cantonese. Its warm and savoury. Its not unlike the sio-bee you can find in dim sum restaurants all over the world. Personally I think those are a little too soggy for my liking.
I think Kuching’s sio-bee is still the best, and Kuching’s best sio-bee by de facto is at the Open Air Markets. People here watch them grow from a humble dirty little stall infested with rodents, into a successful franchise they are today selling sio-bee all over Kuching. For them, next stop, THE WORLD.

I thought this signboard is a little bit mean. How could they make it look as if the lamb is there enjoying a nice hot bath? So wrong.

Everybody loves coconuts.

I couldn’t resist photoshopping ‘Wong Lee Hom’ onto the menu.

More local favourites. Belacan Bee Hoon (or ‘Mehoom’ in that picture) is one of my favourite Kuching dish. Its rice vermicelli soaked in a Malaysian prawn-based soup and paste called ‘Belacan’. So smelly, yet so tasty.

Fancy some camel or ostrich burger?

To be honest, I don’t know how the hell they could come up with stuff like these. I don’t think anyone knows what camel or ostrich meat tastes like anyway, so even if they put bullshit in there can call it ostrich burger, people are still gonna eat it.

Before he was turned into food, Willy the Wealthy Chicken owned five nests, three barns and eight hens.

Wealthy chicken. Heh! This proves one thing correct. It doesn’t matter how much money you have – if you’re chicken, you’re dinner, baby.

Spiderman’s latest victims.

These are actually called ‘Emperor Dragon Whisker Sweet’. I swear it sounds a lot more elegant in Chinese (Long Xu Tang). They taste like soft Australian nougats, except there’s granules of peanuts in there. Sweet, sticky and delicious.

Malaysian satays. An eternal favourite worldwide.

Jeff Ooi‘s little birds went to Thailand and never came back.

This is fried ice-cream. I have no idea how they did it, but they managed to deep fry a scoop of ice-cream without making it melt. The result is an ice-cream with a warm outercrust and an icy cold inside. Only RM1.50. Its heavenly.
Too bad you cannot print it out and eat it.

This is a dish with a fun name called Chee Cheong Fun. Chee Cheong in Mandarin means ‘Go clubbing’. So this dish sounds like ‘Go clubbing very fun’. In reality its just some boring prawns wrapped by very thin steamed skins. Nothing fancy about it.

Barbequed sting rays at only RM25 per kilo. You choose the size and portion of the sting ray, they barbeque it, served on a piece of banana leaf over sambal and lime. It’ll turn out like this.

Its spicy and sour at the same time. I had this for dinner.

This is lok-lok. They’re basically fish balls and other stuff skewed on a satay stick. You can have them cooked in hot water or deep fried, then served with your choice of chilli, oyster, or satay sauce. Its yummy.
Please don’t lick your computer screen.

I spent less than RM20 that night and I had such a total feast I need to roll myself back to my own car. There’s so much food to try, its truly gonna take one whole month for me to fully sample each and every one of them.
Note to self: Postpone diet plan till end of August.
Alright I’m done. You may wipe your drool off your computer monitor now. 😉

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