A Blog Revamp
I’ve decided to do a little revamp for the blog. It’s not entirely done yet though. I might put a tagbox and a calendar here.. you know, typical blog nonsense thingies. Started out with my new blog banner. Culturally Preconditioned (thanks to Kelly for the original idea.. I miss getting our regular discounts at Midvalley’s Starbucks). I used several different fonts for that. I wanted to use jawi for Malay, so I settled for those Arabic fonts. Also squeezed in a couple of Chinese calligraphy (from my mother’s side) and Sanskrit characters (from my dad’s ancient Javanese history). And a little bit of Thai fonts, cause I just think it looks cool.
Okay, actually I was inspired to use the Sanskrit characters because of the upcoming Puteri Gunung Ledang (Princess of Mount Ophir) epic film. I am SO looking forward to the movie. (You can view the trailer here - filesize 13 Mbytes). The music is so infectious. And I have always been fascinated by the legend.
As mentioned in my King Arthur article, nobody knows for sure whether these characters were true characters or just mythical ones. And that’s what’s so fascinating about it.. it’s open to so many different kinds of interpretations. There are loads of interesting ancient Malay literatures out there. No doubt most of them are fictional but there might be some real historical facts thrown into them too. It’s surprising that not many of our local younger generations have heard these books, including my personal favourite “Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa”.
Anyway, back to the Puteri Gunung Ledang movie. I’m glad we’re doing an article on them for next month’s issue. I think we missed out big time by not doing a write-up on Suhaimi Baba’s Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam. I think we may be able to get an interview with Tiara (who plays the title role for PGL). That would be superb. I have very very high hopes for this movie. Now, if only we could clinch M Nasir for an interview too.
