Eeqbalz Playgroundz Inc.

Hye guys…

I’ve just came back from the KL International Book Fair 2006 at PWTC. It was certainly a hot Saturday afternoon indeed. And for this year, the organisers chose to hold it at Hall 1 & 2 instead of the usual Hall 3. Hence, ardent fans of the fair wouldst see a somewhat illussion of the fair being smaller since it is done on one floor and not 3 floors as before.

By the way, Hall 3 is hosting this Direct Selling Fair just beside the entrace to Hall 2 & 1 so be on your look out if not you just might end up in the wrong fair (nevertheless, the DS Fair’s entrance is free so unless you dont mind being ‘tipah tertipu’, you can also browse around there).

Typically, Hall 2 is your garden variety of books; something you would expect from the general Malaysian public - novels, magazines, and children books. Hall 1 is more specialized with Dawama, ILBS and Pearson Malaysia to name a few fabled publishers , which had set up their booths there.

2 things I would like to comment. First, this year’s fair is a wee bit on the kindie side with pre-school books (and furniture - read playthings!) and school referrence books with the likes of SASBADI and such. Second, the crowd as expected is more heavy in Hall 2 since Karangkraf and the gang is heavily rooted there whilst Hall 1 is more sparsely thronged by gawking peeps.

This is good since serious book worms can actually browse around instead of struggling just to get a breath of air from the mainstream novel-reading crowd. No offence here, but it should be done that way all these years before. You should segmentized and specialized the exhibition to cater for different people.

Of course, a dash of integration is good to get a good mix of exposure of serious geeky and techie reading materials to novels freaks. At least people from the other side of the reading world actually know what the other reading hemisphere is reading. But a disorganized one like the several years back fairs is totally chaotic and to some extent irratating.

Anyway, like I said, the kiddie reading materials’ presence at the fair is felt and I dont know… it could be good or otherwise. Anyway, you can register for a membership with the National Library and Perpustakaan Kuala Lumpur there. Quite convinient…

Anyway, for me, today was more of a recce… to see what the fair has to offer. All in all, I would give the fair, at least to me, a 80% thumbs up. On the minus side is there seem to be more kiddie materials on show… not for me. On the plus side however, the fair has a variety of books on show with segmentized exhibitions.

‘Nuff said…

p/s - I need to get a digital camera… then my postings would be more exciting wouldn’t it? And another thing, don’t go to klcc tomorrow, there will be a demonstration against the government’s decision to raise fuel prices. Peaceful or otherwise, it is ILLEGAL… so stay well away to avoid trouble (this is a LEGAL advice, no politics here OK?).

MIRC - revisited

I still can remember the MIRC craze (aka chatting) that really started to shape the 80s generation. It was already there before the craze hit the country especially amongst techies, guru and geeks. Hence, MIRC really was within an elitist circle.

However, as cyber cafe (cc) began to pop up here and there thanks to the falling cost of getting online, (was quite cheap in 1996-97) and not to mention the burst of online / multi-player gaming such as Quake, Doom II and Microsoft’s Age of Empires, curiousity got the better of us and most of us jumped into the ‘chatting’ band wagon.

Yup, it was back then the easiest solution to meet new friends online and also for a lucky (!) few, new love. During those days, there were Yahoo! Messengers and ICQ but while the former is uncommon in Malaysia, the latter is very much elitist.

Compared to YM and ICQ, MIRC offers a sort of plug n play wherein you just fire up MIRC, select one of the 3 reigning kings of Malaysian MIRC servers; Dalnet, Undernet and Webnet (I think), then select the 2 most favourite channels; #mamak and #kampung, and taraa… you’re online! No registration fuss, no password or username hassles (of course you could register your nick in MIRC for yours to keep, but the culture of keeping something for yourself isnt there among newbies).

It was a craze I picked up a little a late but nonetheless it was still quite the trend and norm of those days. Late as in all my friends in my age group had grown out of it. But newbies keep on coming in and you get to meet people very fast and easy. It’s kinda like speed dating of sorts. You try different nicknames or pick-up lines just to get the attention of the person on the other side.

Then the some of the plain vanilla crowd emerged and graduated to advanced mode. They went into scripts (protection, war, bots etc), add-ons and other spiced up skins or programmes that ran on the MIRC client. From RM4.00 per hour, it went down to RM3.50, then to RM3.00 and it settled at RM2.00 per hour until now. It was a price war during those days among the cc owners.

I was lucky to find a cc at Kerinchi (near the LRT Station). With a one time membership registeration costing RM10.00, you get to surf/chat etc there for RM1.50 per hour. The lowest rate even until now. It was during the 3rd Semester of my 1st year, and my friends and I cramped our classes to 3 days only. The rest of the week, we did some community service near Kerinchi, handling youths with issues to say the least.

Anyway, we slept there at the centre, eat there etc. Our work is usually done by 10.30 p.m. and for most of us, it was beddy time. For me, it was the breaking of the dawn for my internet alias ‘tuanwujian’ (gee… my tuanwujian@yahoo.com is almost 9 years old - I registered it with the help of Hasbee in 1997).

I walked there (almost 2 km) and my online sessions usually starts from 11.00 p.m. until the earliest 3.00 a.m. (on weekends it was until 6.00 a.m.). You know, there will always be people anywhere and at anytime. The world is not that lonely after all. Those days were superb. I knew the craze wont last long at least for me. So I went on full steam and got hooked. But it was worth it since I got to know with several persons from various parts of Malaysia whom until now I still call them friends.

Interestingly, one of the 3 servers, Undernet that is, banned Malaysian IP addresses due to spams coming from our country. TMNet tried to reason with them and I cant remember after what happened. Anyway, Malaysians started to flock to Dalnet and Webnet (I cant find this one anymore).

A few days back, I tried to give the old chatting craze a go. Interestingly, not many newbies go for it anymore. I see the old scene of elitist users crowding up most of the channels especially mamak and kampung. You see, MIRC is very easy and simple a communication tool. After a while, people tend to look for something more sophisticated for their comm needs.

During those times, whenever people want to know how you look, usually you send files to them thru the DCC feature I think. Then came face-pic.com. As YM, Msn and ICQ matured, more features were added, it became almost all in one that you really dont need MIRC anymore. It became MIRC = elities, instant messenging = mainstream. And now you even have friendster.com, myspace, and what nots.

Sigh, I couldn’t last 2 hours on MIRC. Heck, I didnt get to chat with people beyond hi and asl anymore. Well, I guess, MIRC is a wrap for me. But thanksh a bunch MIRC for the memories. If not for that chatting craze, I guess would hate computers like I hate water. Nuff said…

It has been 84 days since I left u,
Still I couldnt forget u
Never far away my mind from u
In my heart there is only u

The times we shared together
It will never get better
I feel empty nothing else really matter
Be it present and future; now and later.

Tis is nevertheless fated
Sealed firmly, clear and dated
To leave my current place, I am tempted
Lack the courage is what pitifully lamented

Howdy Folks,
The annual convention for bookworms, geeks, socially-challenged peeps (like me) and the rest of the world who gather at PWTC to see and gawk at the stack full of books, books and books everywhere…
It will be on 24 March until April 2006. So dont missed it. The fair has almost anything anyone could want reading material-wise.
Check-out its website great stuff there!
You have to excuse the somewhat funny looking text. The pc where I’m using seems to ‘meragam’ but then again friendster’s bloggie which is typepad based isnt perfect to start off with.
Anyway, dont forget the fair. I hope to dive into bargains in the old books bin. Of course for ye all novel-loving-puppy-loved-struck individuals / couples, there will be endless selection of such types of novels.
Say hi to me if you see me there! Chow!!!