News
| A few weeks ago I read about a seven-year-old girl from California who trotted off to the public library and came across a book on insects with the header – The Biggest Baddest Books for Boys. She was not impressed. |
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| George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI) Interpretative Centre opened to much fan fare yesterday with the presence of Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and GTWHI General Manager Madam Lim Chooi Ping who both officiated the event. |
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| A couple of years ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting Tan Ean Nee after she launched her book “The Way Home” (together with co-author Joshua Wong), a chronicle of the lives of leprosy patients from the Sungai Buloh Settlement. Her tireless work to document and piece together broken families is truly inspiring. |
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| Hung high in collectors' homes or hidden away behind museum walls, 2D art can have the (often undeserved) reputation for being inaccessible. Street artist Ernest Zacharevic's recent work in George Town, Malaysia is anything but. |
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| Malaysia has its own version of Banksy - street artist Ernest Zacharevic. His latest piece of work, which highlights the problem of crime, has been painted over by the authorities - but not before being widely shared on social media. Across the water from wealthy Singapore is the Malaysian city of Johor Bahru, known as one of the country's crime hot spots. Late last Thursday evening, 27-year-old street artist Ernest Zacharevic was at work on a wall there with his spray can. Zacharevic is from Lithuania but is a permanent resident of Malaysia, and is well-known in the region for his street art. The mural he painted that night depicts a Lego woman carrying an expensive Chanel bag with a knife-wielding mugger Lego man lurking around the corner (the Lego reference can be explained by the fact that Malaysia's branch of Legoland is also in Johor). The image rapidly became a hit on Facebook. "Pictures speak a thousand words of truth," reads one of the comments. Tens of thousands of people have "liked" or shared it. Many have added their stories of muggings and vented frustration at the police. This was exactly the reaction the artist had intended. "My paintings are always a response to whatever social environment I get exposed to," Zacharevic told the BBC. "I noticed many people just feel extremely unsafe. Everyone I talked to - no matter what their situation - would say, 'Take care of yourself and hide your bag.'" Local officials didn't see the funny side and six days on, they sent workers to paint over it. "We cannot simply allow people to come and paint murals on the wall," Abdul Aziz at Johor Bahru City Council told the BBC. He insists crime rates are actually falling in the city, thanks to measures like improved street lighting. The whitewashing of the walls happened despite an attempt by two local artists to make it more acceptable by adding a policeman about to handcuff the mugger to the mural. Many on social media have been playing around with the image of the mural online too - adding flowers and other twists to it. One person has even posted an image suggesting a reproduction of the mural may have been re-painted back on the same wall - though it's unclear if this is genuine. Link to original. |
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| PENANG food ambassador and fifth-generation Nyonya Pearly Kee has produced her first cookbook called ‘A Nyonya Inheritance’.
The 98-page hardcover book features 35 traditional Penang Nyonya recipes for dishes like assam laksa, nasi ulam, tau eu bak, sambal udang, otak-otak and chun pneah. |
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| MALAYSIAN chef Pearly Kee added some extra spice to the kitchen of the King Valley’s Pizzini Wines at the weekend.
She was invited to make the visit to the North East after meeting winery owners Katrina and Fred Pizzini at her cooking school in George Town and discovering they shared a similar food philosophy. |
 Picture: BEN EYLES |