The Death of Alternative Music On Malaysian Airwave

29 August 2008 Midnight was the day alternative music died on Malaysian airwave. 28 August 9pm - 12am was the last Alternation radio show hosted by the DJ, Maya, at Traxx FM. I could not think of anyone from Traxx FM qualifies to replace her. I am pretty sure that the show is considered dead since Maya is no longer with Traxx FM. I was almost heart broken when Maya sent me an SMS telling me about the bad news days before the last show was taken place. Of course, I listened to the last Maya's radio show for the last final 3 hours. The last 30 minutes was a mixed feeling of sadness, anger, frustration and happiness - happy because Maya would be leaving the "evil" radio station.

I consider all Malaysian radio stations "evil" because they often make my favourite genre of music a scapegoat all the time - they get rid of the DJ and the show to prove their power. Before the 90s, there was completely no radio show in Malaysia that was catering for alternative music. I don't consider playing one or two Green Day or Oasis songs in one radio show being good enough because it obviously won't satisfy the thirst of any alternative music fan.

Here are a list of scapegoats:

Scapegoat Number 1:
When Time Highway Radio was established, we had Fly Guy playing some interesting alternative music (something out of the norm those days) in his program mixing with other commercial stuff. As I mentioned previously, this was not good enough. At the same radio station, there was a DJ named Kamil Othman hosting a once a week evening show catering for rock music in general. Every now and then you would hear alternative music. I even sent him an email telling him about my taste of music and he wanted me to be in his show but I "chickened" out by giving various excuses - I still feel bad about it. One fine day, I found his radio show disappeared from the airwave.

Scapegoat Number 2:
Several years down the road, ever since Kamil's radio show was terminated, I stopped listening to Malaysian radio stations. No, I didn't hate radio. I was one of the members of Radio Society back in university days trying to set up a radio station, how could I hate radio? I just hated Malaysian radio stations. I happened to come across on the media that a rather new radio station, Red FM, had an alternative radio show name Clash (It could be named after the legendary band The Clash). The show was hosted by Zack Yusof and Daryl Goh. At one point, I found the show being moved from one time slot to another. This gave me an idea that the show was in trouble. Eventually, I was right!! Red FM got rid of the show!!

Scapegoat Number 3:
I have already mentioned above. This is of course Traxx FM's Alternation radio show hosted by Maya.

I wonder why alternative music has been made a scapegoat all the time in Malaysia. The authority gives the bands headache and radio stations hate them in a funny way. Being the most creative and opened minded music genre, does it instigate fear to the management of radio stations and the authority? Why the British, the American and other foreign countries could even have radio stations fully playing alternative music but Malaysian cannot even keep a radio show for alternative music for more than 5 years?? The Malaysian radio stations often accuse that alternative music radio show generates no money but have they tried their best to get any sponsor or advertiser? I doubt so!!

I don't see any hope for serious music fans to keep listening to Malaysian radio stations. Not just alternative music! Jazz, classical, blues, classic rock, etc suffer the same fate. The never growing up Malaysian radio stations are only suitable for teenagers listening to Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears and all the crappy nonsense!!!

Micro Fish In Macro Mode

Here's my experimental photography shot using Olympus E-520 with Zuiko 35mm macro lens. I am very satisfied taking photo in macro mode for the first time.

Below are a group of tiny beautiful Ember Tetras which are very hard to capture with a compact camera in macro mode - I have never successfully taken any good quality photo of Ember Tetra in the past.

There's no regret for heading for DSLR!!!

Tanks - After Minor Rescape

Cut off some of the Marsilea with green spot algae and moving the position of Marsilea over the weekend. Also throwing away some Spiky Moss with hair algae. If you see carefully, you will notice some sections of the moss are brown. Those areas I overdosed with Seachem Excel unintentionally - I was trying to get rid of hair algae but unfortunately I killed the moss as well. There are three different moss in the tank - Taiwan Moss (Right), Spiky Moss (Middle) and Christmas Moss (Left).


The following is another tank that I have my bitter war with hair algae. It gives me the impression that moss is a hair algea magnet. Hair algae seems to love living side by side to moss. I consider moss as a very high maintenance plant. Honestly, I almost threw all the moss away because of my frustration with hair algae. I threw over 70% of the moss which covered almost the entire tank during the weekend.

Trouble With Tenaga Nasional Berhad

I received a notice for not paying the electricity bill on time from our "favourite company" TNB. That's a mistake on my part. However, I managed to settle the bill before receiving the notice.

In the notice, there was a number to call - 03-79557733. In order to inform them that my bill had been settled, I called them. Totally, I called them 4 times. Each time, there were at least 5-6 ringing tones with nobody picking up the call.

Finally, I decided to let it continue ringing. Eureka!! The call was routed to the call centre after countless number of rings. The customer service that picked up the call amazed me. Here's my conversation with the "woman", it may not be 100% accurate but the the incident is accurate:

Customer Service: "Hello"
Me: "Hello, saya terima notis pemotongan....." (Translation: Hello, I received a termination notice.....) [I was interrupted half way when the call was being transferred]

My goodness! How rude was the customer service representative! She didn't even ask me to hold on. She just cut me off in the middle of conversation. If I knew her name, I would have given her a headache by now.

Thank goodness. The following guy who picked up the call was very pleasant.

Coming up is "Trouble with Telekom Malaysia"...stay tune!!

I Walk The Line