I have no idea why, but I suddenly thought I'd do a Google on my name. Just the first name, as it isn't too common. I figured it might be interesting to see what my internet presence is like. I came up with two pages, the contents of which are as follows. I've divided them into three categories:
1. Yes, they're talking about me:
- One link to this blog
- Two references to me on blogs by people I know (
Indah and
Grace)
- Two Q&A sessions with members of Teenage Fanclub in which I participated
- A mention on Weezer's website regarding an Indonesian Weezer tribute gig held almost two years ago at Nirvana Cafe
- A mention on Weezer's homepage at
their record label's website, because I made note of Muse's Matt Bellamy complimenting
The Green Album in
NME
- A mention on
www.football365.com as a spotter for their Mediawatch page (but for the life of me I can't remember what I spotted)
- Two mentions with regards to Malesbanget.com
- An article regarding MTV's impact on Asia, featuring yours truly's two cents on the matter (the
link I've found suggests the original article's been licensed out and recently republished, considering I did this about two years ago)
2. Might be talking about me:
- A link to
BlogPulse.com, an "automated trend discovery system for blogs and a portal into the blogosphere," specifically the Key People ("prominently featured people across today's weblog entries") section for April 12th 2004. It's unlikely I'm the key person in question, and the website's archives don't go back that far so I can find out who they're referring to. But after a quick glance through my blog archives,
my entry on the corresponding date talks about
The Pink Panther's 40th anniversary, so it's likely that that's what everyone else was talking about on the same date as well.
3. Definitely not me:
- A link to
some website owned by these three Malaysian guys in their mid-thirties with no apparent connection apart from their birthdays being in late February. Not really much info as to the point of this website's existence; aside from the birthday info, it has their home addresses and weight (they all weigh 75 kilos! Spooky!); their hobbies (Sports! Fishing! Gardening! Candle collecting!) and their children (no mention of their wives' names). It's on the latter part where the Hasief comes in, specifically M. Hafizuddin Hasief. I assume that they call the kid Hafiz for short, though I wonder if they thought the whole thing through. See, based on personal experience, people keep getting my name mixed up with Hafiz...
- Two pictures of some baby whom I'm sure isn't me, at Breastfeeding.com. Unfortunately, no actual breasts are visible.
Speaking of breasts, this looks like as good a segue as any to mention
Coupling (I was going to say "mention
Coupling again", but I just noticed that I haven't mentioned it here before. Read
here to get up to speed). It's a British comedy that they tried remaking in the U.S. in the hope that it would be able to replace
Friends, but that version tanked horribly, even though it involved the original series' creator and the risque-ness factor was toned down to suit the U.S. audience. Anyway, thankfully they're showing the U.K. incarnation on Star World twice on Saturday nights (9 and 1:30, local time), so if you need a reason to stay home, then this is definitely it. It's lucky they show it twice, which means no scheduling works once the football season kicks in next week.
Back to the topic of breasts, last night's episode dealt with just that. Here's
the synopsis:
Jeff and co. can’t take their eyes of a beautiful stranger in their local bar. And the girl can't take her eyes off Jeff. Jeff goes over to talk to her, only to discover that she doesn’t speak a word of English, which to Jeff of course is quite a relief. Her interpreter, Alice, tells Jeff she’s Israeli, then whisks her away.
The next day the girl is back and Jeff attempts to chat her up. With neither speaking a word of the other’s language, it is an utter disaster. The girl is led to believe that Jeff fancies Alice, not her. Jeff is led to believe that 'Shadayim' is the girl’s name, when in fact it’s Hebrew for 'breast'. The heartbroken girl reluctantly arranges for Alice to meet Jeff at the bar the next day. When Jeff says to Alice, 'I’m sorry, I was expecting Shadayim,' the flat-chested Alice punches him in the face.
I'm not sure the description alone is enough to make you laugh (it was for me), but the magic is in the execution. Before the episode aired, I knew what it was about. When it got to the chat scene between Jeff and the girl, they didn't have any subtitles to let us know what the girl was saying. After four previous episodes of comic gold, I had an initial feeling that this oversight would render this episode a major disappointment.
But then again, if there's anything the previous episodes taught me, it's to expect the unexpected. And lo and behold; after the end of that scene, they suddenly "rewinded" it and played it again while telling the audience to "imagine you're Israeli". So they replicated the exact same scene, but this time the girl's speaking English, while Jeff is speaking some incomprehensible gobbledy gook (which the actor, Richard Coyle, had to come up with and memorise during rehearsals). Definitely one of the most ingenious pieces of TV comedy I've ever seen. I'm going to buy the DVDs if I ever find them.