kee thuan chye captured their attention

wanted to attend the pictorial exhibition yesterday but by the time i reached town, i had a headache (yesterday afternoon was damn hot!) so i didn’t. instead spent the one hour at the church office until 2.15pm when i went for kee thuan chye’s book reading (part of the little penang street market activities) at the foyer of ‘the garage’ in penang road/farquhar street.
(note: ‘the garage’ of course is not a really a garage. well it was originally a garage but converted into a building with shops and restaurants. read about it here)

there were about 50 people present. i see several familiar faces, like lucille dass, our church member (who is an english language trainer), who was the one who organised this book reading. activist anwar fazal, bloggers mustafa annuar, brighteyes were there.  jeff ooi dropped in too about 1/2 an hour after starting time.

this book ‘march 8: the day malaysia woke up’ by kee thuan chye were on sale at the garage with 10% discount. i notice many buying the book and approaching kee for personal autograph.

lucille started off by introducing kee thuan chye. when kee started, he wanted to acknowledge the  presence of two contributors to his book, he introduced me as ‘famous blogger lucia lai’. ayoh!  embarrassing lah as i don’t see myself as famous at all, and most people don’t too, i’m sure. ‘famous’  belongs to bloggers like susan loone, anil netto, haris ibrahim, zorro, rocky, kenny sia… oh and those who appears in malaysiakini ‘top blogs’ (which means to say mustafa annuar is one too); certainly not me at all.

anyway, the other contributor present was zaharom nain who wrote ‘long way from media reform’. 

kee started with the reading of ‘do we really need the NEP?’ by yasmin azman.

he later read excerpts of the interview with RPK. ahh. . . as i mentioned before, the best part of the book was the interview with RPK, i’m glad he choose this to read. sure enough, the audience were quite enthralled (and sometimes amused) with what he read. he read one part about RPK in ISA few years back, and the other part about what RPK said that non malays giving power to UMNO, of which i had posted the excerpt here. go and read it if you missed it. wise say from RPK of which i’m sure you would have fully agree with RPK.

as kee need to rest after lots of reading, when he rest, zaharom nain was requested to do a reading of his own contribution (long way from media reform).

later, kee also read from his own writings in the book, beginning with the part how he never like and never have respect for dr m!

to wrap up the book reading session, kee fielded questions from the audience. read mustafa’s blog where he had blog on this, with mention of the questions and discussion.