Yvonne Foong

What a day in the cinema! I watched War of The Worlds and Batman Begins, all for RM5 at GSC Summit USJ. One was a free ticket by GSC for my birthday and the other was discounted with a student ID.

War of the Worlds is more exciting, or rather… frightening? The movie is really good. Keeps me gasping in freight and I thought NF was scary enough. I am especially touched by Ray(Tom Cruise)’s love for his daughter. But Ray’s relationship with his teenage son, Robbie, is rather hilarious at times. Especially when Robbie asks silly questions like if the strange objects (Martians) come from Europe. I would also say that Dakota Fanning who plays Rachel, has very good acting skills.

The 2nd show was not really my cup of tea. But I am quite enthralled by the multiple flashbacks that surprisingly did not confuse me for long. And some people are right, the camera is indeed too shaky during the fighting scenes. And they should’ve chosen a more wicked looking guy to play the psychiatrist role.

Good movies overall. And lucky for me that War of the Worlds was the first movie I watched or I would be too shaken to fall asleep tonight. Yes, that’s right. War of the Worlds hit me that in some unusual cases, optimism is simply not enough to survive. And in such cases, our lives become zero in value. But Love maybe? For the love of his daughter, Ray faught all his might in order to bring Rachel to her mother in Boston.

Between watching the two movies, I went downstairs to MPH and browsed the book, War of the Worlds and I decided that I will fall asleep reading it. As for tomorrow, I’ll be in genting watching Lee Hom in awe. *jawdrop* Till then…

After much anticipation, I finally manage to literally shift my weblog to the root directory. The entire wordpress remains in its own directory while index.php and .htaccess are transfered to the root directory. That one little move took me a good few hours because the .htaccess was NOT PRESENT in the first place. I am still clueless as to how my blog can get by without one. Barely anything works without it so I created one with notepad and uploaded it into the root directory.

To make index.php replace index.html when prompted, simply put
DirectoryIndex index.php into .htaccess and remember, its case sensitive.

Besides that I also installed some plugins and they are..

BOTD - BOTD tracks each participating site’s traffic (unique page views) and highlights the most popular blogs and blog posts in user-defined categories. It is both an organized directory of current articles and a popularity contest.

SITEMAP - This generator will create a google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. The priority of a post depends on its comments. More comments, higher priority!

RECENT COMMENTS- As what it is called. This plugin display comments that have been made recently. This little php script is modified by Liew CF. Original Source Unknown. The difference is, results displays post titles instead of post contents.

TRANSLATOR - A wordpress plugin that translate pages into 9 different languages with just one click!

Apart from all these, I’ve also added a NeoWorx webstat counter to the sidebar. Its not neccessary but since everyone has it, so why not?

I’ve also registered myself as an Amazon Associate and placed up ads promoting some products. I can’t think of anything much to put up now except for John Ling’s Fourteen Bullets and Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie.

I have also become an engrossed reader of ProBlogger. The author’s flair in writing is simple and .. well it keeps me reading more.

Lastly, I would like to thank Liew, Ed and everyone else in Wordpress IRC for the kind assisance.

I recently wrote an article for XFRESH and its posted up here. It’ll be featured on the front page until the end of this week. Thanks to Albert and William Lau for the co-operation. Hopefully, more people will be aware of NF through that one little article.

I try not to blog too often but I can’t help it this time. AN AGENT IN EUROPE REQUESTED FOR MY MANUSCRIPT! This is so exciting. Eventhough its just a request for review, but hey, my querry made it! Let us hope that this agent would be FURTHER pleased by my work.

In another note, THINK magazine will be interviewing me next Monday. Don’t think I will need much preparation because all the proposal and querrying around have trained me well on the subject.

I am now assisting Madelene with Eden’s newsletter as a writer. This is a good chance for me to gain more experience in the literary world. I’ve written a few poems for Eden but I won’t put it up here until it is published in print. I thought my poems are very ordinary and I didn’t expect it to touch people to the extend of making them cry. Suddenly, I feel that I am no longer useless and I can indeed make a change. I may not have the physical strength but I’ll do what I can. Eventhough I would like to consider this as my first freelance job, but I do not charge Eden because Eden is an NGO and asking money from them is foolish and unethical. I am very touched by Eden’s work and this is the least that I can do for them.

As for my book project update, the editor of Think magazine requested for an interview today. It will most likely be sometime next week. Now I really wish that I can have my hearing aid for the publicity and promotions.

So much work up in my sleeve,
This is the life I want to live,
To exercise and avoid becoming stiff,
And something to temper my mind with.

Blogathon is not something new,
Spare some cash if you will,
To ease the hurt and serve the ill,
Donate to charity and help pay bills,

No need for paypal and credit card to donate,
Sponsors should send money to NGO’s gate.
Your decision to donate changes fate,
Kindness and charity is never too late.

I have created two banners to support myself.

 

John has done me another favour by recommending me to Izuan Shah of Youth 2. John must have done some PR as well because Izuan says that he has heard A LOT about me. Haha! I am glad that Izuan is keen in my project. He did not waste time before he starts researching about my topic even when he is still at the Penang TheStar office. He should be visiting for an interview one of these days. And that fact kept my eyes wide open last night, serious!! The sleepless night is also caused by excitement about the fact that I WILL get my book published. I hope the sleepless night doesn’t drag on or you’ll catch a Panda Yvonne in newspaper.

I have also submitted an article about my project to Albert from XFresh and the kind soul helped pass it on to those in-charge.

Cordy has ordered a set of 10 NF wristbands from The Children’s Tumor Foundation and I expect it to arrive sometime next week, hopefully BEFORE the interview. I am looking forward to sell it(not for profit) during my book launch and at any other events that is appropriate. The NF wristband is to support NF research, and in my case, to spread awareness about this genetic disorder. Ofcourse, 10 is not enough so I might order for more if all goes well. But I am also looking into ways of manufacturing it ourselves because shipping the wristbands from US is not cost effective. If you have any clues about silicone wristband manufacturers in Asia, please let me know. Thank you.

Good News Again!! Oon Yeoh and his business partner, Hou, decides to help me get my book published. YAY!! Now I have a publisher!! This is really a good news, considering that it takes most authors years before they find a willing publisher to accept their work. Thanks to John Ling who so kindly assisted by opening doors for me!

But since my book is about a very niche topic, we would like to get sponsors for this project. We would most likely be producing the book with Print-On-Demand technology. That way, we don’t have to print thousands of copy at once, but maybe a few hundred to test the market, so the risk is reduced.

I am now writing to the media. Hopefully someone would come forward to sponsor this project after reading my article.

On the other hand, Johnny is back from his business trip and he will be sending me the agent agreement very soon. yay! My book will be printed in chinese! That’s when he finds a publisher for that.. and I know he will..