Month: June 2015

Forgotten History: Battle of Slim River

Continuing my stroll down main street, I met this family on a bike. The mother is dropping the kids in front of P.K.Mohamed Mastan & Sons.

I learned that the Indian-Muslim grocery shop was founded before World War 2. They stressed their grandfather settled here before the Japanese Occupation; perhaps as a reminder of the turbulent history the town went through.

The Battle of Slim River was fought here in 1942. Some 500 soldiers from the British Indian Army lost their lives fighting the invading Japanese Imperial Army. 3,200 men were captured.

The assault force using tanks was commanded by Major Toyosaku Shimada. The British commander was Acting Major-General Archibald Paris.

Indian soldiers were from the Hyderabad, Gurkha and the Punjab Regiment. The experienced Punjabis set fire to a few tanks with molotov cocktails.

Destroyed tanks caused a bumper-to-bumper tank crawl on Federal Route 1. That left the enemy exposed and vulnerable but unfortunately artillery units did not arrive on time.

Staring at the road, I made a silent salute to the brave and unsung men who defended Malaya. Read more on the fierce Battle of Slim River on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Slim_River).

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f4, 1/250 sec.

Stare Down At The Cowboy Town

Mani Store in Slim River sells fresh cow’s milk, among other things. The Indian family business started 78 years ago with a small herd. They now run a ranch with 180 cows, supplying milk to its own shop and to a government agricultural agency.

I spoke to the lady proprietor who is a devout Anglican Christian. Funny to hear from a cattle ranch owner that Slim River is a cowboy town. Not in the lawless sense but in its visual representation of a one-street town with rustic shops, I guess.

I walked down the main street like a gunslinger and the town dwellers stared at me, as expected. They didn’t challenge me to a quick draw though. If there is going to be any shooting, it will be with my camera.

Some of the curious town folk engaged me and we ended up with very interesting conversations. In upcoming pictures, we’ll meet some of the ‘cowboy town’ people on Main Street, Slim River.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f10, 1/320 sec.

Lemon Has A Less Glamorous Cousin Called Lime

Was exploring the Ramadan bazaar at Peel Road Kuala Lumpur when I saw Blue Lime. I asked the girl why is it not Blue Lemon like in Slim River? Sasha explained that lemon sounds more glamorous than lime. “Tu nama glamer saje” and she laughs.

The KL version lean towards aquamarine while the glamorous Slim River version is Avatar (movie) phosphorous blue.

According to her, both are made from lime cordial with blue colouring added. She should know. She’s (coincidentally) from Slim River. I know. I travel home to KL to take a break from Slim River and I meet a Slim River person. Haha.

Photography Notes: Picture is graded for soft-colours or muted look similar to that I’m using for a project for a client from Thailand. You may have noticed that this ‘look’ is currently popular with Thai PSA videos.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f4, 1/80 sec.

Scam Alert: Luxury Car Giveaway On Facebook

At last count, there are over 100 thousand people hoping to win a luxury car from an anonymous and overnight Facebook page.

You got to say it is a very successful promotion targeted at a special market of people who ask or suspect nothing.

Why is there no website or link or T&C? That’s the first red flag.

You can say it cost you nothing. It also cost nothing to set up a Facebook page to do mining.

The scam usually goes like this and was busted by Snopes as early as December 2014:

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
“For the FIRST time in facebook history we are giving away 2 [insert Audi, Mercedes, Range Rover, etc] to two winners that we will select on [insert date] completely at random.

Would you like to join this amazing giveaway for a chance to own a brand new AUDI? Simply follow the steps below to enter the competition :

Step 1) Likes this Page
Step 2) Like this Post
Step 3) Comment which color you want. (BLACK OR WHITE)
Step 4) Share on your wall

The winners will be messaged via inbox message”
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The current “Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG 2015 Giveaway” is a “Like(s) Farming” scam at best. A page with many likes can be recycled to scam even more people later as the accumulated likes gives it some seeming credibility.

At worst, it is mining of personal data from stupid people. The gullible people opt in for permission spamming by liking the page. The perpetrators gained a list of idiots to spam via PM or to con in future.

For the spammers and scammers, it is a free and easy way of building a database of greedy people most likely to fall for a scam. What could be better? Brilliant, indeed.

Further (simple) investigation, revealed it is an old scam on Twitter and Facebook.

It works especially well here because Malaysians are suckers for anything free.

Cat Roar

One of my cats getting up on a lazy Sunday morning. I saw him yawning in front of nice window light and went to get the camera.

To make him yawn again for the camera, I pretended to yawn a few times as he looked at me sheepishly.

Eventually, he yawned again. Don’t know if it is contagious yawning or he was bored by the whole thing.

Is cross-species contagious yawning even possible? Some scientists believe, in the case of humans, it is triggered by empathy.

Didn’t spend too much time wondering. We went back to sleep.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 500, f4, 1/60 sec.