KEPENTAS Ulang Tahun Ke-14

KEPENTAS are celebrating their Ulang Tahun Ke-14 today! 

 

It is held at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Jalan Dewan Bahasa, Kuala Lumpur. 

 

KEPENTAS have been making great strides and they are presently present in five countries, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and of course, Malaysia. 

 

I attended the morning session only – the preliminary rounds of the speech contest consisting of four groups with nine participants per group. I was the Timekeeper for Group 4 contestants and three judges are to pick three qualifiers to progress to the finals of the "Pertandingan Pidato Piala Nusantara 2023" later in the day. 

 

My group's nine contestants are from outside of Malaysia: Brunei; Banda Aceh, Jakarta, Medan, Palembang, Surabaya, and Tanjung Pinang in Indonesia; Singapore; and Patani in Thailand. 

 

All speeches are between eight to twelve minutes long. 

 

 

An Entry Fee May Not Be Enough to Save Venice

Italy’s Floating City welcomes an estimated 30 million visitors per year, far above the 50,000 residents that actually call it home. 

 

And more than two thirds of visitors come just for the day – they’re mostly composed of large tour groups, cruise ship passengers and people coming in from the surrounding Veneto region. 

 

This month, Venice's municipal authorities announced plans to fight overtourism with a controversial move: charging day trippers a €5 entrance fee. The city's mayor has described the charge – which will be implemented on 30 particularly busy days in the spring and summer – as an attempt to “protect the city from mass tourism". Thus, this will make Venice the first city in the world to charge visitors to enter its premises. 

 

The tourism explosion has increased the number of boats in the city's canals, causing waves that are eroding the foundations of Venice's centuries old buildings. Two years ago, the Italian government banned cruise ships from mooring inside Venice's city center partly due to the damage these large ships cause to buildings and the seabed. Last August, UNESCO threatened to put Venice on their list of World Heritage Sites that are at risk due to "insufficient efforts" to preserve the city. It was clear that something had to be done. 

 

And so, starting in spring 2024, Venice's municipal government will test the new fee during a trial period. All travelers to Venice will have to register their visit in advance and obtain a QR code online. To enforce the policy, the municipal police and authorised inspectors will carry out random checks. Anyone without the proper QR code will face a fine of up to €300. According to Venice city councilor for tourism, Simone Venturini, this trial will allow policymakers to experiment with the tax, with the ultimate goal of making it permanent. 

 

According to a list of rules published by the local government, exempted categories include visitors who stay overnight, residents of Venice and the wider Veneto region, family members of local residents, people coming in for work or volunteering reasons, students enrolled in Venice's universities, athletes visiting Venice for sports events and minors under the age of 14. 

 

But some have expressed doubts about whether the €5 fee – the price of a coffee or an ice cream – will be enough to dissuade tourists from travelling to this iconic ancient city. One city politician commented that the charge means Venice has become “a theme park, a Disneyland”, where “you get in by paying an entrance fee”. 

 

Besides, I don't believe this strategy aiming at persuading tourists to come at less crowded times will necessarily reduce numbers at peak periods. I daresay it may very well end up increasing overall demand.

 

China Eastern Airlines announced on Thursday they will buy another 100 C919 airplanes in a deal worth $10 billion at list prices, in what would be the largest ever order for the jet made by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC). 

 

The state-owned carrier said the planes will be delivered in batches from 2024 to 2031. The deal came five months after the Chinese passenger plane, developed by state-owned COMAC to rival Airbus SE's A320neo and Boeing Co's 737 MAX single-aisle jet families, took its first flight in May with China Eastern. 

 

The Shanghai-headquartered, state-owned carrier are the first users of the C919 and have bought five of the jets, of which three have been delivered. The other two are expected to be delivered later this year.

IOC-OCA Shamelessly Backtrack on Asian Games Invite

Russia's Olympic chief (right) criticised Asian Games organizers for rowing back on a decision to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete at the multi-sport event in Hangzhou, China. [My blog post "A Croatian Wish for Germany" published on January 27, 2023 had highlighted this issue]. 

 

The Olympic Council of Asia had, in fact, voted in July to allow up to 500 Russian and Belarusian athletes at the Games but the International Olympic Committee confirmed in early-September that the two countries would not participate due to "technical" reasons.

 

Russian Olympic Committee President Stanislav Pozdnyakov said they had been waiting for specifics about their athletes' participation but was "stonewalled" by organizers. 

 

"From the point of view of diplomacy, I think that such things are simply unacceptable; they did not even inform us that they reconsidered their decision to invite us", he said in comments published by Russia's TASS news agency.

 

Acting OCA president Randhir Singh reasserted this week at the Hangzhou Games that Russian and Belarusian athletes would have been welcome but the "logistics" could not be worked out. 

 

Pozdnyakov questioned that logistics were the problem. "The Games are being held in China, relations between our countries would have removed all security issues and the geographical closeness excludes any logistics issues", he said.

 

It's really disgraceful on the part of IOC and OCA for the shameless deception – it's a blardy decision that will live in infamy! 

😂😂😂

The NFT Crisis

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) emerged as the poster children of a digital renaissance.

 

Remember back in March 2021, when the work by digital artist Beeple, entitled “Everydays: the first 5000 days”, was sold for a staggering $69.3 million at Christie’s. That was the moment when the whole world – or so it seemed – fell in love with these digital objects, whose value lies in just a few lines of code. 

 

With the hype reaching its peak during the 2021 bull run, the NFT market saw nearly $2.8 billion monthly trading volume in August 2021. But by July 2023, the tune has changed drastically. Indeed, weekly traded values plummeted to around $80 million, marking a significant contraction. 

 

Amid this backdrop, a startling reality came to light: Most NFTs are trading at a market cap of zero Ethereum (ETH), rendering them “worthless”.

 

The data from crypto and Web 3.0 review platform DappGambl, which was derived from an extensive analysis of 73,257 NFT collections, unveils a sobering narrative contrasting sharply with the stories of million-dollar deals and overnight success. Indeed, of the analyzed NFT collections, a meager 21% were fully claimed or had over 100% ownership, leaving 79% unsold. 

 

This imbalance between the flurry of new NFTs and the actual demand represents a pivotal issue of oversupply, creating a buyer’s market. In such an environment, discerning investors are increasingly scrutinizing the uniqueness, potential value, and narrative behind NFT projects before taking the plunge.

 

Drilling down into the cream of the NFT crop, a closer examination of the top 8,850 NFT collections, as listed on CoinMarketCap, unearthed a continuation of this disquieting trend. Even among these successful projects, 18% have a floor price of zero, while only 1% command a price above $6,000. This reality is far from the ballyhooed million-dollar deals that once dominated headlines and consequently spotlighting the nature of value in a market driven by speculation and fleeting trends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liverpool trailed to Leicester City in just under three minutes – a rapid counter-attack gave the Foxes a flying start – before fighting back to win 3-1 in the EFL Cup third round on Wednesday. 

 

The Reds’ equaliser came when Ryan Gravenberch set up Cody Gakpo to find the far corner in the forty-eighth minute. Then, a winner through a stunning strike from second-half substitute Dominik Szoboszlai as he took aim from outside the box and smashed the ball into the top corner twenty-two minutes later. 

 

And Diogo Jota's flicked Jarell Quansah’s low cross in off the inside of the post in the eighty-ninth minute to put the result beyond doubt as the 2022 winners reached the fourth round, where they will meet AFC Bournemouth in the week commencing October 30.

WSC's Twenty-first Meeting

Our twenty-first meeting is an outlier event. 

 

It was unscheduled – we hosted a World Speakers’ Coalition Kuala Lumpur meeting as our friend, Sivaprakasam Raman and his family who are from Chennai, India made a brief stopover in KL enroute to Singapore. 

 

And it was the first time, we had youngsters – 5 of them – gracing the event. 

 

Altogether, fourteen came to this meeting which consisted of 6 members and 8 guests. As is our custom, everybody there made speeches based on our meeting theme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friendship isn’t only about grand gestures – it's about a million little things. Meaning, it’s not the big things that make a friendship “real”. It’s the million little things happening within the friendship. The little things, like the idiosyncrasies which make up your friend’s persona. It’s the meat and potatoes of his, or her, personality, which either solidifies the friendship, or provides the proof the friendship isn’t really a friendship. Knowing what you get when you’re a part of a friendship is what makes a friendship so special. 

 

Friendships come, and some friendships don’t last. It doesn’t mean those million little things weren’t important, or special, it just means it wasn’t meant to be a lifelong relationship. However, it doesn’t change the fact that friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things. 

 

I came across this piece about friendship – and I just gotta share with you. 

 

Researchers at the University of Virginia wanted to find out whether friendship influences how we approach the challenges of daily life. In an unusual experiment, researchers stood at the base of a steep hill (a 26 degree incline) on the university campus and asked 34 students as they walked by to help them in an experiment. Some students were by themselves; others were walking in pairs. 

 

Each student was given a backpack filled with weights equal to about 20 percent of their body weight. While the students may have had the impression they were going to have to climb the hill, the researchers simply asked them to estimate how steep the climb would be. 

 

Notably, students standing alone perceived the hill slant as steeper and thought it would be harder to climb while carrying the weighted pack. But students who were standing next to a friend thought the hill looked easier to climb and gave lower estimates of its steepness. Interestingly, the longer the two friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared. 

 

Other studies support the notion that social support helps us cope with stress. When female college students were asked to complete challenging math tasks, their heart rates went up. But when they were asked to complete the math problems with a friend in the room, their heart rates were lower. Scientists also know that when rhesus monkeys are moved to a new environment, the level of stress hormones in their blood increases. But when a monkey is moved along with her preferred companion (monkeys form friendships too), the stress hormones measured in her blood were much lower. (Similar results have been seen with rats and guinea pigs).

 

All this research suggests that friends can change our view of a challenging situation, and that the mere presence of a friend in the same room can lower our stress. Having friends essentially allows us to outsource some of the emotional burdens of daily life. 

 

For those of you who don't know us – we’re about friendships and impromptu speeches and deep conversations. 

 

Photos of Tuesday's event at our favorite F&B venue, Decanter in Section 17, Petaling Jaya:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And one of our young guests, Vishana Sivaprakasam (above photo, far left) honored us by crafting a short poem. On the fly. Of course, it is on "Friendship". And it enjoyed 4 readings! 

 

The poet recited first, followed by Suriakumar, then Victor Ong and finally, Alan Chew. For sure, she has 3 fans now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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