An Unlikely Superstar

I came across this YouTube video on Susan Boyle (left) and I wanna share it with everybody. 

It is a narrative that has struck a meaningful chord with me. And I’m sure it’ll do the same for countless others too. 

Susan Boyle is a straightforward and simple woman. She comes complete with foibles, flaws and failings. Still, her one talent shines brightly through. 

Like a shaft of light penetrating the dull and drab to let slip a "glow of happiness" and reveal a voice that is sheer magic.   

Yup, when she sings, I shush. I’m elated, enchanted and enamored. 

She said she’s nobody special. I don't know about that but for someone ordinary, she has blossomed into somebody out-of-the-ordinary. 

This is the story of an unlikely superstar who hails from wee Blackburn, a town in West Lothian in bonnie Scotland!

Susan Boyle is an extraordinary story of an extraordinary singer.

On Monday, I was back at Rumah Puspanita in Jalan Hose, Kuala Lumpur. Of course, it was the NAWEM Toastmasters Club meeting that drew me there. 

I had two reasons. 

The first was the curry mee: 

Lovingly prepared by NAWEM Toastmaster, Celina Joseph, it is enticingly mouth-watering. And tastefully titillating. 

The second was a speaking opportunity. I delivered my CC #6 Vocal Variety speech – it was titled An Aspirin Called Loudness. 

‘Twas a good meeting!

3 Golden Globes

Lady Gaga poses with her Golden Globe for best original song, motion picture for "Shallow" from "A Star Is Born"

The stars shined and sparkled as they appeared at the 76th annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday in Beverly Hills in California, USA. 

And Lady Gaga's songwriting chops earned her a Golden Globe. 

The singer, in tears, won best original song for co-writing "Shallow" from A Star Is Born, sharing the victory with Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando and Andrew Wyatt.

"As a woman in music it is really hard to be taken seriously as a musician and as a songwriter", she said onstage, adding that her co-writers "lifted me up, they supported me". 

"Shallow", performed by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, earned four Grammy nominations, including song and record of the year. The track also reached platinum status and became a Top 5 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. 

You may check out the song @ http://helpvictor.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-star-is-born.html.

Her win represents her second Golden Globe – in 2016, she won best actress in a miniseries or motion picture made for television for her role in FX's "American Horror Story: Hotel".

Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen with actor Rami Malek

And Bohemian Rhapsody was the surprise winner of two Golden Globes. 

The Queen biopic took home the trophies for best film drama – a surprise victory over A Star Is Born – and best drama actor for its star Rami Malek, who played the late frontman.

There Can Be a Hundred People in the Room

If you ask people, most will admit that of all the memes that Lady Gaga has inspired, her telling of the story of how she came to star in Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born is among the best. 

It’s no surprise that Sandra Oh (far right) and Andy Samberg (right) used their 76th annual Golden Globes monologue to poke fun at Lady Gaga's much-repeated anecdote. 

In many interviews since the film’s premiere in October 2018, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (professionally known as Lady Gaga) has emphatically told the same story: That despite the fact that she had never starred in a film before, Cooper believed in her, and that’s all that they needed to make this wild – and wildly successful – dream come true. 

“There can be a hundred people in the room and 99 don’t believe in you, but just one does, and it can change your life”, Lady Gaga has said, in many iterations with different phrasing, and often gesturing to Cooper lovingly to indicate that he was her one-in-one-hundred. 

Oh and Samberg, who co-hosted Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to riff on the meme. 

“It just proves – and I’m just coming up with this now – that there can be 100 people in a room, and 99 don’t believe in you, and you just need one to believe in you. And that was Bradley Cooper”, Oh said during the duo’s opening monologue. 

Lady Gaga laughingly interrupted Oh to shout, “It’s true!” 

Samberg continued the raillery by paraphrasing Oh’s story. And Lady Gaga gamely kept on laughing – with Cooper by her side, of course. 

This star's performance in A Star is Born had landed her a best actress nomination at the Golden Globes. And Cooper was also nominated for his direction of and performance in the musical remake. 

It’s good to see Malaysians generally observing the no-smoking ruling at eateries. 

This morning, I saw two smokers puffing away outside of the mamak restaurant – after their breakfast.

This scene was captured in USJ9 in Subang Jaya, Selangor:

BTW, for a change, I had puri and teh ais:

Superheroes as Cats

I love my superheroes and I know those who love their cats. 

Indonesian artist Fajareka Setiawan put the two together to create a cleverly illustrated collection in which superheroes are captured as cats. 

Included in this series are AquaCat, Venom Cat, Ant-Cat, CATPOOL and Black Kitteh:

Indeed, superheroes and pussies are a perfect match! 

After Apple warned of disappointing iPhone sales in China – did you read my post 'A Rough Day for Apple' yesterday? – industry observers have been quick to point to Chinese smartphones as being responsible. 

As the phone market in China reaches saturation and sales shrink, the country’s hardware makers are pushing hard, and increasingly winning fans, in places like France, Germany, India and Southeast Asia, where consumers find that the phones can do just about everything an iPhone can do at a fraction of the cost. 

Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are China’s biggest smartphone brands. Around the world – although not yet in the United States – they are making the handset business brutally competitive. 

There’s no doubt, Apple sits comfortably atop the market in many countries, including China, for the highest-end handsets. 

But the Chinese brands are fast gaining the quality recognition they deserve. And they have started to do elsewhere what they have done in China, competing with the iPhone, not just on experience and value but luring customers with price comparisons that make them rethink buying Apple’s signature product. 

Competition is always desirable. So, it’s good to know that Chinese brands have boldly challenged the status quo.

A Rough Day for Apple

Wednesday was a rough day for Apple. 

According to CNBC on Thursday, two Wall Street analysts Jefferies Group and Macquarie Group had each thrown in the towel and downgraded the stock to a neutral rating from buy. Others had murderously slashed price targets on Apple. 

This came in the wake of a rare earnings warning after the market closed on Wednesday afternoon, stating that Apple’s holiday-quarter performance is expected to fall well short of the guidance the company issued last October. 

Apple had originally told investors to expect revenues to be as high as $93 billion – now, they have revised them down to $84 billion, a decline of nearly 8 percent. 

And they took the easy way out by planking down the blame on China – Apple CEO Tim Cook (right) had attributed the shortfall on worse-than-expected iPhone sales in that country. 

Citi agreed: “Apple cited the majority of (their) sales miss from China which last quarter represented 18% of the company’s total sales which we estimate is now closer to 10-12%”. 

But it’s interesting to note that pundits are already tossing around theories that iPhone sales are weaker than expected in other key regions, too. 

If that is indeed the case, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering how expensive Apple’s current iPhone line-up is. Not only that, but the latest iPhones lack any novel marquee features that might encourage people to upgrade. 

After all, the iPhone XS is a faster iPhone X, the iPhone XS Max is a bigger iPhone X, and the iPhone XR is a more colorful iPhone X. And that’s pretty much it. 

The last time Apple made a spectacularly shocking announcement was in 2002 – at that time, Apple were largely just selling personal computers, and had been selling their original iPod for less than a year. The iPhone wouldn’t be announced until 5 years later in 2007. 

In that year, they had warned investors in a letter to expect revenues around $1.4 billion – down from its original guidance of $1.6 billion. 

Putting the above aside, I want to share this comment by Apple blogger John Gruber! 

He had pointed out the 2002 missive, written by then-CEO Steve Jobs (left), clocked in at a concise 200 words. Comparing that to CEO Tim Cook’s 1,400-word document on Wednesday, Gruber had written, “delivering bad news was one area where Steve Jobs really shined in a way that Tim Cook just can’t”. 

LOL! 

The fact remains, however, that even with the revenue downgrade, Apple will still announce massive profits for the quarter relative to the competition. Therefore, we needn’t be overly concerned by that Wednesday which pummelled Apple.

This morning, I was at Taylor’s University in Jalan Taylors, Subang Jaya in Selangor for their Toastmasters meeting. 

That’s because thanks to Elysia Teh, I got hold of a speaking slot. And so, I delivered my Advanced speech titled Unbutton Me – assignment #5 The Humorous Speech from the Humorously Speaking manual. 

This was my project #685 and successfully completing the speech allowed me to earn my sixth ACB award:

Check out photos from the said Taylor’s Toastmasters Club meeting:

Price Gaffe at Cathay Pacific

It was the New Year’s Eve travel sale that appeared to be too good to be true – business and first-class flights on Cathay Pacific from Vietnam to North America for just $675. 

That represented a staggering discount of extraordinary proportions! A first-class round trip would usually cost around $16,000 and a business class flight $4,000-$6,000. 

It took two days for Cathay Pacific to publicly acknowledge the gaffe with the airline on Wednesday gallantly saying it would honor the cheap tickets. 

Customers who had snapped up these ludicrous bargain-counter airfares breathed a sigh of relief after waiting more than 24 hours to learn what the company had planned to do. 

“Happy 2019 all, and to those who bought our good – VERY good surprise ‘special’ on New Year’s Day,” the Hong Kong-based carrier tweeted on Wednesday. 

“Yes – we made a mistake, but we look forward to welcoming you onboard with your ticket issued. Hope this will make your 2019 ‘special’ too!” 

Acknowledging that the delay had caused unwelcome speculation, Cathay Pacific added #promisemadepromisekept, and in a nod to the expensive error, #lessonlearnt. 

The airline did not respond to requests for comment about the number of flights sold at the steep discount. 

But South China Morning Post believed thousands of tickets had been sold during the online ticketing foul-up, which was blamed on an individual entering the wrong prices into the company’s system for that flight sector. 

And this decision would cost the airline millions of dollars in lost earnings. 

This is not the first-time airlines have mistakenly offered premium-class flights at marked down prices. 

In 2014 Singapore Airlines agreed to honor some 400 business class flights to Australia sold at economy prices. Last year Hong Kong Airlines said it would do the same when a similar error was made. 

But in 2015, United Airlines cancelled hundreds of tickets it sold for $100 by mistake. The American airline said it would not honor the fares because the error was caused by a “third-party software provider”. 

And Air Canada are currently involved in a class action lawsuit at home for refusing to honor a similar price mistake in 2015. 

Manchester City were much better on the ball on Thursday and with luck siding them, they emerged 2-1 winners in this EPL match against Liverpool.

Our unbeaten run had ended and already the Citizens closed the gap with us – separated by a mere four points.

We must remember that every game is a final. And for sure, we must win every game.

Smoking is Permitted But at a Distance

The no-smoking ban means every food premise owner/operator is required to display a no-smoking sign, to not provide smoking facilities such as smoking rooms or ashtrays and to ensure that no patrons would be smoking any type of nicotine including e-cigarettes, vape and shisha. 

Diners can still smoke but they must stay 10 feet (3m) away from the F&B outlets as they puff. This was the advice by Deputy Health Minister Dr Lee Boon Chye (left) to patrons who still persist in smoking after the ban comes into force nationwide on January 01 this year. 

I had my breakfast yesterday at an eatery called Restoran INT in SS13 in Subang Jaya, Selangor – where I had my usual nasi lemak and Coke. No smokers were spotted – but I had a look-over everywhere and I couldn’t find any no-smoking signage(s) at all, whether inside or outside. 

In the evening, I purposely went to USJ9, also in Subang Jaya to a place that billed itself as a restaurant and pub called House of Lords. Again, there were no no-smoking signage(s). But what’s good to know is that I didn’t see any ashtrays on the tables and not even on the bar counter. 

One drinker had a pack of ciggies and a lighter next to his beer but he wasn’t smoking the whole time I was there. 

And as I left the premise after one beer – once out of the door, I saw three patrons having their smokes. I nodded my head.

I’m sure the Malaysian public gives a thumbs-up to the implementation of the no-smoking ruling in all eateries.

I was at the USG Boral HQ in Subang Jaya and I had facilitated a Storytelling workshop for their Toastmaster members. 

It was a short sharing session that provided them with a useful introduction to narrative communication: