See-Food gets Swept out to Sea

I try to support local Malaysian cinema lately, but from what I’ve seen, they’ve got a long way to go. For instance, I thought the much talked about animation (Malaysian press only), See-Food deserved a look. It looked stunning in the trailers and the voice talents seem to have American accents. And it’s got some film festival nod somewhere or other.


The animation is about two sharks of different species. One is big and scary and the other shark adorable and harmless. They are best of friends. One day the smaller one’s eggs got stolen by poachers. Their adventure even takes them to land and even feature an outlandish made-for-fish out-of-sea bio-suit. All this while a horde of denizens of the deep plot to take over the abundant coral reefs.


Well, the graphics were next to flawless, they could have given it a little more shadow, I thought. The accents were a little disarrayed. Most accents were American, some more genuine than others, some were British, the grand old dame has a Malaysian Accent, and weirdly, one chicken has a German accent. What all these accents signify, I don’t know.


So where does this measure up against giants like Pixar’s Finding Nemo which obviously shares the same theme.  Against Pixar, See-Food would have been fileted from its bone and made into fish food. Pixar’s story telling is par excellence, while See-Food is not even worthy of day time television.


Its plot was so bad, there were times so excruciating I had to look away. Their intended comedy is flat. Their overly kid friendly plot is so unexciting and messy; it leaves me drawing parallels to a cheap Malay cartoon on TV. When the credits came up, it’s obvious that there is only one writer credited, or incriminated, whereas it should be a whole team of writers taking many many months to create that one masterpiece.


I hope they really do get better in animation. Nothing beats a good story, and they need to build this foundation first before tinkering with anything else. I give it 2/10.

Paramount & SEA Park in Pictures

Paramount Caltex Station, used to be a bus depot

EU Institute, Jalan 20/16A

Meng Kee Steam Soup, Jalan 20/22

Even busier at night, Jalan 20/22

Millenium 86 is busy only at night, Jalan 20/22

There is no place to park, Jalan 20/16A

Old Post Office at Paramount

Main road Jalan 20/7 is very narrow considering the heavy traffic,
 look people have started double parking

Jalan 20/7 service road. The parking on the right is newly constructed

Jalan 20/7 has not enough parking. Original linear parking on the left
and new parking on the right can't cater.

Jalan 21/12, is the main road that links Paramount to SEA Park

Jalan 21/12 has no service lane so it's always congested.

Paramount Garden and SEA Park of Petaling Jaya

Feng Shui: Paramount no more

Feng Shui: Peak of the Paramount Garden

Feng Shui: Foodie favourite

Feng Shui: Living in Paramount

Feng Shui: South- East Asia Park

Feng Shui: Hilly Sea Park

Feng Shui: Valleys of Sea Park

Almost every Friday in the Star newspaper’s property pullout, there is a feature on fengshui by a David Koh, a master sifu of some sort. Over the past few years he has been visiting Klang Valley neighbourhoods applying his fengshui theories and determining fengshui’s effects on the locality by merely observing how much renovation has been done to the premises or even how newly painted the building is. Apparently a can of Dulux is all it takes to fool a fengshui master.

However, his findings for my neighbourhood seemed skin deep and lacked any historical basis. Paramount and SEA Park was developed in the late 1960s as one of the newest sections of Petaling Jaya. The commercial areas of Paramount and SEA Park were built with intentions of both being a thriving town centre. It had amenities other town centres could only dream of.

You could find a standalone post office, and two iconic cinemas, Paramount Cinema and Ruby Cinema in SEA Park itself. There was even a bus depot where a Caltex Paramount is now (the one near the post office). Wondered why so many trunk bus routes ply Paramount Garden? History. And how many townships can boast of a largish park with a lake. There are only 3 lake parks in central PJ, and one of them is Taman Aman, which it shares with the residents of Section 22.

There was one notable landmark of a sordid nature, the Taiwan Pub which occupied a shoplot right at the Y junction between Jalan 20/7 and Jalan 21/12. It’s outer décor was flashy, it’s location prominent and we all know it’s a front for a brothel. It stood for almost 50 years, until it all but closed down a couple of years ago.

Paramount was designated as Section 20, while South East Asia Park (SEA Park) was given Section 21. Their commercial areas are adjoining at certain parts. In my map below I tried to outline the boundaries of the two sections, but because the borders between Paramount and SEA Park and between SEA Park and SS2 are so porous, my map is only my best guesstimate. Porous because some roads may seem straight, but half of the road maybe in Section 20 and the other in Section 21, and you may never pinpoint where the boundary is. It’s best to check with the land office on this one.

In its early days, like any newly developed commercial area, business was slow to come. In fact throughout the 20th century, neighbouring SS2 commercial districts and even the two-road Section 14 commercial district eclipsed Paramount-SEA Park in terms of prominence and business activity. Many shops seemed unoccupied and only a few eateries drew in a small crowd but fortunately, parking was plentiful.

Despite that, Paramount in particular captured a niche market of sorts. It is home to a variety of hardware shops specialising in piping, electrical products, lighting and other tradesman businesses. It is where plumbers, contractors and others come to get good cheap supplies. And to this day, many of these shops remain.

The two cinemas closed down in the mid-90s, and with that Paramount and SEA Park went through its gloomiest days. Paramount Cinema was converted into TOPS supermarket which is now Giant Supermarket. Although temporarily serving as a church for a couple of years, Ruby cinema remains abandoned. I am of the opinion that that land could be put to good use as a residential zone.

Petaling Jaya’s population is 70% Chinese. The Malays tend live in Kelana Jaya, and a small enclave in Section 14 while the rest of it is majority Chinese. While SS2 could be seen as a kind of modern Chinese town centre, other parts of PJ like Old Town, Paramount and SEA Park right in the geographic centre of PJ retain a more rustic charm. More authentic kopitiams than modern ones, if you get my drift.

In the late 1990s, the LRT line found its way through PJ and was built inexpensively on the electricity transmission line corridor. As luck has it, Paramount which borders this corridor, was given its own station, Taman Paramount although this was one of the stations where LRT ridership is at the lowest in PJ. It wasn't immediately apparent but, once the LRT services begun, commercial businesses in Paramount and SEA Park picked up.

Over the last decade, the once economic laggard of PJ, Paramount and SEA Park blossomed. David Koh was spot on about a gastronomic valley in the roads of Jalan 20/22, 20/16 and 20/13. It must have been Paramount’s reputation as being a Chinese food nexus, a centre for good cheap food, which spurred businessmen to open more restaurants. Now there are twice the number of restaurants in Paramount than there were in the mid-90s. Some are successful but others were not, and were forced to close shop. It seems the only criterion for continued success in the Paramount restaurant business is that the food must be tasty and delicious.

There were other changes too, the tenant mix in the commercial areas became more varied. A couple more banks opened up, and more modern amenities like hairstylists and bakeries were available, and even a couple of colleges. The Paramount LRT station sees more passengers through its turnstiles, and the Giant supermarket is thriving. New restaurants like dim sum shops and seafood restaurants all see customers waiting in line for a seat. But the downside of it is there is hardly any parking available anymore.

Finally I'm happy to report that Paramount and SEA Park have caught up with the hustle and bustle of the nearby SS2 and Section 14 commercial districts. For instance, Jalan 20/7 has a service lane that runs parallel to serve the shops. Originally, there was only one row of parallel parking lots but sometime in the late 2000s, the opposite road shoulder was converted to parking as well, so we now have 2 parallel rows. But it isn’t enough! People have started double parking on the main road, which only has one narrow lane in each direction. And we the actual residents of this area have to put up with constant jams when we visit our nearby shops.

How do you measure prosperity? Is it by the peeling paint or mouldy walls? Or is it by foot traffic or is it by the number of times you hear the 'ch’ng' sound of cash registers? David Koh was wrong to pass judgement by simply driving around and observing what he sees. I do not know what lies Paramount and SEA Park’s future, but I do know that things have never been brighter.

Pictures are available in the next post

Truth About Malaysia as Ninth Most Popular Tourist Destination

UNTWO, the United Nations Tourism World Organisation fully released the 2010 statistics for international tourism earlier in February. It was revealed that Malaysia was the ninth most visited country in the world. For a country that most people have never even heard of, that’s an amazing feat.


The top ten most visited countries with the number of international travellers in year 2010:
1. France – 76.8 million
2. United States – 59.7 million
3. China – 55.7 million
4. Spain – 52.7 million
5. Italy – 43.6 million
6. United Kingdom – 28.1 million
7. Turkey – 27.0 million
8. Germany – 26.9 million
9. Malaysia – 24.6 million
10. Mexico – 22.4 million

Source : http://corporate.tourism.gov.my/images/research/pdf/2010_kumulatif_new.pdf

But if you scrutinise the details, you will understand why. More than half of the tourist arrivals are from Singapore. Malaysian will go – “No wonder!” Singapore used to be a part of the Malaysian federation and both nations share a common culture.

Malaysia, particularly Johor state is Singapore’s more affordable hinterland. Many make day trips across just to shop and take advantage over their much stronger Singapore dollar. There are two major road links across the Singapore and one of them is chronically congested at peak hours. So with a population of 4 million, Singaporeans on average make 4 trips to Malaysia in 2010. And most of them are day trippers and excursionists and not true international visitors as its definition would imply (true international visitors stay at least 1 night).


Take away these Singaporean visitors and where will Malaysia rank? Way below the top 10. Has the Malaysian government no shame deceiving the world? Actually, France's numbers are also inflated by day trippers where policy and infrastructure makes it easy to cross international borders. Heck, France is the centre of Western Europe. A better statistic would be perhaps hotel night stays and tourism receipts.


A good article in the EDGE magazine