Wednesday

10 MARCH
2010
thestar.com.my/lifestyle

CHILDWISE

Enjoy shopping with

your toddler >15

R.AGE

Life after
divorce >7

. > 2-3

R.AGE

Paramore >8

T2

R.AGE

STARTWO, WEDNESDAY 10 MARCH 2010

e
c
n
e
i
d
u
a
r
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A bigg

R.AGE

Dramatic designs
On the works of fashion and
design students in the Klang
Valley. >6

HEALTH

Just laugh
Happiness may be more than a
state of mind. >11

Saving sight
Having blurry vision? Better
have your eyes checked as
glaucoma does not just afflict
the elderly. >12

MIND OUR ENGLISH

Hoppity-hop

Its amazing how a three-letter

word like hop yields heaps of
interesting meanings. >18

MOVIES

Sparks ready
to fly
Ntv7s new drama series
Glowing Embers revolves
around Taipings charcoal
industry. >22

StarTwo

EDITOR: LIM CHENG HOE

CONTACT
e-mail: startwo@thestar.com.my
tel: 03-7967 1388
fax: 03-7955 4039
ADVERTISING:
Peter Hoe
peterhoe@thestar.com.my
(03) 7966-8236
Pearly Tan
pearly.tan@thestar.com.my
(03) 7966-8272

EDITOR: IVY SOON

CONTACT
e-mail: alltherage@thestar.com.my
tel: 03-7967 1693
fax: 03-7955 4039
ADVERTISING:
James Lam
jameslam@thestar.com.my
(03) 7966-8226
Mandy Seah
mandyseah@thestar.com.my
(03) 7966-8263

By NIKI CHEONG
niki@thestar.com.my

N MID-2005, young blogger Kenny Sia

(pictured, right) attended the Project
Petaling Street 2nd Anniversary Bash
in Kuala Lumpur. The moment he
stepped into the bar where the party was
held, Kenny was mobbed by the
other guests.
Kennys blog
(www.kennysia.com) was
popular by then, and his
fans included many of
Malaysias top bloggers
including Minishorts,
Suanie and FireAngel (all not
their real names). That night, he even
took home the PPS Blog of the Year
award, arguably the first blogger
awards of its kind in Malaysia.
This was only six months after
Kenny started blogging, but his
popularity has not waned. As blogging
became a more mainstream activity,
and social media became part of
our lives, Kennys popularity
continued to grow. In fact, Kenny
draws between 350,000 and
almost 500,000 visitors a month,
according to the counter on his blog, until
late last year when he got busy setting up
his business venture and focused on
blogging.
At the recent Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog
Awards 2009, Kenny took home the Best
Entertainment Blog award, beating
competitiors from Malaysia, Singapore and
Australia.
Today, you would be hard pressed to meet
anyone who frequents the local blogsphere
who have not heard of Kenny Sia.
The thing is, Malaysias most recognisable
blogger is not based in KL, the hive of
Malaysias social media community. Instead,
he lives in his hometown of Kuching,
Sarawak. Despite living far from the mad
crowds of KL, Kenny still manages to attract
fans who faithfully visit his blog.
I am recognised more in KL than here,
Kenny said during a recent phone interview
from Kuching.
Considering the period in which Kenny has
reigned as one of Malaysias top bloggers, and
the fact that Sarawaks broadband penetration is still below 20%, it is a rather significant
fact that he comes from a city where the
social media scene is still in its infancy.
Imagine the blogosphere about five years
ago in Malaysia. Its like that here now,
Kenny shared, describing the social media
scene in Sarawak.
Yet, some of Malaysias most recognisable
names in the blogosphere are Sarawakians,
including Rowena Tan, the author of food
blog Mum-mum (www.mum-mum.info)
which peaked in popularity about
five years ago, and Poh Huai Bin
(www.sixthseal.net), who
currently lives in KL.
Media planner Huai Bin, 29, was
featured last year in the first season
of Project Alpha (www.projectalpha.
com.my), an online reality show
which aims to uncover the lives of
Malaysias top bloggers. Last month,
he joined other bloggers from
Peninsular Malaysia who were also
featured in the show, on a visit to

Anna Bella Wong blogs

at www.annna.net.

niki@thestar.com.my

Kennys new fitness centre in

Kuching. They were there to shoot
an episode for the reality shows
second season.
A lot of people are blogging nowadays, much more
than back then. There are a
lot of people on Twitter too,
Huai Bin said.
During the shoot, Kenny had invited several
local bloggers to join in.
One of them was Anna Bella Wong, a 24year-old financial analyst. Anna has been
blogging since 2004, and started twittering in
2007.
The social media scene in Kuching is
dominated mostly by bloggers and Facebook
users. Before the blogging era, people were
active via sites like Friendster and such,

but they seldom meet up in person, Anna

shared.
Back in 2004, Huai Bin, Rowena and a few
other bloggers got together for Kuchings first
ever bloggers gathering at a restaurant called
Hot Seat.
That was the first meet-up ever done in
Sarawak and it started as a casual invite
among bloggers we already knew, and it
then progressed to an open invite, Huai Bin
said.
According to Anna, formal gatherings for
bloggers have dwindled over the years.
However, the friendships made back then are
as strong as ever.
Now, the blogger gatherings are mostly
meet-ups of those who still hang out together, she said.
Anna was very excited to have been invited

Kenny (left) and Huai Bin (second from right) at the PPS 2nd Birthday Bash in 2005.

STARTWO, WEDNESDAY 10 MARCH 2010

T3

Featured bloggers
You(ths) have a lot to say, and you say it
in your blogs. Every week, R.AGE highlights three young Malaysian bloggers.

Our picks this week:

Grey Ang
http://caramelz.my

The Iban Facebook, one of several

Facebook groups dedicated to
Sarawaks diverse culture and its
people.
to meet the visiting bloggers, and thought
that the trip was good for Sarawaks
social media scene.
Its great, more exposure for Sarawak,
she said enthusiastically. She then relates
an incident she encountered at the
Botanical Gardens in Putrajaya.
The person who welcomed me asked
me where I was from. I told her I was
from Kuching. She asked, Is this your first
time in Malaysia?.
It is stories like these that has motivated Wena to come up with a new blogging
project.
Im planning to start a blog about
living in Sarawak. We (Wena and an old
friend) wanted to do something that
shows what Sarawakians are like outside
of politics, and that we dont all still live
in trees, Wena explained.
Sarawakian blogs, said Wena, are
focused either on political rants or on
private lives. She would like to see
Sarawakian bloggers take on a broader
interest in public issues.
They seldom talk about things that go
on behind all that. They dont always see
or hear what goes on in the lives of lower
income groups or people in the rural
areas,she explained.
Bong Chan Siong aka Bongkersz, 28,
was born and bred in Sarawak but left the
state to further his studies. He only
returned to Sarawak about a year ago (he
was born in Kuching but raised in Miri)
when he joined a new company based in
Kuching.
Bongkersz has developed quite a public

Bong Chan Siong aka Bongkersz

profile for his twittering; his tweets are
often on issues affecting the country,
including politics.
Even when he was based in Petaling
Jaya, Selangor, where he worked as a
civil and strutural engineer, he shared
Sarawakian things like state politics and
big happenings like Rainforest World
Music Festival, Miri Jazz Festival, cultures,
food or drinks that I missed.
Now that he is back in his home state,
he writes more about its people, food,
places and happenings.
I am a proud Sarawakian. Sarawak has
so much to share with the people out
there and I feel obliged to share all the
good and bad things about this place so
people can learn, gain or make something
out of it, he said.
Due to Sarawaks diverse cultural
background, many were also quick to
adopt social media as a tool to unite
people, and to educate others about their
ways of life.
Lolly Raja, from Bario and is now based
in Rotterdam, Netherlands, started the
Kelabit Wiki Project (www.bario.info) in
2007 for the simple reason that I dont
want my language to die.
The idea was borne out of discussions
we had in a Kelabit forum back in July
2007. A news report with the headline: A
language dies every two weeks, researchers say in September the same year
provided additional impetus, Lolly

explained.
There are to date only two published
Kelabit-English dictionaries, both by nonKelabit scholars who acknolwedge these
to be incomplete works.
To date, the Kelabit Wiki Project
consists of around 3,600 pages.
There are also several other groups on
Facebook, which focuses on Sarawak and
its people. One is the Iban Facebook
group which has over 2,500 members to
date.
I came across this Facebook group for
my current hometown, Sarikei. It has
nearly 2,000 members, which is a huge
achievement considering the size of
Sarikei, Bongkerz also shared.
It is indeed interesting to see that there
are as many faces to social media in
Sarawak, as there are faces of
Sarawakians.
The Government has pledged to help
build more telecommunication towers in
remote areas of the state to help increase
the broadband penetration. With the
increased use of the Internet, and
mobile services, you can only expect to
see more social media users from
Sarawak, and many other areas in
Malaysia.
Judging by its track record with social
media personalities, it would be interesting to see what else Sarawaks social
media scene has to offer in the future.

Grey is a
fairly new
blogger,
having only
started
penning his
thoughts
online in
October last
year. He says
that he
blogs to
share, inspire
and motivate and that
is why his
blog focusses
more on his observations about life, relationships, people, and living in general.

Eugene Lee

http://foodfromthoughts.blogspot.com
The young
blogger
considers
himself
part chef,
part artist.
In his early
20s, Eugene
works as a
chef at a
local hotel,
and blogs
about his
findings and
culinary
adventures.
He believes
that cooking is more than just making
food edible and eating is more than just
putting food into the mouth.

Serge Norguard

http://dustyhawk.com

Sixthseal.com is Poh
Huai Bins popular blog.

Rowena Tan is the blogger

behind mum-mum.info.

If youre often at blogger gatherings,

you might recognise this young gentleman who introduces himself as Serge.
Having been blogging since 2002, Serge
chronicles his life and the world around
him. You can also read his reviews on
everything and anything from Japanese
anime and music to international movies
and sometimes even food!
Drop us an e-mail at alltherage@thestar.
com.my with your blog URL and a short
description for a chance to be featured in
R.AGE!