In Penang at the moment

Hello all,long time no jibber jabber. Has to be said I have been a bit caught up in many many ways. Where to start? Well along with making my documentary (which is going marvellously well and costing me an arm and a leg, but is looking amazing and will almost certainly be a smash, no shit guys it's going to be very interesting indeed), where was I? Oh yes, aside from making my documentary I have ended up being involved in a tourism/travel show for the USA. A long story, but basically Adam the cameraman found out I'm not too bad an editor, the american woman who presents the show thought she could edit it, after a month she still wasn't able to look at any of the footage so Adam and I hijacked the show and said we'd do it for a token fee, really to solidify a relationship and prove that we are the only people they need to shop with in the future. The americans got a bit upset and haughty, thinking we were basically going to try and screw them over somehow, but we went ahead and did it anyway.
So yours truly edited together the first episode (only 6 minutes, essentially long adverts, american style, but nice ones that are mini "come visit malaysia" programs) - then we sent it to them and they all wet their pants with glee.
So now we are almost entirely sorted, got 3 more episodes to do and it's going to be sweet. The only problem is on the Malaysian end, see the Americans refuse to bribe anybody - why? Because they have an inland revenue service like we do, and accountants that notice when 10% of the budget has evaporated into thin air, and also laws that back up these observations. In Malaysia? Well the laws exist, as do the accountants, but just bribe them under the table, ok lah no problem. Like that.
So the Malaysian client, who operates for the Malaysian tourist board, thus promoting bringing American money into Malaysia, are not being very forthcoming about payment until they get their bribe. So what to do? Dunno, not too bothered cos I got a film to make and no doubt it will all play out nicely in the end. If not, bugger it, we now know that we're good enough for the yanks market, so the rest of the world is no problem.

As for my documentary - well this week has been a bit of a heavy one (intentionally so as Adam has a 30 day job all through august, so I want to use the downtime to start editing my film) so on Monday we set out for Ipoh and met with our man Hong (the museum owner), where he delighted us with a box full of incredible old photos, along with various letters and cards etc, so we spent Monday night trawling through a whole shoebox packed with piccies. Incredible stuff, but led to a very late night. Then after spending the night in the museum (and yes I know that's the title of a crap film, and yes it was a bit scary as Adam got bizzarrely "attacked" by a "spirit" - and yes this sounds weird, but he's really a very normal and sensible guy, but he says he has dealings with the spirit world and when a guy is talking to you in a spooky 130 year old house then suddenly goes "huh?" and then doubles over and makes hideous vomitting dry heave noises on the floor in a very much Exorcist style, then goes into a trance and starts clapping (banishing the evil spirit into hell apparently) and in the process you suddenly feel like you're having a severe heart attack, well, it makes you wonder, and yes that was an inordinately long sentance with no break, but it is very very late and my head is now quite blur blur.
I digress, what was I on about? Cameramen being attackedby demons? No after that. Oh yes, on Tuesday we interviewed Olga again, but this time she was wearing the wrong blouse (bad continuity for interviews, very bad) so we had to devise a whole scene on the spot. Thus we got a great set of footage of her going through all the pictures, letters and stuff, a lot of which she had never seen before, despite it being her collection. Don't know, it's hard to tell with an 87 year old lady, her memory is utterly superb, but, well, it's hard to have a full bag of marbles at that age, right.
Anyway we all sat around until far too late having a brilliant time and getting some incredibly good footage. Then at around 8.45 we finally realised that we were scheduled to drive an extra 200kms up to Pulau Penang, so figured it was time to leave.
We finally made it up to Penang and found a place to sleep around 1.30am - ending up in a really nice and fabulously budget saving backpacker hostel (from whence I write this jibberish) and collapsed in a heap.
Early this morning we scraped ourselves out of bed and went to meet a man called Cheah Boon Kheng, who is a pre-eminant Malaysian historian, with a good number of excellent books to his name, and was a lecturer of history at University Sains (science, not my bad spelling) Malaysia or USM for 30 odd years. We had a lovely chat and although he had declined to be intervied, I have to add a, YET, I am firmly convinced that I can cheese him into it, with some good old fashioned flattery. This guy confused the crap out of me, namely because he is 74 or 75 (for sure as he was 5 when the japs invaded) but looks like he's in his late 40s. Weird? Yes. I thought I was talking to the wrong guy, in fact I kept expecting him to say "so when do you want me to take you to see my dad?". But no, another incredibly good looking youthful elderly person (that makes 4 or 5 so far on this film), there must have been something in the water back then, either that or there is something bad in the water now. Incredible. Anyway I got to be really cheeky and made him sign my copy of his book (one of them).

Finally we went back into Georgetown (which I will add incidentally got declared a UNESCO world heritage site yesterday) and collapsed. Later we went out to shoot some cutaways for the american travel show (may as well right, we needed them, we're here already) then went to meet a lady called Khoo Salma. She's the lady (or one of a few, but a very important one) who just got the whole of Georgetown declared as world heritage site. I like her already, stick one in the eye of the ignorant money grabbing uneducated shits that rule this country, who would gladly bulldozed the whole historical part of the city, grind it down into cement and use that to build "PENANG WORLD THEMEPARK" which would consist of cheap badly made replicas of the origionals (which would of course fall down in 2 years and have to be re-built, thus securing more under the table bribe money for the cabinet and their family members).
It's the saddest thing about this country that it takes a mandate from someone like UNESCO to say "you cannot tear this down" in order to save the history of this country from the vultures , surely they just have to look at these places to see they're worth saving!!! But no, they see only $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Sidetracked again. I was saying that tomorrow we're going to interview Salma and her husband, in an incredible place. It's an old chinese shophouse (I imagine dated around the 1890s, but I no expert) which looks amazing. It was the house where Sun Yat Sen (who was the father of the Chinese revolution in 1911 or 12 or sometime around then) had his secret HQ and planned the successful revolution that saw the end of Chinas Emporers. It looks utterly amazing in there, so much dark hardwood furniture, walls, floors, staircase, everything, and it positively stinks of history. I'd recommend looking Sun Yat Sen up on Wikipedia, cos he was a proper interesting bloke and changed the course of world history (as it was only after his revolution that Chan Kia Sheck and his Kuomintang lads, and Mao Tse Tungs Red brigade we established, he was the father of modern China, whether you like the outcome or not)/ Oh and we got an open invitation to sleep in the place whenever we are back in Penang, which is just amazing.

So now it is gone 1am again and my head hurts, so time for another beer.
Sorry no photos, but we killed the batter taking pictures of Olgas pictures the other day, and dunce boy here forgot to bring the camera battery charger. We're going to try and shoot some stills on the HD cam tommorrow if we get the chance, so as I can show you the location. The word for it is "Wah"

Love to all, Andrew hope your back is better soon