The Cat Museum of Kuching (The Cat City)

Located in the strange UFO-like DBKU building, in Kuching, the Cat Museum is the perfect tourist attraction for cat lovers interested in anything and everything feline.

The Malaysian city of Kuching translates as The Cat City, so it makes perfect sense it have its very own cat museum, especially since many Malaysians believe cats bring good luck. The Cat Museum, along with dozens of cat statues around Kuching were erected in celebration of the city’s name, and the important role cats play in the every day life of the locals. It was inaugurated in 1993, and has since then become a favorite destination of cat lovers all over the world.

The Cat Museum of Kuching features over 2,000 feline related items, but it’s much more than just a collection of artifacts – it’s also a research center that focuses on the history and various beliefs surrounding cats. Among the most impressive displays are a mummified Egyptian cat dating back to 3500 BC, and the only stuffed specimen of the world’s rarest cat, Felis badia,  which lives in the jungles of Borneo. There are also plenty of cat statues made by various cultures, cat photos, posters and even stamps for cat loving philatelists or morbid cat burial scenes.

Believed to be the only one of its kind in the world, the Kuching Cat Museum offers plenty of valuable information into the history of cats and their part in human life, and is a must-visit attraction for cat enthusiasts everywhere.

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Brian Lai’s Mind-Boggling Color Inverted Drawings

Brian Lai, a brilliant Malaysian artist, has invented his own technique of drawing called ‘Invert Art’. Using the technique, he is able to make rough sketches materialize into full-fledged realistic drawings, when the colors are inverted using a Photoshop filter.

Lai has created a time-lapse video to demonstrate exactly how he creates these drawings. He first sketches and shades ‘normally’. Then, he completes the drawing by shading it inversely. After this, he takes a photograph of the drawing (he’s in some of the pictures too), and inverts the colors in Photoshop. The details appear, almost magically.

Some of the pictures on the internet of Lai’s work show how he’s successfully used his technique to make a drawing of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. At first, I thought he was holding up a real poster of the movie. Only when I read about his technique, did I realize it was a drawing.

Lai is talented; he has a keen eye that allows him to translate normal images into inverted ones. He does need some time though, to adjust the tone and shading details of his work. For complex images like the Wolverine one, he had an inverted image of a photograph for reference.

 

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Vince Low – Malaysian Artist Makes Celebrity Portraits from Scribbles

For the average illustrator, scribbling isn’t the best way to create realistic-looking portraits. But then again, Vince Low isn’t your average illustrator. The Malaysian artist somehow manages to produce impeccable portraits of some of Hollywood’s greatest actors using only childish scribbles. The lead illustrator of Malaysian advertising agency, Grey, Vince Low has an impressive portfolio of stunning artworks, but his latest portrait series, called Faces, is particularly eye-catching. That’s because the stunning depictions of stars like Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith or Leonardo Di Caprio were all done exclusively with scribbles on blank white canvases. Most people would have a hard time capturing their unique features using classic drawing techniques, but he creates highly accurate facial representation just by overlapping thousands of swirling lines. Amazing or what? Vince Low’s scribbled masterpieces reminded me of Russian artistic duo Sergei and Vyacheslav Savelyv who use the same technique to create incredibly detailed images.

 

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I-City Shah Alam, Nighttime wonderland

i-City, one of the latest high-tech attractions of Malaysia, can best be described as an unconventional mix of Oriental style and the latest in lighting technology. Located in the city of Shah Alam, i-City is a one-of-a-kind theme-park where all the main attractions are made of plastic and millions of bright LED lights, during the day, i-City’s artificial forest of maple and pine trees really comes to life at night. Made out of plastic and fitted with colorful LEDs, they put on a light show unlike any other.

Inaugurated in early 2010, Shah Alam‘s i-City has already become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Malaysia. From rows upon rows of LED-made Chinese lanterns, to LED peacocks, flamingos and LED cherry blossoms, i-City offers a variety of unique sights that are sure to amaze anyone who visits here. Though nothing compares to the look and smell of real trees, the colorful display of i-City’s magical forest is proof of the wonderful things man can create if he puts his mind to it.Now sit back and check out a set of mind-blowing photos taken in i-City, at night.

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Alain Robert The Spiderman Climbs The Petronas Towers KLCC

Malaysians especially those in Kuala Lumpur would have been shocked by the news about Alain Robert ‘The Spiderman’. Why? Because he climbed the Petronas Towers or the KLCC building on last Tuesday September 1st 2009. Many people argue why did we detain him as he gave the free publicity to Malaysia without asking even for 1 cent from Malaysian government.

Robert or his full name, Alain Robert Phillipe, 47 is a French and even the French government regards him as disabled etc. He started to climb at the of 12 and since then he has climbed 85 buildings around the world including the skyscrapers like Empire State Building in New York (1,250 feet), Sears Tower in Chicago (1,453 feet), Taipei 101, Taiwan (1,667 feet) and Jin Mao in Shanghai, China (1,378 feet).

Most of the climbing he did were done without consent and these made him to be detained for intrusion charges.

When the Petronas Towers in construction was fully completed in the late 90, Robert and this building got the world’s attention as the Petronas Twin Tower in Kuala Lumpur was the world’s highest building then.

in 1997, a year before that towers were officially open, he climbed to the level 60 of that building without being noticed.

Recently on last Tuesday, September 1st 2009, just a day after Malaysians celebrated their nation’s 52th birthday, Robert was claimed to start climbing Petronas Towers at 6 am and he managed to reach the highest point of that building. The next day he was charged in the Magistrate Court that can put him into the jail for 6 months (maximum) or need to pay Rm3,000 (maximum) or both of them.

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Dress from 4,000 Tea Bags

The latest in bizarre dresses has arrived. After paper napkins, newspapers, and even condoms, we now have a dress made of tea bags. This one was made by a 16-year-old from Kuala Lumpur, and she used a whopping 4,000 tea bags to create her masterpiece. She won the top prize at the Green Awards 2011 held in Kuala Lumpur in October.

Suraya Mohd Zairin is a science student from SMK Bukit Jelutong, Shah Alam. She says that she chose to make a dress out of tea bags because they were easily available to her. With the help of her friends, she was able to collect the 4,000 bags and then it took her three months to complete the dress. The theme followed by the budding designer was 'flowers', because their shapes have always mesmerized her.

Suraya says that people tend to take flowers for granted, and through her dress she wanted to highlight the significance of nature, especially that of flowers. She was the youngest contestant in the category, and never expected to win. Needless to say, she was quite shocked when her name was announced as the winner. The two categories of the award where wildly creative and totally active. She received RM4000, which is approximately $1,700, along with a trophy, for her efforts.

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Malaysia Langkawi Sky Bridge

Langkawi Sky Bridge is a 125 metres (410 ft) curved pedestrian cable-stayed bridge in Malaysia. It is located 700 metres (2,300 ft) above sea level at the peak of Gunung Mat Chinchang on Pulau Langkawi, an island in the Langkawi archipelago in Kedah. The bridge was built crooked on purpose to offer a beautiful view of the chasm beneath and of the sea and neighboring islands. It has 2 triangular platforms at each end, offering views of the landscape from different angles and also shelter for those who have a problem with the shaking of the bridge. The constructors took all the necessary precautions, building an excellent protection system, so don’t worry you’re safe.

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Hygiene-Obsessed Woman Washed Her Hands 300 Times a Day

40-year-old Julia Abdullah, from Malaysia, was obsessed with her self-cleaning rituals. Her bizarre behavior started 20 years ago, but it gradually got worse to the point where she was washing her hands up to 300 times a day, spending 5 hours in the shower and shampooing her hair 25 times per day.Julia first noticed something was amiss two decades ago. She was working as a laboratory technician, and often handled urine and stool culture samples, as well as blood samples for HIV tests.

She started spending increasingly more time on washing her hands, for fear of contamination, and although she suspected she had developed OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), she didn’t seek help. ”I thought I could will myself off the washing,” Julia remembers, but her condition only got worse. She eventually lost her job as her obsession caused her to be constantly late for work, and needed to find other ways to pay her rapidly increasing house utility bills. At one point the woman became so desperate that she started scavenging through her neighbors’ trash looking for stuff she could sell. In a short period of time she amassed a collection of junk that occupied the two-room flat she shared with her mom. The hoarding got so bad that her mother had to sleep at the stairwell as there was no ventilation or natural light in the flat. ”It finally got too much for me to bear. I got so angry that I stopped bathing for three months,” Ms Julia told the Malaysia Chronicle, but her obsessive-washing habits were hardly cured.

“I called the Singapore Association for Mental Health (SAMH) hotline in 2009. I was almost driven to the point of suicide,” Julia Abdullah says, and they helped her get life back on track. Only her condition worsened a year later, after she missed some of her treatment appointments. She was again going through two bottles of shampoo and 21 bars of soap per day. She was so exhausted that she didn’t have the time or energy for anything else. Luckily, her SAMH counsellors intervened and admitted her to the Institute of Mental Health,for 22 days. Now Julia Abdullah says she has regained control of her life, but agreed to tell of her struggle in a photography exhibition called Picture My World, which is organised by IMH to raise awareness of mental illness, as part of its World Mental Health Day activities.

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