I was checking comments on the blog as usual last Sunday and came across these two comments:

By chee hong on Oct 5, 2008 | Reply

hey KY , congrats la dude! i saw this blog post in on of the Star’s article this morning ..

By AkiraSabine on Oct 5, 2008 | Reply

Flipping through The Star as usual on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I happened to see a familiar name, KY! haha. “Hey, I read his blog” was my first reaction. Congrats!

I then quickly searched online and sure enough I found this article on the Sunday Star Metro compiled by Renita Che Wah, a name I could not recall.

my post appeared on the Star

The article (full screenshot) is made up of 3 sentences by the journalist, followed by 15 short paragraphs quoted directly from the Pantai Seafood entry I wrote on the 26th of May September.

Obviously I was feeling pretty proud to be noticed by the most read English dailies and have the paper used my blog post heavily in an article, I went out and bought a copy of the paper for save keeping too.

At the same time, however, I do find it a little odd that I was never informed prior to the blog being quoted. No phone call, email, or even a comment left on the blog. Pictures were taken directly from the blog and edited without my knowledge either.

To be fair, a previous blog post of mine on Kampung Atap Curry Fish Head was also used by the Star Metro over a year ago (link here), and the journalist did communicate with me prior to publishing. The difference is, this time around I was kinda caught by surprise.

I think the Star should consider giving me a weekly column instead. What do you make of this?

Tags:  newspaper,  the star

Posted by KY | 82 Comments »

Kimberly the cun was the cover girl on the Star’s RAGE yesterday. Coincidentally, yours truly was mentioned in the Metro section of the paper the same day in a very good article titled “The changing hawker scene“.

True, Kim has the whole page to her, and I have 3 paragraphs. But hey, I’m keeping the paper cut out nonetheless. (the difference is, Kim has gathered more than 6 copies, I’m keeping only 1, narcissism isn’t necessary)

The article talks about the impact of foreign workers in the local hawker scene, and here are my bites, quoted verbatim from the paper:

Blogger Kar Yeong, or better known as KY, who has gained recognitions among netizens for reviewing a huge array of food and restaurants in his blog http://kyspeaks.com, is among those who prefers food stalls manned by locals.

“Foreigners grew up in their home country and aren’t as accustomed to the local taste, so naturally the flavours might be a bit out of tune when compared to what we like,” he said.

To be fair, according to KY, there are foreign stalls selling tasty non-local food such as the gyoza prepared by the Shanghainese cook at the Ming Tien food court in Taman Megah, Petaling Jaya.

Thumbnail of the article on the left, click here for the full screen shot (just in case the permanent link at thestar.com.my is removed)

I want to thank the writer Xin Yi for including me in her research.

Tags:  food,  hawker,  mainstream media,  news,  the star

Posted by KY | 11 Comments »