Year of the Dog: My First Short Story Now on Kindle

Good news, folks! If you enjoy short stories, please give it a go with my first one titled Year of the Dog. It's now on Kindle and it goes like this:

A short story about a stray dog’s unfortunate encounters with humans that did not turn out well. In trying to escape from captivity, he soon becomes lost in the city. As the year of the dog draws to a close, will he be fortunate enough to find a decent master and becomes man’s best friend?

To buy or read for free with your Kindle Unlimited subscription, click below:

I must apologise to my fellow Malaysians because it's not available here. I've written to Amazon and below is the unfortunate reply:

Hello, 

I understand that you are unable to buy your book in Malaysia. 

Kindles and Kindle content that is published through KDP are currently unavailable in Malaysia. 

We value our international customers and hope to make Kindles and related content available in more locations in the future. 

Thanks for your interest.

Bumblebee (2018 Film) Review

Before we start, I’d like to state that I’m a huge fan of the original first generation Transformers cartoon (people seem to use the word “cartoon” less and less these days, preferring to call them animation). All the subsequent ones never quite found a place in my heart.

Looking at the big picture, Bumblebee pretty much recycles the same plot materials from the Michael Bay Transformers movie series, especially the first one - ugly, complicated robots in disguise, Decepticons aiming to destroy earth, foolish and gullible humans, humourous clumsy robots, mindless slugfest, etc.

Thankfully all these had been toned down and refined. There is also a much better actress than the Sam Witwicky-plus-hot chic combo. Surprisingly, these actually made the movie work for me.

The whole movie is much more watchable this time around with much, much lesser Michael Bay’s Transformers. In fact, the focus is on just three robots (Bumblebee and two Decepticons Shatter and Dropkick - never heard of these two until now) most of the time. It’s unfortunate Michael Bay’s ugly, overly complicated versions of robots still plague this movie but this is somewhat saved by the simpler Bumblebee and some added colours to the other two Decepticons.


Some scenes in the movie paid homage to the first generation cartoons. These gave me hope that the originals could return someday and helped me forget the current version of Optimus Prime that philosophise too much of the obvious while sounding like a too-good-to-be-true leader. I couldn’t quite remember why I used to love Optimus Prime. I most certainly don’t now because he’s really a boring hero. I suppose this movie worked because he’s not the focus.

I was disappointed that this movie is a very relevant prequel to the first 2007 Michael Bay movie. I had hoped for a complete reboot. I wait with hope and anticipation for what’s next. A message to the filmmakers - as proven in this movie, less is more, simple is better so please do away with the confusing fight scenes and it’s really not necessary to have a very attractive chic running around much ado about nothing.