Ah so sad. Response a little weak for this survey.
Any ideas on how to get better response for future surveys?

Alan Chong’s All About Penang Food (http://allaboutpenangfood.blogspot.com)
Criz Lai’s Criz Bon Appetite (http://www.crizfood.com/)
Nel’s BeArY InFoRmAtIvE (http://bearyinformative.blogspot.com/)

So what are you waiting for? Click on the link below and VOTE for your favourite FoodieFebruary PenangBlogger!

CLICK TO VOTE
Voting closes 1 Feb, 00:00

<div align=center><script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.feevy.com/code/18765″></script><a href=”http://penangbloggers.wordpress.com”>A PenangBloggers blogger</a></div>

This is the HTML for the PenangBloggers widget. So far we know it works on Blogger. But we don’t know about other systems, especially WordPress.com which is quite famous for its rejecting HTML.

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What we do here is post updates of PenangBloggers blogs automatically using RSS Grafitti.

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Of course the wall is also open for discussions and such, but with limits. (see http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=157593364258831&topic=218)

Hope to see you on the Facebook Group soon!

Philip

Venue: Young Heart Restaurant (http://www.youngheart.com.my)
Cantonment Road, Pulau Tikus
Penang, Malaysia
Time: Saturday 23-10-2010 3pm- 6pm

The cost per head is RM15 for the food and drinks. Please confirm by the 21th of October (21/10/2010).
Facebook event link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=141112079268071

To those that are free on that day, we hope that you will come ^^!

From a survey that was conducted (either recently or a few years ago, I can’t really remember), the amount of books an average Malaysian reads is 2 per YEAR. Yes TEAR, not MONTHS nor WEEKS. A very shocking figure! Here are some more startling book statistics which might raise eyebrows. More people in the old times read books compared to the now modern era of our time. Some people blame it on the television, and later on, some on the Internet, which you must admit it is partially true for most of the teenagers nowadays. Personally I find books a good source of information and knowledge, I improved my English by reading fiction and nonfiction alike.

For all those bookworms out there, I have great news to share with you all! A writer from Singapore will be coming HERE to Penang to share her experience on writing and being a writer!

Who is the writer?

Joan Hon of course! She is a 67 year old Singaporean who has ties with Penang and has written both fiction and non-fiction, with her most popular fiction being “Star Sapphire”, a sci-fi novel about a headstrong girl called Yva Yolan on her adventures in space. Her science-fiction romance Star Sapphire won a High Commendation Award from the Book Development Council of Singapore in 1986, the same year when she was also awarded a Commendation prize for her better-known book Relatively Speaking on her family and childhood memories.

Pictures of the books:

Star Sapphire (under the pseudonym, Han May)

Relatively Speaking (Joan Hon)

What will the event offer me?
Joan will be sharing with us her experience on writing and being a writer. She will also share snippets of her writer’s life and how a physics teacher like her ended up being a sci-fi writer!

Below are some areas that she will be talking about:

• I would tell my “accidental author” story how I came to be writing books.
• Account of how each of my books came to be written.
• How I seem to have three identities: Joan Hon writes non-fiction, Joan Fong writes Physics, Han May writes fiction.
• Giving talks to sell my books in schools and libraries, book signings in bookshops.
• My attempts at printing my own books. Setting up Hope Publishers.
• Difficulties of publicizing and the options nowadays. POD publishing.

This sounds interesting. Where will be the event be held?
Precious Ones Collections
Title: A Writer’s Journey by Joan Hon
Date: 12 October (Tues)
Time: 2.30pm
Venue: 1st Floor, 56, Lorong Selamat, Penang
[Open to public, men and women alike]
Map to the venue – Click me!

PS: Due to limited space, please reserve a seat for yourself if you are interested in attending and meeting the writer herself in person. Email (info@womenbizsense.com) to reserve a seat at this talk.

A bit more on Joan Hon

A 1986 article by The Straits Times on Joan Hon’s two books that won her two awards.

A more recent interview that was conducted by The Star: Read all about it here!

Joan Hon is the daughter of the former Finance Minister of S’pore (her father, the late Hon Sui Sen, was actually from Balik Pulau). She wrote a book “Relatively Speaking” chronicling her father’s growing up years in Balik Pulau and later his position as the Finance Minister of Singapore. Among the anecdotes were about her father’s attempt to learn Mandarin together with Lee Kuan Yew, and how they shared tapes and monitored each other’s progress!

Her late father was often regarded as one of Southeast Asia’s most successful economic planners besides being one with the most integrity! A British official, upon meeting Joan’s mother, says, “Pleased to meet you. I hear your husband is the most honest man in the [Singapore] civil service”. This remark, says Joan, was to her the highest accolade and the most meaningful among all her father’s achievements.

BONUS!
For those interested in getting her books that are autographed by her, you’re in luck! There’s a 10% discount for all books that are autographed by her!
Source: YourPenang

Various bits of information were taken from MayaKirana and AliceTeh I hope you guys/girls don’t mind!

A few snippets from the e-mail Jo Lau send me (Thank you!):
She feels that the Penang public can benefit from this book talk as she will be touching on topics such as “Print-on-demand”. The whole idea is to write a book first, collect the money second, THEN print and lastly deliver the book(s) to your customers. There is no storage cost or book shelf rental for display and that is fantastic!

Jo Lau has also invited members from St. Nicholas Home for the Blind and they have expressed interest because writing a book could help them become financially independent! It would be great for them!

All the pictures in this post was provided by Jo Lau, thank you very much!

I highly recommend enthusiastic readers and writers to come and join us during this event because it’s a VERY rare chance to have indeed for us all. It is pretty rare for writers to come to Penang after all!

The bloggers that I met during these 2 days (I did not turn up for the events that were held on the 1st day (sadly) due to some problems that I was facing) were fun, energetic and are pretty active in the blogging sphere. Bloggers from all over the world came here, we even had USA bloggers who attended the event! We, the local Penangites were there as well as many other bloggers that came from other parts of Malaysia. The foreign visitors include bloggers from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, USA, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India as well as the Philippines.

Thanks to Criz for pointing out that I missed Indonesia ^^” Sorry to our fellow Indonesian bloggers!

The local Chinese bloggers awards were also held on the 2nd day. It was hosted by MyBloggerCon.

Various coverages from the bloggers that attended the event:
Blog posts from various countries
Blogfest Asia 2010 @ Penang – Day 1: Heritage Tour by Silver Ang (An actress from Singapore!)

Blog posts from Malaysia
Photos of 2010 BlogFest.Asia welcome dinner @ QE II, Penang, Malaysia by Sam
Blogfest Asia 2010 ＠ QE2, Penang – Welcome Dinner by Valyn (Malaysia)
I Wuz In Penang for BlogFest Asia by Zach (Malaysia)
Blog Fest Asia 2010 by Alan Chong (Malaysia)
Journey of BlogFest.Asia 2010 by Lady Cooper (Exabytes Malaysia)
With Internet, now everyone can be a journalist… by Alexandre
BlogFest Asia 2010 by TSNRA
BlogFest.Asia in Penang – Day Two. by Saph (Penang)
MILNIV.VIN’s posts on the various workshops/seminars that were held
<a href="http://blog.johnshenlee.com/2010/10/02/blogfest-asia-2010-day-1-02-october-2010" BlogFest.Asia 2010 – Day 2 (02 October 2010) by JohnShen Lee
<a href="http://blog.johnshenlee.com/2010/10/03/blogfest-asia-2010-day-3-last-day/" BlogFest.Asia 2010 – Day 3 (Last Day) by JohnShen Lee

As for the Lets Blog Penang! blogging contest that was held by the Ministry of Tourism Malaysia, the winners of the contest were:
1st Prize: [Cambodia] Keo Kounila – Asia’s ‘European’ State
2nd Prize: [Taiwan] Tzu Che – Pearl of the Orient, City of the Pirates – My Penang Story
3rd Prize: [Penang] John Khor – Rediscovering Penang with BlogFest.Asia 2010!

Congratulations to all! You may click on the links to read their entries.

Will be updating this post when I get more information on the details ^_^!

Meanwhile for those Penang bloggers that have ‘accidentally’ stumbled into this site, please do join us!

Check out BlogFest Asia’s official link here to know more about what exactly is BlogFest Asia.

A blogging contest will be held after the 2 days full event, specially organized by Tourism Malaysia under the Ministry of Malaysia. It is open to all bloggers that registered and attended the 2nd BlogFest.Asia at Penang.
Prizes:
1st Prize : RM 1,500
2nd Prize : RM 1,000
3rd Prize : RM 500

Looks tempting doesn’t it?
For more details, click here to find out!

3 workshops will be held there as well, pretty interesting list I must say. Oh and here’s the list for the speakers of the event itself! Pretty awesome !

Did anyone joined? If so lets meet up !

It’s not just a competition that he will be winning for only himself, it’s one whereby the country will benefit from it as well.

A little bit about YourBigYear:
Your Big Year is a competition to encourage global citizenship and social responsibility through entrepreneurship. It is an exciting and official event of Global Entrepreneurship Week and you should be part of it.

Enterprising individuals compete for the prize of a 12-month, expenses paid trip around the world, by raising money and the profile of a group of short-listed charities, and engaging in the ‘windows of opportunity’ monthly challenges.

Winners will be given the opportunity to meet world leaders, celebrities and inspirational entrepreneurs. They will be given the tools and support to create their own international profile in the global media.

- taken directly from their site, YourBigYear

Well how exactly can we help him? By voting for his video on YourBigYear’s Facebook page !

In just 3 simple steps -

1) Go to www.facebook.com/yourbigyear — ‘Like’ the Group

2) From the Group — Go to its Wall and Scroll Down to look for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by Michael Teoh Su Lin OR click HERE for the video’s link and like it!

3) Just click ‘Like’ on it — You have casted your Vote for Malaysia in the Global Standing!

Our aim here is to get as many votes as possible, so if it’s possible, please do share this along with your friends!

A little bit more on Michael Teoh, he has been on the press before, and quite a lot of times by the looks of it! You can check the articles on him here at his Facebook profile’s album.

You can check out his speech at One Young World, London which was selected to present in front of 1,000 young leaders from 100 countries. His insights were then broadcast through CNN on ‘Quest means Business’, Reuters and BBC World News.

Check out more stuff on Michael Teoh here: Winning the elections of youths: Michael Teoh leads Malaysia to One Young World and Cultivating Young Entrepreneurs

Cheers people, please do help spread the message out !