By now, a few of you may have realized my slow and steady attempt at making money online. One of the best thing about making money online earnings is that most of them are handled using the US currency, so just a few hundred dollars can translate to more than a thousand Malaysian Ringgit a month for me. Not too shabby for a stay-at-home mom.

I’m currently doing a few things simultaneously to generate my income online, from paid posting to WordPress services, and moving towards affiliate programs and ads revenue as both of these can turn to become passive income once the ball gets rolling. As mentioned in my previous post, things are looking well with my arts and crafts site which are generating income through three programs (CPC programs they call it) — AdSense, Chitika and AdBrite. These three ads work well together, and Chitika and AdBrite are AdSense-friendly.

On the other hand, my affiliate programs (CPA programs I think they call it) aren’t doing well; in fact, they’re not generating any income at all. The three programs that I’ve joined are Clickbank, Commission Junction and Amazon.com. I’m not giving up hope, though. I’m still very fond of CJ and Amazon, but I’m thinking of switching from Clickbank to Clickbooth. I’ve totally forgotten that I’ve signed up for them until I got the newsletter from them recently. The great thing about this program is that they currently have what is called Clickbooth Webinars, a collection of online videos featuring top affiliate marketers on the Net, sharing their success tips to users of Clickbooth. This is more than enough to convince me to switch. Hopefully I’ll have better luck after using the techniques taught in the webinars.

Wow, the paranoid Malaysian Government did it again. After putting in jail without judicial intervention of more than a couple of bloggers, a politician, an activist group, and God knows how many more in the span of just a few months, us Malaysians can now be proud of the fact that we may be the first ever country in this democratic globe to imprison a 6-year old named Vwaishhnnavi Waytha Moorthy.

The reason? For writing a letter to the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Oh yes, she did! You can’t do that, girl!

The letter sent on 23 October 2008 read:
Dear Mr. Prime Minister

On the 27th October 2008 Hindus in Malaysia would be celebrating Deepavali — a festival to mark victory over evil.

This celebration does not mean anything to us so long as my lawyer uncles, uncle RPK and all others are in prison under ISA.

Please release them as Deepavali gift for All Malaysians.

Please visit my house, I will wait for you with flowers, and cakes.

Yours loving daughter
Vwaishhnnavi Waytha Moorthy

I suppose that the government got more than scared after reading the part about inviting the PM to her house, having deciphered the flowers and cakes part as chains and knives.

Say you can tell that I’m being sarcastic about the whole thing, eh? But the part about imprisoning a 6-year old, not funny. I would raise hell if my kids were treated that way.

“Uncle lawyers” = the Hindraf group; “uncle RPK” = Raja Petra Kamarudin, veteran journalist and blogger, owner of alternative Malaysian news, Malaysia Today; “ISA” = Malaysia’s Internal Security Act. Oh, and “flowers, and cakes” = chains, and knives. Update: After being detained on Oct 23, she and her mother were released the next day but they chose to stay in the police station until the 9 others detained with them were released.

I really wanted to blog about the latest Chronicles of Narnia movie, mostly because of my fascination with its actors

I’m particularly impressed with Skandar Keynes, who played Edmund, not just because of playing his more matured character wonderfully, but also after finding out of his ancestry. Among other historical intellectuals, Skandar is a great-great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, father of evolution (hope I added enough “great” there), as well as the great-great-nephew to John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist renowned for his Keynesian theory (I slapped my forehead after reading that bit of info, having taught economics for a few semesters — I should have tied them together).

I have one word for Ben Barnes a.k.a. Prince Caspian — yummy I’ve wondered what his real name was since I first saw him in the movie Stardust as the young Tristan.

In all seriousness, the second movie managed to spark my curiosity about the whole Narnia series, that I might just buy the collector’s edition of the books.

I didn’t realize another X-Files movie is coming out! And I call myself an X-File fan Officially titled “The-X-Files: I Want To Believe”, the trailer mentions a July 25th release… I’m so excited, I can’t wait to watch it!

One of the biggest Malaysian music awards gave us (or at least myself) a wonderful shock with the win by Estranged’s Itu Kamu despite their last night’s technical glitch (missing keyboardist?). I was certainly hoping for the best and expecting the worst with these underdogs, who ended up winning for overall Best Song and Best Song in the Pop/Rock category. Competition was stiff for all categories (Pop/Rock, Ethnic Creative, Ballad), but I believe every one of the winner in each category (even Mawi for Best Performance) deserved it.

The 22nd AJL looked to be doomed with the ban of Faizal Tahir and a no-show by Kaer and Rio Fabrian, but the artistes standing in for them — Fiq, Sahri, Bob and Lah — have done wonderfully. Photo gallery and coverage can be found at Gua.com.my.

I see one aspect that’s pretty obvious with this year’s AJL. The fact that a significant number of its performers — four in the winners’ line-up — were once reality show participants, particularly from Akademi Fantasia, goes to prove that Akademi Fantasia specifically is not just a feckless show trying to rob us of our texting/SMS dollars, but is showing its force as a powerful platform to boost careers of talented wanna-be stars. I hope this positive trend by reality shows can continue to spurn out fantastic artistes and give more chance for new composers and writers to impress us. Let’s continue to support our Malaysian music industry, shall we?