I absolutely love YouTube.
I used to be wary of putting up videos online because my file sizes were typically large and I reckoned no one, unless genuinely interested, would ever download them. Heck, even I sometimes lacked the patience to wait for my files to be uploaded. Now this sort of presumption is no longer valid as YouTube makes it easy for me to embed and display video files on my website. Victory is mine!
I've recently taken the opportunity to archive all the videos ever published on MyIndo.com in my YouTube account. To date I have produced 26 clips, scattered in various articles, mostly complementing writeups of memorable concerts that I've attended.
While you can happily stroll down to my YouTube page to view my entire video collection, I'll recap four that are most special to me.
Video #1: Fairy's Fried Oreos
When I wrote "How To Make Fried Oreos" in 2003 for fun, I never imagined the fame and interest it would garner from the media and online community a year later. The viral effect of putting up the article was tremendous - suddenly my website was being referred to by countless blogs and graced with so many frequent visits that my website crashed due to unusually high traffic. I have even received mention on high profiled portals like Fark! and reviewed by credible media like USA Today.
A New York news channel belonging to Time Warner went a step further and actually made a TV review of my fried Oreo oddity! The review appeared on air on a segment called 'On The Net Now' that fateful month of circa September in 2004 - the video you see below is the outcome.
Video #2: Fairy receives thanks from Project Pop
This next clip is one of those surreal moments that I've experienced as a result of running MyIndo.com. It started out with me writing of a review of Project Pop's Dangdut is the Music of My Country video clip in which I gave a non-serious and detailed breakdown of the bizarre musical endeavour by the Bandung band that married dangdut and heavy metal melodies.
Some time after the review was published on MyIndo, I was emailed by the band's manager himself, Handri Sidharta, who was touched and thanked me profusely for the writeup. Soon after, Project Pop made their way to Malaysia for a concert and I was invited to come and meet the wacky group. Needless to say I felt very honored to have met these folks who make up some of Indonesia's brightest and successful performers.
The video below is an embodiment of band member Udjo thanking me in a rather cheeky manner for the piece of writing I did on his band's hit clip.
Video #3: An Indonesian attempts to speak Malay
If you're a language appreciator, you'll like this clip. It depicts Project Pop band member, Odie, trying his hand at speaking colloquial Malaysian Malay! It's one of my favorite videos because it's just comical to witness Odie wriggle his Indonesian tongue to get that Malay accent going. :-)
Video #4: Traditional Music at a Malay Wedding
I only wished I had taken a fuller length of filming of this rare scenario. Thirty seconds of this stuff hardly does it justice. Here we witness a traditional Malay band originating from the North of Malaysia, consisting of 2 drummers, a gong player and a serunai flutist performing at my cousin's wedding in Perlis, shot in 2003. A crude video that's near and dear to my heart as the venue is my father's hometown of Jejawi. The music being played is haunting, alien but somewhat enchanting to the ears.
Well that's it, my four favorite videos from my online collection. I've toyed around with the idea of producing a YouTube style version of Myindo.com, instead of writing on my website. But since I'm more of a writer than an on-screen-crazed person, I'll leave that thought for another day. :)
(Fairy Mahdzan 
- 1 August 2007)
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