Thursday, December 28, 2006

Three french hens

Yesterday morning I went over to Darryl's place with some other friends (Hope, Wee Ming, Jiabin, David) for a mini celebration coz it was Darryl's birthday. Brought a cake along, and of course his present (a Chinese sword, the kind wushu people use to practise with, so it's actually pretty wieldable and cool). WM brought along some banana muffins that his maid made, so once we settled down in Darryl's room we just started munching on the muffins and drinking Yakult haha. And even though we had the mahjong table opened up we never really got around to playing mahjong and just sat around talking and laughing at random stuff. I can't even remember what we were talking about except it was really quite random. And we were playing with a toy Magneto. Erm. Oh yeah we watched Darryl try to play some Naruto game except it was all in Japanese and we couldn't make sense of it (my Jap is just not good enough lol). Then we watched Bleach and explained the story to the people who don't watch Bleach (and the anime also taught everyone a new word, "Teme", which everyone thought was "Teh Ming" when they first heard it, how amusing). It was loads of random fun and of course we finally got around to getting the cake out of Darryl's fridge (much to Darryl's disbelief that a cake had "magically" appeared in his fridge, but of course we had put it there when we arrived, without his knowledge) and doing the customary birthday song bilingually, and munching on the yummy tiramisu cake. Haha hope you had a great day, Darryl.

I keep getting reminded of how lousy I am at narrating the events of my day. Meh.

After leaving Darryl's place Hope and I went to Orchard to meet our surgery elective (last May) groupmate Shimin for lunch at Manhattan Fish Market. It was a great lunch, with yummy Fish and Chips (I definitely think MFM is better in terms of value-for-money than Fish & Co) and of course very enjoyable conversation, with Shimin telling us many stories of her trip to Korea and laughing at some of the funny things. Of course gossip is indispensable, but I'm not going to say who we were gossiping about haha. I'm glad that Hope suddenly decided to arrange this lunch (because he was bored, haha) and give us a chance to get together. It was fun getting together like it was back in surgery elective, albeit without the two of us guys grossing Shimin out by talking about yucky stuff during lunch haha.

Following lunch the three of us strolled around Plaza Singapura, Shimin looking for (and eventually finding) this scrapbook store (called Made with Love, if I remember correctly) which had lots of fascinating materials for making scrapbooks. I was quite amazed by the amazing variety of patterned paper they have at the store - now if they sell wallpaper with those patterns I am so going to wallpaper my room with them. There were also other interesting things to look at, like distressing inks, various kits, stickers, and cute thingamabobs. Mostly we were commenting on how expensive the things are - a cute Elmo sticker set (the Elmo has fur!) costs $12.50, etc. After leaving the scrapbook shop we stopped by this strange gift shop because we were fascinated by some of the more - ahem, interesting - things inside, and got immensely tickled reading this card about the ways in which bananas are better than men. You really need to be there to read it.

Pictures of the above events can be seen on Hope's new blog, here's a spot of publicity for him heh.

We left Plaza Sing and headed towards Centrepoint, and talked about other people (i.e. gossiped) all the way as we walked. We parted at Centrepoint as Shimin went in to shop, while Hope was going to gym and I went to Cineleisure to catch a movie. I watched Curse of the Golden Flower, and the moment I got settled in my seat the movie started at 4.30 sharp, so darn I missed all the trailers. They really start movies on time nowadays, huh.

<< Spoiler alert, don't read further if you haven't watched Curse of the Golden Flower and intend to do so >>

Curse of the Golden Flower was a so-so movie (probably 3 or 3.5 stars), I thought The Banquet was a little better. I thought the plot was spoilt by the pacing - it was jerky and really boring at the start, then getting a little bit more exciting, then dragging again. By the time the ending came (and it wasn't a particularly climactic one) I felt like my patience was getting a little stretched. The thing I love about these ancient China movies (which The Banquet had loads of and thus I loved it) is their conversation, how the characters converse in delightful archaic Mandarin, proverbs flying every which way, and the way their speech cleverly conceal daggers, which gives even a simple scene of characters conversing a thrilling undercurrent which eventually breaks through the calm surface. Curse didn't have much of it, in fact I felt the conversation bordered on the mundane many times, with no depth. Possibly the best scene was in the inn where the physician guy and his family had stopped for the night and the wife finds her daughter sleeping with the Crown Prince, who is acually her son (love the agony of finding out your children are having an incestuous relationship unknowingly) - the emotional tension was quite palpable, and pretty well done.

I can't say much about the acting since I'm not a good critic of acting skills. Chow Yun Fat was pretty much the best actor in the movie, in my opinion, but I just felt that his overbearing paternalism didn't come out quite as well as it should have, he just didn't have that sinister feel until the ending where he one son and basically forced the other to his death. I really think I've been spoilt by that guy in The Banquet (can't remember his name, but the emperor guy) who was so outwardly cold and yet radiated this aura of evil-ness, he really did it very well. But I guess they're two different characters and I shouldn't expect the same kind of feeling from them. It was kind of weird watching Jay Zhou in the movie.. it's like I'm so used to seeing him singing that my mind just reels away from accepting the concept of him acting. People in the audience keep sniggering every time they see him make a facial expression, and I guess I can't fault them for it, it's pretty darn funny. He just doesn't look right in period costume.

All in all, like I said, an okay movie. The story is actually based on Cao Yu's Thunderstorm (a play) which I read for a Chinese book report in secondary school, and which I loved very much, so I still prefer Thunderstorm. In the end, everyone dies anyway, so what matters is the buildup to the final climax where all long-held pretenses dissolve and unravels into chaos. Haha. Maybe I'm being a little overcritical of the movie.

<< End of spoilers >>

Throughout the day I had heard complaints that the Internet didn't seem to be working, but I was away from home and so wasn't really bothered by it. Turns out it's some earthquake in Taiwan that disrupted undersea cables, which everyone knows by now. It's quite annoying to realise you can't use MSN, and it startled me into realising dependent I can feel on the silly program, which is quite stupid really. I finally managed to log in to MSN about 10 pm yesterday, and over the hours I could see how the connection was improving and sites were loading faster, as apparently the ISPs route internet traffic around the break to other cables. My Azureus is also working now, so I'm relieved, because I was aghast by the prospect of not being able to download anime for 3 weeks. Haha.

Avaris / 12/28/2006 03:01:00 PM

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