Back from JB

Was in JB the last the last two days with two old students to eat & relac. They were from my first, yep, my very first batch of students which I'd taught. One's in training to be a teacher and the other is working in the army. It's kinda scary when I come to think about it... yeah, I'm that old. Sniff... My first batch are already working and I know of some who have already gotten married and have kids. It's scary for time has passed. On the flip side, it was great to hang out with them in JB, almost like old times when I was still teaching them.

We stayed at Puteri Pacific hotel, not far from the Causeway itself and either walked or took the taxi around the place. Taxi fares were certainly cheap, ranging from 2 to about 5 singapore dollars. While I don't really like travelling without the meter, I must admit there is beauty in the simplicity of the 'how much to _________' when taking taxis.

I don't know what attracts us Singaporeans to food in Malaysia. Price? Taste? Atmosphere? Yeah, I think food in JB was reasonably cheap. We ate at seafood restaurant, a Hong Kong snack/food restaurant, a roadside hawker centre and a chinese dim sum restaurant. Overall, definitely cheaper than eating in Singapore. Taste-wise? Not bad really. It was kinda oily at times and the drinks were a little too sweet for me, but on the whole, quite good. I enjoyed especially the satay from the hawker centre (only less than 20cents a stick! and the meet was succulent.) and some of the dim sum from the chinese restaurant (the prawns in the siew mai and chee cheong fun were crunchy & sweet - very fresh!). Atmosphere? I think I'm quite spoilt lar. As much as I liked the food, I can't help but wished some of the places were cleaner.

On the first night, we went to catch a movie. My friends decided we ought to catch something different, so we caught a Malaysian movie... CICAK MAN! (Lizard Man). I can't say it was the wisest decision we made... but it was certainly quite an experience.





Pic of the Cicak Man movie advert with my two former students










I think when you have a movie about a Lizard Man, you don't really have much subject matter to work with. It's set in a fictional city, Metrofulus, where the currency is... the 'fulus'. Hairi (super loser & weird clown-type guy) and his friend Danny (handsomer & cooler guy) work in some secret lab where they are testing a virus vaccine on some animals... including... the house lizard! Hairi accidentally releases a cicak which climbs into his coffee cup which he drinks and.... VOILA! He becomes CICAK MAN!

Ah.. but the owner of the company he works for is also the culprit for releasing the virus so that he can earn from the vaccine! Oh no! So now, loser Cicak man and his cool friend has to expose their boss.

What power does cicak man have? He can climb walls, shoot out his tongue to catch insects and people (it's really gross) and he can heal himself! Wow! Super right?

Anyway, there's the requisite love interest who falls in love with the cool friend rather than Hairi (oh the irony!) and at the climatic fight, the cool friend.. DIES to save Cicak Man. Believe me, it's not as dramatic as it sounds.

OK. Let's get to the chase. The movie was bad. So bad that it was actually watchable. I can't help but keep my eyes on the screen just so I could find out if it could get any worse. And yes, it was hilarious. I couldn't believe that people could make a movie like this in this day and age. But oh well, as long as it makes money, I guess people will keep producing such stuff.

Back to my JB trip. Bought some cool stuff there, all related to Death Note! lolz. Have a nice huge Death Note Poster mounted on a board, a whole complete set of Death Note comics for less than 30 singapore dollars and Death Note anime dvd. Very happy!

On the whole, an enjoyable getaway - good food, good entertainment, good accommodations, great company!

Merry Christmas!

A very Merry Christmas to all!

My family has a tradition of celebrating Christmas. We buy presents for each other and usually stay up on Christmas eve to open our presents when the clock strikes midnight.

Got some nice gifts this year:
- The Far Side collection (super heavy! I think I might hurt my back trying to lift up the two mega volumes!)
- Lego Star Wars: Slave I (this one is really hard to find during the year. I think the lego shops brought in more for the Christmas period. Can't wait to start putting it together... probably later today.)
- Xbox game: Gears of War (the graphics on this game are amazing and so far, the gameplay looks pretty good too. Unfortunately, I'm probably gonna try to finish Zelda on the gamecube before starting on this.)
- a BAD BOSS voodoo doll (came in orange colour, my current fave colour. I shall try not to read into what the implications of getting a BAD BOSS voodoo doll means. :P)

Here's wishing all my blog readers a Merry Christmas (& don't forget the reason for the season!)

Death Note 2: The Last Name

I really liked the first movie so I've been looking forward to watching this sequel, especially since the first one ended kinda abruptly. So despite the christmas shopping crowds, I braved the mall at Junction 8 to catch the movie on Sunday afternoon.

Before I say anything else, I admit that I have not read the manga series so I am not comparing this movie with anything other than Part 1.

I think DN2 tries too hard to be clever. While DN1 drew me in with all the plot twists, I found that at times, the twists in DN2 were a little forced and I found myself either getting confused or slightly (I stress 'slightly') bored. With the introduction of the second Kira and other characters, there was less time spent on developing Light further. In fact, I think his only real scene came only at the end. At other times, he just didn't seem as interesting as in Part 1. 'L' was ok but in this sequel, the incessant scenes focussing on his sweet tooth became quite distracting for me.

I guess it was inevitable that in comparison with DN1, the character development was not as interesting. It's probably the freshness factor. Hence, in DN2, they tried to focus a little more on the twists and the cleverness of Light but again, that lost a little excitement since we've already seen it in DN1. It's a bit like that M. Night Shyamalan. After his groundbreaking 'Sixth Sense', he never really wowed the audience anymore coz we kinda came to expect his movies to come with a twist so we aren't really blown away when the twists come. Kinda ironic actually.

However, I will say that as a whole, it was a pretty good movie. If you've watched DN1, you will almost definitely go watch DN2 so my opinions probably won't matter. If you've not watched DN1, I strongly recommend you try to catch the double bill at GV. It might be more interesting when you watch parts 1 & 2 together. This is one DVD set I'll definitely get when it comes out.

Curse of the Golden Flower

I was really looking forward to this epic, especially after the slightly bland Battle of Wits. Boasting stars like Chow Yun Fatt, Gong Li and Jay Chou, together with director Zhang Yimou, my expectations for the movie were quite high. I had read the reviews for the movie in The Straits Times and FIRST magazine. They were quite different. One giving the thumbs down and the other, glowing comments. After watching the movie, I would have to go with the latter - I thought the movie was pretty good.

Zhang Yimou again dazzles with plenty of colour and set-pieces. The golden costumes of the royalty and the glimmering walls of the Imperial palace were breath-taking. No less amazing were the scenes of the imperial palace being decorated for the 'Chung Yang' festival. There weren't many fight scenes but the few they had were done well. I especially liked the one where Chow Yun Fatt sparred with Jay Chou. The director also made it a point to that all the ladies in the movies had their assets bursting through the tips of their dresses. Quite funny actually. Wonder if it was really like this in ancient China.

The actors were definitely in their elements. Chow Yun Fatt was thoroughly believable as the emperor although his spoken mandarin was still just a little off. Gong Li played an excellent empress and I'll admit it was a little distracting at times to see her... assets... bouncing around.. lolz. Then there was Jay Chou. Hmm... Many people complain that he seems to have only one expression when he acts (for eg. in Initial D). In this movie, I don't think he really flexed his facial muscles much more, but he did get involved in some decent fight/battle scenes. Basically, I think he has chosen a role which fits his persona again. For some fun.. keep a look out for his pout during his big battle scene. heh.

SPOILER WARNING (highlight the rest with your mouse if you want to read it)
The story was quite straight forward. Not really a thrill a minute, but I wasn't bored lar. Empress has affair with step-son. Step-son has affair with official's daughter. Empress plots to kill Emperor. Emperor plots to kill empress... lolz.. I think you get the idea. Earlier on, I was kinda fed up with the newspapers for revealing that Jay Chou and Gong Li die at the end. I'm still quite upset coz it really did give away the ending. At the very end, when there was a final tense scene, I already knew the outcome due to the stupid articles.

As an epic movie, I guess COTGF comes close. I still have a soft spot for Heroes cause I think the package was more complete. I think the one scene with Maggie Cheung fighting in the falling leaves almost justified the cost of the ticket! But COTGF is a pretty good movie. I enjoyed it. Catch it if you are in the mood for a Chinese epic.

Night at the Museum

Last night, at the last minute, I decided to go catch Night at the Museum with my brother. Only Cathay cinemas had the movie being screened after 11pm so we made our way to The Cathay at Dhoby Ghaut to catch the 11.30pm show. Was quite lucky coz the I managed to get the last two side-by-side tickets! Unfortunately, it was at the very first row. Luckily, the screen was about 6.5m away from the first row, so it wasn't really that bad. Still bearable.

The movie was quite typically Ben Stiller. He had his usual manic moments and I could actually see some familiar moves from his other movies like Meet the Fockers and Dodgeball. He might be depending too much on his usual roles, a bit like how Jim Carey seemed to act the same in many of his movies. The movie was reasonably funny but certainly not laugh-out-loud hilarious. But it seemed to be quite a crowd pleaser as the cinema quite frequently broke out in laughter. To me, there were some moments which I think escaped most of the crowd - for eg. there was a scene which involved spanking a monkey... Lolz. Get it? Heh. Story? Well, if you have to ask about the story, then you obviously aren't a fan of Ben Stiller movies. There really isn't a decent story.

There were quite a few stars involved in the movie. I knew that Robin Williams and Owen Wilson were in the movie, but I was surprised that they managed to get veterans like Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney to star in the movie. Robin Williams did a decent job, putting in a more controlled performance than usual. Owen Wilson... I never really liked him.. so he was bearable, especially since he was given such a small role. heh.

If you need a laugh or two, NATM should be fine. But don't expect an academy award winner. :-)

Amazing Race Asia

Just watched this week's Amazing Race Asia. This week, they flew from New Zealand to Singapore and then to Bangkok. The Singapore stop was SO LAME! All they had to do was get from airport to Macpherson Road to wash a car at the Caltex station and then find the fountain of wealth at Suntec City and then back to the airport to get a flight to Bangkok. You mean there is nothing else to do in Singapore except to wash a car at Macpherson Road and take a taxi ride to Suntec?!! It's such a pathetic stop. No challenge/excitement whatsoever. I wonder who thought up the road block in Singapore. Should be fired.

Project Superstar - Female Revival Round

Just finished watching the above.

I tell you, I think the four girls should be left underground. It was awful. Although it's tomorrow, I dare say they might as well let in the four guys from tomorrow's revival round rather than any of the girls.

Is it just me or are all the gals in the singing competitions like Singapore Idol and Project Superstar really not as good as the guys?

Wireless Mooching

It's a cute-sounding name for something that can land you in trouble with the law.

Woke up today to the news in the papers that a 17 yr-old had been hauled to court for illegally accessing his neighbour's unsecured wireless network.

I'm not totally sure what's the law, but I find it funny that you can be prosecuted for acessing an unsecured wireless network. If the owner has chosen to make his wirless unsecured, then why is it wrong for someone to have access to his network? It's like... if I use a cheapo wireless microphone in my home to sing karaoke, and my neighbour's radio picks up the transmission, is he liable to be prosecuted? There are tools for a person to make his network secure if he doesn't want others to access it, and I think the onus should be left to the owner to use such tools. Furthermore, given that Singapore is going to become one big wireless hotspot, are we supposed to be worried everytime we connect to a wifi access point in public? Like at a shopping centre food court?

Like I said, I admit I'm not sure what's exactly in the law as the article in the Straits Times just states that what the boy did was illegal and nothing more. It just seems to me that this law is kinda funny.

Christmas Shopping

I did my Christmas shopping today. It was pretty crazy & the weather didn't help much with the continuous rain. Heard it's the highest rainfall Singapore has had in 75 years!

Takashimaya was really crowded. If not for the fact that I needed to do my Christmas shopping, I wouldn't have even dared to venture into Orchard Road. Every year, Christmas shopping is a big headache. Surprisingly, this year wasn't as bad. Armed with a tighter budget coz I'm like out of a job right now, it was a little easier to decide what to get for my family. I'm proud to say that after 6 hours of braving the crowds, payment queues & gift-wrap queues, I have finished my shopping! That's a record!

Lining up to get my gifts wrapped was quite interesting. It's scary when the person in front of you reaches the counter and pours out a whole stack of cheapo toys/gifts to be wrapped. I saw this poor girl struggling with at least 10 of such gifts (a cheapo handphone 'chair' in the shape of a tacky high heel shoe) from the same person who stood there with a really chao-bin (hokkien for smelly-face). Heh, I think the gift wrap might've cost more than those gifts. Actually, it does seem to be an interesting job, something which I won't mind doing actually. It can be pretty challenging to have to wrap all the weird shaped gifts. One person was trying to get her golf club bag wrapped!

Heh... my first published letter! Hey.. I know it's not about some deep environmental issue, cyclist safety, or educational debate.. but it's still a published letter!

I've done my service to movie fans in Singapore!

Eragon

I went to catch the premiere of Eragon at GV Max on Monday. Brother had an extra ticket coz his wife didn't go.

I was kinda excited at going for a premiere but in the end, it wasn't such a big deal. Heh. It's kinda sad coz I always think that the experience of movie going can be so much more special. When we arrived, there were some TV interviews being done with some celebs and people dressed up cheesily as characters from the movie. Entering the cinema, we found the goodie bags placed at every seat... they weren't even personally given out. After waiting for 25mins (which is the usual delay in most GV cinemas anyway) the movie finally started. This being a Starhub premiere, the adverts started with the Starhub advert. I was thinking that it would be really funny if someone forgot and included a Singtel or M1 advert, especially the new one from Singtel which shows this red slim guy fighting with a green fat guy in a video game.

The movie was a bit of a letdown. I know it was written by a 16-year old, but I don't think that's any excuse for the movie to feel like it was written by one. (SPOILER WARNING! SKIP TO THE NEXT PARA IF YOU WANT TO AVOID IT) One thing which I hated was the lack of sense of timing throughout the film. For example, Eragon and his mentor, Brom, were supposed to travel 5-days on horseback towards some place when suddenly Eragon decided to go back in the opposite direction. So, he gets on his dragon and flies back in no time and the funny thing was Brom, who travelled by horseback, suddenly appeared as well! I mean, how could the horse travel as fast as a flying dragon?

The next thing I didn't like was the dragon's voice. The dragon is apparently a female and it was voiced by Rachel Weiz. Throughout the movie, it just didn't feel right. I think I've been spoilt by the movies where the dragons have this deep booming voice, my all-time favourite being Sean Connery in Dragonheart. So, to watch this dragon speak with a sexy female voice was kinda... wrong.

Eragon was supposed to be the Lord of the Rings for this year. It's quite far from that. The director & cinematographer just couldn't give us a sense of scale and awe throughout the movie. So, it's certainly not epic movie.

On the whole, it was an average movie. I'm sure it'll sell plenty of tickets anyway coz it's the big movie of the season, but I'd recommend that you go with little expectations so that you won't be disappointed.

Project Superstar

I'm a Project Superstar fan. It's much better than Singapore Idol, both in terms of the contestants as well as the judges. I've been following the current season since I got back from the States and I just wanted to say that the girls in the competition are really lagging in standards when compared to the guys. As I'm blogging, I'm watching this week's girls' competition and I have to say it's quite painful to hear the girls' solos. Actually Diya and Carrie sounded great in their duet but their solos were very disappointing. Looks like it might be a battle among the guys in the finals again.

Heh heh.. as usual.. back from overseas vacation and my blog posts start to lag. I think it's just the laziness of being at home.

Oh well, I spent the week catching up on all the movies I'd missed while I was away in the US. So, that pretty much means almost a movie each day. heh. Let's see... I've caught Happy Feet (Sat), Battle of Wits (Sun), Casino Royale (Mon), Flushed Away (Tue), Tenancious D (Wed), Deja Vu (Fri), Flag of Our Fathers (Sat). I didn't watch anything on Thursday coz I went out and got myself a toy! Yeah! When I woke up on Thursday, I flipped open the papers and saw an advert from Toys R Us and they had the TMX Elmo on sale!!! In case you don't know, the TMX Elmo is this toy that's totally sold out in the US and it's basically an Elmo which laughs and is able to roll around the floor then return to its original standing position. Sounds silly, I know, but if you haven't seen it, you should just search out TMX Elmo in Youtube and see some of the videos. It's HILARIOUS. Well, it wasn't cheap but let's not talk about money... I think it's a wonderful toy and that's that.

OK, my usual quick movie reviews. Actually, I dunno who reads them. Haha, dun even know why I review them. Nevermind lar, nothing better to do with my life right now anywaez.

Flushed Away - Animation was ok. Humour was very british. I don't really like british comedy and to be honest, I wasn't really very wowed by the movie. Found it a little boring at some parts. But the slugs definitely stole the show. I think my biggest laughs came from all the slug scenes.

Tenacious D - This is typical Jack Black. The movie is full of songs with the F-word. It's amazing how many times/ways Jack can use the F-word in this songs. Humour was typically crude... especially how he switches off a security system... I won't describe it any further. Honestly, I think only Jack Black fans will like this movie. I don't mind him so I found the movie passable. But the cinema had like only less than 10 people I think. What to do? With a name like 'Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny', I don't think it's gonna appeal to many Singaporeans.

Deja Vu - This is one of those murder mysteries mixed with time travel. I thought the movie was watchable, but as usual, once you include time travel, there are plot holes which you have to just ignore. Denzel Washington is in his usual element and does a decent job. The movie managed to keep my attention so the director did a decent job. Just enough explosions and killings and car chases. Watch it if you have nothing else to watch.

Flag of Our Fathers - Frankly, I didn't know what to expect when I went for this movie. Singapore reviewers were pretty harsh on the movie but US reviews were generally good. Not surprising since this is one of those patriotic-american-type movies. Funny thing is, it's kinda like a war movie, but to me, it was really about how the americans twist and modify reality to suit their needs. The movie is about the famous pic of american soldiers raising the american flag during world war II and how the soldiers involved were 'forced' to market themselves in order for the US government to get more money for the war. Yes, it's a pretty heavy movie and a few parts were kinda slow-moving. Don't really think many people will like this movie unless you're a war movie buff or you want to see how people can modify truths to suit their needs.

Tomorrow night, I got an invitation to watch the Premiere of Eragon! Quite excited.

And oh yeah, I think the new National Museum looks pretty good. I'll certainly try to make some time to visit it some time this week.

Casino Royale & Battle of Wits

Went to see a doctor today for my eye. He said it was ok, the bleeding is not within the eye and should clear up within a week or two. Whatever it is... it's gross and the red is like spreading around the iris. Scary.

Went to Vivocity to catch Casino Royale. But before that, I decided to grab a burger at Carl's Junior. This is my first time at a Carl's Junior in Singapore. It's probably gonna be my last time for a long while. I was almost floored when I saw the prices! Basically, burgers went for around 7 to 8 bucks and combo meals were around 10 dollars! That's like twice of what other fast food places charged. Funny thing is, in the US, Carl's Junior isn't even a big chain and they don't look very popular. Here, it's like a gourmet burger. Well, I ordered a bacon and chicken burger which set me back by about $8. Verdict? It's big... taste pretty good... but I don't think it's worth $8. For that price, I'd rather sit down at a restaurant like Swensen's and eat their burger.

Casino Royale is certainly one of the better 007 movies in recent years. Pierce Brosnan was quite good but this Daniel Craig does play the role of a rookie 007 very well. At first I thought the story was a little sucky but luckily it wasn't at the end yet and the ending was more satisfying. A "highly recommended watch" from me.

Yesterday, i caught Battle of Wits. It stars Andy Lau as a strategist who tries to help a state from being invaded. It was billed as 'how a chinese epic movie' should be. Frankly, I don't think so lor. The story was fairly coherent and the battle scenes were executed well, but somehow, for me, it doesn't go into the 'epic movie' zone. In the end, the movie just felt above average. If you asked me, I think the most epic chinese movie for me has to be HERO and the next most enjoyable movie is FENG YUN. I didn't really think Crouching Tiger was that good either.

After Casino, went to get my hair cut and re-dyed coz the black hair was growing out from under the dyed layer. I don't really like what the stylist did. Right now, my hair looks even darker and blacker and the cut just feels wrong. Sigh. I always have this strange sense of fear when I sit in a barber's chair. You never know how it is gonna turn out coz you're pretty much at the mercy of the barber. It's worse when you wear glasses and have to remove them so you can't see what's going on through the cutting process. Oh well.. guess I'm looking for a job now so it doesn't hurt to get my hair into a more work-ready black.

Dunno what happened, but my eye has turned all bloody inside. Noticed it yesterday after I woke up. I think maybe some blood vessel broke due to the strain of the 30 hours trip back. No pain, but it's kinda scary looking. Will prob see a doctor tomorrow to get it checked out just to be safe.

Home

Yep, I'm back in Singapore. Haven't been blogging since Houston coz I've been really busy shopping! Thanksgiving sales in the US are really quite fantastic. The shops open at midnight for the people to grab the items at really special prices. My friend bought a 1Gb SD card for only US$3 (which works out to be a little less than S$5)!!! I didn't dare to go for any of the sales on 24 Nov but I still managed to get some good offers a couple of days later. After Houston, I made my way to San Francisco and then San Jose where I basically spent the few days I had shopping like there was not tomorrow. So now, I've stocked up on my new Big Dog shirts, got some nice shoes (at size 15!!), bought my 2007 calendars and bought plenty of DVDs. I even bought some branded polo ralph lauren shirts! haha.. my first 'branded' shirts. My only regret? No PS3 or Wii. I tried lor. I even queued outside the Sony Store in San Francisco for over an hour but gave up when I realized they only at 20gb models left. I only wanted the 60gb models. Wii was also totally unavailable everywhere. On my last day in the states, hopes were briefly raised when I saw a short queue outside a Gamestop shop. But after waiting for about 30mins, the store clerk came and told us they weren't getting any new stock. Bummer.

Flight back was uneventful but quite long. It was 10 hours from San Francisco to Amsterdam, then I had a 10 hour stopover before my 11-hour flight from Amsterdam to Singapore. I'm not good at sleeping on the plane, so all in all, I think I slept for about 5 hours out of the 31 hours of travelling. Quite shacked.

I spent today going out and doing stuff to keep myself awake. Went to Sitex at Singapore exp... it was not very good, didn't even have a Sony booth or Canon booth. Then I popped by the game shop in Tampines and City Hall before going to Great World to catch Happy Feet. I didn't have very high expectations for the movie but I found it quite good. The animation was quite well done and I think the story was good too. Add to it the singing and dancing, I think it's one of the better animated movies this year.

It's 10.40pm now and I'm yawning like mad. Better hit the sack. Jet lag sucks.