Saturday, October 30, 2004

What the?!

I was so amused by this scene I saw on TV just now.

Anyone knows the name of the master of the Ninja Turtles? The mutant giant rat? Anyway, here's what happened:

Rat jumps about all over the place.

4 turtles watch with concentration.

Rat breaks bricks which were stacked up highly a la gongfu master.

Upon finishing, Rat walks to the side to pick up his walking stick.

I was like: !!!

What?! If anyone can jump about with such agility, why the hell does he need a walking stick?

Anyway, I don't like the way the cartoon is drawn now. It's so adult now. What happened to the one I used to watch when I was young?
fjozn at 11:05 AM

Friday, October 29, 2004

Rantings

From #band:

jA5oN> is tis year syf set piece singapura rhapsody ??
TakyPok> shld be
fAwN'fAwN> how your noe de
jA5oN> instructor say 1
* tear'sob_ is now known as pink'star
Lillix> its always some singapura dumbass song
jA5oN> [-Ya-] lar...
Lillix> hahahaha
Lillix> boring stuff
fAwN'fAwN> haa...they want us to be patriotic ma

Great. The Singapore Youth Festival is going to start all over again. The great biennial bitching season.

Why is there the need for the SYF? I seriously think it should be abolished. I was never really a keen supporter of the SYF anyway!

What's the point of spending half a year preparing a song that lasts not more than 10 minutes? Some would know all the notes in their piece to mechanical precision. Some memorise every single note in the score to the extent that I almost believe that they can play it from back to front. Is that still making music?

Up to this day, I still don't understand why certain conductors want to keep their choice piece a secret to the day of the competition, I'm sorry, I mean adjudication.

See? Most people, including me, see it as a competition, not adjudication. This is probably where all the trouble comes in. Wait, this is what's wrong with Singapore. Competition, competition and more competition. No wonder all the kids are getting more and more stressed out.

We have ranking for schools, and similarly, we have rankings for their bands. Is it really necessary to have ranking for that? Thankfully, the Ministry of Education is changing to the ranking system to a somewhat more subtle method of ranking.

The vicious cycle of bitching goes on forever and ever in #band.

Stage 1
As per above example.
Bitching of how horrible the set piece is and why the setting is local folksongs in recent years. I wonder if the English ever complain about Folksong Suite being boring?

Stage 2
The great hide and seek session.
The whole world would be comparing to see which bands are playing the same pieces and so on. There would be great vivid discussion online which half the time ends up in quarrelling/bitching session. And there's always the conductor who would want his kids to protect the identity of the choice piece that would put the FBI's witness protection programme to shame. Why? Beats me. Why don't they all just retreat to the mountains and practice for a few months? In that way, no one would know what they are playing except for the monkeys. Like they can understand it anyway.

Stage 3
Actual day
One can go to the competition hall and witness the numerous spiders jumping about nervously. At the same time, you see anxious people waiting for the results. You can almost imagine this scenario:

Person walking up: It's a boy! Oops! I mean, Silver.

Person waiting bursts into tears.

Stage 4
The aftermath
This is where all the serious bitching kicks in. Just go to #band during SYF season and you will know what I mean. Examples of typical comments.

XXXXX School don't deserve their gold!

ZZZZZ School played such a weird piece, of course the judges don't know the piece and give them gold lah.

And the one which irks me the most!

Wah lao! The judges cannot make it lah! Not qualified loh.

Excuse me! You're only a kid. What do you know about music? Perhaps I'm wrong if you are a child prodigy. But wait, if you're a child prodigy, what are you doing here? You should be studying at Julliard, Havard or *inserts appropriate college's name*!

Well, in a way, the local band scene would never take off in its current state. How many conductors actually know their stuff well? I'm glad to see there are a rising number of young aspiring conductors who actually conducts well. Let's hope this continues.

As for those who really cannot make it (like a certain individual whom I slammed some time ago), can we arrest all of them and exile them?

Why are some conductors so idolized? I seriously don't understand why. Take this very popular female conductor for example, she almost seems to have a fan club who turns up at every of her concerts. Is she very good? I don't think so.

While she's really quite a nice person, I just don't like her conducting, being under her before. It's just not good even though she has quite a few gold bands to her acclaim, including the "top" band of Singapore. Oops! Did I just give myself away?! Oh well, maybe it's her choice of music?

Oh my, I just went on and on! What's wrong with me?

Time to stop! Next time!
fjozn at 11:33 PM

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

22

Time to blog!

As most of you probably realize by now, yesterday was my birthday!

I think I received a record number of birthday wishes this year. I woke up to a pleasant surprise last morning. I had 9 messages! This might not seems a lot of most of you but perhaps it's the most in recent years.

Why? My birthday falls in the exam period and most people were busy mugging in the past. At least I have colleagues now who remember.

And yes, I spent my birthday at work and later at home. Boring? It was actually fine with me. Maybe I'm a bit used to spending birthdays on my own? Haha.

To all of you who took the effort to leave me a message, be it here, e-mail or SMS, thank you!
fjozn at 10:09 PM

Thursday, October 21, 2004

2046 revisited

A writer arrives in Singapore for starting a new life, which is nothing but counting time at dealing tables. His name is Chow Mo-Wan (Leung Chiu-Wai). A mysterious woman, only known as Black Spider, quietly walks into his life and brings back his lost memory, the memory of the time he spent with an married woman named Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung). Black Spider helps the writer to win back his money then he could buy a ticket returning to Hong Kong. She refused to share her past with him, except her name, which is also Su Li-Zhen (Gong Li).

The writer returns to Hong Kong alone and on Christmas Eve, he meet Lu Lu (Lau Kar-ling), another woman from his past, who now has no memory of him. Chow sees a familiar number on the door of Lu Lu's hotel room - 2046. Room 2046 was filled with memory of the days he had with Su Li-Zhen, and is now trashed by Lu Lu's boyfriend CC (Chang Chen).

He moves into Room 2047 to start his life, again as a free-lancer. He met two daughters of the hotel owner (Wang Sum), Wang Jie Wen (Dong Jie) and Wang Jing Wen (Faye Wong). Jing Wen's relationship with her Japanese boyfriend (Kimura Takuya) was not allowed by his father and Jie Wen just started to learn what love was. Then a new tenant, Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi), moved into 2046 and he picks her up in no time. Just when she shows some real feeling, he immediately excludes her from his life.

He starts writing a new story, titled 2046, for Jing Wen and her boyfriend. In the story, a train departs for 2046 once in a while and people boarded the train would find back their lost memories. No one wanted to leave 2046, except Tak (Kimura Takuya). He falls in love with a senseless robot (Wong Faye), who offered him great joy along the ride. But each time Tak asks her to go with him, the answer is always silence.

2046 was in development when In The Mood For Love was still in progress. It was originally thought as a sequel to it, but is really about a story of its own. Wong Kar-Wai struggled for five years to tell us a story, or a collection of stories, about a dissolute and disillusioned writer and fractions of his experience with six women. Wong Kar-Wai takes us through a thrilling ride, drifting between the writer's memory and his fantasized train journey from 2046. Su Li-Zhen of Singapore is nicely portrayed by Gong Li. She is a con of card game, who is always dressed mysteriously in black. The writer discovers something familiar, which reminds him other Su Li-Zhen from his past. He tries to uncover her secret and lure her into his life but fails. Gong Li's role keeps such great distance away from her early films that we would forget she used to work with Zhang Yimou.

Lu Lu, a showgirl lives in her jealousy, is played by Lau Kar-ling, the girlfriend of Leung Chiu-Wai. She is changing love interest so friendly that no memory is left for the writer, one of so many men she has dated. Later on the train, she is a robot, sexy and senseless.

Faye Wong and Kimura Takuya play a couple of lover who could not be together because of the girl's father. The writer starts to deliver letters for them and later recruits her as his assistance. Something between them blooms but her heart still belongs to someone else. Faye Wong is very impressive as playing a girl in love and a gorgeous robot who knows nothing but serving the train riders. Kimura Takuya does a great job as her Japanese boyfriend, desperately to get the girl she love, and the sole passenger on the train, desperately to leave his memory behind. He is, again and again, asking the robot to come with him, even though there is no hope that she would ever answer.

Zhang Ziyi is ranked number five on the cast list, but she is really the star of 2046, only next to Leung Chiu-Wai. Her character, Bai Ling, is a prostitute, though the film has never made it clear. Her time with the writer is sweet but short. They attempt nothing from each other but quietly starts to grow. She is the women he knows the most and is also the one he least wants to have serious relationship with. Zhang Ziyi skillfully shows us the evolution of her character, a performance breaking-through her past. Now I am really convinced she could play any role she wants.

Chang Chen and Dong Jie only shows up for a couple of minutes, either because their roles are too supporting or because their scenes have been cut. Maggie Cheung, the star of In The Mood For Love, only does a cameo her. 2046 is no longer her story.

2046 is like a lavish feast celebrating the finest arts ever created. Christopher Doyle, Lai Yiu-Fai and Kwan Pun-Leung, the mEn behind the camera lenses, are truly masters of colors, lights and layers. They uses mirrors, glasses, door frames and all other tool he can find, to create illusive images, which makes us to believe the writer's mind only exists in a illusion. From the women's dresses and the hotel literally rusting to dust to the futuristic robot suits and the high tech train, Chang Suk-Ping, the art director and costume designer, masterfully created two drastically different worlds being seamlessly blended into one film. Original scores by Peer Raben and Shigeru Umebayashi and unoriginal music from masters of the past also transform the film into a classic collection of operas.

2046 is Wong Kar-Wai's most stylish work ever. We see his mind travels through time and space, freely and randomly, collecting various pieces of his imagination, to depict a journey of a man. In the end, we see the story returns to the exact point where it started more than two hours before. The only difference is the writer has more memories for feeling sad and we just finished riding a cinematic extravaganza. 2046 is not a film suitable for everyone. Stay, if you are looking for an experience and go, if you are looking for a story. 2046 is very 2046 and 2046 is very Wong Kar-Wai.

After words: The version now showing in China, including Hong Kong, runs about 128 minutes, which is 5 minutes longer than the one screened in Cannes last May. Reportedly, after retuning from Cannes Wong Kar-Wai re-edited the film in attempt to make it more understandable.

From MonkeyPeaches

I'm even more -_-" now. There are so details written here that I didn't catch in the show! Is it me or the show?
fjozn at 10:44 AM

Compression fracture

My back condition seems to be becoming worse every time I see my specialist.

I started off with a disorder which caused my leg to stop growing for a few years, hence the 2 cm difference and a crooked spine as a result of that.

Latest update!

I have a compression fracture in one of my vertebrae. Great. Read more about it here.

It seems quite bad, but it probably explains my back aches. Well, at least I know the exact cause now. It seems bad enough that the Medical Officer said that he has to downgrade my PES without me saying anything (FYI, a MO is a military doctor). I think I should be downgraded to something like PES C9 L3, which is like the lowest level of PES eligible to stay in regular service.

On the bright side, I will never have to go chiong swa again in my life. I'll be one of the few male Singaporeans who have never gone through "live" firing and "live" grenades throwing and so on. I'll be promoted soon! If nothing goes wrong, I should be promoted when the next financial year starts in April next year.

Back to my specialist. I'll have to go through this $400++ MRI scan, whatever it is, next year to evaluate the extents of injury of the adjacent discs (the tissue, not the music disc). Argh, money not enough.

When's my $10000000000000000 gonna drop from the sky? (Refer to wishlist on right) I'd prefer it to be a crossed cheque addressed to me; one big sack of money dropping from the sky is potentially killer-litter material.

Oh, here's one mistake the smart Xiaxue made!

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Get Rea!

Get Rea! is tomorrow morning at 830pm on Channel News Asia!

I'm mean. Yeah.
fjozn at 10:30 AM

Sunday, October 17, 2004

2046

I watched 2046 today.

It was -_-"

It's that kind of very abstract, arty-farty show. Took me a while to understand it. While I won't say it's very bad, I won't say it's very good either. I'm sorry but I really don't understand why the hell it took 5 years to finish this film?!?!

BUT! Don't let me stop you from watching it, I still think it's a pretty decent movie. =)
fjozn at 9:35 PM

Back!

Ok! Stop pestering me can? I'm here to update!

I was in camp for quite a few days this week and the nights that I was at home, I got home rather late and went to sleep because I was feeling tired and need to get up really early. I have to get up at 5.45am every morning in order to get to work on time. Someone buy me a car! (Refer to my wish-list for brand and model preferences)

Speaking of wish-lists, Melvyn mentioned that quite a number of people have wish-lists in their blogs and most of them have quite un-realistic wishes. Unfortunately, I'm one of them! Well, as I have already acknowledged in my wish-list, it's indeed quite unrealistic and greedy. It's just a wish anyway, so I don't really expect anything to come dropping from the sky. Anyway, if a Mazda RX8 really does drop from the sky, I would want to be out of the way! I want a car in driving condition, not one in millions of parts.

Nothing interesting happened this week I guess. Let me recall what happened so far. Hmmm?

Monday
Took leave to rest but ended up going to town to meet my friend.

Tuesday
Normal day at work, duty musician. Got my results for my Grade 8 exam. Stayed in camp as have to report for IPPT at 6.45am the next morning.

Wednesday
First SAF Band IPPT. I didn't take part but I was involved as a marshaller. Went to Sue's house later in the afternoon to work on the design for this year's Junior College Band Festival.

Thursday
Normal day at work. Stayed in camp.

Friday
Normal day at work. Went to watch YST's chamber concert at the Victoria Concert Hall. The arrangement for Pictures at an Exhibition was good! Anyway, Thomas Hecht is one of my favourite pianist in Singapore.

Saturday
Duty Barrack Orderly. Stayed in camp.

Sunday
Blogging day!

The highlight of the week was my results! Thanks to an extremely lenient examiner, I have a distinction! Woohoo!

Ok, I'm going out to town now! To my complainers, I'll try to update again soon ok?
fjozn at 11:28 AM

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Afterthoughts

Some afterthoughts after my grandfather's funeral today.

Ironically, I spent the most time alone with him in recent years, burning incense paper by his coffin. The other times were perhaps when I was still a toddler. I really have no idea at all.

On the brighter side, I'm now closer to my younger cousins. Jolene, who used to hide behind her mother every time she saw us, the older cousins, is now a bubbly young little girl who talks a lot! The only difference now is that she clings to her sister instead of her mother. But still, she has grown a lot from the shy little girl I used to know.

Her elder sister, Julie is now in secondary school and is singing in the school choir. Thus, we have a more common point of interest to talk about. I don't seem to have any cousin who plays any instrument. Guess my brother and I are the only ones!

My youngest cousin, Weiqiang is now in Primary 1. He's just so cute can! The other day, I was upstairs in the house when I saw him wake up from his nap. I just causally said: "Oh, wake up never brush your teeth ah?" The next thing I know, he was asking his mother where the toothpaste is because he wanted to brush his teeth. Cute right?

I also got to carry my younger nephew for the first time. So great, I'm an uncle now! A sign that one is getting old. Oh wait! That makes all my little cousins uncles and aunts too! I always think that it's so cute when a supposingly senior generation is younger than the junior one. My dad's uncle, for example, is more than 10 years younger than him! Not everyone gets to carry your uncle as a baby ya? But calling a baby uncle? -_-"

Somehow kids have this amazing ability to make us smile no matter what silly or smart things they do. Why is that so? I had a little debate over MSN over the usage of tian zhen for kids just now with my friends. Tian zhen in Chinese means naive. It can also mean childlike innocence. Yongxiang the jian huo said that kids are by default tian zhen, so you can't use that term on them. What say you?

My little cousins brought smiles to my uncles and aunts during the wake. My grandfather's death wasn't really a sudden one as he was sick for a very long time, so it wasn't exactly a very sad wake.

To digress a bit, he was in and out of hospital so often that all the nurses in the unit knew him. They even called him David Quek. Why? He didn't like it in hospital and on a few occasions somehow managed to disappear from his bed. The first couple of time was all right as he made his way home safely. The nurses had no choice but to tie him up subsequently. It seems that the tying had no effect at all because he still managed to untie himself and "escaped". Hence, they named him David after David Copperfield.

I saw how my uncle smiled while talking to my cousin. Maybe this is why shows like "Kids say the darnest things!" are ever so popular. I have no idea why the Singapore version hosted by Gurmit Singh flopped though! Perhaps we are all seeing too much of him anyway!

I shall post some photos of the little ones here soon!

The new Mandai Crematorium looks very nice. The downside is that it's quite secluded and inaccessible. My cousin commented that the architecture reminds him of the Esplanade to which I quite agree. The architecture was pretty calm and Zen-like. Solemn colours were used, the furnishing were keep to a minimum. Zen-like minimalism.

I don't think it's a place that anyone wants to go to at all but still, I thought it was quite well designed. It's different from Mount Vernon where you have the service hall and cremator in the same space. At Mandai, there's a service hall which reminds you of a church and after which you precede to a separate viewing hall. My dad said that it was a "departure hall" and I couldn't agree more. The downside is, you can only purchase one way ticket for this departure hall.

Reader might be wondering why I noticed all these in the midst of a funeral. I look around at more things to take my mind off things that I prefer not to be thinking of. It's also a habit that I've cultivated since my poly architecture days to look at the architecture of a building the first time I step into it. My lecturer once said this: "One day, you'll be so touched by architecture that you will just step into a magnificent building, be so touched and just kneel down and start crying!"

Perhaps, I think it would be better if I don't achieve this level of appreciation. People won't be surprised to see someone kneeling and crying at a crematorium but at an office building?

I'm glad to see that my grandfather's final resting place is so serene and beautiful. He won't be far from me; my camp is directly besides the columbium. Ok, I take back the serene part. The blasted shooting range is within hearing range. Sigh. Someone write a petition and get it shut down! It irritates me sometimes to hear the non-stop firing while at work. For Reader's info, the shooting range is smack in between the columbium and my working block, otherwise known as the White House.

Thank you all my friends who have sent me messages of condolences. This chapter is closed, time to move on!
fjozn at 10:46 PM

Friday, October 08, 2004

Read this!

To further illustrate my point on my previous post on materialistic girls, please read Huifen's blog. I'm kinda lazy to write out everything I saw on TV here.

Take care all!
fjozn at 1:05 AM

Thursday, October 07, 2004

My grandfather

My maternal grandfather passed away on Tuesday.

He had a long battle with heart problems before finally succumbing to them, leaving behind my grandmother, 9 children (1 deceased), 16 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. He was 79.

He was born in China in 1923 and came to Singapore in search of a better life. Like many of the older generation in Singapore, he lived through the hardships of the Japanese Occupation, the triumph of independence and many other significant events of modern Singapore.

Sad to say, I was never close to him. He spoke Teochew and me, Chinese. The language barrier was inevitable. I always need my parent to help to translate whatever he was saying to me. My elder cousins were the one speaking to him most of the time.

His final resting place would be bright and airy. As my aunt put it, just the way he would have like it.

Rest in peace, gong-gong.
fjozn at 11:48 AM

Sunday, October 03, 2004

New Police Story & Girls

New Police Story
Jackie Chan ought to start acting like someone of his age! I think he visually looks much more aged than all his other show, especially when he has a girlfriend who looks young enough to be his daughter, like in the Medallion and now NPS.

His acting was fine. It's just somewhat strange to see a man of 50 with a woman who looks like she's half his age. And JC doesn't even have the sugar daddy look!

On top of the cradle snatching, I think NPS is quite a nice show. It's a bit on the longer side, clocking in at close to 2 hours. Somehow, I think there's nothing "new" about NPS. The storyline seems quite recycled; even though I think it's the first time you see JC drowning himself in sorrow over his failure and loses.

Rating: 3.5/5

Next up, White Chicks!

***

Is it me or is it that some girls these days are getting more and more materialistic? While outside last night, we ran into a friend of my friend. Her first question to me was: "Do you drive?"

I was flabbergasted even though I didn't show it. The first thing you talk about upon meeting someone is whether or not I drive? Is this the hottest topic now? Does it mean that if you step into a club waving your car key, girls will flock to you like bees to honey?

Another friend of mine once went out with a girl. He borrowed his dad's car and told the girl that he would be picking her up from her house. So, guess the first sentence she said when she stepped out of the lift?

Where's your car?

Isn't that a bit direct?

Let me first save myself by saying this, I'm only questioning why some girls are behaving this way. Of course the vast majority of my female friends don't behave this way (if you are a girl and I know you, you are nice!). It's just that enough people are behaving this way for me to raise this question.

I will also say that this problem might be present in guys too; even I have never really seen a guy doing that. So feminists out there please don't start defacing my site and start hanging pig heads around this blog!

I'm just a poor guy who doesn't drive. =)
fjozn at 11:00 AM

Saturday, October 02, 2004

HTML

I'm feeling stupid.

I spent the whole morning searching the web on how to correct the referrer thing when all it took was to go to the referrer's site and get a new script. That's all I had to do. And to think I spent the entire morning thinking of how to keep the width of the table within constraints! *bangs head on wall*

At least, I learnt a bit more about HTML today, I learnt how tables in a webpage actually works, I learn how u can change the colours of whatever you wish on your page. It was still quite fulfilling and I can create a table from plain HTML now. It might not be something impressive for others, but for a self-confessed computer idiot like me, I should get a prize for that! Anyway, I learnt a few new things that I might try out here in days to come (if I'm free). Someone give me HTML lessons! *bandages head*

I actually quite like the current colour theme although someone did say that it didn't suit me very well. But I don't care! I'm not going to spend so many hours sitting in front of my computer trying to edit templates again! Anyway, a few people do actually like the feel of this them. Soothing, they said. =)

I think I will be sticking to this design for a while unless something goes wrong again!
fjozn at 1:36 PM