You Wanted To Be Tragically Happy.

Hello almost exactly a month since my last post cause I haven't really got much to say. And because my brother has been hogging the comp, which is a wonder since he's supposed to be in the middle of his prelims. It's quite impressive how much time he spends on the comp instead of hitting the books, although I'm not morally capable of telling him off HAHA. I lost my moral high ground with the advent of DotA. But fret not, airvybody, for I will be leaving the game forevermore very soon, which is not quite as bold a proclamation as if I promise to quit now, but I need a bit more time to get over it!!

Speaking of hitting the books, I just bought Eragon and A Visit From The Goon Squad today. And The Imperfectionists, a Sandman graphic novel, and St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves (or sth like that) all from Littered With Books. I had business in the area so I couldn't help but make visits to that most delightful of bookstores. Although I must add that finding it proved to be tougher than I thought and between my multiple visits to the shop, I must have covered almost the whole Tanjong Pagar by now (since I kept taking different routes.) I also had Keen on Crepes one day, which was quite decent.

I also watched Love In Space today. I wanted and didn't want to watch it actually. I thought I'd watch it online, but the MRT stopped its service at Yishun and since I'd already had to get off the train, I thought I'd watch a movie. Have also watched Easy A, The Kids Are All Right, Four Lions, Beginners, Crazy Stupid Love, Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, Whip It!, Tropic Thunder, Casino, Wu Xia, and probably a few more as well. Pretty decent haul, eh? And I also started watching Monk with my brother (I think we were tired of dota one night), but that traitor went and watched episode 7 and onwards without me. So I guess it's to each his own now!

So my Australia trip went well. I was totally under-budget, spending 900 AUD in total, even after buying a watch for 200 AUD! I guess when you've got friends and relatives everywhere (esp those uncles and aunties and cousins who pay for your meals) money is of no import eh? Anyways my most heartfelt thanks to those who took the time and effort to entertain me and show me places or even to lodge me, be it for half a day or for days on end, all of you were absolutely brilliant.

I'm going to JB tomorrow with my parents and surprisingly (perhaps obscenely) my brother as well. Did I mention he's in the middle of his prelims?! Say what you may about there only being paper 1s left, the very fact you're having prelims means you should be studying your arse off for A levels no? I think we're going for massage and karaoke or sth, I really don't know, but this is the first time I'm traveling with both my parents at the same time in ages! I'll try to be a good boy tmr.

Sometimes inactivity is the greatest wrong of all. Sometimes all we can do is look back and think: I should have done something.

Anyhow, the hour is getting late now, and I should be going, going, gone.

The Cold Air Will Rush Your Hard Heart Away.

Just back from some mahjong action AKA gombak massacre, and this time I was not the massacre-ee but the massacre-er mohoho. No ZMMT though :( But free chicken rice (famous one) and ice green lemon green tea makes up for it I guess! And woonshin's wallpaper ofc.

Also watched Incendies at Cineme Europa today, after going to the hospital and my aunty's place. Pretty powerful stuff. Of course it isn't very plausible lah, but why would you watch a movie if it's a perfect rendition of reality? Just live a life, man. I also want to watch Four Lions actually.

I ate at GoIndia! at Vivo just now and man... If that's what a Kashmiri lamb is like then I daresay Singapore should have a slice of the pie as well, along with the Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis. I think before I sleep tonight images of sheep jumping over not a fence, but a barbeque pit, and defying all laws of physics, get suspended there (and rotated to boot) for just long enough to be perfectly cooked yumyum. No one can do a curry like an indian. Incidentally is today curry eating day or was that last week? What a palatable event.

Well I've got werk the-morrow so pleasant slumbers you.

On The Streets Of Serenade.

Just done with some dota (yet again) which firmly cements my place among the dota greats (yet again!) I've gotta get up to go to the hospital at noon tmr to visit grandma, where I will be meeting my aunty who wishes to speak to me. I'm pretty sure her "speak" is gonna turn out to be a lecture instead, so I should fortify myself somehow.

I suspect the lecture will be about how I have to study bloody hard to get myself brilliant grades so that I can earn massive amounts of money, plus minus a few superlatives. Everyone knows how much of a lazy bugger I am, unfortunately. Apparent from the way I haven't booked my flights yet :O Is okay I clean up my act tmr like np.

Anw I realized I lost a few ticket stubs this year, so there's a little bit of a gaping hole in my collection. My friend tells me I'm a junk collector, and he's probably right!

Ang also says my hair is damn BadBoy. Alright! Score! All I need left is to master the DoucheWalk and I'm good to go eh? Baddest boy in town okay. Almost as bad as my Line Birds is good.

I don't know what it is about sembawang waters but after dipping in it I have become uber pimply. The kind of rubbish you can find underwater you have no idea. And when there's an oil spill as well even the surface is no respite, so you can tell how miserably smelly we all were.

Okay I know very incoherent and jumpy hmm? I can't seem to string together more than a few thoughts before drawing blanks, and I am alarmingly hungry as well, so I shall sleep right now because everyone knows late night snax are bad for your figure, and I'm trying very hardly to keep in shape!

OWTV gd nit3.

No, Not Your Lies Nor Your Downcast Eyes.

Have been on a movie binge of sorts lately, capped off with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (POTA) yesterday. So I think the one thing I took away from the movie was this: PETA or POTA! So let's start being nice to animals (especially hyper-intelligent ones) and not give our hairy counterparts any reason to want to smash us into little bits. Support PETA!

Cowboys VS Aliens is a movie that has managed to transcend its genre. By genre I mean the "VS" genre consisting of such gems as I don't know.. Cobra VS Mongoose or Hippopotamus VS Rhinoceros or sth. I thought Olivia Wilde was a little underwhelming and more than a little creepy however. But Daniel Craig the cowboy has higher-teched gizmos than Daniel Craig the 007 (aka Bond. James Bond.) But ya lah better than I'd expected from a terribad title like that.

Wu Xia was a whole lot better than I thought it would be, whatwith all the lousy ratings people were giving it. It's possible I'm a little partial to Tang Wei, but who cares it's still a good show.

I shall watch Incendies and Beginners and Bridesmaids, maybe even today? Not all today of course, that would be insanity.. or not. I haven't been spending enough time alone I think, as in the proper kind of time where you actually can hear what your mind has to say to yourself, y'know? I've been traveling, or reading, or playing dota, I haven't managed to just.. ruminate. Maybe tonight. Cinema Europa Vivocity here I come!

Okay not, dinner with circle, or semi-circle, or whatever the heck we are left now! Goodbuy.

Here, There Be Dragons!

Happy National Day Eve guys. I'm quite looking forward to watching the parade tmr, seeing as I missed it last year no thanks to my brilliant brother who convinced me it started at 8:19pm, despite my doubts we'd be able to make anything out in the dark. On TV, of course, which makes me wish I were P5 again eh?

I haven't been keeping up with my incessant blogging for a while now, but that's cause my comp is being shared by my mother, my brother and I. And what little time I do get on my comp I... it's a secret. Then again, since it's probably the worst kept secret in yewtee by now I might as well tell you that I spend all my time playing dota :) whoopsy daisy!

Anw hongkong was very fun thankyouverymuch for asking, and it would have been funner, even funnest, if I didn't have this ridiculous, sad, tummyache the first 2 days. Like appetite -9000 sigh. I still managed to consume quite a number of sumptuously sumptuous food e.g. charsiew pao and charsiew pao. Forgive me, sometimes all I can think about for days is the charsiew pao, true story.

I think that was the most expensive hotel of my life though. Not the most original of names perhaps (Nathan Hotel on Nathan Road doh) but it was plenty massive. As was the TV screen, much to my delight. One never knows how much of a couch potato one is until you plop yourself in front of a huge LCD TV streaming cantonese shows all day long.

Anw thanks amanda for the free tickets ((Y)) and both of you for the company! And for trying so hard to help in my quest to shop. And for not killing me with over-shopping.

I managed to catch Midnight in Paris, Love Actually, and a silly chinese show called The Butcher, The Chef and The Swordsman on the plane rides. Midnight in Paris wasn't quite as enjoyable as Vicky Christina Barcelona and I really only watched it for Rachel McAdam, but I must say that Woody Allen's films are pretty good. I should check out those starring Diane Keaton or sth, those old movies.

And Love Actually was brilliant! I don't know how I've managed to not watch it in all the years since it came out (I was underage when it first did) but I sure am glad I did. I don't think there are many of you out there but if you still haven't watched it, you should.

My brother harangued my into clearing my mess and arranging my stuff nicely so now I've got a brand new layout for all my books and all my nice(ly) useless stuff. I currently have 101 books in my possession! of which 37 are still unread. Which is a horrible statistic, which I have done nothing to improve by visiting the library! Of course if you see a book like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest then you are very much obliged to borrow it, yes yes. It is unexpectedly smooth reading, so I expect I shall very soon find out what exactly happens to the mad and not so mad men in it. Then I can watch the movie, starring a young Jack Nicholson.

Which reminds me how many TV shows I have to watch. I just started on Psych cause my brother psycho-ed me into watching it. (Sigh I know what a poor pun, oh to what depths I've sunk.) It's quite funny actually. So that makes it the 4th crime/detective show I'm following after Criminal Minds, Bones and The Mentalist. And is the 7th TV show after also How I Met Your Mother, House M.D and The Big Bang Theory. Oh the horror. And since all I do is dota.... I'm such a burden to society srsly.

I did want to alleviate a little of that burden but the bloodbank is closed today so ohwells. They've been sending me messages about a shortage of blood they're having (especially my sweet precious O+ blood) so I think I shall go down this saturday or sth.

Anw I just read about Anne Hathaway being the next Catwoman in the next installation of Batman?!?! That's gonna be an odd pill to swallow. Of course, I'd probably have said this if I'd heard she was gonna be the White Witch in Alice, but that turned out okay. I'd have expected.. someone sexier though, haha. Like... I don't know. Angelina Jolie is too old and too cool probably for a superhero film. Hoo well I really can't think who could be a good Catwoman, you'd need a real sizzler! Like Sienna Miller in her turn in GI Joe, hoo boy.

The only dragon you'd see here is this dragon-sized wall of text, as usual, boring me. I don't know why I keep hearing this phrase in my mind lately though. This and Macbeth's "something wicked this way comes." It must point to the fact that I'm such a dangerous person, yes? Hahaha. In an interview, Nina Dobrev said that girls always go for the bad boy, and while I can't verify that with the rest of the female population it is suffice that she does. Hahaha obsession reaches an all new level. But as of now I am BadBoy92 and I even howl sometimes during the full moon a la Jacob Black and occasionally glitter in the sun as well. Glitter = Free Win.

Alright enough of that babbling, I think I've embarrassed myself enough. More pertinently, one of my dota kakis has very kindly invited me to play so BAI BAI NOW.

Got To Be Good Looking Cause You're So Hard To See.

Okay hi so I decided I shall stop dota-ing for just this one brief moment in time to blog since I realize I haven't done so in ages. No particular reason for this, and a lack of free time definitely isn't the culprit this time, as I have more on my hands than I can be counted upon to handle. Cue DotA and... No, that's just it. Almost nothing else at all, except for work ofc but surely no one wants to hear about something as boring as that.

I must express here my heartfelt gratitude to one Zili for accompanying me to my comms ball, and enduring my most ungentlemanly behavior! I can all too clearly imagine myself instead date-less and most desperate, having to undergo excruciating humiliation and social embarrassment as I canvass my phone contacts/facebook/friendster for someone to ask.

Quite a bit has happened the past few weeks, and it would be unwise for me to try to type them all out especially given the time now and also the time I am supposed to wake up. I wouldn't want to miss breakfast/touch!

So. Lately I've watched Your Highness, Harry Potter 7-2, and Let Me In. In wildly different circumstances. HP7 in Gold Class which was rather too grand (read: expensive) to do often. Your Highness in the tiniest cinema and on the tiniest screen eva, at Lido, which I thought had just renovated no? And still the screen size.. Let Me In was on Funshion on HD which would be brilliant if my laptop had a screen 42 inches wide, but sadly no.

I had to watch Your Highness if only because it features both Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel, and since I'm fanboi92 I can't really help myself and my fierce loyalty. I expected the show to be silly and boy was I right! It's pretty funny and the show wasn't bad, but some of the jokes were cringeworthy indeed.

Let Me In I watched because of Cloe Grace Moretz, the girl who put the kickass in Kick-Ass as Hit Girl. It was quite good I think, but perhaps the pacing could have been a little faster. It raises some interesting questions about the nature of evil, comparing her with the bullies.

I watched the trailers for Captain America and it looks good doesn't it! Also Brighton Rock, which seems at least somewhat interesting. I also wanted to watch Elegy but haven't had the chance to do so yet. Sir Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz, hopefully in HD on funshion!

Anw I have discovered recently just how disappointing I am. Not disappointed, no, just disappointing. Every time there are those who expect so much more from me, but I fail them at every turn. It is quite sobering. My indifference might shield me from disappointment, but it certainly does not lessen the effect it has on those who care. A whole life of almosts, and I don't seem to care. Sigh.

So. I'm on Bleak House right now, but unfortunately it is not the kind of book you'd sit yourself down into your chair to read for hours on end. It is quite a good read, just not terribly absorbing. Although nothing for sure can beat How Late It Was, How Late in terms of sheer difficultness. I think I spent more than a month on that book, even with the "luxury" or weekends in camp to attempt to finish it.

Charles Dickens is pretty good though, the book being not at all what I expected. Here's a line "(He had) such a delicate sentiment for what was beautiful or tender that (he could have won my heart)" Something along those lines, with the stuff in brackets being probably wrong as I cannot recall with precision what the exact line was. Maybe I will attack Great Expectations and et cetera with more gusto now that I have a bit of experience with him.

Which brings to mind, as I am speaking of a famous writer, of the book I bought at Litteredwithbooks, which is the most delightful of bookshops you could ever expect to find, which is by Ernest Hemingway. I shall read it and then decide on whether I should read the others by him, most significantly For Whom The Bell Tolls, which is famous enough for word of it to have reached my ears.

And before that was Truman Capote with his excellent short stories, so I will probably seek out more books of his. I always find it is so much easier to hunt for reads according to authors. I am always stymied when people ask me how I know what books to read cause I really don't know. I think it's just little nuggets of information that get stuck in your head like when you read of a certain author, or of certain books that are deemed to be "Dazzling", "Wonderful", "The best novel of the 20th century" etc etc. And I have no idea, too, what genres of books I read.

Oh yes I forgot to mention Never Let Me Go. I can't imagine how a movie can be made of the book, whatwith all the unspoken emotion and silent sadness of it all. I can imagine Carey Mulligan in it though, and I assume Keira Knightley was Ruth. It'd be way weird if it were the other way around wouldn't it! I will also read his other books, like Nocturnes and Remains of the Day, if I could only finish the stack I already have. Close to 30 unread books sitting on my shelf now, plizz someone stop me from teh dota.

Okay I have nothing much else I wish to add, and I do really need to sleep so have a good to-night!

Crumpled Letters To Lovers Non-Existent.

Why hellooo. I'm just home from a whole friday afternoon out, so that must indicate to you my overwhelming glee. Whoever heard of a friday afternoon spent not in camp! Fabulous. I finally made my suit (I'd better look damned charming in it HAHA) and I shall assess the result next week. Watched Transformers 3 quite by accident, apparently my friend wanted me to buy X-Men instead but whoops!

This is one of the rare times I've watched a movie without having seen its prequels, cause I really hate doing that. Like with the upcoming HP7-2. Simplay can't stand not having things done sequentially haha! But since I've broken my duck perhaps I shan't be such a prude anymore. Wall Street 2 etc beckon. Stuff like Kung Fu Panda 2 (too. lousy pun)

Okay the next thing to note of my day was that I stepped into PageOne. Mistake leh srsly. At the first display, I spotted 3 books that seemed worthy of note, and I was quite itching to whip out my wallet there and then. If I hadn't paid the deposit for the suit I'd probably have done it too, but my poverty stayed my hand. Butttt, I saw Breakfast At Tiffany's and since my sister only just mentioned last week that she was thinking of buying it, I did. Seems like a steal, since it comes with 3 other stories too! But so potentially upsetting, because of the paradox of choice. They offered 3/4 different covers and I had to pick whichever of them I thought my sister would like the best. Maybe I should have picked the one which actually had Audrey Hepburn on the cover sigh.

Anyway I've alr begun reading it cause I surely hope to finish it before giving it to my sister! Haha quite cheapo actually, but I'm sure she'd understand. Anw it is literarily quite good, no wonder Capote is so famous. Maybe I shall buy In Cold Blood, I think it's one of those cheapcheap slim small Penguin Modern Classics. I must say that Miss Holiday isn't at all what I expected, probably cause I expected sth conventional from a classic story/film while her charm lies in the completely opposite direction.

"It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural."

While we're on the topic of books, I also wish to add, quite happily, that most of my other books have arrived too! I'm not sure what I'm short of actually, I think they might be 2 or 3 books by Milan Kundera. So I didn't know I was expecting another 3 by Murakami, I thought the first wave brought most of them. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Underground. That makes a total of 11 books by him that I ordered. Sometimes I can't believe myself. But I am quite happy with myself.

Milan Kundera's Immortality, Jonathan Safran-Foer's Everything Is Illuminated at long last, and Ian McEwan's Amsterdam and Solar. I read about him in a story about some guy who didn't like fiction until he read Ian McEwan or sth like that, and somehow that stuck with me so I decided to give it a shot. The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Sarah's Key I bought rather whimsically, just because I read the blurbs. Then there's Crime and Punishment and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which were about US$3 apiece, so I thought what the heck right?

Also my uncle also gave me a book titled A Civil Action (which starred John Travolta in the movie adaptation) as a gift. I'm really quite surprised and deeply appreciative of the support my relatives have shown me. So okay I'm done with harping about my books, which incidentally would now take abt 5 lifetimes to complete instead of only 2.

Today also I went to Commonwealth for dinner, quite by accident. I'd wanted to check out litteredwithbooks but I took the MRT from outram the wrong direction, so I decided not to switch trains and got off at Commonwealth for a lookabout. I don't think I've ever been there, at least not for any substantial length of time. Had curry rice which was nice (not initially intended to rhyme) so it was quite pleasant. Wanted to try some gourmet pastry or sth but I had no more money left in my wallet so I had to forsake it. Seemed terribly interesting, or just very gimmicky.

You know how people always say "Don't look back", today I learnt the folly of those ways. I walked through a market (you know those double sided stalls) and following that adage, I didn't look back, so it was only on my return journey that I saw the tauhuey stall, and it looked good. Triple sigh. Nothing can beat a good tauhuey srsly.

I wanted to donate blood tmr but I remembered that I was coughing. They'd ask me if I was unwell/taken medicine recently and I couldn't lie to them, it'd be heinous. Imagine inheriting a cough from a donor you don't even know, you'd have no one to blame. And since you're receiving blood transfusion you're probably already in a weakened state and the cough might just be the trigger and you'd die, and then you wouldn't be able to blame anyone or anything at all cause you'd be dead. Hexasigh.

I'll probably go check out litteredwithbooks tmr, or booksactually, since I've got nothing on in the morning. RWS after, which is quite the exciting event, esp since I've never even gone near the place! In fact, today was the first time I took a halfway decent look at it, from the roof of Vivocity haha. The only other time was while on a bus on some highway, and I only saw the roof of some colourful castle or sth. Unbelievable, given the number of times we've seen the other side of sentosa from the sea.

I think my memory is failing me leh. I keep half-thinking things and forgetting where they're from. Like I'm thinking of this desciption of a guy as "papier mache" which isn't common at all, but I forgot where it was from. I just remembered it though haha, and it's from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I shall have to try reading it sometime, along with Lord of the Flies, William Golding I think? And that one by the japanese author about some schoolkids or sth, if I could only remember what it was called.

Okay so I have still yet to watch X-men, which I can hopefully remedy soon, and hopefully I can also catch Your Highness in the cinemas. I think I might watch Garden State for my next movie, or maybe The Social Network or it wouldn't be fair to that poor movie haha.

Should I try reading The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe? My sister bought that a few years back but none of us have ever hazarded an attempt haha. The plastic covering is still intact actually. I know he wrote "Blackbird" or sth of that ilk, which sounded pretty interesting, but I'm not sure how prepared I am for poetry haha!

Actually I've wanted to watch Chicago for a very long time now, because everytime I think about it I wonder why exactly I haven't so far. If I could only make time to watch shows instead of DotA!

Heh not to worry actually, I will theoretically have loads of free time very soon! What an agonizing wait srsly and the agony is real. My poor aching arm! Never knew parade was such a pain :'(

If you should ever look back, walk on. We all look back, don't we? But we cannot stop.

Hmmmmmmm okay fine I shall end here. Ta.