So I've made it through another year (kudos to moi). Happy time all around! Choccies and champagne for everyone!!
[Man, I've a lot of posts that have that title.]
As per above, here's an update of what I've been doing for the past two weeks or so, since I seemed to have gone on an unannounced hiatus:
1) Finally. Came. HOME!! Flew back on the 23rd (or 22nd, what-ev), hung out with people I haven't seen in a year or so, haven't moved from the couch since (except to go to the kitchen). Been watching cartoons and DVDs ever since.
2) Managed to persuade my mom to let me buy Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, since she loves The Da Vinci Code (book, not movie) as well. Now, to get my mom to let me buy Patrick Suskind's Perfume. And also Robert Ludlum's The Gemini Contenders.
3) Found out a few days ago that my weight ballooned (literally!) up to 65kg. Is cutting off food as of tomorrow.
I'll post up some much-delayed photos of the things I bought over the next few days, like my Tommy Hilfiger sunglassies (oh YES!! Hahaha, I'm so sampat) and my iPod Touch (oh YES AGAIN!!).
The Tuesday before last, Ying Ying and I headed to see Madama Butterfly over at the State Theatre. It was raining like ass (I seem to have an affinity for that word these days), but it wasn't heavy when I left the office and took the tram down.
Bought the program for $15 (still cheaper than what I paid for Wicked and The Rocky Horror Show), and when we went in, we got this mini flyer that said that the lady playing Butterfly (or Cio-Cio San, the Japanese lady of the title) was replaced by another lady.
Now, I'm all for understudies getting their time in the light, but I didn't pay $90 to see the replacement.
Anyway, before the show started, this guy came out and told us that the actress advertised was down with a throat infection (or something), and that the current lady has played Butterfly a few years back.
[So at least they didn't give us the understudy.]
Our seats were awesome (in the balcony, of course). We could see the surtitles (I dunno what's with the 'sur'; I always thought it was 'sub') clearly, and the stage, and the orchestra (which is always cool in my book).
The show was lovely. The storyline's basically proof that American men are pigs. In a nutshell, it's about this military man, Pinkerton (whose name sounds British, by the way) marrying this very, very young and very beautiful Japanese girl, Butterfly (of the title) so that he can have nice time if he docks at port again (in other words, he married her just for the heck of it). He promises her that he will be back by spring; unfortunately, three years have gone by and there's no sight of him.
Up till then, she's still hopeful that he will come back, because she had his baby (oooo yes, he knocked her up. But he didn't know). As the show goes on, her hopes are dashed, and Pinkerton returns (with his new AMERICAN wife) to adopt Butterfly's child (because it's still kinda his) and take the boy back to America.
So in the end, she gives the boy up, and she commits suicide.
[It is all very emotional.]
See, kids? This is why we Asian girls should not have white boyfriends. They will get us pregnant and adopt our babies and then we'll be forced to commit suicide because we can't kill our nagging relatives ('cuzza that whole 'filial piety' crap).
[I know, I know. Words cannot describe how nerdy I am. But you may refer to me as the Uber-Geek.]
Last week or something, I was randomly looking at the iTunes Store when I found TWO(!!!) exclusives vids from the new Watchmen movie! (Out 5th March 2009)
[It's SPAZZING TIME!!!]
I couldn't watch it on my laptop, 'cuzza my Quicktime whatever is not up-to-date (it still isn't; I didn't have enough memory space to run the update thingy).
Sigh. Two more days before I can see the vids ('cuz I'd be able to transfer most of my files onto my other laptop, then I'll have enough memory to run the update file).
In the meantime, here's a gem to brighten up your day:
[It's too adorable.]
Read More......
But YES to Tchaikovsky!
Instead of going to see Madama Butterfly, Ying Ying and I went to see the Nutcracker (Yes, the ballet, with the dancing and the prancing and the pirouetting...).
[We're gonna go see Butterfly this Tuesday, though.]
Since I didn't know that the show was cheapskate enough to be held out in the open, I didn't dress for the occasion.
It was a night show, and it was one of those crazy-cold nights.
It was organised by the Australian Ballet School (SCHOOL, mind you, not COMPANY. I thought it was the COMPANY that was performing. No wonder the tickets weren't crazy expensive. Like $43 each concession). I mean, they did a wonderful job, but I woulda preferred to spend my money on the pros rather than the students.
[I did awfully well in my exams. Will brag blog about it in a few days 'cuz I need to get snapshots.]
In uni now. Will be heading down to the city to watch ZucchiniPuccini's Madama Butterfly, which, for the unitiated, is an opera. I'll blog more about it when I get back.
[YES, AGAIN!]
Yesterday was a FANTASTIC DAY(!!!!!!!) ‘cuz the new Watchmen trailer came out last night (got it on my iTunes), and I totally spazzed out. I think I actually spent an hour watching the thing over and over again.
[YES I’M A GEEK!!!]
Geeked out when The Comedian got thrown outta the window, geeked out when I saw (AND HEARD!) Rorschach, dropped jaw at how Patrick Wilson DID NOT LOOK AND SOUND LIKE PATRICK WILSON (can’t believe how much he actually LOOKED like Daniel Dreiberg IN THE COMICS!!!), SQUEEE’D when I saw the Watchmen photo being taken (excellent casting with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, by the way, he looks SO MUCH LIKE THE BLOODY FRIGGIN’ COMEDIAN!!), and GAWKED when Laurie turned and ran from the fire (which looked kinda fake by the way, but the cinematography was absolutely, ABSOLUTELY gorgeous for that bit). THEY EVEN HAD DAN’S DREAM SEQUENCE!! BOO-YEAH!!
*does chicken dance*
I don’t remember summa the lines, though; might be rewritten for the movie. Can’t wait to see Matt Frewer as Moloch; haven’t seen him in ages (Frewer, I mean, not Moloch).
AND I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THE BACKSTORY ON RORSCHACH!!!
[I think I might be turning into one of those people who like typing in caps.]
Quibbles: Dr. Manhattan looks like Clive Owen (nothing wrong with that, but I thought he should be looking like Billy Crudup, who actually PLAYS the guy), Adrian Veidt doesn’t look blockheaded enough and, is it me, or is Zack Snyder a fan of awful Muse song? Seriously, he had Knights Of Cydonia for the 300 trailer (which turned Pamela off, by the way, and caused us to NOT see that movie in the theatres), and now this crap for the new Watchmen trailer. I’d be turned off if I didn’t love the comic.
[Don’t read the summary on Wikipedia; it makes the book sound lousy.]
The Tommyknockers is in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where this lady, Bobbi, stumbles onto part of a spaceship, inadvertently lets out alien gas, and slowly turns herself and everyone else in town into the aliens that formerly piloted said crashed ship.
‘Tommyknocker’ is a term that the aliens adopted (based on whatever their hosts name them) from her friend Gard, our hero, who was randomly thinking about it when Bobbi named the aliens.
[Imagine if he were thinking about Butthead from Beavis and Butthead.]
Gard is the only one immune to the gas, because he has a metal plate in his head, souvenir of a skiing accident. As we go through the book, we find out that anybody with a large piece of/enough metal attached to their body can ward off the effects of the gas.
[Don’t mean they don’t die later, though.]
People who slowly turn Tommyknockers gain psychic abilities (kinda like a hive-mind, similar to the Borg, minus Alice Krige) and become electrical and electronical geniuses, inventing all sorts of weaponry (as long as they have batteries) from household items to drive off/kill outsiders late on in the book, including a huge Coke machine that runs around running people over (it WAS controlled by a Tommyknocker, who later died because Gard destroyed one of the weapons she was controlling, and the backlash of energy flowed back to her through her controls and made her brains explode).
Stephen King is a big fan of the exploding-head-and-brains routine.
As the townspeople gradually become more alien, they depend on the polluted town air for survival, as evidenced when two young Tommyknockers drive out to buy batteries and barely made it back, one dead, and the other one blinded.
In the end, with the ship finally unearthed, Gard makes it take off into space, sacrificing himself in the process. The rest of the Tommyknockers are rounded up, and they slowly dwindle and die away.
All in all, I loved it. The book scared the crap out of me. It's really quite refreshing to read this after the bore-fest that was Bag of Bones. I mean, it didn't suck, but it was really, really, REALLY slow in the beginning.
And here is a flurry of updates (flurry of posts to come later):
Started work on Monday before last (yes, I finally got a JOB(E)!!), and Thursday morning, my key decided to be a putz and not work, so I was late for work for OVER AN HOUR!!
This is the first time my room locked me out.
Luckily no one really cared (I hope!) that I was late, so it was all kewl.
It’s really refreshing to be able to come home and NOT DO ANYTHING PRODUCTIVE. I mean, I’m not saying that I am so during semesters (‘cuz usually I’d be playing my games or watching YouTube when I’m supposed to be revising or doing my assignments.), but to be able to play games and watch YouTube when I’m not supposed to be doing ANYTHING…
Priceless.
I’m having Candy From A Stranger stuck in my head now. It’s said to be a track on Britney Spears’ Circus album, but Wikipedia isn’t saying so. Anyway, there’s a debate in YouTube (over on Comments) that the song was actually sung by one of her backup singers, Myah Marie. The guy singing kinda blows, though. One comment noted that he sounds like someone’s squeezing his balls or something.
Balls squeezed or no, he sounds like a pedo. But that’s kinda what the song was trying to convey, I guess.
Candy will always symbolize Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers for me, since I was reading it while having the song on repeat. Normally I don’t read in my room (I read on the can, actually), but I had gotten to a good part a little while back, and couldn’t stop, so I continued on in my room.
Song + Book totally scared the crap out of me. And yes, I’m a dunce.
Had nasi friggin’ lemak yesterday (fuck yeah!), which set me back $13.30. Convert it, and it’s RM 40. Curry was lovely, but it wasn’t really worth it for RM 40.
Sigh. The money I spend for mediocre Malaysian food.
