The Times Higher Education World University Rankings

So I just looked through the top 100, and my uni is nowhere in sight. Sigh.

For the rest of you interested in where your university ranked, linkie below:

The Times Higher Education - QS World University Rankings

Another reason to WANT to go to Harvard. Or Yale, or Cambridge, or Oxford...

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Found this offa Perezzers...

This is too cute to NOT embed. Enjoy.



28/12/2014: Re-posted because embed was dead.

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Books, books, books...

Is now working on Anne Rice's Lasher, although since I just collected Queen of the Damned (also by her) this morning, I'll probably divide my time between the two. And exams are in less than a month.

Sigh.

And the edition of QotD I'm having right now (the only one available in the uni) doesn't have Stuart Townsend on the cover.

Dubblesigh-er.

So I bought my first Dean Koontz book a few weeks ago, The House of Thunder. It wasn't thick, but it was gripping enough. Got it for $5.75, which translates to RM18. Not bad for a book that normally retails for RM32.95 or something.

Finished Cry to Heaven (also Anne Rice; I'm going wild here) some time back. It was okay for me, although the revenge bit was what kept me going.

Right now my desk is swamped with textbooks and literature on the Romantic era in music history. It's for an assignment due this Monday, but somehow I'm not really panicking yet. I've still like, 500+ words left. Normally I finish everything a week before and go into editing mode, but... meh. Every moment I can, I go around playing Delicious – Emily's Tea Garden and watching Yu Yu Hakusho whenever new vids're uploaded.

Crap. Why am I overloading on self-confidence?

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"Don't get hot and fluh-HUH-STERED!

...Use a bit of MUH-HUH-STARD!"

[woulda blogged yesterday, but laptop was being a bitch.]

Watched Rocky Horror LIVE yesterday (and didn't think of bringing my camera to actually just take photos of the stage and stuff, ugh), and...

I TOTALLY FREAKING LOVED IT!!!

Front row balcony, best seat ever. I could even see the band do their thing, which was totally, totally awesome. Honestly, I think I was the Chines–nay, ASIAN there. Everyone else was white, goth, punk, and/or old. Audience members were mostly middle-aged to old, as Rocky Horror has been around since the mid-70's.

They even included audience participation!! Well, sorta. About 15-20 minutes before the show started, they sent the dancers into the audience to stir things up. So the guy the balcony got had on fishnets, denim very-short-and-very-tight shorts, some kind of half tank-top thingy, and full-on tranny make-up. He proceeded to bend over quite a bit and cause a lot of discomfort among us females (which is very funny when it's not happening to you). After a while, he moved up to the back, where I think he kinda satleaned(?) on this old lady who, when I was looking, couldn't stop laughing.

When he came back down, he crossed our row from right to left, SLOWly. As I was on aisle left, he had to cross this middle-aged couple before me, the lady of which, poked/slapped/smacked his bum when the guy passed her (I don't know which, I was too busy laughing). Like, her husband was with her! Hahaha!

After he passed me, he was standing on the steps (elevated seating, facing the back row). I, on the other hand, was trying my bestest not to look at the guy, since staring is totally weird in my current situation. He was standing there for a while, so finally, I gave. I looked up at the guy.

He winked at me.

I totally giggled (he was kinda cute ;)), throwing in an "Oh my God" while doing so, while Mrs. Butt-Pincher next to me was laughing hers off as well.

I noticed the people downstairs weren't having much luck either. Since the dancers below had the stage, well, let's just say it's POSING TIME!!!

Then the show started!

Even though it was only two hours, they still had an intermission (the term meaning 'mad rush to the bathroom'). At the end of it, the band played a medley of the show's songs. So cool to see them play live.

Costume-wise, the show is much more different than the movie, with the Transylvanians dressed way more provocatively than their black-suited counterparts in the movie. Additional song lyrics (additional song as well, cut out from the movie), and dialogue and storyline is slightly different (to suit the stage, 'cuz the pool bit's kinda impossible to emulate on stage.)

One thing's for sure, though: Rocky Horror Live is very, VERY MUCH dirtier! During Don't Dream It, Be It, they unveiled a giant lifesized plastic penis (YA RLY!), after which it shot out CONFETTI. HEART-shaped confetti. At all of us! I was gawkinglaughing at the same time 'cuz that sure as hell wasn't in the movie! xD

I loved the end of the show. Usually after a show ends, the players come out, bow, bow a bit more, then leave. Well, in our instance, everyone was walking away, except for guy playing Riff-Raff. And he yells to the audience,

"Melbourne! Would you like to do... the TIME WARP AGAIN!!"

[The Time Warp is Rocky Horror's signature song.]

Everyone cheered like mad. It was a friggin' ENCORE!!

The band started up again, and the cast proceeded to do The Time Warp. They were totally encouraging the audience to stand up and dance along (it has steps). I didn't; it's one thing to make a fool out of yourself in front of your friends, and another thing to do so when you're by yourself. But I had a ton of fun singing along and watching them perform again.

And then it was finally over. Sigh. Next time when I have money and it comes, I'm gonna go again :D

[I think my mom's gonna kill me when she sees at the program I bought, she didn't really like the idea of me going to see the show :p]

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Let's... do... the Time... Warp... AGAIN!!

I'm going to The Rocky Horror Show!!

Yesterday, I went traipsing around in the city BY MYSELF. IN BOOTS. HA HA HA. I went to check out the Comedy Theatre 'cuz I wanted to get tickets (well, ticket, yes I know, it's sad).

Me got front row balcony seat xD

Found the place, and spent $6.30 on a damn ham-and-cheese sandwich at the joint down the road, just 'cuz I didn't see that they charge a base price of $2.50 for the freaking bread alone. And it's just two slices, for eff's sake.


Anyway, today I just earned $35 (Aussie!) for sitting in front of the computer for an hour and assigning who should do some task or something. It's part of this research experiment run by this dude who's Head of School for Economics. The premise is there are 5 workers of group L and 3 of group C. Each of the workers (irrespective of letter) are either classified as passed (meaning that they're qualified for Task 1), uncertain (going either way) or failed ('nuff said). The 'uncertain' ones are the clincher, 'cuz you never know whether they may be qualified for the task or not (if they are, they're counted as pass points). They're pretty much the ones that influence your score.

Besides that, there is the base fee for just COMING, which is $15. That is for if their system crashes.

Still haven't updated myself on Heroes: Villains Chapter 3 yet. No one put a WMV file up =(
I'd go for the normal 350MB one, if it weren't for my laptop/Internet connection screwing with me right now. I really need to get that motherboard fixed.

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Heroes: Villains

Just saw Heroes: Villains Chapter 1 and 2 yesterday. Not bad, but to me, Heroes is beginning to look like Lost now, minus the foliage and the smoke monsters. But anyway, mutants are definitely way more cool than being stranded on an experimental project/island.

So anyway, Level 5 breaking out is probably the most interesting storyline string to happen, since they're gonna be hunted down and stuff. And you know what that means.

Cool CGI and people dying.

Pamela couldn't stop laughing when I told her that Sylar was related to the Petrelli brothers. Then she was like, "They have nothing else to write izzit? Are the writers Chinese or something?"

Epic. Own.

I gotta admit, that was a VERY good one. Anyone who's familiar with Hong Kong TV shows (not sure about China) knows that everyone is somehow connected/interrelated/literally related to each other, and that each episode will just keep dragging on for the most pointless reasons. So far, Heroes hasn't fallen into the latter trap yet, even though the storyline does get a bit tedious, sometimes.

*ahem*Season 2*ahem*

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The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor (2008)

On the seventh minute, Russell Wong gets pulled apart by horses.

On the eighth minute, Michelle Yeoh is stabbed.

And on the ninth minute, Jet Li becomes a flowerpot.


[Nah, he gets encased in terracotta, which is red clay, hence, the flowerpot reference. Credit goes to Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times.]

When I read the initial release description for the movie, the words "shape-shifting mummy" gave me the impression that Jet Li'll go back and forth from looking undead during fights and stuff. Kinda like the flying toilet papermummy in Talos The Mummy, but minus the awful storyline and lack of famous people. And even though he was the bad guy, Jet Li (being Jet Li, of course) really didn't deserve to die after such a lame fight scene. The way they killed him was pretty good, though. His death was much better than Cate Blanchett's in Indiana Jones 4.

It being Jet Li, I was expecting an ass-load of fight scenes. Unfortunately, there isn't much. They saved what little of it for the end. Short sword-fight with Michelle Yeoh, short unarmed combat with Brendan Fraser... It's like, he's starring in the movie, but his kung-fu is just making a cameo. It's way much shorter than Venom's screen time, and that's saying something. Jet Li was SEVERELY (even more emphasis on the word) underused in this movie.

Then, we had a blatant and obvious attempt at fanservice in the form of Brendan Fraser with his shirt off. Not that I'm complaining. I was pleasantly surprised. I haven't seen that since George Of The Jungle. Teeheehee xD

There's this bit when Jet Li throws the magic knife at Brendan Fraser, and he jumps aside to dodge it, and I thought, whatever happened to Fraser's mad knife-catching skillzzz as demonstrated in The Mummy Returns. Ya know, near the beginning, in the mansion, this baddie throws a knife at Fraser and he just catches it and swings/hurls it back at the dude. That was awesome.

Anyway, the movie seems to focus more of his son Alex than anything *hellowhereisBrendanFraser*, and I've read that the next few Mummy movies will be revolving around Alex, with parents taking a back-seat kinda role.

Not that Luke Ford isn't eye-candy material, but... ugh. George Lucas, anyone? *rolls eyes*

Alex has an American accent in this one. Apparently, 13 years is long enough for you to lose all trace of YOUR ENGLISH ACCENT!!

Sorry to nitpick, but I'm a stickler for continuity. Don't get me started on the lack of Rachel WeiszEvie. Nothing wrong with Maria Bello, but original cast owns all. And besides, why couldn't they have gotten Freddie Boath to play Alex again? Six years is long enough for a fricken' growth spurt.

Ending was typically hilarious. Jonathan leaves China to go to Peru where, according to him, "there won't be any mummies". A post-script as Jonathan rides off in his cab states: "Soon after, mummies were found in Peru."

As interesting as the whole concept of China's first emperor returning as an undead bent on ruling the world (I thought that whole terracotta army thing was ingenious), the movie was kind of a letdown in my book. I miss Egypt. I miss the music. Bring back Imhotep, I say! Although I don't think he'd be too keen on it since he got spurned by Anucksunamun in the previous movie, and thus, wouldn't have much of a point in future instalments :P

And as usual, whenever Anthony Wong is in an English-language production, be it American or no, he plays a villain. Not THE villain, but A villain. Poor guy. Talk about being typecast.

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