2006 - a review

That which does not kill me, makes me stronger. - Nietzsche.

This is not reflection, this is not some post titled 'regrets of 2006' or whatever. This is just a review, a recollection, a commentary. There is nothing to regret, nothing to change, nothing to mull over, because whatever happened, happened.

2006 was shit. Yeah. I'm not going to shy away from the fact that 2006 was one of the shittier years I've lived. It wasn't easy. Large chunks of it was just nasty. But as Nietzsche says, thatwhich does not kill me, makes me stronger.

I'm pretty strong that way now.

==

2006 started in Malacca. My family was vacationing. Looking at photos from back then, I was fat and flabby. Well, that's one thing that had changed dramatically. I'm 15kg thinner, I can run much faster and longer, and I can climb hills on my bicycle so much better, I'm really quite proud of it.

And it was the early part of the year. All that mindless memory work for the exams at school. Leading a solo existence, which was simply turning up at school, staring blankly at the lecturer drone on about his pet bacteria, classes of medications and all the associated facts and figures, how the brain is wired-up, how sick cells look under a microscope. Other than small chat with a few classmates, there was no social interaction at all. Zilch.

It wasn't much of an existence. Turning up at school, going home, revision, surfing the net, doing solo hobbies such as watching DVDs by myself and shooting down some people in video games. Time passed and it felt like nothing changed at all.

You know, when life becomes so pointless with all that loneliness, even the release of Arctic Monkey's debut album can mean every fucking thing to me. Scouting out record shops on and on for the album, going into days of dark gloom just because the release date for the local pressing had been delayed again.

I turned 21 on February, and no one hardly noticed except my close friends. Maybe because I'm just a nameless shadow in school. So many of my classmates turn 21 in 2006, and I can't help being resentful about being forced to chip in for the gifts of people I don't know well, for them enjoying their birthdays so well when these same people didn't even notice or care about my birthday. And I got nary a gift from these people. You know what? It sucks to be a nameless shadow. It's one of those nagging things that comes back every now and then, having to pay for someone else's gift for his birthday, then recalling how crappy my own was.

Tried my hand at blogging again after half a year's haitus, trying to find my voice, looking for an audience. That was in March. And it never really took off until this current incarnation.

I did pretty alright in the exams in March. Well, so as long as I pass, I don't give a damn really.

I bought my notebook computer. Had a new-found passion for everything on the Internet, gadgets, etc, which only made me more of a recluse.

Geee this is depressing. I had better fast forward to May.

==

May 2006. It was the beginning of clinical attachments at school. Somehow it was a situation that allowed me to break out of that reclusive bubble and start getting to know classmates, as we work together in groups and get shuffled around quite often.

Also, the person-to-person interaction needed with the patients (interviewing to do case presentations and write-ups and practice in physical examination) also trained up my people-skills quite a bit. It was tough, sometimes painful, but I guess I came out much stronger.

Slowly evolved from being the one who avoids being the centre of attention, to one who makes full use of the centre of attention to prove my worth, to trying to crack the occasional situational joke to make school less of a damned bore for me.

Somehow, it felt good being different from the rest - being someone who really felt for doing what's right, rather than for what's written in the textbooks, not knowing my lists of facts but understanding the situation better than the rest, doing things my own way. It felt good being the punk who was the first one who broke the dress code by not wearing a tie to the hospital wards - and having many of my classmates follow suit.

But it was painful to be different, cause it involved alot of struggling against the system, and having to explain yourself all the time. Trying to find a place of my own in a class of workaholics was near impossible. It's hard to reconcile with the feeling that everyone's staring at me with dagger eyes because they might feel that my working style is mocking their hard work and determination. I do the minumum, make sense of everything, do away with memory work, but yet get by. Barely. I never really fit in, of course. Always had this doubt lingering in the back of my mind if another field would have had been better for me.

These issues didn't kill me. I came out a much stronger person, comfortable with who I am, confident of bending the rules just enough so that I get what I want. It may not seem like it but really, I totally proud of myself for that. it's like I've become a God, paving everything for myself while everyone else takes the roles of sheep and lemmings.

==

In hospital attachments, the death thing is particularly prevalent. People in various stages of death, from the first chest pains of clogged heart arteries, to people becoming barely conscious, to dead bodies waiting to be carted off to the mortuary. Who can really come to terms with the idea of death? I can't. I don't even dare to think about what comes after. I've sorta made up my mind, I'm going to avoid fields where people die all the time. It's too depressing.

Feeling a total hypocrite in the hospitals being overweight and unfit. Looking at obese and jaded doctors telling overweight patients way less obese than them to lose weight, seeing patients die of p[roblems that probably won't have happened if they had lived healthily, colon cancer patients in their 50s, heart attack patients in their 30s; then deciding: Project Lean and Mean KC starts.

Well, it worked. I'm way fitter and lighter than I ever had been since about forever? And now I feel even more like a God.

==

The months passed. Struggling with school, becoming more and more used to the new school environment along the way, but still feeling pretty burnt-out all the time, hard times, good times, bad times - mostly bad though.

And it's August. Many of my mates flying off overseas for studies. Now I'm much more alone than ever. As for those studying locally, they're busy too, they got their own commitments, own friends. Me. Total recluse. Turned to internet forums for solace. STOMP being one of them. Well, they had outings and all, so I joined in. And in a good way, I made a number of really good friends.

You know the rule I used to believe, that one can't really make close friends once one's past 16 and all. Somehow the people I meet past the age 16, ALWAYS want something outta me in exchange for the friendship. But as I've found out, there are exceptions, so now I'm scratching this rule of mine off my whole list of cynical rules.

Outing after outing, an official Ghost Tour, et cetra. It sorta took away the messed-up edge to my life cause there's always something to look forward to. And I really hope that all the friendships I've made won't fizzle out in 2007. I really do. Especially when school starts and shit hits the fan again, and when the friends have their own lives to lead too and et cetra.

==

Other things I've progressed in in 2006: taste in movies and music. I've broadened my tastes in music, all thanks to http://www.goodweatherforairstrikes.com/ and life pal CH. And CH also intro'd me to some pretty good movies, and they all rock.

==

2006 might have been tough and painful. But heck, I did become stronger by loads mentally and physically eh?

Friday, Saturday quick words

Wiseman's at Bishan Park again!

Run was bad, because I made the mistake of running with a stretched hamstring. Ended up making it really bad, was literally hobbling. Yikes.



The monkeys around the reservoirs were particularly aggressive and noisy. It was the end of the week, they're probably very hungry since their last meal the previous weekend. Not to mention less people would feed them in rainy weather. Stop feeding the monkeys, idiots, look what you did, create an uncontrollable, ruthless community of pesky primates.

Reached home, popped by the nearby supermarket. Decided to cook my own lunch. Tuna fried with egg. Note to self: use more oil or it'll will stick and burn again.





Rest of the day was homework, slack, homework, panic about homework, slack.

Looked around the net for Nintendo DS stuff. There's this really cool game called Elite Beat Agents. You just gotta see the video clip to understand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa4zzMbVwis

Plans for DS brewing in head, then wham! Decided to get it. For sure.

Saturday. New year eve eve. Spent morning doing homework. Mom barged into room with vacuum cleaner. The one they refused to replace even after a decade despite it being so freaking noisy ("It still works"). Feeling particularly irritable. Kept the door shut to keep the noise out (acoustic isolation is VERY important to me, to hell with privacy and what-not, but I want my silence), but dammit, my parents can't respect that. Always gotta close it again myself after they barge in all the time.

Didn't manage to do as much homework as I wanted to, irony is, parents are always the worst distraction when it comes to school work.

Family high-tea at Hotel Phoenix and well, I don't like going out with family much. Good thing I had uploaded some games in my phone so I used them to distract myself/keep myself occupied.

Food was good though. Getting seriously fat with all that food. Turkey and ham were the best. Deserts were so-so but there was chocolate fondue.







They're known for their roti prata. It's alright but not impressive. But what was fun was making cheese sausage prata and maple syrup prata from the other dishes and ingredients there. And ice blended coffee using espresso, ice-cream and ice shavings (for ice kacang).

Dad kept on talking about his weird theories and stuff, so I just cracked Borat/Death Note/alien invasion jokes when the chance came just for the hell of it, even though only my brother understood.

Went to the furniture shop to have a gander and to get the new TV rack.

Long walk home, distracted self by re-playing New York Nights on phone (last played it on the Nokia 6100 and that version was dumbed-down with lousier graphics)

Home, back on the computer, more homework (ahead of schedule now) and some slacking and crapping on STOMP forums. Yay!

Sim Lim

Trying to balance myself in a torquey mercedes bus equipped with a jerky zf gearbox is an exercise of futility. Tried to prop myself against the window with my elbows. But still bumping into people. Happy couples. Old ladies who had lived contended lives and don't ask for more. Meeting bozo for lunch plus sim lim square. And running late. And it's raining like usual.

Met up with bozo at Bugis Junction. And well, it's weird how much we can crap about only after meeting just 2 times before. It's weird. But why is it that i can get along, both online and in real life, so well with 18 year olds rather than people of my age? My impression of people my age is that, they're people always so busy getting what they want, trying to be oh so sophisticated that I can't connect with then no longer.

So. Destination. Sim Lim Square. Lunch at basement (lamb chops, I feel slightly cheated at the lack of meat) Plan:

1. Recce for Nintendo DS lite. The variety of DS and Gameboy (the DS plays both) there's vast. Prices slightly cheaper in Sim Lim, but gotta beware those gimmicks.

2. Take another gander at the Canon printers. Yeah. They're humongous, and it'll probably hang from the edge of the table by a few cm if I get it. Old rinter's erratic now, but still working at least. I can delay it.

3. Browsed through the latest games. bozo bought BF2 and one of the C&C games, personally, I don't play multiplayer games, learning curve too steep so by the time I'm alright at it, I'd have gotten sick of it by then.

4. Look for the fan to replace the dead one from my CPU cooler in neighbouring Sim Lim Tower. Well, I was too silly to check the size of the old one so I sorta estimated it to be a 70mm one. Stared at it for a long while, not sure of the size, then finally just bought it, if not, it'd be a wasted trip eh?

bozo's supposed to meet a friend but somehow there was this miscommunication and he's free in the evening too. So just hung around Bugis Junction, looked at DS games again in that electronics store there, walked around, $1.20 bubble tea + weird Japanese potato patty called a Corochan corokke which tasted sorta good. bozo got a curry rice bento. Looks nice for $4 but personally, I'd prolly spend the $4 at 3 different places heh.

The pastries and buns at Four Leaves look really tempting, but there's lotsa food at home already so couldn't buy. bozo and I were musing at this:



Label says: Twin Weiner (Pork) - please, no more sausage jokes!

Walked with bozo to City Hall, then took the bus home. Catnapped for a while on the bus. Woke up, and it was raining again. Depressing.

Opened up the computer to fit the fan and replace that jury-rigged fan thingie. Oops. Turns out the fan wasn't a 70mm but a 60mm instead. So resourceful me decided to mount the fan diagonally such that it would fit (barely).

Before: Macgyvered cooler from old pentium 2 chip I found from void deck bulky refuse disposal area



After: 70mm fan mounted where a 60mm fan was - diagonally

Marathon mammoth mangled blog entry

What does one do when there’s so much to cover in such a short attention span?

Do what the music video directors do. Scenes that rapidly flicker into the next within a drumbeat, 5-minute music videos that manage to convey the story, the mood and the rhythm all at once.

Every word is of essence. Brevity at its best.

Rainy tuesday. Borders.

Went a little ahead of Ryan so hung around the shops on the 2nd level of Wheelock. Some idiot mistook me as staff in the Apple shop. Window shopped for a moment before heading down.

(Tinny rhythm guitar over frentic bass line)

Borders. Dirty joke books rock, but look only at the short ones, because they’re always the best. “Brown San Francisco gerbil says to white gerbil: you must be new in town.” The greatest jokes are those you don’t understand instantly, but 2 seconds later you go OH and realise how witty it was.

Looked for Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Nopes. Can’t find it. Lately there’s been a lull in the modern fiction scene – nothing groundbreaking, and many of the books being sold lately are just sophomore efforts by award-winning writers trying – but failing – to get that special spark going again.

(Drum interlude and scene change). Plaza Singapura



San Bookshop. I found the book. Ryan found his book too. Conclusion? Borders can’t beat small cosy bookshops.

Met up with Ferret like before. Comfort in familiarity. Cue Death Note 2 review from previous entry.



Ferret's nachos.

(Guitar solo and a crescendo of drums)



Plaza Singapura has this 24-hour Macdonalds. Just chilled and chatted over food, and under the shelter that kept us from the relentless rain.

(Interlude/sleep)

Morning. Checked phone and, WTF, friend’s badly hurt in accident. Tan Tock Seng Hospital. The ward number’s a High Dependency Unit. Not a good thing. Doesn’t take a person who had done his General Surgery posting in that exact hospital and following ward rounds right into that ward to know.

Made use of the dry morning to do a quick run in Bishan Park. Somehow, hamstrings feel strained. Not good.
Did some homework at home, and Internet’s horrible this morning. Word got around that an undersea cable in Taiwan had broken due to an earthquake, which really makes me wonder why Singapore’s internet providers are smart enough to put all their eggs into just 1 basket and hope that that single route’s always alright.



Flipped through Ultimate Fantastic Four comics, and to be honest it’s not too bad, despite me not being an action-comic fan. I admit it, I’m a sucker for back-stories and character development. But as for the action-pages (well, that’s what action-comics are supposed to be all about, eh?) I flip through them with glazed eyes. Static pictures just don’t go well with action. I’d rather watch an animation or even a movie. But all in all? It really ain’t too bad at all.

Junction 8.

Returned the DVDs. I hate crowds when I have errands to do and am always zipping from place to place, furiously overtaking people who just wander aimlessly and stop at the exits of escalators causing major human pile-ups.

Recce’d the video game shop for the Nintendo DS. $238, and there’s this thing for $100+ that lets you play games from your own flash memory card (i.e. pirated, downloaded)

Novena Square.

Early, so browsed through magazines. Men’s Health is, what do I say, retarded? It glorifies vanity, obsessions, frivolous money-wasting and, well, from a medical standpoint, fallacies and bad advise that makes me go ‘what the hell were they thinking? Who are they thinking of killing?”



Rolling Stone had this cover of Borat, photochopped with a Hard Gay costume that’s really amusing. They have an interview with the actor Sacha Baron Cohen, which is really rare because he hardly gives interviews out of either 1 of his 3 personas, Borat, Bruno or Ali G. Still, he doesn’t not reveal much about himself, for good reason. It’d be funnier and easier to believe that Borat, Bruno and Ali G are real people.

Reached TTSH with Ferret and Ryan. Oh well, friend’s quite badly hurt. During my 8-week posting there we went thru these patient lists that show the patient name, bed number, medical problems and treatment plan. And he’d prolly have at least 3 lines under the medical problems column (usually it’s 1 liners like ‘appendicitis s/p appendectomy’ or such, seldom 3 full lines). And to be honest? In my 8 weeks in TTSH General Surgery, I hardly saw anything quite that bad. But he’ll be fine. I know that. He’s improving.

It’s times like this that makes me feel so damn helpless, despite everything the doctors and nurses can do, the patient’s still in pain. And I really hate it when me, being who am I, am expected to know what to do, to be able to change things, to be dependable in such situations.

But really, what the fuck can I do? I’m not Superman. Everyone tells me how I should do things in future, everyone wants to have a say. But I’m just me. I’m human, just like you and me. You want a perfect healer who vanishes the wounds and soothes the pain 100%, I’d suggest you’d have better luck with religion. Not medicine. Just walking into a hospital brings all these bad vibes crashing in at once.

No that I have got this off my chest, online strangers, please know that I am not obliged to help you in any way (in the first place I usually can’t) just because of who I am.

Plaza Singapura. Again.

Met up. Big group. Crowds. Sorta fun. Night at the Museum. Movie’s a 3.5/5. Silly but entertaining but yet rather forgettable. Somehow it just doesn’t feel like a movie I should do a full review on. It’s just a sweet-but-forgettable comedy. Nothing special to it, nothing to die for.

Déjà vu. Hung around the same 24h Macs. Enjoyed. Yeah.

Reached home. Internet’s still messed up. Singapore’s internet infrastructure’s messed up. Why place all their eggs in their basket and route ALL their overseas traffic just through 1 route via Taiwan? When the earthquake struck, it sent internet access down to its knees in an instant.

They can route it elsewhere instead. It’s technically possible, I know that as a fact. Because that’s what they’ve been doing – but only after, and not before, the Taiwan cables were disrupted.

Death Note 2

Rushed through some homework at home, then slacked around and time to head out.

Since I'm sleepy and it's late right now, I cut to the chase for now.

Death Note 2: The Last Name



Since I'm sleepy and it's late right now, and I do not want to spoiler it, I cut to the chase for now.

It's good. It's amazing how they managed to tie up so many open ends all in one fell swoop. It's entertaining. It keeps up the detail and good work in Death Note 1. I like it.

Go watch it, cause I don't want anyone spoilering it for you.

Grade: 4.5/5

Boxing day

Why is it called boxing day? Is it a day we're supposed to unbox presents, box people up on the streets or parade around in boxers?

Morning: Alarm rang. Peered out of window. It's freaking raining again.

Back to sleep.

Woke up later in the morning and watched Silent Hill on DVD.

Silent Hill

Like most video game adaptations, this one didn't really catch on with the general public. However, fans of the video game would appreciate how true it captures the creepiness of the game, complete with all the small details such as the noise of shoes against the metallic grille floors and the quirkiness of Dahlia Gillespie.

However, the plot in its entirety is pretty absurd, to put it politely. It gets so weird and lame in the second half it starts to disappoint. I'd rather they save the viewers' time and their own efforts and tone down with all those pseudo-logical explainations. When you watch a horror movie, all you want is the horror eh?

A little disappointed they didn't do that creepy static sound effect when the mosters come around, or attempt to recreate any of the flying monsters in the original.

Overall? They captured the horror of the game series really well, but as for its value as a movie by itself, not much.

Grade: 3/5

Christmas Eve

Morning. Went for a quick run in my new shoes. Summary: shoes feel super stable - there's no way I'm going to twist an ankle or anything in these. They're grippy as like all Nike shoes I've used so far. And they are sorta cushiony and slightly bouncy. They're sorta perfect in fact. Except for that bit of uneveness in that insole but it'll break in in a couple more runs.

This old wiseman at the park this morning taught me all the different combinations of using the hinged log exercise thingie. Cool guy. Really appreciated it.

Afternoon. Rain. Watched The Transporter 2 at home. And it was only after the movie, at 4pm, that I recalled that the barbecue was at 7 and I had not got the present for the host yet.

Oops.

It's December 24, that makes it Christmas Eve, the day when every single shopping mall is teeming with crazed people looking for last-minute gifts.

I'm one of them. Double oops.

When you're pressed for time and need to think of a gift, the best idea would probably be to recall what you've read in the person's blog.

'Hunky English gentlemen''s the first phrase that comes to mind. Colin Firth. Hugh Grant. He starred in About A Boy. Based on a novel by Nick Hornby. I have that book. The movie edition. The one with Hugh Grant on the cover.

Yes. I'm getting that book for her.



Along with a little card. And there's this promotion on recordable DVD blanks so I bought a spindle of 25.

The crowds and queues in Junction 8 were horribly depressing. Joined the queue of equally harried families, then managed to pay and leave the place. Found a table in the corner of the shopping mall and managed to quickly pack the book in wrapping paper which I had prepared earlier. Great success.

Wormed my way out of the crowd into the bus interchange, then made it to her place after a long wait for the bus and a walk through the drizzle.

Barbecue in the drizzle's sorta do-able, but it's not much fun. Luckily, most of the food didn't need cooking so it's quite alright. Met up with friends, kept each other updated. While the girls just kept on cooking and forcefeeding the guys. It's how barbecues go. The evil girls don't want to get fat themselves so they forcefeed the guys!

Ate loads. As in, really loads. How could anyone not eat all that lovely food? And oh, it's supposed to be this nightmare-themed dress code but only 1 person really followed it.

Had a taste of whiskey and yep. I nearly gagged.

It got stuffy and uncomfortable so that guy slowly took of bits of the costume piece by piece as it got late. Was joking at how the pants would go off later that night. And yep, I'm getting this reputation for jokes like that. I can't eat a sausage without making a joke about it. And I ate 4 of them.

Just hung around and slacked until 11pm, then took the bus back home. It was fun, at least, I didn't spent Christmas eve moping around at home like usual. And having a cosy barbecue surely beats moshing with the crowds in Orchard or any shopping mall.

No photos on my part. Lazy me. And nothing totally spectacular to document anyway. Just food. And friends. The latter will scream if I shove the lens in their faces.

As for Christmas day, well, nothing much happened. Homework, slacked, re-organised my older MP3s (I standardised all the filenames, made sure all the ID3 tags were complete, etc, took me hours), sleep.

Merry Christmas. Oh and gift exchanges are generally a bad idea, I was thinking. Really makes much more sense to take the money you save on buying others gifts, then buying your own gift. No one knows what you like better than you do. And if you receive a gift you don't like, it's just so depressing, knowing that the friend took so much effort to choose the gift, but well, the effort'd be wasted and you just can't bear to tell him/her that.

The new Blogger

4 months ago, Blogger revamped Blogger, called it Blogger Beta and released it to an exclusive few. What it offered was:

1. WYSIWYG editing of templates
2. Common Google account, as opposed to using a separate Blogger account
3. No need to 'republish' the whole blog with every edit - pages are rendered realtime
4. More syndication (feeds) options
5. Ability to tag your posts with metatags, Wordpress-style

Now that they're rolling it out to the rest of Blogger users, I decided to migrate over, seeing how it's so well received.

How do you move over? You go to the Dashboard, i.e. the index page of www.blogger.com after you login. Then click on the option to switch over. You then enter your Google account details, leave, then wait for them to send you an email to state that the conversion process is over.

First impressions: Hardly any change from the old Blogger. The Dashboard looked different, but otherwise the editing user interface stayed largely the same, which is a Good Thing.

However, to unleash the full power of the new Blogger, I had to use a new template, as the old one didn't work with the WYSIWYG template editor. That was the hard part. A Google search revealed that there were extremely few new-Blogger-compatible third party templates, so I just had to use one of the Blogger-provided templates and get down and dirty with the HTML.

The hardest part was to change the width of my blog. As I have a number of 640x480 photos, they could not fit into the standard templates provided. With LOADS of trial and error, I finally got it to do what I want.

Then I transferred over the old background from my older template, and tweaked the colour scheme to suit that. Removed the ugly borders from the photos, made small adjustments to margins and all such that it'd be tight and compact.

THe WYSIWYG template editor rocks. Now it's so much easier to add links to your friends' blogs without having to type all that silly HTML. However, the new lists uses 1.5-line spacing for the links in the sidebar, which I'm totally not happy with. Up to now I still can't find a way to fix that.

Another problem with the template was that I had to modify the HTML and stuff to allow links that have been visited before to be shown in a different colour. Pretty disappointed that the original template didn't cater for something so basic. Fixed the problem of the post-footer not being rendered with the correct stylesheet too.

In the end, fussy users like me still have to delve into the realm of HTML and CSS despite the new Blogger. But I guess it's worth it, for the improved syndication options and not having to hit 'republish' all the time.

I'm not too happy of that little 2-3 pixel gap between the Navbar and the title header when the page is viewed in Firefox too. Somehow, it renders perfectly in IE. I can't find a way to fix it, even despite lotsa OCD-esque fiddling.

I'm quite particular about my templates. Everything has to be pixel-perfect, rendered perfectly in both IE and Firefox. I spend hours tweaking it such that the size ofthe margins are, to my eyes, perfect within the closest 5 pixels.

Experimented with opacity settings within the style sheets but failed miserably. I guess that's the reason we hardly see transparency effects using plain HTML/CSS?

Found a nifty way to keep track of the comments in the blog by putting the address of the comment-feed into my feed reader, SharpReader. Saves the time checking the comments page of every entry every now and then.

After all that effort, I guess the new Blogger works out quite alright for me eh?

Oh and I've removed the Blogpatrol counter for now. I suspect it's the cause of the popups on my blog.

Review - Transporter 2

Grade: 4/5

Remember the first Transporter? The one with Shu Qi, the lady who endos off the movie in horribly-accented English: "He's a bastard, but he's still my father." Shu Qi's no longer in the sequel, but Jason Statham is back as Frank, the ueber-cool guy who fends off his enemies with all those intelligent-yet-impossible moves you remember from the first movie.

This time, it's crazier, more absurd, more action-packed and yet so much more engaging. Frank Miller's so slick, he can drive his car off a ramp at the harbour, do a 360 degree flip with such precision that the crane hook scrapes the bomb planted on the bottom of the car seconds before it explodes, then lands the car on the ground with nary a scratch.

But it's fun. And humourous. The villain stereotypes may be overplayed, the Russian femme fatale may have been extremely corny, but somehow, when you suspend your disbelief enough, the movie's so well-paced and entertaining you hardly get a moment where you're bored.

In this sequel, Frank finds himself breaking his own rules (as usual). The story begins with Frank being a chauffer of a rich family's kid (not his usual idea of 'transport') and eventually gets emotionally connected with the family. Somewhere along the way, he finds himself in action again, as he ended up making a promise to the kid to keep him safe.

All things break loose when the kid got kidnapped and the true plans of the villians was slowly unfurled - they were going to spread a bio-engineered virus and release it in a drug-enforcement gala event.

The plot's absurd indeed. But suspend your disbelief, enjoy the ride and you'll be entertained.

Review - Million Dollar Baby

Grade: 4.5/5

"I don't train girls.", mutters Dunn (Clint Eastwood), while Maggie (Hilary Swank) persistently pesters Dunn to be her coach.

Each character in the movie has his or her fair share of baggage behind him. Dunn's broken relationship with his daughter and his professional regrets, Maggie's poverty and one-tracked determination and Dupris's (Morgan Freeman) fall from grace after a nasty boxing injury that left him partially blind.

Dunn finally sees the passion and determination in Maggie decides: he's going to get things right again, take up his role as coach again and avoid the mistakes he had done in the past.

With the backing of Dunn, Maggie's career took off at incredulous speed, with her outclassing everyone and almost always knocking out her opponents in the first round.

Dunn is cautious. He doesn't want Maggie to be hurt. But where do you draw the line between protecting your boxer from getting hurt and allowing her to spread her wings and progress through the classes? What decides if a life is lived meaningfully, despite the physical hurt that comes in the process?

This movie tracks the rise and fall of Maggie's career with startling rawness and intensity. Clint Eastwood betters his previous directorial+acting role in Mystic River, brewing up this masterpiece where the emotional highs are sky high, and emotional lows are, well, rock-bottom. It's a pretty long movie, there's alot being told and the detail may overwhelm you, but it's all worth it.

I'm not going to spoiler it for you. You just gotta watch it.

One pair of shoes to rule them all

Woke up at about 10am despite sleeping at barely past midnight. For the 2nd time. Ugh. I sense something bad here. If I sleep for that long and yet don't feel well-rested, it only means one thing - sleep quality was poor. I'm chalking it up to the effects of having a slight cold.

Weather's still tempermental.

Shoe shopping at Queensway! Met up with Ryan, after being late (bus 93's way more irregular than expected).

In previous episodes: KC owns a pair of black Adidas shoes that had a developed a creaking problem. After some prying open of the shoe and deft wire-cutter work, the rubbing parts were removed. Also, he has a pair of silver Nike shoes that had a rubble sole part come off. After grafting on a piece salvaged from a dying pair of shoes, they were sorta OK. Until a few days back when the Adidas shoes creaked again, and the graft on the Nikes fell off.

Walking in creaking shoes is hell I swear. Creak. Creak. Creak. Creak.

So some conclusions from going a round through all the shops:
1. prices are more or less standard across all the shops
2. football apparel is so shiny and colourful, it's just possible people play football just for that apparel
3. the sales people in Queensway tend to know their stuff better than those in other places

Armed with information from the Internet, I ruled out all non-cushioning models (not suitable for my feet type). And keeping in mind a reasonable price, and simplicity and reliability of design, I ruled out even more shoes. Already narrowed down the choices, so the big question was between 2 variants of the same model - the Nike Pegasus:


A: Black/red, waterproof, slightly heavier, $10 more expensive


B: Blue/white, not waterproof, slightly lighter, $10 cheaper

Was mulling over it for a long time until I, with the sagely advise I had from Ryan, decided that.

1. For A - $10 out of the total cost doesn't really mean all that much
2. For A - Black matches more colours of clothing
3. For A - Option B has a white foam base, from experience this will be stained a horrible brown with time
4. Against A - Waterproofing's a gimmick anyway, you got mesh parts and all, water'll go in in either situation. And my old pair of Adidas are Climacool with air vents all over and it's not like I have issues even after hopping into puddles
5. Against A - Lightweight is always better

Eventually, A won.

Had time to burn, so went to Orchard. Hung around the shops. Kinokuniya. Then l ibrary, and found some comics to borrow. Already got 2 novels at home (1 I gave up on, the other I might just push myself to read it) so comics would be a better choice.



Hung around for a while longer then had to part ways, so took the MRT (amidst the crazy pre-Christmas crowd) back to Bishan. Decided to go to Junction 8 to check if there was any of that Evangelion Swimsuit toy machines. And lo and behold, there was.

After some difficulty looking for sufficient $1 coins (the 7-11 could only give me $4 worth of $1 coins as change for buying a small packet of milk with a $10 note, eventually found this place with Neoprint machines where they had some counter to change coins), I decided to try my luck.

First capsule was a yellow one. Looked inside the transparent part and saw blue hair. Rei.

Tried again. Yellow capsule again. Blue hair. Rei again. Next one had better be an Asuka!

Third one. Blue capsule. Red hair. Yay! Asuka!

To end this post, here's some Asuka porn. And even before that, a fake Borat introduction I originally composed as an MMS to some friends:

Jagshemash. My name a Borat. In Kazakhstan we pay money make sexytime in woman. In Singapore they use machine. They put in money in a metal vagine, screw, then a small woman in a water panty come out. Great success! I come here learn. Dzienkuje!

The day it didn't rain - Wednesday

Morning, and jerked awake from the balmy cold at 6.30am. It was seriously cold. But what was so nice was that it had finally stopped raining after so long. The met station said that it was the third heaviest continuous rainfall in 75 years, and I'm not surprised.



Balcony thermometer registered 23.5 degrees Celsius, which was the lowest I've ever seen here.

Nice morning for a run, haven't got my bum moving for 4 days. And I can't bicycle because I've just cleaned up my bike and I am so not going to get it dirty right again.



Beautiful clear skies, barrelling over the rain-soaked ground and skipping over the puddles. Reached the reservoir with barely any energy left. Haven't been feeling too good lately, and I've been quite out of form lately. Shoes feeling weird too. Despite shoelaces being reasonably tight and all, I still got this pain in the midfoot. In the exact region of this part called the Listfranc ligament. Not a good thing. Yikes. And my foot kept on sliding at an angle that jammed my big toe into the shoe.

But but, the blue skies, the warm sun streaking the ground with clear distinct shadows was worth it all. Lovely.

Camera tip: To capture the warmth of the morning sunlight, be creative with your white balance settings. Set it to Cloudy rather than Auto, which prevents the camera from overcompensating for the warm sunny colours.



Lower Peirce reservoir's below a hill, so that handles the rainwater from that large area. To prevent an overflow, they drain the excess water into Kallang River, through a series of canals that have been there since the beginning of the reservoir way back in the 1920s.



Took a breather and continued up the hill - slowly. The scene was beautiful. Everything's bright and sunny, the puddles shimmering, ropes of water flowing downhill on the road. Running in the middle of the puddles (it's a road, I got no choice but to keep to the side to let cars pass), kicking up a minor splash somewhat akin to those in corny car advertisements where they drive their cars along wet twisty hilly roads.



Everything looked like it was drawn by Miyazaki and his team of Studio Ghibli animators. Sweet.



Reached up the hill and decided to stroll to Sembawang Gardens to get a drink. Dehydrated and tired. Having 1 cup of black coffee and nothing else = not good.



Went into 7-11 and got Pocari Sweat. It's easily the most effective isotonic drink if you don't want to overdose on sugar. Just enough sugar to keep you going, but not so much it gives you a sugar high. They have sachet versions in our military outfield combat rations and yes they really do work wonders.



Barely managed to get by at a trot. Saw this bus along the way. They butchered up one of those double decker Volvo Olympians found on SBS routes, just as some advertising thingie. A pity.

Trundled back home, exhausted, stopping by the provision shop to get some stuff.

Reached home, took off my shoes and realised the cause of the foot discomfort. The rubber sole I had tried to re-glue came off again, and I was mighty peeved since the pair of shoes are not worn-down yet, and despite my efforts, I just am unable to repair them.



Went out again. Errands. DVDs.

Helped mom with shopping.



But but. Superman doesn't get scratches and bruises does he?



After hearing everyone rave about that mochi ice cream thingie, I finally tried it. It's so good but so expensive!

Home, slacked a while, went out to meet Richie at Suntec. Burger King. Student's meal sort of a ripoff, the burger is tiny. Then the hunt for the Asuka and Rei swimsuit toys from Neon Genesis Evangelion. They're those coin-operated machine capsule thingies, you put in $3 and turn the lever and you get a random toy from the series.

Hunted all over Suntec. Can't find Asuka and Rei.

Went to Cineleisure. Can't find Asuka and Rei. Late. shops closing, had to go home. Sad.





Anatomically-correct rodeo statue outside Heeren.



Drumset with a strangely familiar photo. After some mulling over it I recalled it as Richey James from the Manic Street Preachers. Surprised that people still bother commemorating a person from that long ago! (He went missing since about 11 years ago)

Reached home, a little disappointed. Felt like there was nothing fun left to do anymore, just bored of everything. And the stark reality hits, that this 2-week break is losing its shiny novelty, and I gotta start on schoolwork.

Watched Borat late at night and didn't really enjoy it, simply because of a bad mood. But it's quite a good movie I hafta admit.

Ikea Encore - Tuesday

After destroying IKEA Tampines the other time, Ryan, Ferret and I decided to terrorise IKEA Alexandra too. Mainly for the meatballs, perhaps for the home furnishings but definitely for the friends too. This is a photo journal, since I've got the photos, I've got a story, but you, the reader don't have the attention span for a whole long diatribe on every single thing that had happened there.




Unfortunately, even the best-planned acts of terror go awry in case of contigencies such as bad weather. Missing the bus-stop, running in the rain, getting everything wet and drenched may have changed some plans, but it didn't change the gleeful smirk on us terrorists' face in anticipation of wreaking immeasurable misery.


Before a major terrorist operation, the troops have to feed.


Prawn salad.


Princess cake. The topping's supposed to be marzipan. But if it tastes like kaya, smells like kaya, feels like kaya and looks like kaya, it's kaya to me. Well, they don't have kaya in Sweden. But I'm sure they'd do well with a couple more words in their dictionaries!


Meatballs. Much more generous servings of sauce and potato as compared to Tampines. Tasty, yummy, with all that beefy porky goodness in them. Who can resist them? Not I. The berry sauce at the side didn't go well with the meatballs, but it sure did make the bland crust of the bread of my prawn sandwich taste much better.


Fish and chips. Chive sauce. Better than Tampines too - less tough, more meaty. But, well, the sauce isn't liked by everyone. My personal opinion? IKEA doesn't really do fish well.


Prawn salad sandwich. Lettuce, egg, mayonnaise, cucumber (detracts from the overall taste to be honest) and salty crunchy prawns.


Cheesecake. For $3, it's a steal considering its taste.


Chocolate mousse.


Meatball, up close.


Sometimes seafood might look like something out of Mcminn's Colour Atlas of Human Anatomy. Especially the chapter labelled 'pelvis, perineum and genitalia'.


Aerial shot of the aftermath. Terrorism at its best.



'S-hook' 'S-hook'. Say it aloud 5 times fast. Is there really not a better, more polite name for these hooks? As in, not a synonym for buttock retractors.


They're selling lotsa Christmas decorations too.


Mirrors are fun. Especially when you've got 2 mirrors facing each other.


Evil eye.

Mission get-new-pencil-holder-and-basket-for-small-stuff-and-rubbish-bin failed totally, but I got new plans. Was mulling around IKEA distracted, looking at the photo in my camera of my own room, thinking of the possibilities. Then a flash went through my mind, and I decided to go the DIY route.

Went around Anchorpoint, wandering and terrorising the shops. Then had to go. The rain's really getting everyone down, and even despite that it was fun fun fun!