Monday

Monday of a new posting at school. What can be worse. Woke up with great trepidation. Part of me wanted to believe that if I didn't get out of bed, Monday didn't have to begin. But oh well, it's so not true, so with a great I reluctantly got out of bed.

Breakfast, and got ready for school. Running madly around house looking for all those stationery and stuff I had left haphazardly around during the 1-week break. Was going to be late dammit!

Got on the bus with a sleep-deprived stupor and drifted in out of consciousless while the engine droned on.

Reached NUS 5 minutes late. Luckily the lecture hadn't begun. Lectures.

Break after lectures. Was just musing with my classmates how I'm bored and how about watching a movie? Surprise suprise and HC, J and KW are already planning to watch Death Note! But they already booked tickets, so had to book separately and hope to get seats that are close enough! SH joined in too.

But alas, the seats were for another screen! Well, since I really wanted to watch I decided to just take them...

Lectures.

Oh and since the NUH Blood Donation Centre was asking for blood, SH and I went during lunchtime!

It's like this. First you gotta fill up a questionnaire to confirm that you're not at risk of HIV/Hepatitis B/STD/etc infection, then it's a declaration that says you'll be locked up and jailed if you lie.

Then they take your blood pressure, haemoglobin count of your blood (i.e. how 'thick' your blood is - done via a pinprick) and weight. Saw the scale and nearly fainted. Gee I'm _that_ overweight?

Then they make you lie on this couch thingie, and they swab your vein site really cleanly then they inject a little anaesthetic and put in the needle. The actually blood donation's pretty fast - before you know it it's done!

Then they give you a cup of milo and some biscuits. And you sit in the waiting area for 10 minutes or so. No giddiness, no lethargy.

More lectures.

Home. Dinner, shower, slack. For a short while. So went online and crapped around STOMP forums and stuff. Oh and bozo posted a thread on VRZone linking to the Stalking gonococcus thread on STOMP. Yikes!

Was bored out of my mind after a while so decided to take the bus out to Orchard early. The bus was depressingly quiet and empty.

Borders. Took a look at the latest fiction, none of which looked familiar to me since I'm so out of touch! Saw Graeme Obree's autobiography. He's this bicyclist who's not only a great writer, but has a really creative and intelligent mind. He built all sorts of weirdly-shaped bicycles that were more efficient than what was being sold, then raced them himself and won. But the cycling regulatory bodies weren't too happy, and banned his contraptions. He had his bouts of self doubt and even tried to top himself twice, but managed to pull through, fortunately.

Tempted to buy the book, but it's almost $40.

Journey to the East! Walked all the way to Plaza Singapura cause I'm too damn cheap to pay the bus fare! When I was younger I used to take rather long walks across Orchard to City Hall, since there's so may places to stop by along the way. Trying to catch that feel again, but the crowds were just too huge.

Reached Plaza Singapura just while the shops were closing. So just sat outside and watched all the happy couples, the lovely couples, all the lucky lucky people who're walking around Orchard feeling invincible together.

And one by one the mates arrived! And guess what I managed to change the tickets to the same hall as the other 3 friends'! And just opposite the walkway. What's even better was that there was some sort of orangey dirt on the seats we got, so I asked the staff there what could be done and they decided to put the 2 of us right behind the 3 friends! Yay! I'm really appreciative of that.

==

DEATH NOTE - Death Note's a great movie. Although advertised as a horror flick, it actually is more of a psychological thriller than anything.

We got Light, an aspiring lawyer who learns of the injustice of the world and how the law isn't always powerful enough to solve them. On one particularly bad night, he finds a black book with DEATH NOTE emblazoned on it, with instructions inside it which read:

* The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
* This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
* If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the subject's name, it will happen.
* If the cause of death is not specified, the subject will simply die of a heart attack.
* After writing the cause of death, the details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds. (ripped from Wikipedia)

Amused, Light writes the name of a criminal that was mentioned on the news and in the next day's newspaper, he realises that that exact criminal had died of a heart attack.

Light then sees the powers he is suddenly entrusted with.

We have L, a mysterious superdetective who works under a cover. The police had noticed the recent spate of mysterious criminal deaths and thus engaged L to find out the truth.

It becomes a cat-and-mouse game, with Light and L trying to outwit each other. Light and L slowly realise they aren't too different afterall.

I'll spare the details. Any more and I'll be spoilering it for you! But note that this is just the first of 2 movies in the series, so don't expect a hasty ending to this movie.

As for criticisms from me and my mates who watched the movie together:
Androgynous actors. Well. Jap film. What can ya do. The Japs love them Bishounen (pretty boys). But hey, Light's hairstyle is really cool and I want that.

Naomi Misora's (FBI lady's) motivations. What are they actually? She seemed more like a madwoman on a rampage.

The artificial, cartoon-like Ryuuk (the CGI-animated God of Death) doesn't go down well with many audiences, but I just think it's a nice tribute to the manga series!

Also, Light's slow descent from honourable justice to evil isn't explored much, which is quite a pity.

And, while L is the one shown biting his nails all the time, the extreme close-ups of Light's hands show actual bitten nails. What this implies isn't too clear. Maybe it's some sort of imagery to show the similarity between L and Light?

And, RHCP's Dani California totally stuck out like a sore thumb during the end credits. Bleagh. Use a Japanese song instead!

But all in all. Grade: A

==

After the movie, SH had to leave, so the 4 of us walked to the Kopitiam in City Hall area and just talked up to 4am! And HC and KW really devoured alot of Hello Kitty marshmallows:



Yeah it was nice catching up with stuff and all, but heh I'm sort of the odd one out - when they talk about Ayumi or Wang Lee-Hom I just had to do the smile-and-nod-thing since I'm like totally ignorant of all those enbtertainment gossip stuff.

Oh and we spent a great deal of time trying to figure out whether the 2 tall skimpily-dressed people were females or transvestites!

We already agreed to watch Death Note 2 together next time so that's great!