In Continuum.: December 2008

31st of December, 2008

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

31st of December, 2008

So this is it, this is the last day of 2008. Give it another nine hours or so, people are going to be counting down from ten, welcoming in the next year with opened arms and throwing confetti in the air. Because that is what people do on the last day of the year, because that has been the tradition every year, ever since they started this whole countdown thing. But when you think about it, when you really think about it, going from one year to the next really doesn't stop anything from happening. I mean, whatever happened in the last year does not automatically stop with the coming year, because one day is really followed by the next. Welcoming in the next day really does make more sense than welcoming in a brand new year, and definitely cheaper too. "To a brighter tomorrow", people would toast to at dinner with a glass of wine, and that to me makes a lot more sense. It is always what you do tomorrow that matters more, relatively to what you tell yourself that you'd be doing next year. You know how it is with new year resolutions, when was the last time any of those things came true anyway. You pretty much forget about them halfway through February, and by March you are back to your old ways all over again.

But that's not going to stop the party animals from cheering their heads off on this day. Little pockets of people are going to be gathered in places today, in small pubs and clubs, or in houses and parties, all counting down to the same minute of the night when the minute hand meets the hour hand for the second time in the day. Everything that leads up to the countdown sure is fun, with all the drinks and all the music, with all the people and all the partying. It is the hours after midnight that is somewhat sad, to me, the way you realize that everything is still pretty much the same as an hour before. People will be giving speeches on stages and in front of crowds, about the past year and the year to come. People would be given hopes for a better year, only for them to be dashed in the days to come. There'd be this great build-up to the midnight hour, you know, people would be anticipating for it. As if some divine intervention would occur, that all the wars and all the poverty in the world would seize to exist in the next year. There is a possibility, of course, that for one year in human history, people wouldn't be killed because of some kind of war, somewhere in this world. There is a possibility, but humans were never built to be this peaceful and this kind. You see the same thing happening every single year, and you lose hope all over again. But don't worry, you really only have to wait till those minutes before midnight on the next thirty-first of December to begin to hope.

It is a depressing time of the year, somehow, the way everything goes back to square one, all over again. The new year is really just another day, it really doesn't make a difference. But you've survived this long from the first day of the year until now, and it just kinda sucks to know that it is all going to snap back to square one all over again within a second. Five, four, three, two, and one - sorry, you have to start all over again because that's the way it is. All your efforts go down the drain, somehow, and it isn't helped by the fact that the new year also ushers in a brand new semester at school. Not that school is torturous or anything, though. After all, the friends are certain enjoyable, and being in the same torturous situation with a whole bunch of people just makes it less, well, torturous. But still, if only school could be just about the classes and the friends, and less of the quizzes and the exams. The new year is going to have a lot of those coming, a lot more semesters, a lot more assignments, a lot more projects. They are not all unwelcoming, but there are times when you just want to know that you haven't got anything to do at all for the next couple of weeks. So yes, all your efforts kind of come to a stop, you are back in square one, and the first of January is always the most depressing day of the entire year.

I try not to look at the last entry of last year, for the most part, or the first entry of this year for that matter. I was a slave to all the hopes and all the dreams of 2008, and you don't really want to be reminded of how much hope you harbored for this coming year. You don't want to start on the wrong foot of course, nobody wants to start off a year knowing that it is going to suck. But this year hasn't been very good for a lot of people out there, for the ones I know and the ones I don't. For one, the financial crisis probably took a toll on a lot of people out there, with one entire country going bankrupt because of it. The idea of a country going bankrupt probably never came across anybody's minds, but it sure happened to my dear Iceland this year. And then there were the bombings, the killing, people dying, and all those kind of things happening over and over again, all around the world. I mean, on a personal level, the year hasn't been the kindest of all years, sure. But when you think about it on a larger scale, when you flip through the newspapers and magazines of the last couple of months, you start to realize how trivial your problems are, somehow. The financial crisis, for one, didn't hit my family very hard. I am sure, on some level, it has an effect on everybody out there. But we are managing well, we are doing OK. We are the luckier ones, I suppose, and everything has been well in that department.

Still, there are probably some resolutions that I failed to achieve, though I vaguely recall not making any resolutions. There isn't a point going back to that entry to read what I had to say, since it is already too late to make any amendments. For now, on the last day of the year, I just feel like doing whatever that I have been doing for the most part of the year - everything normal. You know, eating and drinking, listening to music and talking to friends, the unlucky ones who are going to be alone as they countdown silently to themselves. It is going to be rather boring, but at least we are not going to be letdown by the silence in the first minutes of 2009. Never mind the loud music and the party, everything dies down at the end of the day, the silence will swallow us whole. You don't have expectations when you are alone, you don't wish for anything particularly different next year. When you are alone, you just want everything to happen as per normal, and that is exactly what you are going to get when the clock strikes twelve. No expectations, no disappointments, and everybody is happy even if you are all alone and lonely. The last day of the year is going to be a party for some, but a meditation for others. What has come to pass in the last year, what have we done and not done? Questions will be asked, though some of them would be unanswered. Like a question that has been lingering in my mind for a while now - what happened?

There are a lot of things that happened this year, the kind of things you can't help but to ask yourself, just what in the world happened back there? There are times when you get a definitive answer to things, and other times when you are left to wonder on your own. You never really get the reason to everything, but there are times when we are just comforted that it is over. That is what I feel now, to know that things are over and done with, despite never really knowing some of the answers. Ignorance can be bliss at times, when you just leave things behind and allow them to fester in the past, and there alone. Memories are only good if you don't have to deal with them, and that is the case for me right now. Other than that, good things and bad things have happened, just like any other year really. As you grow older, you kind of realize that no matter how much you hope for something good to happen, they always happen right along side the bad ones. It really doesn't make a difference after some time, so you really should just skip the praying to the drinking. Anyway, it has been a decent year, though I can safely say that 2007 was way better in general. I mean, sure I experienced that nasty break up thing, but it was a life-long lesson that I shall not soon forget.

So, 2009, I don't think I am going to hope for too much. Perhaps, just the courage to face whatever that I have to face, and just live like I've always lived for the past twenty two years. That is really what everybody should be hoping for, I suppose, just wishing that they'd survive this coming year as well. If the last year was pretty good for you, then hope for the same thing to carry on in this coming one. If the last year sucked for you, then you really should hope for the same courage to pull you through. So I suppose, good luck to you and myself in this coming year, and let's hope that the damn MRT station is ready soon. And as for the rest, let's just keep breathing, and hope that everything turns out just a little bit better, and the bad things won't be half as bad as it is supposed to be.

On a lighter note, Angelica (my philosophy lecturer) was kind enough to send me, via e-mail, a scan of her baby, seven months on into her pregnancy - in 3D! Little Johann is looking really peaceful in her stomach indeed! Let's hope that everything turns out for them next year, too.

Cape No. 7

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Cape No. 7

I ran out of books to read on the trip back from Taiwan, mainly because I couldn't resist reading the last book of Fables. Well, not exactly the last of the series, but the last book that I brought along with me. Fables is probably one of the best graphic novels I have ever read, so eat dirt Neil Gaiman! I wanted to leave book five for the flight home, but apparently I couldn't wait to learn the characters on Saturday night, which was when I decided to just speed through the book. In a way, I am glad that I went through with it, but at the same time it did prove the return trip to be somewhat of a bore. Rid of a book to read, I was stuck with my iPod for the most part, with none of the movies being shown being particularly interesting. It was curious to observe the switching of roles, the way my mother had magazines and newspapers to read on her way back when she didn't have anything to do other than to watch Hellboy 2 on our way to Taiwan a week ago. At least she had Hellboy to kill two hours of the flight, though. This time around, I was stuck with my iPod and a throbbing headache. Not that I mind my iPod, but I'd much rather have a book, you know? So I grabbed pillows and piled them on the table before me and buried my face into it for a nap. It wasn't comfortable, but I needed it.

One and a half hours before landing, and my throat was burning for some reason. I asked for a cup of orange juice, and my mother was still reading her newspaper when I awoke. I've dozed off for more than two hours at that time without me knowing it, and bending down in a strange position made my neck hurt. I decided to watch a movie, whatever movie, and I started browsing through the library when I found Cape No. 7. You know, supposedly the highest grossing movie in Taiwanese movie history, the one that caused quite an uproar back home. It is the Titanic of Taiwan, for one reason or another, and for that I was rather intrigued. You know how it is with words like "the most" or "the highest", they are cheap marketing gimmicks to get people hooked. They work though, and they work very well. I wanted to see the film for myself, and check out what the fuss is all about. I knew I wasn't going to be able to finish the film by the time the plane landed, but I still wanted to check it out. So I played the movie, got myself comfortable, ordered another cup of water, and the movie began. Mind you, this is probably the first Chinese-language movie that I was watching in a very long time, and completely voluntary at that. All those movies that I watched in the army because I was bored out of my minds doesn't count. This time, I was genuinely interested, imagine that.

Let's just say that I held quite a high expectation for this movie, in a way. I mean, people are positively crazy about this film, and everything about it. There are tours being planned in Taiwan just because of this film, and you can visit the locations where the film was made in Southern Taiwan. There are television commercials featuring the cast of this film everywhere, and the news reports give updates on the box office earnings of the movie. Despite being made at an extremely low budget like most local films in Taiwan, it cashed in more than two hundred million dollars at the box office. That's more than Titanic's local box office in Taiwan, so imagine that. The film really came out of nowhere for me, but then again it's not like I have been keeping an eye on the movie industry over there. The synopsis of the film didn't not exactly feel very appealing to me, because everything felt very predictable. It is one of those drama slash romance slash comedy movies, the kind that was made probably to appeal to the crowds. But how can you blame the director though, nobody likes to watch art house movies that Taiwan is more known for. It matters little to the audience how many awards you might win overseas though, people only cares about how it relates to their lives back home. To me, as closely rooted in the local culture as the film is, I felt rather disappointed halfway through the film.

Let's just say that the film brought me tears, not because of the laughter but because of how boring it was. Given, I wasn't able to finish the entire film, but I was well pass the halfway mark by the time the plane landed. I can tell you that by that time, the film really wasn't going anywhere that cannot be predicted by the audience fifteen minutes into the film. So, a little town in Taiwan is going to have this Japanese singer performing, and a so-called "warm up band" is needed, and preferably local according to the mayor. So the mayor mustered a bunch of unlikely members to form a band, write two songs, and perform in a relatively short period of time. In the midst is a Japanese model, who acted as a sort of mediator between the Japanese organizers and the locals, since she spoke fluent mandarin. Of course, from this alone, you can pretty much guess the story. The lead singer falls for this pretty Japanese girl, the concert is a success, everybody is happy. The director had a sub-story to add to the main one though, something about a letter being written by a Japanese man to a girl in Taiwan in the 1940s. So throughout the film, we see the contents of the letter being read, though it is mostly just about his infatuation with the girl.

So, the film crawls, and then it burrows into the ground as if crawling isn't slow enough. The movie begins with the main character being jaded about not making it in Taipei in a rock band, and he pretty much remains that way throughout the entire movie. We don't really know why he is jaded all the time, and characters like that becomes really tiresome and annoying. Like, they cannot be bothered with doing something, always trying to cause trouble, making life difficult for others, these things really only lasts for so long. After a few times, they become really irritating, and that is what the main character was to me - annoying. The main female character is just as boring as the male character as well. Character development is fiercely lacking in this film, with so many characters to touch on and yet, none of them are actually very well established at all. The female character pretty much screams and whines throughout the film about, well, everything. She is always angry about something, and when she had a little too much to drink one night, she - gasp - has sex with our protagonist. Right, as if we didn't see that coming at all. The more interesting characters were way too downplayed, though they really should receive more screen time. Who doesn't the vulgarity churning old man? He was awesome!

Despite being hailed as one of the best local film ever met, I don't see why it deserves the title at all. First of all, the predictability of the script and the bland acting of the characters begged to differ from the testimony of the crowd. The lack of character development made the characters shallow and boring, and always revolving around the same thing over and over again. The lead actors failed to be anywhere more than skin deep, let alone the rest of the cast. It is a big cast, mind you, and the directors failed to make the audience feel for the rest of them other than giving them a few funny lines to say every now and then. The truth is, I am rather disappointed at the so-called "best local movie in Taiwan", because it really doesn't feel like it should be "the best" of anything, at all. This film is mediocre at best, and nothing about it gives me an impression that it deserves the kind of praise or box office that it is earning right now. It is a feel good film, and a little something for everybody, sure. But if this is the best we can do in the movie business, then we have a lot more work to do from here on out. Because really, mediocrity shouldn't be at the spearhead of things, but an example by which we should never ever follow.

This applies to a lot of local films in general, though. People in the business are always complaining that the lack of budget is the main reason why their films are just "never good enough" as compared to their western counterparts. I think that is just a convenient excuse as to why your films just don't do better in general. I mean, more than anything, the script is the most important aspect of a film, in my opinion. Of course, the execution is vital as well, but it really only takes a good story to get the film into the vicinity of greatness. Some of my favorite films of all time don't involve special effects or giant explosions on an epic scale. Low budgeted movies can be good as well, only because they have a strong script to boot. Once that is nailed, then everything else just kind of follows naturally if you find the right people to do the job. Like, you can't say a film like Before Sunrise is a masterpiece in terms of how it was directed. It is a very ordinary film, strictly from the technical perspective. But the script is what the story has to boast about, and that is what drives it into the hearts of the audience. The same cannot be said about these "highest grossing films" in local context, though. They are shallow as a story, and banks upon cheap humor to get by. And, for some reason, people actually enjoy them. Suddenly, it's about pleasing the crowd rather than to have a good story.

Of course, with the success of this film, however undeserved, it is definitely going to spur on a new generation of films in Taiwan, and the region I'm sure. It'd suck that if mediocrity is the best that they could manage, because I think they have the potential to do so much more. After all, a script is really a stack of paper with words on it, it really doesn't cost a lot. You just need a team of creative minds to come together, and think about how you can work within the budget to make something that is just absolutely brilliant. I think there is a lot of potential here, but people are not digging in deep enough. There are times when you feel sad about the local film industry, but then there are times when you just realize that - yeah, they are better. Cape No. 7 should never be seen as a masterpiece of a film at any rate, but rather a reason for other films to improve and improve some more. It is a deeply flawed movie with a box office I don't quite understand. Yet, I suppose, as a beacon of light at the end of a long dark tunnel, it's good enough as it is.

Damn Those Vikings!

Monday, December 29, 2008

Damn Those Vikings

"Houston, we have a problem."

Reconnection

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Reconnection

I gave up the silence and allowed myself to be exposed to the sound of the car engine and the wind rushing pass the side of the car. I kept my headphones and turned off the music, because I was attracted to a certain piece of music that was sang by my grandmother from the front seat of the car. At the request of my father, who was drunk while being at the wheel, she hummed a soft folk song in the front seat, in a language I did not completely understand. We just left a relative's house, my aunt's private estate up in the mountains, and the taste of dinner was still thick in our mouths. Our stomaches groaned with satisfaction, and the alcohol in my father's system was still fired up in every way possible. Yet, at the sound of my grandmother's singing, even he retreated into the silence that was brewing inside the car, and the old lady's voice rose above that of the car engine's roar and grasped our attention by the throats. My mother leaned forward to hear what she was singing about, a song that was more like a nursery rhyme of sorts more than anything. I tried to catch up, but my knowledge of the language is limited as she went from verse to verse, without the sign of stopping, remember every word of the song despite being at the age of ninety-four. In the midst of the night, my grandmother sang a song, as we traveled back home on the long dark highway road.

There are two things you don't want to be waking up to on a typical weekend morning. One would be the voice of my father yelling into the phone, which is how he usually talks for some reason. Two would be my sister blasting loud Japanese boy band music over her laptop in the dining room. It was ten minutes to nine thirty, a full half an hour before I was supposed to wake up. The door was left opened, and the sound poured into my room and intruded my peaceful slumber. I woke up and groaned, my head throbbed from the sleepless Saturday night before, and asked my father to lower his volume as he came into my room. I buried my face in my palms for a minute and thought about what we had ahead of us: a trip down to the countryside, and then a visit to the relatives in the mountains. It'd involve lot of meeting with people I haven't seen in a long time, and I didn't exactly know what to expect. My family friends live in the South, about an hour's drive from where I live, deep in the countryside amidst endless fields of farms and plantations. The other, my father's only sister, lives in a high class estate in the mountains, a place that I have been to once a long time ago. So I ran a handful of icy cold water into my face to wake myself up, and I was ready to get ready.

I remember waking up early just to go to their place in the countryside, only because we grew up with them over the years. My parents and their parents have been friends ever since I was a year old, and we've been paying them a visit for the longest time every time we returned until a few years ago when, well, we grew up and older. I suppose that is what happens at times, you find less and less reasons to reconnect with your past, to see the people that you grew up with back home. Suddenly, it was less of a priority when I came back home to Taiwan. It became the food and the shopping, the dog and the doing nothing. Childhood friends hardly came across my mind for a good five years or so, and meeting them now just made a whole lot of sense. My father drove down the highway with my mother at the front, and the whole family drove through familiar roads and narrow alleys, off the main road and into small country road until we reached a row of industrial warehouses to our right. Our family friend deals with a lot of engine oils, and he is an expert in car repairing for the most part. We were at their office when we arrived, a warehouse with a small corner designated to be the office space. They met us at the front as we got out of the car, and they looked just the same as they looked the last time we left them.

We talked, and we talked some more. The country air was fresh and chilly to my skin, as I stood on a mount in the middle of the field and looked out into the distance. Wild flowers grew about my feet, along the drain that was choked with pebbles, and farmers far off bent their backs and tended to their crops. Rows and rows of crops lined the fields on one side, while my side of the land was left to grow freely and on their own, like a democratic society amidst a series of totalitarian states, and it wasn't difficult to imagine the plants as being unwilling citizens, all dressed in the same color and providing what they could to the betterment of the farms. Anyway, my sister and I took pictures of the flowers, ran around the field and avoided dried piles of dog dung, and threw pebbles into the drains. It was just like how things were when we were both much younger, when we used to visit this place in the summer and the winter, when we would dig holes in the ground and make traps for ourselves. It was fun, when we built our wooden houses with wooden poles and straw, and we'd make ourselves comfortable underneath a makeshift roof and eat snacks. Now that we were back in the same countryside, there was a strange sense of nostalgia creeping up my skin, like a deja vu. "I've been here before", I said, and smiled.

We got to a restaurant that we've been to before, ordered the same food that we have ordered before, everything was just the same as before. It was just a little emptier, with the seats less taken, and we talked about how we were still being carried in the arms of our parents when we first went to that restaurant. Then we all grew older, we are at the table by ourselves, and who knows how it is going to be like the next time we decide to go there. Perhaps, I'd be pushing my parents in instead, though I do not wish for that to happen at all. It just kinda shows the whole idea of time, the way everything passes by if you don't think about it. When you do have the time to think about it over tea, everything has changed so fast that you can't help by feel somewhat saddened by the whole situation. Anyway, we moved out of the restaurant and went back to the little warehouse next to the farm, where I followed them into the fields to pluck turnip out of the grounds. "Look at the taller ones," he said with a cigarette hanging from between his lips. "They are ready". We jumped from row to row, and my shoes sank into the soil as I jumped. He started pulling them out of the ground, threw them to me while I removed the roots with a cutter. Like that, we collected three bags full of fat and fresh turnips from the ground, and we packed them to the back of our cars to be brought home. Yeah, it's one of those things, you really don't get in Singapore.

I liked that part of morning, going through rows of spices they planted for themselves was nice. They even had a bush full of strawberries, and we plucked them off despite the fact that I find strawberries to be unsettling. I also took a walk around the warehouse, and found that they have preserved a lot of things from the past, things that they have brought over from the previous house that I used to visit when I was a child. There was a mini dirty bike that I used to ride when I was a child, up and down their driveway and up pass the pig sty. Then there was the Mickey Mouse clock, the wooden statue of the Buddha that used to smile upon us in the living room, and then there was the giant grandfather's clock that they have carried over. It was the same one that we tempered with when we were younger, when we'd adjust the time just to make time pass by a little slower. My aunt would be the evil one, hurrying us to go home when we didn't want to. So she'd give us ultimatums, have us decide what time we have to go home and stuff like that. We'd ask for ten more minutes, five more minutes, until eleven thirty, whatever. Then we'd try to adjust the hands of the clock, just to trick my aunt to believe that we have more time. Of course, we also forgot that the adults had watches on their wrists as well.

We left that place with a drizzle falling on the windscreen. The road led us to my grandmother's house, and I slept on the way there for the most part. She emerged at the front door with the help of my mom, taking careful steps one at a time with a cane in her hands. Ninety-four years of age, still going strong, though a lot slower than before. She needs a cane to walk now, and my father's car is too high for her to get into without any troubles. I held the door open for her, smiling while she got in with the help of my mom. She looks lot older now, and age has finally caught up with her. She sat at the front of the car for the rest of the trip, and my father kept trying to entertain her by making a fool out of himself. We reached the relative's place after a ten minute drive up the side of a mountain, and it was almost reaching into the clouds as they hung low around the peak. The rest of Taipei spread out at the foot of the hill and away into the distance, and we drove around a giant lake to get to their place. The estate felt like some Japanese estate, the kind where important people would stay. Residences minded their own businesses, making dinners and watching television. We could hear only our own footsteps though, and it echoes down the road as I threw pebbles into the lake.

Dinner was being served, and the entire family sat around and ate the most food I have seen in a long time. My cousin poured me wine in a tall glass, and he just kept on going for the rest of the night until my vision became a little woozy. It was particularly different for my parents because my parents have never seen me drink before. My father wanted to test how much liquor I could hold, which was why he kept asking for more to be poured into my glass. My mother just kept asking him to control himself, but I felt she kind of wanted to know how much I could take as well. A few drinks later, I felt a little strange in my head, and I couldn't tell near objects from the ones that were far away any longer. So I positioned myself in the living room to watch the kid play with his toys, with the race cars going round and round the plastic tracks. I never liked those plastic tracks when I was a child, I didn't like how I had so little control over the cars. They just went round and round around the same track, and I would have hated that as a Christmas present. But there he was, going through his toys and showing the adults what he could do, reminded me somewhat of, well, myself.

My mother explained to me about the song my grandmother just sang. It was about tea leaf farmers and what they go through in a day, from the moment they wake up till the moment they fall asleep. One verse went on to another, then another, then another, with a short pause halfway through for her to cough. When she was done, even my father applauded despite the fact that he was supposed to keep his hands on the wheels. He was drunk after all, but the rest of us were genuinely impressed by the old lady's feat. It felt somewhat like a moment of time travel, back to a time when she first learned that song. I'm sure she still remembers who taught it to her, or where she heard it from. For a few minutes there, she reconnected with her past - like she was there. It's kinda like me today, going through all the events and seeing some of the things from the past, and coming in contact all over again. I had a great day reconnecting with my past, getting in touch with people I have yet to meet in a long time, go to places that I haven't been to in a while. It was a fruitful visit, I must say, and I don't think I can ask for more on this trip back home.

Showing You Around

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Showing You Around

"So this is my house, it's a little dark now, let me turn on the lights. I'm sorry about the mirrors in the lift, they are a little creepy, so you really need to close your eyes for the duration of ten floors next time you take it yourself, okay? Anyway, so here is my house, and I think those little sculptures over there look like two naked versions of my dad fighting, for some reason. And yes, this is my simple simple house, and could you grab that remote control over there on the shoe cabinet? Thanks, let me turn on the heater with this thing. It's supposed to circulate around the house in a few moments, so I suppose it's better to keep those jackets on for now. Oh, just toss your shoes into the cabinet, that's fine. Do you want the yellow slippers or the... oh wait, we have the green ones. I think you can take the green ones while I get the black ones, and then the rest goes back into the cabinet like that. The light switches are over there on the wall behind you, yes press the third button. Better? Let there be some light, it can get quite dark here even in the late afternoons. No, no one is at home now, my dad is down in the South, he won't be back for a couple of days. There restaurants and stuff like that downstairs if you get hungry at night, I think they open till pretty late most of the time. But we'll take a walk around the neighborhood later on, okay? Let me show you around the house for a while.

So this is the dining room, we have that cool rotating light above our heads. It kinda looks like a clock, though I told the designer that it'd be cooler to be a real clock mounted up there on the ceiling. It turns with a control, well, somewhere, I'd find it later. My dad totally cannot be trusted to run this house on his whole. The last time I came here, he had a bicycle parked in the dining room and a bunch of boxes stacked on top of each other in the kitchen. Seriously, he messes everything up while trying to clean everything up. Anyway, so here's the kitchen, no doors, just the way you like it. You can pull this little door here up but, it is opened most of the time. But that other door over there, don't open it because my mom doesn't like it, something to do with fengshui, I don't know why really. So yes, we have those pretty set of knives over there, the kind that you like. The bowls and plates are here, the utensils are here in this drawer next to it, and it closes without a sound! Everything here is just the way you like it, though we don't really have an island here. Sorry, I wasn't involved in the designing process and stuff like that, so. Everything is a little small here though, but I do like how it becomes even more open when you push this wall out. Yeah, the television spins out all the way from the living room to the kitchen. The sound is from the wheel, something is wrong, we know.

So this is the bathroom I told you about the other time, yeah I can see that you like it already. We have the floor, as you can see, they really look like polished granite rocks, no? Then the walls are all filled with tiny little pebbles like I told you about. I know you dont like this giant piece of mirror in front of you here, but it really isn't very bad when you get into the shower. I prefer this kind of shower really, with the glass door and stuff like that closing up. Here's the shower, and don't turn it too far to the left because it's already scorching as it is. There's the shampoo, the body lotion there, the soap if you prefer the soap, and stuff like that here. And the towels are behind the mirror, so just grab it from there, and you also have a smaller towel for your hair if you need it. Oh, here's the control panel for the heater in the bathroom, and you need to turn it on before you go to bathe, so when you come out of the bath it's not going to be too cold in winter, you know? The other buttons are for drying the air and stuff like that, but I don't think you'd need it in the winter now anyway. Oh, and the toilet seat here is a little cold, because it doesn't have a heater. The other one has, so this one might be a little chilly to the butt. So be careful yeah?

OK, so here is the bedroom that I sleep in when I come back here. It is supposed to be my bedroom, but it looks more like a guest room in a hotel, I know. The only thing that makes this room my room, is probably the baby picture of me on the shelf over there. OK, so I love this room, I call it the time capsule. You pull the curtain down, turn the lights off, close this door behind us, and you pretty much lose track of time completely. Unless someone comes into the room, you cannot wake up at all - how beautiful is that! Anyway, so the room is pretty empty and stuff like that, so nothing interesting for the most part. But if I decide to move back to Taiwan, this is probably going to be my room. I'm not going to complain though, but I'm probably going to want to move this bed out and leave the other bed. I like the softness of the bed, it is firm enough for me and stuff like that. The closet over there may scare you a bit, because it is huge and you can hide a person inside, or a monster. But just close the door and you should be fine, so don't worry about it.

The room next to my bedroom is my dad's work room, this is where he yells into the phone to do business and attempts to type out document on his laptop, which he never turns off. Here's the thing, he thinks that it takes way too long to start up his computer, and he's too lazy to wait. So he hasn't turned it off, probably ever since he bought the computer - imagine that. The other thing is that, I think this is a lovely house, and I love it. But the problem is that it doesn't really have a view to begin with, because we have a hospital across the junction over there on the other side of the house. On this side, we have that ugly chimney over there from a factory, pouring smoke out every minute of the day, every day of the week. And because this building is much taller than all the other buildings around, you get to see all their rooftops, and people tend to treat their rooftops as a rubbish dump, you see, so things are pretty ugly up there for the most part. That is also why this curtain stays closed all the time, the view is just not very pretty. Though, if the weather is good enough, you can see Taipei 101 all the way in the distance, right next to that red building over there. See it? That's it, and yeah it's small.

OK, so this is my parents' room, very simple and elegant like every other part of the house. I think my house looks like a giant presidential suite in a hotel, perhaps just a little more attention to detail. I mean, there is nothing on the tea table in the living room, and we really have just two sets of couches. But then the designer really has that minimalist view on things, and I love how he uses very elemental materials on the furniture as well as the designs. Like this little lamp over here behind the door, he actually made this lamp himself. The doors in front of the television here, they close without any sounds as well. So you can close the door like that and not wake anybody. Behind here is the closet, the little mirror here you can check yourself out with, then the bathroom here is a little different from the one in front. We have a jacuzzi here! The button doesn't work at times, but the jets of water punching your body from every direction is pretty damn awesome. But you don't have to use it every night, we have the shower head next to it if you want. Oh, the toilet bowl, it is heated all the time, so it won't be very cold if you sit down to do your number two. And you can press this button here to wash you butt with water, but it feels a little weird.

So if you want to get the laundry done, there is a laundry shop across the road if you don't want to wash yourself, and we can go to the little shopping mart down the street to buy groceries and all that. Food is going to be pretty convenient, because we have everything within two hundred meters, pretty much. Or we could walk to the hospital, they actually have surprisingly good food. But the canteen is pretty hard to get to, and you kind of get lost amidst a whole bunch of scanning rooms and stuff like that. It's a little creepy because sometimes you don't see people down these long halls at all. So, a hospital, long halls, it can get pretty creepy. So, my parents won't be back for some time, and transport is pretty convenient as well. The bus takes about twenty to half an hour to get to Taipei from here, and it is just a short walk to the bus stop. So we could go there and come back pretty quick if we want to, and everything just works around here. Oh, there is a Starbucks underneath my house, and a Hugo Boss shop as well - I don't know why either, but I'm sure you like it. Anyway, so that is a guide through my house for now, just pretend that this your ow home, okay? Make yourself comfortable now, relax, and then we'd go have dinner. How does that sound? Good? I think so too. I really do think so.

Slumdog Millionaire

Friday, December 26, 2008

Slumdog Millionaire

That's it. If there is one movie that you are going to watch next year, it has to be Slumdog Millionaire. It hasn't gotten an official release date in Singapore just yet, but that's kinda how it is with films that receive a limited release in America. It'd probably only reach our shores if it earns some major awards out there (like the Best Motion Picture - Drama category in the Golden Globes which it has already been nominated for). Slumdog Millionaire is an amazing piece of work, no questions about that. Even if it isn't going to hit the theaters here, try to get your hands on it somehow, because it is worth the risk. This film is just one of the many mind blowing movies that has been released in the past month or two in the theaters, and it does not pale in comparison with the other great movies. The truth is, amidst all the heavy Oscar contenders with an equally heavy topic like The Reader and Revolutionary Road, this one provides a refreshing and light-hearted story that takes your breath away by the end of the film.

I can't say that, before this, I was a fan of Danny Boyle. I mean, as much as people love Trainspotting, I couldn't get pass the first fifteen minutes of the film, for some reason. I'd probably get to it eventually, but just not now, not yet. I am not a fan of zombie movies because they don't scare me very much, and they are really one and the same from one movie to another. People tend to read too deeply into zombie movies at times, especially the (something) of the Dead series by George A. Romero, all the discussions about socio-political implications. It's a brainless zombie movie, with dead human beings chasing living human beings for their flesh - that's it. Which is why 28 Days Later didn't exactly appeal to me any more than just a brainless summer movie. It was fun for what it was worth, but it didn't really leave an impression on me. Though, I must praise the first ten to fifteen minutes of the movie that featured an empty London - that was pretty awesome. The Beach was fine, to me, because 1) I love Robert Carlyle 2) I love Virginie Ledoyen. But everything else in the movie was just off, in my opinion. Slumdog Millionaire, to me, is Danny Boyle's best film yet.

Slumdog Millionaire begins with Jamal Malik on the show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire. He is one question away from the top prize, ten million dollars, and he is doing all that not because he wants to get rich, but because he was hoping that the girl of his dreams, Latika, would be watching. With everything set in India, we go back to the beginning when Jamal and Salim, his brother, growing up in a slum as orphans. Their parents were killed in a religious riot between the Muslims and the Hindus, and that was also how they both met Latika as children. We see them grow up in a slum by cheating, stealing, and doing whatever that is necessary to survive. But childish fun quickly becomes darker when Salim takes the path to the darker side, especially after acquiring a pistol along the way and murdering a childhood menace. The two brothers take on different roads, sharing only the harsh reality of our world. The interesting bit that I forgot to mention before is probably how Jamal knows the answer to the questions, despite being a "slumdog" and being lowly educated - he just knew. Somehow, he just knew the answers to the questions being asked, because of his past experiences as a child in the slum. So the story unfolds slowly as we move from one question to the next, one story to another.

The first minute of the film pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie. You have quick shots of Jamal in the hot seat, answering questions, and then the scene cuts to Jamal being interrogated by police. He is being punched, kicked, drowned in a bucket of water, and then electrocuted, all because he was being suspected of cheating in the game show. In an attempt to clear his name to the police officer is how the audience learns about his past. Danny Boyle has elected the method of intersecting the past and the present, with the both of them moving in a chronological order. Using different actors for the same characters in different times, it isn't difficult to tell who is who. The case is especially so when all three versions of the same characters give brilliant and top-notch performances, and especially so for the young Indian child actors that play the younger versions of the main characters. Slumdog Millionaire is kind of like City of God, a similar film about children and teenagers growing up in slums, joining gangs and trying to survive in harsh times. City of God didn't really appeal to me that much though, but I blame it mainly on the fact that my attention had to be split between the film itself and the subtitles - I tend to be pretty slow on that most of the time.

Slumdog Millionaire probably has all the necessary formulas to make it the ultimate dark horse in the Oscar race happening in March next year. It has an unique cast (all Indian), a spell binding story, beautiful location work, and great cinematography to boot. Forget about Juno being hailed as the dark horse of this year's Oscar, Slumdog Millionaire blows that movie out of the waters and onto the moon and beyond. More than that, the movie makes the multi-faceted nature work, when a lot of movies cannot even seem to handle one right. You can view this film as a sweeping romance movie, with Jamal going to great lengths to finding Latika throughout his life. Or, you could see the film as an examination into the poverty situation in India, as well as the same horror stories happening around the world, with children being exploited and living in difficult conditions. You could even see this as a Bollywood movie that does not involve the usual cheesy action hero killing a whole battalion of enemies with a dagger. Though, the end credits is preceded by an interesting dance number that gives tribute to the movie industry in India. You know, the whole where-did-the-dancers-come-from dance routines and all that jazz.

Danny Boyle's style of filming is like a more tamed and rational version of Baz Luhman, in my opinion. I find that Baz Luhman can be a little too absorbed sometimes, trying too hard to make his films quirky, but then making it look too eccentric for my taste. I've never liked any, and I mean any, of Baz Luhman's works, and one of the reason is because it's just too self-absorbed. Danny Boyle is a little different here, and his bold cuts and effects does add to his imaginary watermark all over the film itself. He carries forth his style of filming effectively into this film, and it works brilliantly even in the context of an Indian slum. I love the first scene in the slums, where you see two policemen chasing the children off an airport runway and into the slum itself. We get to see the living conditions, the people, and what is happening within the span of the chase. The first half of the film differs drastically from the second half in the sense that, there is a distinct message in the first half that demands the attention of the viewers. After going through all that, the second half of the movie picks up from present time and moves on with the story that it started off with. It is one of those feel good movies that leaves a smile on anybody's face at the end of it all, definitely.

My friend had a bit of a problem in regards to the disparity between the first and the second half. He thought that the film, as a whole, was brilliant. But he was a little let down by the last quarter of the film, which focused merely on Jamal finding Latika, and then trying to win the competition. As predictable as these movies go, you still can't help but root for the main character as he attempts to answer his very last question. This film has a rather Dickenson feel in the sense that, we have the protagonist living a tough life, surrounded by evil adults, and dreaming big at the same time. It is a winning formula for the audience to love and enjoy, and this film does all of the above with a twist. This film blends tragedy and happiness, heartbreaks and triumphs. All of that, mixed with a fast moving narrative and characters you genuinely love to love, and love to hate. Every element of a good movie can be found here, the kind of thing that'd make an audience love the film. It is not possible for you to walk out feeling like you have wasted your time and money on this feel good movie - it's not possible. Perhaps it would make you feel more aware of the poverty situation in the world, but overall it still gives you a sense of hope, and the film dares anybody to leave without a good spirits.

In truth, I don't think this film is going to win the top prize in any awards. I just don't see it happening, but then that's what dark horses are supposed to be. It tries to be everything, and most of it works - but that's normally not what any academy looks for in a film. They kind of like consistency, I suppose, and this isn't the kind of film that they'd typically choose over other more "serious" films. Over this holiday, I have watched a couple of critically acclaimed films, the ones that have a shot at winning the top prize. Frost/Nixon was great, and so was Milk. But personally, this is my favorite, even if I don't think that it is going to win. It appealed to me personally, and that is really good enough for me. There are times when I love to drown myself in "serious" movies to get my brain cells fired up, while there are times when I just want to watch something that makes me feel good, like a modern fairy tale that has a happy ending. I recommend Slumdog Millionaire to anybody who loves a good story, wants to feel good, and enjoys a great movie. Besides, any movie that uses Hoppipolla by Sigur Ros in the trailer is good enough for me, on some levels.

10/10

Fables

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Fables

Step aside, Snow White.

Make way for Rose Red, your sister.

I can't say that I actually grew up with all the Disney movies. I loved The Lion King, but I couldn't care less about all the Disney princes and princesses. At a young age, I found those fairy tales to be childish stories to fool young children. Even as a young child, I refused to see myself as a young child, which I suppose, can be a good thing after all. Still, I knew the basics of the basics, and I knew that Snow White lived with seven dwarves, and she also had to battle an evil witch that gave out poisoned apples. I never liked Snow White, not exactly because of the fact that she is the worst looking Disney princess, but I was also uncomfortable with the seven dwarves staying inside the same house as a princess - what's up with that? Then I found out about the original version compiled by the Grimm Brothers, the original Walt Disney in the ancient times. In the original story, the seven dwarves were really evil dwarves, and Snow White actually had a sister called Rose Red. Rose Red represented summer, while Snow White represented the winter. The depiction of Rose Red above is that of James Jean, famous for his covers for Fables. Oh, I love Fables, and let me just say that you are already a good enough graphic novel if you take the time draw, if you know what I mean.

Comics and I have been inseparable since young. My sister had a lot of group tuition in the past in the Hougang area, and there were times when she'd be a couple of minutes late, and I wasn't exactly the most patient kid in the neighborhood. What my mother did to shut me up back then was to give me a few dollar notes and then direct me to a bookstore nearby to buy comic books. So there I would be amidst rows and rows of comic books, picking them off and then paying for them at the counter. I started off with Doraemon and Master Q (老夫子) comics, though the latter is actually quite pointless and thrashy. Doraemon is definitely one of the building blocks in my life, because it made up much of my imaginary world, with everything based off the pages of the comic book, for the most part. I loved the idea of a magic pocket, a magic door, a time machine in the drawers. I pretended to climb into my desk drawer once, and I also managed to dislodge the drawer accidentally, spilling its contents. I related very well to Nobita, the main character in the story, the kind of kid that loved to read comic books and to sleep the day away. It's not that my grades were particularly awful or anything, but the idea of having a machine cat as a friend living in the same house was, well, welcoming.

Master Q was just simply pointless, though I am not sure why I bothered with its comics in the first place. I mean, most of the comics weren't just unfunny, they were vulgar as well. Most of the vulgar words were replaced by dollar and hex signs, but the readers knew pretty much what he was talking about. I remember the author venturing into an adventure story once, but they all paled in comparison with Doraemon's adventures into the prehistoric times and the future. Let's face it, when it comes to comics, no one in Asia can measure up to the greatness of Japanese manga. Nothing in Asia compares to the kind of comic books that they have in Japan, with the variety and the details they put into the characters as well as the stories. I mean, have you read Singapore comics before? They are probably some of the most poorly written stories in the entire industry, and a complete waste of those paper used to print in my opinion. I remember a book my friend lent to me in high school, and I was halfway through the book before I couldn't take it anymore. The story aside, the characters looked completely the same. Just look up pictures of the series, Return of the Condor Heroes. Every male character looks the same, just with a different hair, and the same with the female characters. There are basically three types of faces the artist plays around with, and it just shows lazy and sloppy drawing, in my opinion.

The story and the drawing are the two most important factors contributing to a good comic book, in my opinion. You can't have a brilliant story with a sloppy artwork, and you can't have a a comic with brilliant artwork and a sloppy story line - same thing. It is great if the two has a great marriage, and that is usually the case in most great comic books out there. Japanese manga places a lot of emphasis on both aspects, and the result is a multi-billion dollar industry around the world. I was a fan of Japanese manga when I was younger, the way that their stories are always so engaging and interesting. It defines an entire culture by itself, a world away from reality that sucks the readers in without even trying too hard. Yet, as do most serialized comic books out there, Japanese comics are often boggled down by ambition and the public demand. So many comics are either too long, or that they lose steam towards the end of the series. I started off with book one of Detective Conan, and the story has yet to go anywhere after fifty books or so. Shaman King began with a powerful punch to the comic world, and then ended with an ending so bad that I couldn't be bothered to finish it at all. There are, no doubt, great comic books out there still being churned out from Japan. But I suppose, for the ones that I have read, they tend to lose heat and depend too much on cliches and predictable storytelling techniques that it becomes boring. Oh, suddenly our protagonist has a hidden magical skill that'd miraculously defeat the enemy! Predictable.

I don't know when I got myself involved in American comics, since I've never been a fan of Superman, Spiderman, and all those man-s. I am not a fan of superheroes with superhuman powers, it just seems way too easy somehow. This man can teleport, that man can lift a mountain. That man cannot be destroyed, this man can shoot lasers out of his eyes. It gets a little tiring, especially with characters like The Hulk, knowing that he is virtually indestructible. He lifted Thor's hammer, after all. The point is that, like many other comic books that I have read, serialized comic books seem to suffer from the same fate, using the technique of deus ex machina to complete the story. Then the world of graphic novels revealed itself in the form of a giant yellow smiley face with blood splattered across its face. Yes, I started off with the greatest graphic novel of all time, and it is sad to say that no graphic novels or comic books have matched its greatness just yet. It kinda sucks sometimes to know that I started with the best, and that nothing has matched up well enough ever since. But a few has come close enough over the years, and my love for comic books was revived all over again.

So I got to know about Watchmen from TIME's top 100 novels of the twentieth century, the only graphic novel in the list. So that got me intrigued, like any other "the only" in any list out there. So I went to a bookstore one day and bought the book without even flipping through it, since it was wrapped in plastic. Mind you, I bought this book way before the movie was even announced to be made, which means that it wasn't because of the hype or anything. Anyway, Watchmen opened up the various possibilities of comic books as a medium. Different from ordinary books, this time it infused painted art with a narrative, and everything came together and made sense. Over the years, I went around collecting even more graphic novels. Some worked, some completely missed the mark, the same thing with books. I noticed a few drawing styles along the way that appealed to me, while some just turned me off just a little bit. One of the main reasons why I didn't like The Sandman series, despite the rest of the world disagreeing, is the way things are drawn in the first few books. I understand that the series changes a couple of artists along the way, and perhaps that is why we have such a variation in styles. Still, the unorganized nature of the stories just serves to make the reader disorientated. And it is not helped by the fact that the story has little to no relation with each other most of the time.

There is a type of comic which I like to call the "Orgy", which is a bunch of storybook characters thrown together in the same story. There is something about weaving these different characters into the same story that is so endlessly fun and alluring, and I've been in love with that ever since. Graphic novels like Marvel 1602, Kingdom Come, they all involve a bunch of characters, thrown together into different situations, though they wouldn't normally be associated with each other. That is when Fables comes in, recently introduced to me by a very dear person. Fables is a little different from the other comic books in the sense that they don't involve comic book characters, but fairy tale characters. The Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, the Blue Boy, the three little pigs, and all those characters. They have been forced out of their own world, or the Homelands, into our world due to evil forces. It is still a series, but it is going to end some time next year with the 12th and last book. I bought five in a row, not because I actually know what the story is about, but I based everything purely on a recommendation and the cover art. I like comic books to put in at least a little effort in the art, you know? As much as people appreciates abstract, there are times when straight forward beauty just, well, works.

So, I have put myself down the long dark road of collecting every book in this series, and so far I love it. It's one of those evil evil urges inside you that you just have to learn to curb sometimes. You know, the urge to see the numbers at the spine of the books to run in a numerical order, everything from the beginning to the end, you know how it is. Wish me luck down this long dark journey. I don't expect myself to reach the end with a lot of cash left to boot, but it's all going to be worth it I'm sure. At least, it'd be easy on the eyes, with all the drawings and everything.

Merry Christmas, Batman

To Batman,

and all the people that I love.

Yeah, I am talking about you.

The year is almost over, so hang in there.

After all,

we've already gotten this far.

Goodwill Pandas

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Goodwill Pandas

Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan

No, I don't know which is which.

The wheels of the airplane screeched upon the long tarmac road, leaving behind a trail of black. A man was carried off through the front exit after falling ill halfway over the South China Sea, and then later shipped off to a local hospital. The rest of us idled and waited, and then we waited and idled some more. I tapped the side of my new sling bag from River Island, adjusted my scarf loosened up the coil around my neck. The cold wind snuck into the insides of the plane, crept up the openings of my sleeves and teased me of the chill that was to come. The blocked ears felt like sand being poured into those earholes, everything around me sounded muted and dull somehow. I could hear my breath almost too clearly, as if someone else was blowing air into my ears from behind me. Like being zipped up in a luggage, the feeling was strangely claustrophobic somehow. The customs went on by without a hitch, smooth as an eel and we were out of the airport in no time. My father was parked by the side entrance, his bear-like silhouette stood out from all the rest, and he helped me get the luggage into the boot while my mother climbed into the backseat. A cold wind blew, a familiar smell came through. My ears were still near-paralyzed, but my sense of smell became suddenly acute - I was home.

The red lights of the cars in front hinted at the massive traffic jam to come, as my father's nursery rhyme cellphone ringtone rang off the hook in the car. Even with the blocked ears, the ringtone seemed inappropriate, and the functions of the phone made me want to toss it out onto the freeway. As we tried to figure out which of the green button is the button to pick up a phone call, horns blared behind our car and lights flickered from a distance away. Through the rearview mirror, everything was made clear. Blue and red lights spun around and around on top of police cars behind, a dozen of them making a headway through the heavy congestion on the freeway, and the police waved lighted batons from inside the cars to have the other drivers move out of the way. Someone important was coming through, or something huge. Either way, my parents and I anticipated the coming of the shadow that was between the rows of police cars behind us. Sandwiched in between a bunch of them was a gigantic truck, followed by tour buses and even more police cars. We've never seen so many police cars before, at least none of them bothered to blow its horns at us. It made us look, even for a few moments, like wanted criminals, and I couldn't help but put my hands up while they drove by. Perhaps my father was smuggling drugs, had a kid tied up in the back of the car, or murdered a neighbor for refusing him a bottle of soy sauce. Either way, it was an interesting sight.

The convoy drove by our car as my father winded the windows down. The cars before us gave way to a clear road ahead, and the convoy drove by us, full speed ahead. The truck came closer now, and we were still wondering what the fuss was all about. That was when the radio DJs started to mention the arrival of very special guests in the country this evening, the ones that arrived in town at the same time as my own flight. A pair of goodwill pandas arrived in Taiwan on the same night as my mother and I, and we were privileged enough to be right next to the convoy while we traveled down the freeway towards my aunt's home. The giant truck came nearer and nearer, and we were hoping to catch a glimpse of those black and white balls of fur in the cages. Sadly, it was just an ordinary cargo truck, and the contents were not to be seen by the public. Yet, as the truck drove by our car, we could smell bamboos inside the truck, and it was fragrant and refreshing amidst the cold night air. The tail lights disappeared into the rows of cars ahead, and the convoy just kept on rolling by and by. A daredevil cameraman popped his head out of the top of a van and tried to shoot footage of the convoy in front, braving the high winds and the cold air. Mother nature triumphed over him at the end of all things, and he shrunk back into the car soon after the wind was too cold to bear.

I don't even remember the last time I saw something like that in Singapore, or anything remotely close. It felt good following the convoy after they have passed, the way the traffic felt so much smoother when my father simply followed closely behind. All the vehicles that tried to join the freeway from the roads below were blocked by traffic police, as if we were all a part of this giant convoy, or very important people. Amongst that was my dog jumping onto me, licking my face all over and making a mess with its drool. The little white fur ball pounced on everybody that came into the house this evening, scrambled underneath the legs of the visitors and crawled onto every chest he could get his paws on. His tongue lashed out into the air like a flag being waved patriotically, and the nose buried into our pants and shirts to sniff out, well, something. It was inviting to step into the small and crammed house, with all the furniture looking exactly the same as when I left them only months before. It still smelled the same, with dinner being made in the narrow kitchen and the television blaring in the corner of the house. This is by no means a beautiful house like my own in Taiwan, but this is a great home nonetheless. Half of my time spent in Taiwan over the past sixteen years were spent here, and I suppose there isn't another place I'd rather run to here, when all else fails.

It's great to be back home again, and yet there are things that I miss back there for some reason. The cold weather is great, with everything feeling like a cold shower, only drier. Then there's the food, the people, the dog, and the familiar air that I grew up with before I moved over. I remember sitting in this very same chair, typing about coming back home from Taiwan, leaving the same batch of people behind for a while. This will be a short trip, a taste of things before I go back all over again to enjoy the rest of the holidays, or try my very best to anyway. Here's to a wonderful trip ahead, and to cute pandas in the local zoo. I have never seen real pandas in my life, so hopefully the next visit would be a good chance to see them in action. And by that, I mean moving around the enclosure and eating bamboos, not exactly anything else you dirty minded people might be thinking about. Perhaps I shall keep you guys updated via this blog about this short trip. The food that I am going to be eating, the places I will be visiting, and more food that I am going to be eating. In the mean time, look out for news footage of the pandas traveling down the freeway. One of those curious cars following behind the convoy could be my father's car. And if you see a man stick out his head recklessly to get a better view, that'd be my father's reckless head too.

Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)

Heart-carved tree trunk, Yankee bayonet
A sweetheart left behind
Far from the hills of the sea-swelled Carolinas
That's where my true love lies

Look for me when the sun-bright swallow
Sings upon the birch bough high
But you are in the ground with the voles and the weevils
All a'chew upon your bones so dry

But when the sun breaks to no more bulletin battle-cry
Then will you make a grave for I will be home then
I will be home then, I will be home then
I will be home then, then.

When I was a girl how the hills of Oconee
Made a seam to hem me in
There at the fair when our eyes caught, careless
Got my heart right pierced by a pin

But oh, did you see all the dead of Manassas
All the bellies and the bones and the bile
No, I lingered here with the blankets barren
And my own belly big with child

But when the sun breaks to no more bullets in Battle Creek
Then will you make a grave for I will be home then
I will be home then, I will be home then
I will be home then

Stems and bones and stone walls too
Could keep me from you
Skein of skin is all too few
To keep me from you

But oh my love, though our bodies may be parted
Though our skin may not touch skin
Look for me with the sun-bright sparrow
I will come on the breath of the wind

The Metal Bird

The Metal Bird

The metal bird pierced through the white mountains like a knife through butter. Bearing inside its stomach, hundreds upon hundreds of mundane live forms, trusting the eyes and the wings of the metal bird to bring them from one place to another. Some fear the height at which it soars, and they attempt to distract themselves with tiny moving paintings and melodies from plastic head gears. Then there are the rest, the impatient ones, trusting the vibrance of the dream world to take away the boredom that is the long hours of the bird's flight. The metal bird is humming a song right now, one single note that resonates through its body. The monotony is coaxing more life forms to join in with the impatient ones, taking leave from the journey and dive into yet another that requires not the metal bird, but the closing of their eyes and the infinity of their minds. One life form attempts to write a story upon yet another moving painting that is under his command. White framed and elegant, this little piece of machinery has proved useful against the might of boredom many a times. Almost another two rounds of the hour hand around the time giver before the metal bird decides to perch upon a branch, and the single life form begins his account for what happen yesterday, a day that he shall not soon forget.

The sleepless night before left its mark upon his eyes, for they were swollen like apples that hung upon his forehead. He yawned as he sat at the edge of the moving stairs, unable to keep his attention on any one object for longer than a few seconds. The night before was horrible, he thought to himself, the horrible thoughts swirled in his head like a mighty cyclone, merciless upon the shores of the sea. It wasn't so much about himself, but about the person whom he loves. A storm is coming, and the fragile wood that holds up the house of his loved one will not stand the rain and the winds. If it was a punishment by the Gods for the sins he has committed in the past, then the Gods have once again triumphed over his trivial soul. The dark circles widened underneath his eyes as he tried to keep his eyes on the crowd, and the sad attempt at keeping himself awake was energized by the sight of the one he loves, the one that stood out from the crowd like a golden star.

She climbed the stairs to where he was sitting, a silent greeting was exchanged between the both of them. The storm seems to have gotten the better of her house, the way things seem to have crumbled around her like feathers in the wind. Yet, she forced a smile from the edge of her lips, while his arms were out-stretched signaling the need of a long embrace. They hugged for the longest time without a single word exchanged just yet, just the presence of each other and the warmth calmed both their souls, while other souls busied themselves with business of their own. She settled herself down in between his legs with her back towards him, and he sank his face into her freshly washed hair. The familiar scent attacked his nostrils and tamed the unsettling beast inside his head, and he was glad even if it was only for a second or two. They talked, about the storm and what it is to come. "Our defenses," he said, "I am not sure if they are going to hold for long." He took her hand into his, running his finger down her palm and feeling the cold sweat in between her fingers. He was nervous, about the dark future of things, but mostly about the loved one who was sitting right next to him. For the most part, her eyes stared out into the distance, at nothing particular and everything at the very same time. She was holding the watery jewels back, afraid to reveal them to the crowd, afraid that they'd be judgmental, to be so cruel like they are. He puts an arm around her shoulders, as if it was a cue for her head to turn to his. They both knew the consequences of their actions, what they have to do to rebuild their home after the great storm has passed. None can be sure if that is going to happen, but both of them knew that it is the greatest threaten to their love for one another. The light in her eyes dimmed for a moment, and a veil of shadow passed over her face. His heart broke at that moment, for he was also responsible for the coming of the storm. Who knew that the sins of the past would catch up with him so soon, or the effects so far and wide. He never wanted to hurt her, never wanted to aid the killing blade. And yet, every bruise upon her knees and every cut upon her heart has been, in some ways, contributed by his actions. Guilt overwhelmed his body as he tried to utter the following words, the same words that she said to him only the night before when all else seemed lost. "Don't be sad, bright eyes", said the Pelican, and everything was alright. Even if it was for a split moment, it was alright.

The day carried on as usual, like how it would be like if the storm never came in the first place. They made a trip to the town center where the market traded goods from lands far far away. With plastics they traded for goods, and they bought items to place underneath a great big tree. Snow is unheard of in this part of the world, and yet the spirit of the occasion was high within their hearts. The cold winds blew around them, the remnants of the storm still alive in the streets. Yet, the closeness of the both of them held their chins high, for they felt invincible against the might of darkness, and everything else that stood between the both of them. They feasted amongst a vast strange crowd, the same dish set before the both of them while accompanied by fluids in orange and brown. The bags of goods they traded settled down in between their legs and around their bodies, and for a moment the horrors of the storm passed and all was sunny again. They told jokes about their past and the present, saw the other life forms in other tables while they minded their own businesses. Some looked identical, while other strangely out of place. As one, they too were different from all the rest, because they were two people who were really one. Sharing the same invisible memory in a distant nebula, they drew thoughts and ideas from the same source and would constantly be surprised. Like the imaginary shape that they made up, or the biscuits with cartoon animals printed upon them. Everything about each other felt oddly familiar, and yet they were not daunted by the nature of it all. It was a comfortable feeling, like being buried underneath layers and layers of blankets on a cold winter morning. It was good, and it felt so right.

The snake bore the both of them homewards, along the same path traveled by other snakes only in two directions. The snakes stopped routinely upon the track, and the end of it was where they got off and headed for home. The day was drawing to an end, marked by the death of the fire ball for today. Yet it shall rise again the day after, like everything else that has come to pass in their lives, no matter how deep the shadows may seem. He entered her lair with much caution, greeting the owners of her lair with much care and interest. He did not want to offend, or course any more trouble that has already happened. So they closed the door behind them and settled down in the room. The goods were taken out and compared, then admired after being talked about for a while. An orange vast bore water from a fountain, and she carried it into her room for him to drink. The water rushed down his throat, freshening him and bringing him back to life. Her worried eyes met his as she looked down, and within those eyes he could tell that she knew. She knew of the hardship that he has went through, worried sick that he'd fall once again to the tiny devils that still ran wild in his veins. She cared for him, and wanted him to rest well instead of trying to stay awake. He refused her offer time and time again, and only tried to move on to other things to talk about. After all, only a few hours stood between then and the end of the day, which also meant an inevitable parting between the ones who were in love. Sadness flowed from her eyes when she stared into his, turning her head away just in time before the emotions revealed themselves. She sang a song on top of her voice, attracting the attention of the other dwellers of the lair. She sang, because she didn't want to break down in front of him, or at least she tried. He knew so well what it is like, and he too held back the tears that made rounds around his eyes. "Don't worry my love," said he. "I shall be here with you, till the very last minute of the night". She smiled, they embraced, and all was well once again.

Should they have stopped talking or singing, the silence around the room would have swallowed them whole without hesitation. Yet, there is a time when the music has to stop and the chatter has to go away. It was time for him to leave, it was time for her to remain behind. They were both going off to faraway lands on the following day, for a period of time long enough for their hearts to die a thousand times over. They gave each other the longest embrace in silence, her arms wrapped around his back like stubborn roots of a tree. Once again, he buried his face into her hair, taking in the last of her beautiful scent in his nose. Take it in, he told himself. Remember it, cherish it, hold it. They broke away, and her watery jewel rolled down her skin, leaving a trail behind like a glittering river. With that, they left the room and then the house, after speaking of the weather in the distant lands to the owners of the lair. Small talks, they always do well with distraction.

Farewell awaited around the corner as they came down through a long shaft within a tiny box, and the two took a stroll to the nearby park where they found a bench to sit upon. There was still time, always five minutes more from the five minutes passed. Alone against the rest of the world, she once again failed to close the dam that held back her tears, and they settled this time upon his shoulders like little crystals of light. He comforted her, telling of the things that they'd do when they both return from their journey. The damage has been done, they both know, and they shall be mended once they are back in each others' arms. The mending is going to be difficult, like untangling a ball of oil wires with your bare hands somehow. The end seems unclear, but they knew just one thing: they want to go through it all, together. Besides, plans have been made and promised being hooked up, pressed down, and blown a dozen times over. A feast upon the shores of the sea, a trip to the place where the animals roamed, and so many more things that he shall return to finish. He wasn't going to run away, though that was what she feared. He promised, once again, that he shall never leave her, despite fearing himself that she would do that to him instead. It was later when they both found out, that they shared the same fear for each about about themselves, that they both feared that the other person would leave. Perhaps it was the invisible nebula at work all over again, feeding them with ideas and fears from a distant place. He wanted her to be brave, for that was the only way he'd be that way. An electric shaver approached from a distant with a green light on top, and they gave each other a final embrace before the electric shaver bore him away. "Hey," the girl said just before he entered the electric shaver. "I love you so much."

"Silly girl," he said, still putting on that brave front. "My silly, silly girl." He entered the shaver and told the driver where to go. The door was closed and noise outside ended almost abruptly. Through the frozen waterfall made of sand, he blew a kiss through the winds and was caught by her fists. He turned back to the road ahead that was dotted by dull lamps and menacing shadows. The long tunnel swallowed the electric shaver whole, and the rumbling of the wheels underneath joined in the mix with his chaotic thoughts. It was then that his front shattered into a million pieces, upon the floors of the electric shaver, revealing the truth. He broke down in the backseat where nobody could see, burying his face into his palms and teared like a baby. He wanted to be home in his bed, in the arms of his mother, back whence he came when nothing else mattered, to her home once more to plant a kiss to her bubblegum lips. A wave of emotions swept through his body and down his spine, the chills of the night faded in comparison to the ones in his heart. Yet, he had to be brave, he had to be. It was the only way, he figured, that they'd emerge through this storm as one whole - one love.

We shift back to the metal bird which the life form continues to write. Half a revolution around the time giver before it perches upon the branch. His tears were mistook for fatigue, and his sobbing was confused with sniffles from the cold. He wiped away the tears and took leave from his seat. The narrow space in the lavatory closed in upon him, choking the life out of him. He hungered for her somehow, hungered for her to be next to him. It shan't be too long before that happens again, when everything would be back to normal. He has to be brave, he has to be. The metal bird is making its slow descent now, and he cleared his eyes and nose before pushing his way through the folding doors. "What took you so long?" his mother asked, as he buckled himself down into his seat. "I was crying my heart out in there", he said, yet another truth disguised as a lie.

Voices

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Voices

You know how it is, when you hear your own voice for the very first time in a video or in an audio recording, you almost always sound worse than what you think you sound like. I know when I hear my own voice in a video or in an audio recording, I always think that I have a hair ball in my throat with pencils stuck up my nostrils and a fist around my testicles. I always sound strangely constipated when I am being recorded, and it is worse that people have testified before that I do sound like that in real life. The truth is, and that applies for everybody out there, the voice we hear of ourselves is never the voice everybody else is hearing. We almost alway sound different through the speakers, and you start to wonder if there are really two voices in your head, one going through the vocal chord and the other right into your head. Maybe one is really the voice in the back of your head, just repeating the lines the other voice is saying as it goes out of your mouth. It's strange to think that there are aspects of ourselves that we'd never get to know what it is like for real, unless we use some devices to help us out. Like, you can only know what we truly sound like to others by recording your own voice on a recorder. Or, you can only really know how you look like to others if you take a picture of yourself. At least we can take pictures over and over again to get the best results. I don't suppose we could change our voices anytime soon, now can we.

So, I am not a fan of my own voice, and I think it is because I am not used to it. It is difficult at first to attribute that horrendous voice to myself, but I suppose we get used to it after some time and slowly settle down with it. I have accepted the fact that my voice sounds exceptionally weird, though my friends would probably beg to differ. While it isn't god sent, I don't suppose it is nearly half as bad as I make it out to be. But it isn't the voice that I have grown so used to all these years. It just seems lower and rougher around the edges somehow. That is also why I tend to avoid myself being recorded on video most of the time, because I tend to sound very strange - to myself. I am sure most of you share the same sentiments, and know what it is to hear your mouth move in a video and not recognize the voice at all. It's frustrating, to know that what people hear isn't what you have in mind. Because in truth, I like what I hear for the most part, but there isn't a way for people to hear what I hear. It's not like we could implant some kind of recording device into our heads to harvest our own voices or anything, it just doesn't work that way at all. I suppose it has got to do with the way our skull absorbs some of our voices, which makes it different from the one other people hears. But it's true people, I do sound better in my head.

Since I was on the topic of music in the last entry, I have something else that I'd like to bring up in relation to that. I was watching a video by Emma Deigman, another YouTube celebrity of sorts, the kind that puts videos of themselves covering songs on the Internet and then making it somewhere. It's her very first video, though, and she chose to cover Human by The Killers, with a guitarist in the background. Here's the thing, I think she has a very good voice. In fact, she probably has the potential to win some kinda reality television show contest if she tries hard enough, truth be told. She has the clarity, the control, the tone, everything you'd want in a singer - she has it. There are definitely many different types of good singers out there, and she is definitely one of them. But here's my problem with her voice: it's common. It just seems like you have to sing like that in order to be considered a "good singer" somehow, the way the expression has been stereotyped. Every singer these days has to sing in that over-exaggerated manner, or that near orgasmic state in order to show that you are completely immersed in a song and feeling every word in it. The truth is, I am really sick of hearing people sing like that on the radio, and everywhere else on the Internet.

We have the whole "diva" thing ever since the early nineties, when we had the "divas" ruling the music industry. You know, the likes of Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, doing all the power love songs with their high octaves and their vocal acrobats. So the younger generation has watched and adapted their singing methods to suit into that image of being a "diva", and that gave birth to the likes of Christina Aguilera. When was the last time we saw a live performance by her where she didn't scream her lungs out and go from a high note to a low note, then from the low note back to a high note again in between verses and chorus? You probably don't remember her ever doing that, because she has probably never done that in her entire career. It just seems like the higher you can go, the longer you can hold a note, the better you are as a singer supposedly. She isn't exactly the near-orgasmic type of singer, but she certainly is the type that over-exaggerates a lot. There are times when you really shouldn't exaggerate a song just to make it memorable. Sometimes, a song just is. Singing it that way just makes it pretentious somehow, makes people feel like you are trying too hard to get the point across. It's worse when people forget about the lyrics and start to think about how high you can reach with your voice. No doubt you are a good singer, but sometimes you become an unnecessarily good one.

Then we have the near-orgasmic singers in the R&B section. As if lyrics about wanting to fornicate with men and women on the radio, we need to hear moans and groans in between verses and choruses, singers trying desperately to make you believe that they were making love while recording a song in the studio. I bet you have heard one of those singers, and you can tell by the way they end every sentence. It is usually sang in a way that is artificially provocative, when it really isn't. I don't think anybody out there can be turned on, physically, by the tone in someone's voice when they are trying that hard in a song. But that is the way things are, so many people try to sing in the same way that it becomes so hard to tell them apart. I was listening to a song on the radio the other day, a song with a whole bunch of female singers contributing at the very same time. The truth is, I can't tell from one singer to the next, because they all sound the same. I could tell Rihanna's voice though, not because she is better than the others because she is more annoying than the others. I mean, she sings exactly like how she does in that Umbrella song. Speaking of which, I think artistes nowadays are running out of ideas for love songs. They are utilizing nouns like umbrellas and tattoos just to get their point across - what's up with that?

I think I have a thing for low and hoarse voices. By hoarse, I do not necessarily mean the kind of hoarse you get when you have a cold and you lose your voice. I just think that voices with a lower register has more magnetism, if you know what I mean. It is more attractive somehow, rings in my ears like a melody. Of course, for the ladies, it'd be strange to sound so deep that you end up sounding like a man. Just deep enough to be just right, I suppose. Just go to YouTube and search for any interview footage of Rachael Yamagata, and you'd know what I mean. She is not a great singer by any standards, but emotions transcends the ability to sing, but rather how she delivers them. Her strength is in her lyrics, which is why she never over exerts herself on the vocal acrobat department and distracts us from everything else. The song "Duet" can never be sung in a different manner, because that is the way to sing it. It is perfect the way that it is, like an amateur singer songwriter with a guitar. Throwing in the near-orgasmic thing is going to ruin everything about the song. It's the same as what Emma Deigman did for Human, I suppose. Brandon Flowers' voice fits the tone of The Killers, and nothing else is going to do it justice.

I suppose if I am going to change my voice, I'd like my voice to be like Damien Rice's, or maybe Thom Yorke. Their range is just freakin' incredible, such a great blend of emotions and madness. It'd be nice to have their singing voices, but then I don't suppose I'd have the talent to write the songs that they write so very well. And as for my singing voice, I think I am good enough to satisfy myself in my bedroom (okay, that didn't come out so right). In the context of my own bedroom, I think it is good enough for my own ears. Though, there is the occasional presence of my family members and friends, but that is as far as it goes when it comes to my singing voice. I suppose my singing voice is better than my speaking voice, to myself. I don't know, perhaps adding a structure and melody to my voice just makes it that much easier to accept when I hear it over the speakers somehow. Anyway, the technology right now does not allow you to stick a strip of barcode on your throat and allow you to change your voice, like Ethan Hunt does in the Mission Impossible movies. But we can dream, I suppose, and we do it all the time whenever we mouth to a song on the radio or over our computer.

But of course, a voice is the most important part of a singer. At the end of the day, though, it really comes right down to a matter of preference. Perhaps some people just love the whole near-orgasmic voice, while others just like the whole diva-style. They are all good, of course, no questions about that. It is way better than if you are the kind of singers marketed to look good instead of sound good. You know, the kind with their voices manipulated for the album, and pre-recorded for live performances. They always give you some excuse and say that dancing and singing at the same time is a tough thing to do, which is why singers tend to lip-sync every once in a while. The truth is, if you are a singer, then do your job as a singer. You are not a singer slash dancer, so let the dancers do their job while you concentrate on your singing. Unless you call yourself an entertainer or a circus clown, stop monkeying around and start singing. It is only a matter of time when you fall off the stage and your voice is still heard over the speakers. It's embarrassing, or humiliating, which is worse. It's true, just ask Ashlee Simpson.

In Continuum.

31st of December, 2008

Cape No. 7

Damn Those Vikings!

Reconnection

Showing You Around

Slumdog Millionaire

Fables

Merry Christmas, Batman

Goodwill Pandas

Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)

The Metal Bird

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