Friday, June 17, 2005
Thursday, June 16, 2005
A Song I Really Like Now
Meaning
Gavin DeGraw
Taken from Chariot Stripped
hail to the light that my baby watches me
in the darkness of the window
i can hardly get to sleep
wish for the hour that
the nighttime soon shall pass
and the morning dew will bring us
to a day our souls can last
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
situation candlelight
enough to see the bits around you
but it's never very bright
stare at a memory
you, through the grapevine, heard the truth
it's good to learn from your mistakes
but that only works in youth
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
restless minds; curtain calls follow fanfares
troubled hearts; just a walk down the hall
restless hearts; you take a punch just to land one
troubled minds; it's only fair after all
mountain, the trail, but you've got it in sight
sometimes the only way is jumping
i hope you're not afraid of heights
reach in my pocket for a bill that isn't there
and to face all of the undoings
still isn't more than i can bear
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
giving love
love, love
it's always been good to me
it's always been good to me
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
......Wow!
Meaning
Gavin DeGraw
Taken from Chariot Stripped
hail to the light that my baby watches me
in the darkness of the window
i can hardly get to sleep
wish for the hour that
the nighttime soon shall pass
and the morning dew will bring us
to a day our souls can last
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
situation candlelight
enough to see the bits around you
but it's never very bright
stare at a memory
you, through the grapevine, heard the truth
it's good to learn from your mistakes
but that only works in youth
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
restless minds; curtain calls follow fanfares
troubled hearts; just a walk down the hall
restless hearts; you take a punch just to land one
troubled minds; it's only fair after all
mountain, the trail, but you've got it in sight
sometimes the only way is jumping
i hope you're not afraid of heights
reach in my pocket for a bill that isn't there
and to face all of the undoings
still isn't more than i can bear
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
giving love
love, love
it's always been good to me
it's always been good to me
love has a reason
there's a meaning to the world
we're giving love
......Wow!
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
My Film Nuggets
Pedro Almodovar
I watched All About Your Mother many years back. I guess it was because of the poor VCD quality, the white English subtitles that disappears in many scenes and the many cuts in the movie that put me off (to sleep). It was so long ago that I didn’t recognize Penelope Cruz in it, then. Years later I bought Talk To Her in ROC, fully uncut. And it was wonderful. Lush cinematography and what not. It structured a delicate love story on harsh realities surrounding the 4 key characters. That is when I knew who Almodovar was. And I got pretty excited to know that he brought his latest Bad Education to Cannes and it will eventually be screened here. Incidentally Bad Education also starred Gael Garcia Bernal, which happens to be one of the finest actors I recognized (after turns in Y Tu Mama Tambien and The Motorcycle Diaries). But the version shown here was R21 cut. Huh? The original was NC-17 in US. Ok…Piracy time. And indeed I got it in KL. It was as good as what many magazines said it was. Almodovar’s best movie. Bad Education has Bernal playing a dizzying 3 characters (from what I remember; Magazines said 5). The story is not very complex but the characters do bad things and do more bad things and the plot spirals down to hell. Wow. And the film is pretty gay but not so much compared to Lanyu. So there’s contradiction in rating. Anyway, I feel Almodovar has good visions for films and he’s definitely in my good books. Haha. A great master in direction.
Gore
I really have no idea why I enjoy gore so much. Maybe I’m perverted. Anyway I’ve always been fascinated by how people manages to put on screen what’s strikingly real as compared to real life. And one of them is violence. Fight Club. Did they really fight? But it looked awesome and grittily real. Death. None other than my all time favourite Final Destination 1 & 2. Yeah and many others…Event Horizon, Saw, Ghost Ship, Switchblade Romance, Scream, Hollow Man, Dawn of the Dead, Requiem for a Dream, Aliens, Starship Troopers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Vampires etc. Go check it out. It’s very squeamish.
Adaptation
The most impressive adaptation I’ve seen so far would have to be Baz Lurhmann’s take on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The same tale set in Verona became Mexico. Swords became guns. The original play dialogue fit right in. How cool. I was a Romeo and Juliet student. Baz’s version is fabulous. Really. Ok. True to the books we have LOTR, Hitchhikers’ Guide, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, The Motorcycle Diaries, The Pianist, Catch me if You Can, etc. Usually I will enjoy films based on a novel of literature value. But not films which is totally original (and later inspire novelisations). There are, of course, exceptions. Lost in Translation, Amores Perros. Sin City was a good adaptation as well. But look at Elektra. Fuck! As I was mentioning, original concept film bombs? Plenty. Gigli, Jersey Girl, Battlefield Earth, Glitter, Swept Away and many many other bombs. Hah! Adaptation was a nice little film about adaptations. There’s 2 Nicholas Cage inside. Woo Hoo.
Asian Films
Rarely there is any good by my standards. But I am impressed by some of them which I watched recently. Oldboy, The Eye, Waterboys, Nobody Knows, July Rhapsody, 2046, Hollywood HongKong, The Hand, Kung-Fu. Someone needs to breakthrough. We won't survive on slapstick comedies and kung-fu epics, forever.
Pedro Almodovar
I watched All About Your Mother many years back. I guess it was because of the poor VCD quality, the white English subtitles that disappears in many scenes and the many cuts in the movie that put me off (to sleep). It was so long ago that I didn’t recognize Penelope Cruz in it, then. Years later I bought Talk To Her in ROC, fully uncut. And it was wonderful. Lush cinematography and what not. It structured a delicate love story on harsh realities surrounding the 4 key characters. That is when I knew who Almodovar was. And I got pretty excited to know that he brought his latest Bad Education to Cannes and it will eventually be screened here. Incidentally Bad Education also starred Gael Garcia Bernal, which happens to be one of the finest actors I recognized (after turns in Y Tu Mama Tambien and The Motorcycle Diaries). But the version shown here was R21 cut. Huh? The original was NC-17 in US. Ok…Piracy time. And indeed I got it in KL. It was as good as what many magazines said it was. Almodovar’s best movie. Bad Education has Bernal playing a dizzying 3 characters (from what I remember; Magazines said 5). The story is not very complex but the characters do bad things and do more bad things and the plot spirals down to hell. Wow. And the film is pretty gay but not so much compared to Lanyu. So there’s contradiction in rating. Anyway, I feel Almodovar has good visions for films and he’s definitely in my good books. Haha. A great master in direction.
Gore
I really have no idea why I enjoy gore so much. Maybe I’m perverted. Anyway I’ve always been fascinated by how people manages to put on screen what’s strikingly real as compared to real life. And one of them is violence. Fight Club. Did they really fight? But it looked awesome and grittily real. Death. None other than my all time favourite Final Destination 1 & 2. Yeah and many others…Event Horizon, Saw, Ghost Ship, Switchblade Romance, Scream, Hollow Man, Dawn of the Dead, Requiem for a Dream, Aliens, Starship Troopers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Vampires etc. Go check it out. It’s very squeamish.
Adaptation
The most impressive adaptation I’ve seen so far would have to be Baz Lurhmann’s take on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The same tale set in Verona became Mexico. Swords became guns. The original play dialogue fit right in. How cool. I was a Romeo and Juliet student. Baz’s version is fabulous. Really. Ok. True to the books we have LOTR, Hitchhikers’ Guide, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, The Motorcycle Diaries, The Pianist, Catch me if You Can, etc. Usually I will enjoy films based on a novel of literature value. But not films which is totally original (and later inspire novelisations). There are, of course, exceptions. Lost in Translation, Amores Perros. Sin City was a good adaptation as well. But look at Elektra. Fuck! As I was mentioning, original concept film bombs? Plenty. Gigli, Jersey Girl, Battlefield Earth, Glitter, Swept Away and many many other bombs. Hah! Adaptation was a nice little film about adaptations. There’s 2 Nicholas Cage inside. Woo Hoo.
Asian Films
Rarely there is any good by my standards. But I am impressed by some of them which I watched recently. Oldboy, The Eye, Waterboys, Nobody Knows, July Rhapsody, 2046, Hollywood HongKong, The Hand, Kung-Fu. Someone needs to breakthrough. We won't survive on slapstick comedies and kung-fu epics, forever.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Today I wan to tell a story about my fren, Yong.
I visited him today. He couldn't recognise me. My heart almost stopped.
Before I left, I suddenly had a surge of flashbacks from my early years, with my fren inside.
How time changed everything.
I knew Yong from tuition. Actually we were in the same class but only knew him from tuition. It was Mandy who told me he's in our P3 class. (Mandy was one of my four close childhood frens) Yong was a great friend to have. He was way beyond his age. He could do a standard chin-up at P6 (which was a pretty big deal to us at that time; our fat PE teacher only do 3 and can already boast about it). Anyway, I confess I was sort of the loser type of person in school. I was often bullied (in small ways la) and it was always Yong who picked me up. The P School gang I have (which I nv reali felt part of until after graduation), were probably strictly during school hours. I do talk to the people sitting to the NSEW of me and they come for birthdays and christmas etc. But Yong was like my one buddy in school, and after.
Later I learnt that the only reason why Yong was at tuition was that he wanted to xian Mandy. Which they did get together later on, jus before I got together with PS. We went on double dates blah blah blah..quite fun. The most amazing part in my P sch life would have to be during the PSLE exams. Every day after the paper, we would go to the same prawn noodle stall in the then-still-not-yet-burnt-down hawker centre. For four five days, we did that. And with every passing day we will jio more people to go. The stall aunty became richer cos of us. I remember also one P6 day, it was raining heavily. Yong jio me go play rain. We kicked water at the basketball court that collects a lot of water. Ya...I started to like playing rain from then. (Sorry for the countless frens that has been dragged into this by me before)
PSLE results. Ok I got not bad. I go Anglican HS. Yong got not bad, but he wan to go to TKSS cos Mandy is going there. Well, for love. Since we're kids, there was no sad atmosphere, at all. I heard in my Sec school days Yong broke up with Mandy and got together with Lin. And so on and so forth. Yong and I only met up during outings and some other occasions. So we were not so close after P school.
Basically I can fast forward to Christmas 2001. I had a gathering at my place. The P school gang was here but not Yong. No one knows why but we heard (like army, everyone heard but dunno from who) he's in hospital. So we called him up that day and realised.....
Ok! I admit my perception of being ok (being able to talk coherently despite being sick) is different from all the others who went to visit him (having 2 openings on hastily shaven skull: post-surgery). I got there first, I told them he's ok and they can relax. They reached there and needed to hold back tears. After which they all gave me a good fuck and I quote,"Ok My Ass!!!". Well. The thing is he fainted. Caused by a blood clot in the brain. The cause of the blood clot is undetermined to date (or rather jus that I din know bout it). Probably by excessive booze and ciggies (obviously I dun learn). Anyway trust me it wasn't so bad at this point. An infection in the tubes (connecting from his brain and out his tummy draining water clogged by the clot: Docs could not remove clot as its too small) was wad changed everything. His condition worsened and he laid there, many tubes supporting him, survival depending entirely on himself, a few days before his 18 birthday. On his birthday, balloons, cards, presents everywhere. But he slept thru it. I was crying buckets outside. Everyone was speechless. His then girlfriend, Elicia, comforted me with her hands. Her filthy hands. With each and every day, Elicia, Yong's mom and me became his regular visitors. His only visitors. And one day, Elicia, the girl whom Yong loves and whose laps he fainted into, stopped comin, altogether. No calls, no news. Just like that. Maybe Aunty jus din tell me something....
He made it.
After a couple more surgeries to his head and the tube thing.
But he became different. His response became slow. He couldn't talk as he had a lot of phlegm. He couldn't move around (obviously). As days passed, these became the pressing problems. The blood clot was no longer a threat as it cleared away, as Docs said it would. The tube infection caused everything bothering him today (or so I feel). He was no longer being able to giv a quick response, or talk properly for that matter. His ankles became locked due to immobility for prolonged periods. He never walked again. That was in 2003. The hardest part for me was having to help his mom bathe Yong, the guy I've always used to look up to. Many times Aunty washed him while I would brush his teeth. I remembered when I helped her for the first time, I made sure Yong was between our line of sight so she wouldn't see my tears.
His mom is surely the bravest woman I have ever met in real life. She took in everything with grace, with pride. She still thinks Yong will eventually become the Yong that likes basketball and never goes home. She is still holding her family together. I respect her, truly from my heart. She never crumbled. And never cried (in front of me at least: That's a good gauge since I see her quite often during the more difficult times). Yong was put thru therapy at many many places. Now is permanently at Bedok. I have become one of the few people who still visits Yong (like once every 2, 3 months).
Today he did not remember me. That was the first time in about 3 years that he forgot me. But luckily he remembered when I said my name. He remembered. He said he wanted to sleep. So I sat there half an hour watching him sleep. He told me he was hungry and he wanted to sleep. So he chose to sleep. Anyway, he's still depending quite a lot on hand signals. I left quietly. His ankles are still crooked.
I remembered I had a dream once. That I visited him one day and his mom told me he went out to play basketball with some people I dunno at all. And I started to SMS everyone on my way out. I think I was planning a gathering.
Yong made it so far. I wan my dream to come true. I know he also wants to take back what he missed during these 3 years.
This post is for myself: 140605 2303
I visited him today. He couldn't recognise me. My heart almost stopped.
Before I left, I suddenly had a surge of flashbacks from my early years, with my fren inside.
How time changed everything.
I knew Yong from tuition. Actually we were in the same class but only knew him from tuition. It was Mandy who told me he's in our P3 class. (Mandy was one of my four close childhood frens) Yong was a great friend to have. He was way beyond his age. He could do a standard chin-up at P6 (which was a pretty big deal to us at that time; our fat PE teacher only do 3 and can already boast about it). Anyway, I confess I was sort of the loser type of person in school. I was often bullied (in small ways la) and it was always Yong who picked me up. The P School gang I have (which I nv reali felt part of until after graduation), were probably strictly during school hours. I do talk to the people sitting to the NSEW of me and they come for birthdays and christmas etc. But Yong was like my one buddy in school, and after.
Later I learnt that the only reason why Yong was at tuition was that he wanted to xian Mandy. Which they did get together later on, jus before I got together with PS. We went on double dates blah blah blah..quite fun. The most amazing part in my P sch life would have to be during the PSLE exams. Every day after the paper, we would go to the same prawn noodle stall in the then-still-not-yet-burnt-down hawker centre. For four five days, we did that. And with every passing day we will jio more people to go. The stall aunty became richer cos of us. I remember also one P6 day, it was raining heavily. Yong jio me go play rain. We kicked water at the basketball court that collects a lot of water. Ya...I started to like playing rain from then. (Sorry for the countless frens that has been dragged into this by me before)
PSLE results. Ok I got not bad. I go Anglican HS. Yong got not bad, but he wan to go to TKSS cos Mandy is going there. Well, for love. Since we're kids, there was no sad atmosphere, at all. I heard in my Sec school days Yong broke up with Mandy and got together with Lin. And so on and so forth. Yong and I only met up during outings and some other occasions. So we were not so close after P school.
Basically I can fast forward to Christmas 2001. I had a gathering at my place. The P school gang was here but not Yong. No one knows why but we heard (like army, everyone heard but dunno from who) he's in hospital. So we called him up that day and realised.....
Ok! I admit my perception of being ok (being able to talk coherently despite being sick) is different from all the others who went to visit him (having 2 openings on hastily shaven skull: post-surgery). I got there first, I told them he's ok and they can relax. They reached there and needed to hold back tears. After which they all gave me a good fuck and I quote,"Ok My Ass!!!". Well. The thing is he fainted. Caused by a blood clot in the brain. The cause of the blood clot is undetermined to date (or rather jus that I din know bout it). Probably by excessive booze and ciggies (obviously I dun learn). Anyway trust me it wasn't so bad at this point. An infection in the tubes (connecting from his brain and out his tummy draining water clogged by the clot: Docs could not remove clot as its too small) was wad changed everything. His condition worsened and he laid there, many tubes supporting him, survival depending entirely on himself, a few days before his 18 birthday. On his birthday, balloons, cards, presents everywhere. But he slept thru it. I was crying buckets outside. Everyone was speechless. His then girlfriend, Elicia, comforted me with her hands. Her filthy hands. With each and every day, Elicia, Yong's mom and me became his regular visitors. His only visitors. And one day, Elicia, the girl whom Yong loves and whose laps he fainted into, stopped comin, altogether. No calls, no news. Just like that. Maybe Aunty jus din tell me something....
He made it.
After a couple more surgeries to his head and the tube thing.
But he became different. His response became slow. He couldn't talk as he had a lot of phlegm. He couldn't move around (obviously). As days passed, these became the pressing problems. The blood clot was no longer a threat as it cleared away, as Docs said it would. The tube infection caused everything bothering him today (or so I feel). He was no longer being able to giv a quick response, or talk properly for that matter. His ankles became locked due to immobility for prolonged periods. He never walked again. That was in 2003. The hardest part for me was having to help his mom bathe Yong, the guy I've always used to look up to. Many times Aunty washed him while I would brush his teeth. I remembered when I helped her for the first time, I made sure Yong was between our line of sight so she wouldn't see my tears.
His mom is surely the bravest woman I have ever met in real life. She took in everything with grace, with pride. She still thinks Yong will eventually become the Yong that likes basketball and never goes home. She is still holding her family together. I respect her, truly from my heart. She never crumbled. And never cried (in front of me at least: That's a good gauge since I see her quite often during the more difficult times). Yong was put thru therapy at many many places. Now is permanently at Bedok. I have become one of the few people who still visits Yong (like once every 2, 3 months).
Today he did not remember me. That was the first time in about 3 years that he forgot me. But luckily he remembered when I said my name. He remembered. He said he wanted to sleep. So I sat there half an hour watching him sleep. He told me he was hungry and he wanted to sleep. So he chose to sleep. Anyway, he's still depending quite a lot on hand signals. I left quietly. His ankles are still crooked.
I remembered I had a dream once. That I visited him one day and his mom told me he went out to play basketball with some people I dunno at all. And I started to SMS everyone on my way out. I think I was planning a gathering.
Yong made it so far. I wan my dream to come true. I know he also wants to take back what he missed during these 3 years.
This post is for myself: 140605 2303
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
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