Category Archive
Browsing entries filed under Leisure
A Card Game Primer: Big 2
I didn’t learn this game until I was in university. In various Chinese dialects, it’s referred to as “tai di” or some variant thereof. The English translation of this name is Big 2, hence the title.
This is just a picture of all the combos I’ve heard of, in what has been referred to as “Chinese Poker”. Some combinations may look similar, and I’ve used the poker names, but these are for Tai Di, not Poker. I put it together as a visual guide for students who want to join their classmates but don’t know how to play. We play for boasting rights, and it’s a great way to spice up the atmosphere.
I’ve arranged them according to hand values, because I too have a tendency to forget that my flush, while impressive, cannot beat my opponent’s full house.
The Royal Flush cards came from a different deck, because I’d used up the face cards (what we colloquially call “picture” cards) in making the other combos. Royal Flush should be on top, but given its rare appearance, I slotted it at the side instead.
Takeshi Talk, Part Three
We left our dear Masaki and Keigo at a revelation cliffhanger. What will Keigo do, now that Masaki has HIV? Let’s check in with the girl first.
The scene opens with her, sobbing in the doctor’s office. Man but I’m getting sick of this place. The doctor comes in and apologises. Whatever for? Well, they made a mistake! She’s actually HIV-negative! Hooray! She runs out and skips along the road, when she comes to a dead end. It’s a steep fall off the side of a building. And she leaps!
Back into her own body. Cheap “it was only a dream” shot! Masaki sits up in bed, picks up the magazine next to her and cuddles it to herself. Why? Because the magazine had Keigo’s face on it. Um, teenage girls can be quite silly la yeah? Flashback to the time she told him she is HIV-positive, and then we cut to a pool table scene.
Keigo pots the ball right into our faces, before some dumbass comes up to him and taunts him for not having written any new songs. Um, excuse me, but do men who listen to the romantic mush Keigo creates, actually hang out in these kinds of smoky, seedy bars? Maybe his girlfriend is a Keigo fan and she’s getting difficult to handle without any new releases.
Keigo’s response is to snort, pick up his whisky, and take a sip. Then throw it in the guy’s face. Eeee so girly. The guy grabs Keigo by the collar, and Keigo responds with a right hook to the guy’s face. He was conveniently still holding his whisky glass, so. Cheaterbug!
Other bar patrons pull the guy off Keigo (even though he deserved to get beaten up). He looks at his bloodied palm, with a piece of broken glass in it, and thinks back to Masaki’s confession. Cue bonus opening music video.
It’s morning, and Masaki bums around the house in her pajamas. Her father has just left to play golf, and her brother is busy mugging for tests and is not pleased by her pajama-wearing self. She refuses breakfast by saying she’s on a diet.
Keigo is having a party with his best friends Marlboro and Johnnie Walker, when Kaoru gatecrashes. She’s come to drag him off to the office, where they are awaiting his new song. He tells her to just give a young composer a chance and slap his name on it. Er no, Keigo, that’s called… well, it’s not plagiarism, but it sure isn’t honest! He says that life has become meaningless after his late girlfriend passed on. If you ask me, he seems to attract the dying types. Let’s project into the future. If he stays with Masaki until she dies, he will have had 2 girlfriends dying on him, which doesn’t seem to be the best cure for his “meaningless life” problem.
Kaoru plops herself down on the sofa next to Keigo, saying (essentially) “what about me, I helped you too!” Keigo suddenly pounces on her as if to kiss her, but his resolves weakens and he just stomps off, leaving Kaoru a sad, confused and rejected mess. (Can you tell that I’m not very sympathetic to her cause?)
Masaki has gone to visit her friend-with-benefit Hibino, to tell him the outcome of her test. He happens to be entertaining some bimbo, who overhears Masaki disclosing her condition. The bimbo, being a stupid and jealous sort, asks Hibino about it, and he tells her very sternly not to tell anyone. Oh great, the news will be all over town before you know it.
Hibino accompanies Masaki home, where he picks up a copy of the Kaoru Fan Club newsletter that fell out of her mailbox. He then promises to buy her the CD for her birthday the following week, which she had completely forgot. Yeah, when you’re staring death in the face, the day you started life can seem pretty insignificant.
Masaki walks up the steps to her house while looking at the newsletter, and it suddenly hits her: On the front page is a group photo of some trip somewhere, and loser-type is front row left! She frantically calls Hibino back, perhaps to call a hit on loser-type or something.
Keigo is taking a walk in the park, while wearing his ugly sunglasses. There’s a dude in the park playing Keigo’s songs on the saxophone. When he’s done, he spots Keigo and comes over to say what a big fanboy he is. This is the 3rd guy in the show to have the medium-long hairstyle Keigo is sporting. I’m starting to get bored of it, mostly because it’s my hairstyle too!
The sax player sticks out his hand to shake Keigo’s, but Keigo not-so-subtly ignores it. He looks at it, exhales smoke and walks away. It is beneath him to befriend mere struggling musicians!
Hibino and Masaki go on an adventure to the record company to find out the name of loser-type. Um, these fanclubs aren’t big on their clients’ privacy, huh? They track him down to his last known address, but he’s moved and left no forwarding address. He quit his job too, so he’s totally gone now! “Do you think he left this world?” Masaki asks, suddenly. Haha, good observation!
She goes to wait at Keigo’s house until the white van drops him off. She’s pestering him to get tested, and scares him by telling him that loser-type is probably already wasting away from the disease. She doesn’t want him to die, but he gets all existential and retorts that when the time comes, he’ll die anyway. Then he literally and metaphorically pushes her away, because it’s none of her concern whether he lives or dies.
She yells back that she has discovered the beauty of life, and now she wants to live! Then she digs a little deeper and identifies his defensive reaction as one of fear. He wordlessly walks away to sulk in a corner, so she must have hit the nail on the head.
In a noisy club filled with silly girls, a bitchy silly girl with a secret spills it to 3 other sillies that Masaki has an illness, which they would do well to avoid. We’ll come back to this in a bit, because now we see that Masaki’s mother has told her husband that Masaki isn’t eating. Of course she’s not, she’s in love! She survives on fresh air and sunshine! Otosan blames Masaki’s non-eating on the fact that she has a bad relationship with her mother, since Okaasan is always busy. Dude: pot, kettle, black, you.
Okaasan actually puts her money where her mouth is, and goes in to chat with Masaki. She asks what gift her kid wants, and Masaki is touched that her own mother would remember the day she came into this world. Duh. So based on this scene, I predict that Masaki will soon confide in her mother, her only remaining ally in this world!
Keigo is standing on a building rooftop, but he’s too chicken to commit suicide. Just as well, the president of the record company wants to talk to him. Boring scene la.
Masaki retrieves her books from her locker, and they’ve all been defaced in black marker. Okay, can someone tell me what is the point of this? I know it’s meant to show how she’s been ostracised, but girls generally do social isolation and gossiping, not this juvenile graffiti-ing. She goes to the restroom, where one of her erstwhile friends is in need of a hanky. When Masaki offers her one, the girl asks for a tissue from someone else instead. Then they leave hurriedly, and Masaki enters a cubicle to see more graffiti implicating her with a disease. Oh boo hoo hoo!
We are then treated to a slideshow of Masaki’s childhood pictures, some of which are really charming.
After school, Masaki corners the most sympathetic (and left-out) girl of her former clique. Of all the betrayals, only this girl’s rejection mattered to Masaki. She goes to find Hibino at the “shop offering unimaginable goods” where he works. Stupid bimbo is there, and she takes the opportunity to drive a wedge between Masaki and HIbino by playing instigator.
Masaki goes home and reads a nice card written to her from her mother, so she goes in search of Okaasan at the shop. Okaasan has just had a visit from the traveling salesman, and Masaki stands outside watching her mother work, when the salesman leans in to kiss Okaasan! Oh no! She politely dodges and pushes him away, and Masaki decides this is a bad time. She walks away, but Okaasan catches a glimpse of her retreating reflection in a shop mirror across the street. Masaki stomps home in a rage, and her father notices that she’s making so much noise as to disturb his sports telecast. Masaki ignores her father’s query on what is wrong, but she makes a conflicted beeline for the safety of her room.
She is lying in a disturbed heap on her bed (no futons for these guys) when her phone rings. I’d make fun of her ringtone, but I didn’t even have a cellphone in 1998, so. She answers with a barely-audible “hai”, and gets the familiar “ore dayo”. He took the test! Several moments of suspense follow.
His result is… not out yet. *deflates* Oh well, not like I was expecting anything different. It took a few days for my blood test to come back too, and mine was only to find out my blood type. Apparently, Keigo “went to a hospital that will mail the results”. So, not the type of place to go to for emergency diagnoses, then.
“I’m scared,” he confesses. Then it’s her turn to shock him. “Keigo, I wish you would test positive.” For the humanly simple reason that she is all alone, so at least they’d have each other if they were both ill. She’s tired of fighting her battles alone. Our Keigo is at least perceptive enough to figure out that something happened to upset her. With a final gasp, she hangs up the phone and collapses onto her bed. Keigo, faced with the unrelenting beep-beep-beep of the line, has a few moments of camera time to himself, so he can work on his “looking sad and worried” face.
Despite the bleakness of the situation, morning comes again, as it invariably does. As Masaki leaves for school, her mother tells her to come back early, as it’s Masaki’s birthday. Again, Masaki takes several moments to digest this, then says only “bye”.
Keigo is nattily dressed in a coat when he goes out to retrieve his mail. And in his mail is… his long-awaited result from the hospital! Stupid show keeps us in suspense by cutting to a gym scene. Masaki is being ostracised during a game of volleyball. I must say, their PE uniform is ridiculously cute. Floral-patterned t-shirts and pink shorts.
She looks so forlorn after school that her erstwhile friend decides to go talk to her and tell her what the rest of the school is saying about her. She doesn’t believe the rumour that Masaki has AIDS, she thinks it’s just malicious gossip spread by those who couldn’t stand Masaki’s independent character. “What if it’s true that I have AIDS?” Asami (her friend) is shocked, and scatters her armful of magazines that I think she was carrying especially for this dramatic purpose.
Asami doesn’t move to pick up her magazines, so Masaki picks them up for her. When Asami doesn’t reach out to take them, Masaki leaves them on the bench, and promises to sever her friendship with Asami so that she won’t be affected by Masaki’s status.
We return to Keigo, who finally gathers up the courage to open the mailer from the hospital. He gulps, steels himself to open it, then collapses to his knees as the camera cuts to show us the contents. He’s negative. So he has a cigarette.
Masaki returns to the one friend she has left, but stupid bimbo is now acting helpless and calls Hibino into the shop before Masaki can approach. Meanwhile, her family are waiting for her at home with a cake. Wow, they even have champagne on ice. I am so doing this for my birthday next.
The birthday girl returns home in time to see, through the curtains, her happy family popping open the champagne, so she decides not to bring gloom upon her own party. She goes to Keigo’s apartment building, and waits outside sans umbrella or raincoat, in the pouring rain. A stray puppy joins her, until a set of headlights reveal a black roadster coming for her. Specifically, Keigo’s black roadster.
We get the first real mushy romantic moment of this episode, as they stare at each other through the windscreen and the rain. They go back to his apartment, and Keigo hides his test result inside a coffee-table book. While he pours out a whiskey (I hope it’s for him), Masaki reveals that she’s being picked on at school. Keigo puts his glass on the table (oi! Use a coaster!) and delivers some advice about humans who can only feel good by putting down others.
“I wasn’t planning to come to you,” she says.
“If I’ll do, then come to me.” Oh yes you definitely do very well indeed, despite the anger management and unhealed wounds from the past. He continues smiling (smiling! Him!) as he reassures her that she’s not troublesome. And in a retro return to 1998, he says: “If you want to see me, just call me. Let me give you my number.” I recall SMS was still pretty new then, but no caller ID? Really?
He writes it down for her. What, don’t you have namecards? While his back is turned, she notices his test results sticking out from the book. He turns back to her in time to see that she’s picked up his mailer and is now opening it, and for some reason he seems conflicted. Like, “Oh no she shouldn’t be seeing that” and not for privacy reasons either.
“You didn’t have to hide it out of consideration for me.” Yeah, I know why he did that. It’s the same reason I feel a bit embarrassed to share my good grades when I know the asker didn’t do all that well. She exclaims that she’s happy he’ll live a long and healthy life (not with those ciggies he won’t), and then breaks into tears because it’s a life she won’t ever have, anymore.
And now it is Keigo’s turn to hold the little broken birdie to his chest and stroke her head. She continues, between sobs, that it is now the end between them. Hey, stop discriminating against the HIV-negative! His facial expression now tells us that he’s sad to hear this, which implies that he has feelings for her. Not like you didn’t see that coming.
She pulls away from him. His hair is ridiculously tousled. Why can’t I get that kind of volume on my hair? Before it’s too late, he speaks up. It’s hard to keep a straight face while watching this, because his hair is seriously insanely funny. She leaves anyway, because he didn’t ask her to stay.
She walks home, fighting back tears. Someone bumps into her and her trinket flies onto the road. While she’s squatting there, reminiscing, she sees loser-type in the human traffic on the pavement! He’s wearing a surgical face mask! Ta-da!
Masaki is now filled with renewed vigour and stops moping for a while, so she can track down this fella and give him a piece of her mind, as payment for the virus he gave her. The theme song started a while back, so this signals the end of yet another episode.
This one was draggier, all “woe is me” on Masaki’s side, but at least they got Keigo’s HIV status cleared up. If nothing of note happens in an episode, then it’s really rubbish.
Takeshi Talk, Part Two
This is episode 2 of God Please Give Me More Time, in which our heroine Masaki goes in search of the bastard who infected her with HIV. It’s a pretty annoying episode because she keeps having flashbacks to her experience in the doctor’s office when she’s being told about her condition. Cop-out!
She is in a train, returning from the doctor’s, when the reality of her life being cut short hits her and she collapses in a sobbing heap in the train. I like how the dude nearest to her just turns, looks, and goes back to his paper. That’s a very accurate portrayal!
After we’re treated to the bonus opening MV, the scene cuts to Masaki, sitting alone in her home’s dining hall as the clock ticks away the seconds of her life. Then her friend calls her out to go clubbing, and she goes! What a surprise, I’d have thought she would just hide under the covers. At the club, Masaki comes across a poster for a charity concert against AIDS, featuring our dear Keigo.
Meanwhile, where is Keigo at this point? He is backstage at the recording session, thinking of the girl who reached out to his poor lonesome self. Masaki passes by the building just as Keigo is coming out. There’s a stampede of crazed fangirls for the door, and Masaki falls down. Do Japanese schoolgirls not have to do homework? Why are they so free to chase after idols all the time?
Back in the white van (yes that one), Keigo’s lackey-cum-driver tells him that the girl from the rainy night was out there, along with the others. So of course he has to go back and pick her up from where she’s sitting on a parapet, holding a hanky to her bleeding elbow. Oh, my knight on a white horse van! Although frankly, I prefer his black roadster. Mmm.
They go back to his bachelor pad, but this time she just stands outside. He turns to her and sees her injured elbow. When he reaches out to take a better look at it, she rejects him and we cut to a shot of the hanky lying on the floor. As if we didn’t know she was bleeding already. Then Masaki goes on and on about how she really loved him and wanted to get to know him, and that she doesn’t regret sleeping with him at all. (Something tells me she was referring to the emotional investment and not the physical side of things.) The silly female then decides to walk home, and the ever-suave Keigo sits on his couch looking at her bloodied hanky. No, this is the RIGHT thing to do! Don’t chase after women! It’s just part of their game!
Masaki rolls out of bed, refuses breakfast, and only her mother seems to care. Her father cares more about his golf game, and her mugger brother runs off for his first-period test. Masaki decides to skip school to visit Hibino (Ah Beng) to tell him to take an STD test. Hibino’s female colleague mentions that Masaki hangs out at a club frequented by girls who do “sex for money”, though what is this supposed to indicate, I have no idea. Would the club be like a go-go bar?
There follows a PSA (public service announcement) in the form of scary words like “painful”, “death”, “sexual transmission” and the like jumping out at Masaki as she flips through a book on AIDS. Thanks for further stigmatizing people living with HIV and AIDS!
Enough of Masaki’s emo-tizing, what’s Keigo up to? He’s reminiscing about his late girlfriend, who died from some disease in hospital! Oh, how he held her cold dead body and lamented her passing! Boo hoo hoo! Then he decides to give Masaki a ring. To tell her that he doesn’t care if she drops dead. Because she has no idea what is means to live or die. “You don’t know what it means to die! Or to love someone!” And who made YOU the expert, Keigo-san? After she hangs up, her terribly unperceptive friends show up to drag her to the club. Again.
What follows is just a lot of Masaki being emo and pushing away the people who care, such as Hibino and her mother. So we go back to Keigo, who is sitting in on a rehearsal. On his own accord. Kaoru (the singer) remarks that this is unusual of him, because he doesn’t usually care about others. “Have you suddenly started taking an interest in others?” Again, cue flashback to Masaki saying… something. It’s not important what is it anymore, is it?
We get to watch some neighbourhood soccer before Hibino shows up to tell Masaki that he tested negative on the STD test. “What about the HIV test?” He digs out another piece of paper. “Negative means I don’t have it, right?” So Masaki lashes out at him, because it wasn’t negative for her, and isn’t this what she deserves for engaging in compensated dating? Hibino, being the stalwart man (and also a bit of a doormat) comforts her by telling her (essentially) that he will still be her friend.
Okay, so now we know that it wasn’t Hibino who infected her. That leaves 2 candidates! Although the way this story is going, you should have known from the start who was the culprit.
Still in denial, Masaki calls up the hospital late at night to ask if there could have been a mistake. The doctor stalls by telling her to come to the hospital, and Masaki eventually gets it. There wasn’t any mistake (because that would be a really cheap copout).
While she lies in a miserable heap on the bed, her phone rings. It’s Keigo, surprise surprise. What is this, a booty call? You tell her off and then call her up like nothing happened? Although, I don’t think I’ve heard anything sexier to come out of a cellphone than Keigo’s “ore dayo” (it’s me). The unlimited arrogance! I like.
She’s still puzzling over this magic of someone’s voice coming out of her phone, when a *beep beep* sounds from outside her window. Okay, so it’s more like *honk honk*, but it’s still kinda a cute sound, not *pooon poooon* like the lorries do in Malaysia. Girl apparently has enough brains to put two and two together, and opens her window to look down into Keigo’s convertible, which so conveniently has its top down. And of course her bedroom window is conveniently above wherever he decided to stop his car, otherwise Masaki’s dad might have been the one throwing golf clubs at Keigo for making noise late at night.
In an expositional move, Masaki asks how he got her address. I mean, dude may be a superstar, but he’s not psychic nor does he have access to central government databases… I hope. Answer: She is a member of Kaoru’s fan club, so he got her address from there. Quite a good move, not terribly slick but it got the job done. It’s something I would have done, with my data-mining capabilities. He gives her back her biohazardous hanky, and follows this up with… a cigarette. Man! Totally gratuitous smoking.
The hanky reminds her that Keigo is doing some AIDS charity concert, so she asks if he ever got tested. Keigo replies that his agency made him get tested, as part of the campaign. A lorry rumbles by as he reveals that he tested… positive. OH NO!
He keeps a straight face for about 7.5 seconds before breaking into his first grin of the series. PSYCH! So he’s not going to die from AIDS. Because at the rate he’s puffing, lung cancer will get him first. “So it wasn’t you,” Masaki mumbles, to which Keigo gives the most adorable “huh?” I have ever seen in a grown man. [Updated: Keigo is KIDDING! He doesn't have HIV, so he's not the culprit. Anyway, this is a run-of-the-mill romance. Your hero cannot be the cause of the heroine's disease!]
They drive up to some hill overlooking the city, and Takeshi basically stops acting for this part. He is essentially telling his own life story as Keigo tells Masaki how he spent time in LA and feels neither here nor there, with no sense of belonging. “Alone and yet wanting help.” He turns back to Masaki. “Isn’t that how you feel?”
She gathers up her courage to reply. “Keigo, I…” and her grip tightens on the musical-note-patterned paper cups they’re drinking out of. Such a cute and kitschy design! You wouldn’t have thought that a serious musician like Keigo would use such things! The romantic music builds up as Keigo leans in for a kiss, then cuts off abruptly as Masaki pulls back and tells him not to be kind to her.
Having now distanced herself from him (and also because we’re coming to the end of the episode), Masaki finally does the big reveal. “I slept with a man for 50,000 yen!” Keigo: “Sou ka (I see).” Then she gets on with it. I have HIV! I’m gonna get AIDS! And I didn’t want to tell you, but I have to: I may have passed it to you!
HAVE YOU PEOPLE NEVER HEARD OF CONDOMS?! Seriously, even if there wasn’t any HIV, do the words “unwanted teenage pregnancy” mean anything? And you, Keigo, you’re supposed to be the adult! You should know better, because she could slap you with a child-support suit anytime, dude. Sheesh!
Keigo’s expression of shell-shocked horror is probably a PSA in itself. I wish it also meant that he was regretting his promiscuous past, but that’s probably too much to ask. Frankly, just vicariously absorbing his shock, fear and horror is enough to make me celibate. Too many evil germs out there.
What pisses me off is that it took her so long to get around to telling Keigo, when he was the one at most risk of getting infected by her. I mean, when he brought her to his apartment after she fell down, she had plenty of chances to tell him, but instead she just went beating round the bush about how she doesn’t hate him. Yeah, you don’t regret sleeping with him, but if you passed it to him, he’s going to have a lifetime of regrets for sleeping with you! And how come we’re never told how he feels about sleeping with her? Are we supposed to assume that it was just another one-night stand for him? But it’s obviously not, so how come Keigo isn’t allowed to contribute to this romantic fantasy? He just stands as a blank screen for females to project their own romantic fantasies. Takeshi’s great in this role, but I think the actress had more chance to show off her acting skills.
Takeshi Talk, Part One
I recently changed my usual bus route to work, because I kept missing the bus to Toa Payoh. Now I take a bus to Orchard and then the MRT to Novena. Along the way, I face mortal danger from the escalators - and it’s Takeshi’s fault.
At the underpass from Tangs to the MRT station, there’s a giant ad for Red Cliff, and you can look at the different actors as you go up or down the escalator. Tony Leung and Takeshi get the prime spot at eye level, as well as another Takeshi picture right at the bottom of the escalator. So I have to mind that I’m not too busy staring, otherwise I’ll fall headlong down the very sharp and serrated steps. Also, I keep having to resist the temptation to pose in front of the Takeshi picture and take an “act cute” photo.
And I have to run this gauntlet every day!
On another note, I am now catching up with my neglected TV series, Kamisama Mou Sukoshi Dake (God Please Give Me More Time), which catapulted Takeshi to fame in Japan. Frankly, it’s a pretty rubbish story - it reads like fanfiction, which I suppose it is - how very meta. But I never claimed to watch it for the story, eh?
So I’m going to do a blow-by-blow commentary a la Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and snark my way through the series.
Part One begins after the jump.
White Knight, Dark Knight, who will save Gotham tonight?
AS*spoiler alert for Batman: The Dark Knight*
Brain blown. Movie too awesome. Cannot be coherent. Here have many bullet points instead.
- Much symbolism. I like symbolism. Harvey Dent’s lucky coin. The references to him as Gotham’s “white knight”. The use of Joker cards.
- Nolan brothers totally rock. What’s a director without a good screenplay, so it’s just as well that the director co-wrote the screenplay with his brother. The mind-blowingness should come as no surprise, being that these are the guys who did “The Prestige” and that left me speechless.
- The Batbike is sex on two wheels.
- Michael Caine again gets snappy one-liners, by virtue of being British. “The Lamborghini? Much more subtle.”
- Batman is not perfect, and Lucius Fox does not serve him blindly.
- Public opinion can be a real bitch.
- The Joker is a criminal mastermind. So is he sane or insane? I have no idea.
- The 2 ferries each holding the other’s fate: brilliant storytelling. I did see it coming, but I didn’t know how it would play out. In this case, the true heroes are the people of Gotham.
- The hero is imperfect, the villain is without malice, and suffering warps a good man into an evil one. Such is humanity. There are no heroes, only people doing what they can.
- The antagonistic balance between hero and villain, as old as language and still unresolved. For how does one exist without the other?
- The Joker makes some good points about gravity and anarchy.
- The overarching point of the film, according to me: We are all haunted by shadows in our heart. Misguided intentions, faulty motivations, love… all these lead us to decisions we regret, and which will stay with us forever. There is no evil blackness or noble whiteness - we are only human, and have both.
- Explosions +sound effects of THX movie theatre = nerdgasm.
- The Joker tells 2 different stories regarding his scars. Which is real, and does it even matter?
- Are police forces so corrupt that even Gotham’s cops can be bought? And do all forces have an Internal Affairs department?
- The subtitles are funny. Onscreen says “balls”, subs say “LP”. Hahahaha! (LP = lam par)
- How do you continue being, when the forces that made you are now striving to unmake you?
- When given two choices: Yes or No, remember that there is a third way: “F87k it.”
So that makes 3 movies in 2 weeks. You know you’ve been to the cinema too often when the ads are stale and even the trailers aren’t exciting anymore - it’s the 2nd time I’ve seen the trailer for the new Mummy movie. I enjoyed the trailer for the upcoming “Clone Wars”, though. With a female Sith Lord, that would make the Dark Side more progressive than the American presidency.
You can make me young again.
Today I realised that it has been 10 years, and I still haven’t realised one of my teenage dreams.
I want to marry Takeshi Kaneshiro.
And yes, I’m regressing terribly to the point where I’m lusting after imaginary, unattainable males instead of looking at the concrete ones around me, but you’ll excuse me if fantasy’s much more appealing than the real world right now.
It’s not because I just watched Red Cliff, alright. It’s actually because today I decided to listen to my favourite Japanese emo love song, and Googled for the lyrics. And it turns out that my favourite song is the theme song to a very popular TV series starring my favourite Japanese actor! Okay, so I should have known this earlier. Link to the YouTube video is here. Quality is bad but the audio’s fine.
I’m a sucker for long-haired guys with soulful eyes, outcasts who are just that little bit too weird for society. Am I talking about Takeshi or his character? Both, if you’re familiar with the Hong Kong showbiz world. Medium-long hair is sexy, and soulful eyes that betray loneliness and a desire to be understood just make me wanna cuddle their owner to my insubstantial bosom.
Suddenly today I’m 16 again, grinning foolishly at the computer screen as it brings me images of Takeshi in the rain, at the piano… okay so the whole show is really a giant romance fanfiction of the sort I detest in Korean dramas, but as I said, I’m a sucker for Takeshi.
Just for today, I am the same age as my students.
I! Am! Chai-niece!
About a month ago I sat on a bus, absent-mindedly watching TV Mobile, when a movie trailer came on. It was for some show starring Takeshi Kaneshiro. And as far as I’m concerned, Takeshi in a movie is good enough reason to hand over my debit card and sit in a big dark room for 2-and-a-half hours. Doesn’t really matter what the movie is.
The movie, by the way, is Red Cliff. Being the ignorant banana that I am, I thought it was just another period piece, instead of being one of the major stories in the Three Kingdoms novel. It wasn’t until I wiki’ed it that I realised the cultural import of the movie.
The nearest comparison I can draw to Red Cliff is 2007’s 300, which I absolutely, thoroughly enjoyed, and not just for the bare-torsoed muscly men. 300 was a real popcorn movie, a cinematic blockbuster, go watch and be entertained. Probably also something to do with the overall look of the movie, and different directorial visions.
Red Cliff, on the other hand, didn’t feel as entertaining. Sure it had its good bits - everyone loved Takeshi’s interpretation of the strategist Zhuge Liang, and you can’t not like Tony Leung (it’s illegal!) but it just lacks that punch. Surprising for a John Woo film, actually. At times it felt more like a historical re-enactment, which I suppose it partially is.
In certain parts the military tactics really had me befuddled. There’s a pivotal scene where the first skirmish happens, but the events seem to go beyond common sense. *spoiler alert* Who rides into unfamiliar terrain, with poor visibility, just to pursue what seems like an easy target? C’mon, stuff like that only happens in Looney Tunes cartoons, right? Right? I very much doubt you need to read Sun Tzu’s Art of War to know that it’s not the wisest move.
All in all, while Red Cliff is a perfectly fine cultural vehicle (apparently produced to coincide with the Beijing Olympics), it lacks entertainment value. I won’t fault it for being long, since wars are protracted, wearying affairs. But it just… lacks… something.
Probably machismo.
On another note:
Whoever it was who spoke of turning swords into ploughshares, didn’t watch war movies. Look at how many awesome war movies there are. No one’s made an awesome farming movie yet, eh? No, the blood and gore doesn’t get to me, and it’s not because I have bloodlust. What is chess but a war game, writ small upon a board? What is war but a strategy game, writ large? And thus, I enjoy the mental stimulation of war movies, especially if they involve strategies.
Would you like to check out my package?
I ordered 2 different packages from the USA while I was back home in KL, expecting them to take at least 2 weeks to arrive. I may have underestimated the efficiency of whatever logistics providers Threadless and the US Mail use, because they arrived within a week. Hooray!
The first one to arrive was my leather handbag, which I purchased from an Etsy seller. Etsy is like eBay for quirky, handmade, individualised stuff. After the big leather-goods brands failed to offer me anything attractive in the way of a full-leather, stylish handbag, I turned to the Internet. Lo and behold! A bag. It wasn’t any cheaper than those in the shopping malls, but it’s pretty much one-of-a-kind, handmade, and unique. I don’t like having a bag that’s just like what someone else has, and being able to say that my bag is unbranded because I bought it off the net, instead of being another run-of-the-mill Coach or Gucci or LV - it satisfies my inner (outer?) geek.
The packaging is pretty simple, which I don’t have an issue with. It’s a leather bag, it’s supposed to be durable. If it can’t survive shipping, it won’t survive life with me. The green tracing paper is a cute touch.
My deliciously brown leather bag. Sorry vegans, but nothing beats the smooth feel and sniffable-ness of real leather. I love the smell of leather in the morning. And afternoon. And evening, and any damn time I feel like smelling leather!
Cute and quirky! I like the big polka dots. Circles, being a regular, um, monogon, calm me. I can put the bag over my head, shine a light inside, and have a disco-ball hallucination.
Oh! An awesomeness-proving package, for me? How kind!
I love you Threadless. They’ve upgraded from the plain greyish-white courier bags of the past. Goes along with opening your own physical store and having your own brand of t-shirts, I suppose.
My order. The white and gold shirts are my sister’s, while the silver and blue ones are mine. Threadless is slowly phasing out the American Apparel shirts, so my silver one (”Camouflage”, if you must know) might very well be the last one I buy that’s printed on American Apparel.
I should really do a census of my Threadless shirts. I know I have more than a week’s worth, but do I have 2 weeks’ worth? 14 Threadless shirts would mean my students can play a decent game of “which shirt will she wear today”.
Game Review: Professor Layton and the Curious Village
“Professor Layton”, as I shall refer to the game, is quite good. But you can read the details elsewhere, like the metareview on DS Fanboy and Metacritic. As a mostly casual, female gamer, I give my opinion from that standpoint.
First, it’s rather a short game. I finished all 135 puzzles in 10 hours, as the in-game timer shows. It would have been longer if I’d used my brain on all the puzzles, but some of them were so frustratingly hard that I gave in and used the walkthrough.
That’s not to say that the puzzles are unsolvable. The final one that stumped me was just a more difficult version of a puzzle I’d solved on my own prior to that. There are some “sets” of puzzles that proceed that way - you start off on the easiest one, and the more difficult variations on the same theme will show up later.
Second, the storyline revolves around a mystery, that branches off into several mysteries, which are ultimately tied together by one giant mystery. This reduces replayability because once you’ve solved the mystery, that’s it. You can, however, play the puzzles again and again, which I do. I practiced one puzzle until I could do it on my own, plus I reduced the number of moves needed, so you could say I improved, I suppose. These little puzzles work very well as time fillers when you’re waiting for the bus. And because there’s a large variety of puzzles - maths, logic, spatial, spot-the-difference, to name a few - you can play your favourites and leave the rest.
Third, the storyline actually integrates very well with the puzzles. Sure the gameplay has been attacked as being populated by puzzle-obsessed non-player characters (NPCs), but that’s not just how the game works, there’s also a perfectly good plot reason for that. Some comments that I’ve read said that the puzzles themselves had nothing to do with the storyline. Well, would you rather they substituted their own names and occupations for everything in the puzzles? That would just be awkward. Plus, if you actually pay attention, certain NPCs seem to prefer certain kinds of puzzles. For example, water-pouring puzzles are found at the restaurant, under the premise that the chef has lost his measuring cups.
Fourth, I just plain love puzzle games. The fact that this one comes with a storyline, cute characters and a gorgeous visual style adds to the appeal. I’m also a huge fan of the Ace Attorney series, which is a puzzle game at its very core. C’mon, finding contradictions and figuring out which bits match which statements? That’s a logic puzzle, right there!
So, my conclusion on “Professor Layton”: Quick to finish, suitable for all ages (as long as they have the intelligence to solve the puzzles), easy to play in short bursts as a pick-up game, and visually pleasing. Also, candy for the brain. And you can’t beat the dopamine high when you solve a difficult puzzle all by yourself!
Rating: Highly recommended
Rune Factory FTW!
2nd Nov:
I think it’s impossible to overstate how much I love Rune Factory. It’s a “fantasy Harvest Moon”, so in addition to playing farmer and livestock owner I also have to whack monsters and solve the mystery of said monsters’ appearance in my quiet little town. Oh, and I’m amnesic! Way to up the “unknown hero” factor.
Farming, I’ve done before. Keeping animals, no biggie. Whacking monsters - now that’s a new one. And I must say, I’m enjoying it tremendously. Leveling up is fun. Getting rare items is fun. Narrowly beating the level boss is fun. What’s not to like?
Probably it’s more fun now that I’m at a very high level for everything. I took on the 1st boss too early and died several times with nothing to show for my efforts. A bit of training on his minions, and soon I took him down easy. The 2nd one was a real challenge, I barely beat it with a sliver of HP to spare. I’m a non-strategic melee fighter - I just get in there and beat on the monster, hoping to kill him before he kills me. I was lucky that it worked, even though my audience of one didn’t think I could do it. Heck, I didn’t think I could either.
By this time, it was late Fall (the game is divided into 4 seasons of 30 days each) and the next day was the beginning of Winter. I triggered the plot event quite by accident, fulfilled the requirements for the next cave again by accident, and beat the boss so quickly I was left aghast. I whacked that stupid giant Rafflesia maybe 10 times with an entry-level weapon - and it died.
I decided to take my own sweet time before clearing out the 4th cave level, because the boss was reputedly very hard. Finally I reached level 60, after upgrading my weapon and shield several times, and brewing better potions (now I’m my own apothecary, whee!). Unable to stand the suspense, I went into the fight with only full HP and no RP. RP are needed to “power” your tools, so I was handicapping myself in this manner because I would be using HP to power my weapons instead. No matter, I still beat the boss. It was an easier battle than the one against the Chimera in the 2nd cave, but still harder than the farce that was the Rafflesia.
Unfortunately, my celebrations were halted when I realised the next cave was a Winter-only cave, and it was now early Spring. Whee. Well done me. No matter, that meant 3 seasons to improve my cooking, sewing, forging and pharmacy skills, not to mention 3 seasons in which to woo the ladies of the town. Oh, and to up my level to 99, of course. Some people think overleveling takes the fun out of the game, because the fights are too one-sided and end too early. Me, I just want to complete the storyline ASAP. At this rate, by the time I face the mermaidy Siren in Winter, she’ll be ass-whooped before she knows it. Ha ha!
I also nearly got married to one of the girls, quite by accident - I didn’t realise it was a proposal dialogue I was conducting with her. In a panic of cold feet, I rebooted. No way was I going to get married so early when there were other ladies to be hooked! The relationship management part of the game is just as challenging as the fighting. Some of them only want extremely rare items, others want you to propose with one-off items that require a side quest to obtain, and so on.
And that’s why Rune Factory has captured my attention in a way no other game has. It combines my favourite elements about farming with a progress-driven storyline, and lets me vent my frustrations on innocent monsters. I like to pretend that I’m a feudal lord come to collect tribute, and I will dispatch their people one by one until they meet my demands by dropping the item I want. Cruel? Talk to the sword, dude!
Update: 23rd February 2008
Hooray! I’ve completed the game (sort of). I loaded up on HP and RP, and went to the last cave. It was a doddle beating the monsters, then there was a long cutscene before the Grimoire dragon awoke and the fight began. I was using my new Ultimate Weapon, the Fourth Element, which has attack ratings for all 4 elements (very useful). One swing of this gets me 300-400 damage, compared to my Ol’ Faithful, Heaven Asunder, which got 100-200 damage.
Grimoire was a good challenge, I had to use 1 potion because it was causing me major damage and I was meleeing it so I couldn’t dodge. After I defeated it, the enemy faction reappeared, aghast at the failure of their grand plan. The commander, Lynette, was told to commit ritual suicide, but my character generously invited her to live in our little town, instead of going back in dishonour to her own country.
Then Lynette’s superior, Ethelberd (that’s a guy) dropped the metaphorical bomb: he had 100 tanks made with the most superior technology waiting to bring destruction to my village. After I went round the village informing everyone, Ivan the itinerant peddler and Lynette joined me in facing down the tanks.
Just as I was getting worried that there was a final “fight 100 tanks” marathon level, the shadow of a great horned dragon appeared over the tanks and breathed nature magic over them, causing weeds, vegetables and mushrooms to grow rapidly and block the tanks. The Grimoire had reached its final apotheosis and was now Terrable, one of the Dragon Gods of legend (who all have silly names, by the way). Mired in the vegetation, the tanks had to be abandoned, and the Sechs Empire people walked back across the border to their own country.
If you’re wondering why they just couldn’t hack away at the vegetation or something like that, the storyline is that everyone must respect nature. Since the Sechs Empire did not do that, the power of nature came back to bite them in the rear.
Still, the story hadn’t ended. In another cutscene, Ivan was shown going back to a throne room somewhere unknown. He informed the king that he had just returned from “above”, and that a master swordsman had averted the crisis. Presumably this kingdom is underground, and my character was the swordsman alluded to. Ivan went on to say that he had miscalculated, upon which the king replied: “A master swordsman of royal birth?” thus implying that my character was a prince, and Ivan his brother (something I’d suspected all along). Ivan could have told my character everything and brought him back, but upon seeing how well-received I was by the villagers, he decided that I would have been much happier as a heroic farmer. *sniff*
Lynette moved into the village and wanders around, observing village life and trying to get to know everyone. I intend to marry her, because her birthday is apparently Fall 25 (also my in-game birthday) and her name is Lyn-ette. Of course I’m being egoistic. That’s what games are for.
I still haven’t completed my shipping list, so that’s next on the agenda, along with marrying Lynette and having a kid. Once all that’s done, I’ll have nothing left to play for and will probably start a new game to see if experience helps the second time around.
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