Reason #1: Even though I’m a Glitterati, I’ve not seen any increase in my earnings. They’ve stagnated at $16.17 for the past few months. I blame this lack of income on the new system that relies on clicks instead of page views. Now, I won’t tell people to go click on my ads, and I’m certainly not going to be stupid and click on them myself. So the ad has to be interesting enough to warrant clicking, which brings me to my 2nd point.

Reason #2: I get uninteresting ads. I don’t want to advertise “Uniquely Singapore” or “Safra” on my blog, but unlike Google’s contextual ads, I don’t have a choice. At least with Google Ads, I’m to blame for the HIV-testing ads, because of the posts about my J-drama. And no one wants to click on these crappy ads, so they’re generating zero income FOR ME while the advertiser gets free eyeballs.

Reason #3: Advertising on my blog not only costs you money, the money has to come straight TO ME. That was why I stuck with PayPerPost for so long, because I saw the money in a month. With nuffnang, I display ads but I don’t see the money. What’s the point?

Reason #4: I started working.

And now for possible rebuttals:

Rebuttal #1: It’s my own fault for putting sidebar ads. Yes, I know other nuffnangers get the cute new Wall-E ad because they’re using the rectangular format. Well, Wordpress doesn’t allow me to do that. And between a blogging platform that I really like, and advertising that doesn’t even earn me that much, which do you think I’m going to choose?

Rebuttal #2: I have very low pageviews, so I get ads that no one’s interested in. Well then, shouldn’t I remove them in order to keep the 20 or so pageviews I get every day? I’d rather be read than make a few cents.

Rebuttal #3: My blog makes money while I sleep, whereas I only earn money as long as I work. True enough, except that my blog doesn’t ACTUALLY make all that much anyway.

So, I hope you enjoy the new and nuffnang-free Bohemia Bunny. The Google Ads stay for the time being, though, just because I like seeing what funny ads they come up with. Oh yeah… now that I’ve removed the nuffnang, maybe I’ll put Advertlets back on. Just because.

Disclaimer: I acknowledge that it’s my own damn fault I’m not making money from my nuffnang ads. So since it’s my own damn fault, shouldn’t I be the one taking steps to rectify it? So I am.

Edit: I added the Advertlets sidebar for all of one minute. It’s very cute and all, but having my face compete for attention with the gorgeousness of Felicia Chin just doesn’t seem like a great idea. So I guess the money I have sitting with Advertlets will just continue sitting there. Oh, and I have an incoming ad from Nuffnang next week (they sent me the email some time back and I forgot about it). Let it not be said that I don’t stand by my opinion. I’ll restore the sidebar ad in time to display the ad, just to see if it actually makes any money. Stay tuned!

Yes, the Malaysian is a tricky creature indeed to spot. We look like you, talk like you (with certain exceptions that can be used to identify us), eat like you (except for my incessant bitching over how prawn mee, char kuey teow and laksa is very very different in KL) and we’re found in every level of society, from the humble hawker assistant to the loftiest of judiciary posts.

Don’t believe me? Go check the backgrounds of the previous Chief Justices of Singapore on Wikipedia. They were all born and raised in Malaysia. This tendency means that, ironically, my ex-boyfriend may have a higher chance of becoming Chief Justice than his Singaporean friends. I find this amusing.

Yes, the dudes at Cheese Prata, your kid’s tuition teacher, your company’s IT guy, and even your boss - you never know if any one of these might turn out to be Malaysian. We sure are good at hiding it.

We’re like Cylons. HAHAHAHA!

What’s it like being undercover, though? Well, it’s fun until we get spotted. Then it gets funner, as our friend/teacher/classmate’s eyes widen in surprise, and they say (in my case anyway): “But you don’t look Malaysian!”

Er, I didn’t know we had a “look”, but I’ve always been wonderfully stylish, which perhaps contravenes the common perception of Malaysians as backwater hicks with bad dressing.

On the other hand, my kids think I come from a rich family because “only rich Malaysians come to Singapore to study”. They’re not familiar with the ASEAN scholarship, apparently. While it’s true that one needs to be comfortably well-off to send one’s kid down south, it doesn’t require giant amounts of money. You think there are THAT MANY rich families living in Johor Bahru?

Of course, being a Malaysian overseas has its perils. Unlike being one abroad in the US or UK, where they’re generally genial towards you, Singaporeans seem to harbour a strange mixture of familiarity and disdain. On one hand, they will tell you what a great time they had eating and shopping in KL. On the other, they love pushing what they think are hot buttons: politics, race and education. I enjoy rubbing salt in their wounds on all three counts.

Singaporeans bitch about our country because they can’t bitch about theirs, and besides, when was the last time THEY got to vote?

For a supposedly ’second-class citizen’ in a ‘backwards’ country, I sure have done well. Or rather, my parents did well, which set me up in life to enjoy a multitude of privileges. For some of us very fortunate ones, the racial quotas are things that happen to other people. Moral of the story: Money reigns supreme.

I’m a product of the “lousy” Malaysian education system, where you can “allegedly” buy your grades. Now, I don’t know where you guys got your info, or if you’re just stereotyping, because some things remain free of bribery.  The system is built such that you’d probably need extremely powerful connections to get a (fake) good grade, because stapling money to your exam booklet isn’t going to work (so don’t try it, kids!). Don’t ask me how, because I earned mine the hard way.

Besides, “lousy” education or not, it was good enough for the Singapore government, plus I pwn my kids AND I learned my content in Malay, then relearned it in English. The poor dears just suffer from inferiority complex now that a Malaysian is lording it over them.

Muahahahaha.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Episode One, the scene opens to Takeshi’s character, Ishikawa Keigo, sitting on top of a bridge, ruminating on life and death, while Luna Sea’s “I For You” plays in the background. Then he gets into his black convertible and drives off, eventually getting into a car elevator. These things fascinate me!

Our moody hero goes into what seems like backstage at a concert. Apparently he writes the songs that make the whole world cry. Bla bla bla, cut to a street scene of Tokyo in spring. In a public restroom, some schoolgirls are primping up for their “extracurricular” activities, while one shows off her new Chanel purse. Here, we meet our heroine Masaki for the first time. We follow her into Tower Records, where she gushes over the new Keigo-composed album while an Ah Beng-looking boy watches. Masaki complains that her phone has been disconnected because she didn’t pay the phone bill. “Apparently they really do that!” she says, surprised. Um. Yeah, they do.

Cut to a parking lot where a white van pulls up near a black convertible. Keigo is inside “having fun” with some random groupie. His lackey-cum-driver comes out to tell him it’s time for rehearsal, and the ever-dutiful Keigo tosses the keys to the girl and tells her to wait for him at his place.

Onstage at the rehearsal, Keigo shows his assholic side by telling off a showboating guitarist. Apparently he’s one of those songwriters who maintains strict control over the performance of his songs, and you do it his way - or else. The guitarist retorts that he hasn’t written any new songs in ages.  “I pay your salary, do as I say” - that’s pretty much his philosophy. Ok, Keigo is an angry man with writer’s block. Got that.

Back on the street, Masaki is walking around with her Ah Beng friend, who is manhandling her precious ticket to Keigo’s concert. This is a strange thing to say, actually. Keigo is a composer, not a performer. Plot hole! Masaki suddenly remembers that she needs to record a TV show, and calls her mum from a pay phone (her cell is out of commission, remember?). While she’s calling, a salaryman offers her 30,000 yen for you-know-what, which pisses her off (naturally). She leaves the phone booth in a fit of anger and disgust, leaving her wallet on top of the phone.

In a shop, she realises her wallet is missing. Never mind the money, Keigo’s concert ticket was inside! And the only available tickets now cost 50,000 yen from scalpers. The only way to raise that much money in such a short period of time is, ironically, the same thing that put her in this predicament: Sex for money. The irony only gets heavier throughout the series. Funny, you wouldn’t have thought that the Japanese were into irony.

Backstage, the singer Kaoru tells Keigo that his contract is in danger because he’s been dry for so long. He retorts that “work is just a pastime until death”. Ya ya, emo much? We leave our brooding hero for a KTV lounge, where Masaki and her friend are entertaining a fatty. While her friend is out answering a phone call, the fatty tries to inject Masaki with something, and she flees the place. When they finally gather up the courage to return, all their money is gone. Gaaahhhh!

Now thoroughly desperate, Masaki goes on a date with a loser-type guy. When he brings up the topic of sex, she loudly tells the entire restaurant that “hey, our agreement was no sex!”, which then frees her to run out of the place. Long story short, the guy is also a Keigo fan, and Masaki decides to be sympathetic.

Back in his lonely apartment, Keigo sits at the piano waiting for inspiration that never comes, while some whisky and a photo of his late girlfriend accompany him. What do you mean, how do I know she’s dead? Because you don’t keep framed photos of your ex-girlfriend within easy reach, duh!

Cut to Masaki’s house: Her Ah Beng friend, Hibino, calls to tell her that he’s found her wallet, with the ticket still inside. Hooray! But in about 5 seconds, we see that it’s already too late: she slept with loser-type, who left her 50,000 yen on the bed of the love hotel while she was showering. Disgusted with herself, she weeps.

Apparently not all that disgusted though, because she still managed to get tickets for herself and her friend to go to the concert. After the show, Keigo takes the singer Kaoru to task for changing one of his lyrics. Being a moody sort, he skips the end-of-tour party to go home. His white van pulls up at the traffic light, next to the cab that Masaki and pal are in. Man, these girls have money to burn!

They freak out, and Masaki decides to run out of the cab, in the pouring rain, after the van. Run run run, and when it stops at a red light to turn right, she climbs up the overhead bridge to unfurl her “I Love Keigo” banner. Our hero drives off into the night, and our heroine walks the streets, drenched. Oh, boo hoo hoo. Nothing like rain to show your devotion, eh.

She stops at a ubiquitous vending machine to buy canned coffee (meh), and a hand beats hers to the coin slot. Hooray, we’re saved! It’s our hero with an umbrella! He gives her a lift, but she says her home is far. So he does the next best thing: “Wanna warm up at my place?” Hoo yeah, he’ll warm you up all right.

For a change of pace, we cut to a bar, where a middle-aged woman is telling her companion how her daughter got all dressed up for a concert. Ah! It’s Masaki’s okaa-san, and she’s having an affair! She says to wait until her son (Masaki’s younger brother) passes the entrance exam, because she wants her kids to have a secure life. Er yeah, your mum having an affair really adds to the security.

Back at the bachelor pad, Keigo hands Masaki a fluffy white bathrobe. She asks why he picked her up, and he replies: “Out of 2000 girls in the crowd, I picked you.” He then decides to debate the nature of loving someone without knowing them. Oh come on you asshole, “I Love Keigo” doesn’t mean she loves-loves you! But she takes the bait, and declares that she does know something of him. It shows in the songs he writes. In reply, he lights up a cigarette. This show is full of drinking and smoking, it would never pass the US censors.

After coming out of her shower, Masaki goes nuts in Keigo’s carpeted piano room. She does a handstand and tells him that it gives you a fresh perspective on things. Yes, spunky and spirited, I see that. Yawn. She plops herself down on his bed, and he goes on and on about how his songs are a lie. The songs express feelings that he no longer has. He is just empty. Then he makes a “lonely face”, which only perceptive people like Masaki can pick up. And then! She cuddles him to her bosom! (Which is probably much more substantial than mine.) And! He responds! Oh, she has broken through his shell of loneliness and… and… despair! And any other negative emotions you care to name.

Cut to some white orchids in a darkened room. It’s 4am, and Masaki wakes up. She’s still wearing her pajama top, so I thought they were innocently sleeping, but hey! Takeshi Keigo’s topless. So they did the dirty after all. She creeps out of bed to write a note with her name and number, then thinks better of it and crumples it up. Instead she writes him a note, summarised thus: “Thanks for last night, I know you were just using a line about picking me out of a crowd, I left early so as not to ruin the mood. My memories with you will always be my pride.” Yeah, and if this was the UK, you could sell your story to some tabloid for a few thousand pounds.

Keigo awakes - not very sexy - and reads the note. Meanwhile Masaki has managed to walk home. Even her insanely permissive parents realise something is wrong when your kid SPENDS THE NIGHT OUTSIDE. Ramen. Her mother follows her upstairs, demanding an explanation, which she gets in much more detail than she probably wanted: “I just had sex with a man I love.”

Cut to a white van, where Keigo’s probably-virgin lackey asks about his nocturnal sports. “Doesn’t that line usually work? It’s so cool!” While cleaning up the van, the lackey throws away Masaki’s banner. If you hoped for a degree of sentimentality from Keigo, you’d be disappointed, because his response is to take another drag on his cigarette.

In some kissaten somewhere, Masaki tells Hibino (the Ah Beng) that she has found the difference between “having sex” and “making love”, so she doesn’t want to be his friend-with-benefit any more. Montage of her spring holidays follow, featuring girls in bikinis! Masaki’s friends comment that she seems to be more purposeful in life now. What that purpose is, I have no idea, much less that it could be found in a one-night stand.

Time passes, and Keigo returns to his lonely bachelor pad. He puts his really ugly sunglasses down on the piano, and the fangirls get a closeup of his face before being blinded by a scene in a florist.

Masaki is in the middle of buying white orchids when she gets a phone call. “Ishikawa who?” she asks. Probably not the response Keigo was expecting! Where did he find her number? In the trash can, where she threw it away 3 months ago. OMG, Keigo is a disgusting bachelor! He invites her to join him at a recording session in 2 days, because he has been abroad and wants someone he can communicate with. Yeah, I know the feeling. Spend enough time in foreign lands, and you just suddenly fall back in love with your mother tongue.

Our dear, air-headed heroine skips across the road holding her orchids, so naturally she gets hit by a vehicle. Minor injury, she turns up at the hospital saying she’s fine. Unfortunately, while she’s there, a nurse pricks herself with the needle used to draw blood from Masaki. In this case, it’s necessary to run a test for transmissible diseases. The test comes back - POSITIVE! Yeah, as if you didn’t see that coming. Poor nurse, she’s now on a regimen of AZT and other drugs, but we won’t hear from her again.

Cut to Masaki’s bedroom mirror, where she has unearthed half her wardrobe in an effort to dress for her date with Keigo. Which is also the same day she’s due back at the clinic. She bounces into the clinic, hoping they will be done quickly because she has a date *squee*!

Bad news is delivered, and she sits there contemplating while a voiceover says things that sound pretty but mean nothing. Meanwhile, Keigo is ambulating on his own two feet, as opposed to a car or van, and he sees the flowers that Masaki dropped when she got hit. He picks them up and puts them aside. Pointless symbolism.

So that’s it for episode 1. The plot twists are worthy of a high-school novel, and by that I mean a novel written by a high-schooler. Those of you familiar with the realm of romance fanfiction will see the parallels immediately. The plot is very far-fetched, so you can almost always predict what’s going to happen before it does.

So why the hell am I watching it? It’s a guilty pleasure, I admit. I’m a sucker for a love story with Takeshi acting in it, and in spite of the overly-melodramatic plot, my little stone heart is moved.

Every episode ends with a bonus credits-roll-cum-music video featuring Takeshi running across a beach while some female swims in the sea. I think it’s meant to symbolise how they are forever separated. Or, you know, just an excuse to show Takeshi in full-on romantic lead mode.

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.

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.

Last week I used my two off-days to be with my family and attend commencement, so I didn’t really have any time to just chill out and do “me” stuff. “Me” stuff means the mundane, such as backing up my hard drive and ironing my clothes, and more abstract pleasures such as eating lunch at whatever time I like, and reading online comics non-stop, because I have 10 years of backlog to get through. I’ve been reading this comic, “Little Dee”, and its creator used to do a daily strip entitled “Bruno”. It was a surprise for me to read “Bruno”, because it’s very much for mature audiences, and “Little Dee” is quite child-friendly.

So far today I’ve picked up my mail, sent out my mail, done my laundry (yay!), and had a delicious lunch of porridge from the downstairs stall. The proprietor didn’t skimp on the ikan bilis, but maybe it’s because he’s a young man and I’m a pretty girl. Yes, I admit to the sexistness of that statement.

While we’re on the subject of food stall proprietors: The chicken rice seller downstairs from my office calls me “mei-mei”. Heh. When your job consists of being with people who consider you a relic, having someone treat you as a younger person isn’t all that bad.

There’s a temporary stage erected on the empty field, visible from my balcony. I can hear the dong-dong-chiang of drums and cymbals as they rehearse for tonight’s performance. Perhaps I’ll head out later and watch. I haven’t seen Chinese opera since I was a very young child.

I think raising kids is always so damn hard because they usually turn out the opposite of what you wanted them to be, and if they don’t, you’ve failed somehow to raise an independent human being. Either way you’re damned. Tell me again why we don’t have parenting licenses?

And now to be controversial: I’m calling out the hypocrisy I see in some sectors, that they oppose abortion and stem-cell research, and not assisted fertility. If children are indeed given by God, and if you have none in spite of your efforts, then isn’t that a pretty clear sign that God doesn’t want you to have any? Why are you messing with the divine plan to keep you child-free? Answer me that, and then maybe I’ll give you leeway to advance your pro-life rhetoric. If you ask little cynical me, though, I’d just say that anything that advances their numbers is a good thing, and anything that reduces it is bad. Never mind the fact that a pro-life policy also affects people who don’t necessarily share their religious views. How unselfish they are, to want to save us all from the hellfire of Damnation!

Part II:

One of my students woke me from my nap with a nudge on MSN. Serves me right for not turning down the volume. Seeing how it was already 7pm, I readied to go out grocery shopping at the bargain supermarket before it closed. I managed to lug back nearly 50 dollars’ worth of groceries, as the rain drizzled down gently. So gently that I could just barely feel it alighting on my skin as I waited for the red man to turn green. The Chinese opera had already started, but I think it was in Hokkien because I had no idea what they were saying. Still sounded like fun, though.

On the uphill walk to my apartment, I glanced back at the makeshift stage and saw the moon, just rising above the buildings. She was hidden behind the diffuse rainclouds, aglow but not bright. As though she, like the opera performers, was waiting in the wings for her moment to shine.

I did my ironing, which is always strangely calming. Bringing flat, smooth order out of wrinkled chaos. There’s an analogy in there somewhere.

Now it’s time for some bedtime Sudoku, and that’s not anything dirty or kinky a la “bedroom Twister”, okay? Although Sudoku makes for a poor nightcap, it revs up my brain instead of calming it down for sleep.

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.