the details in the fabric

cny's are usually quiet at my place, but this year is quieter than most cuz of my dad's condition.  even then, i have completely let go and BINGED the whole day - i have not been so filled with crappy food in months lolz. 

i have also been making decent headway into the dvd's tat i bought in preparation for this highly-anticipated break (there was a series of tween chick flicks where the slightly-less-bitchy lead actress triumphs over the other bitches, and you don't mess with the zohan, which was totally hilarious), but in the middle of the x-files movie (and here i must pause to go... KYAAA~~~~~~~~~~~~~!!!!!!! cuz mulder/scully is like one of the extremely rare, one-in-a-million het pairings tat i ship so i am thrilled bt the movie for this alone lolz), i had to stop cuz the 小娘惹 cny special is on and my grandma HAS to watch it.

5 min into the show, the host is still talking and everyone is still on set and i turn to grandma and tell her, 'there's no show leh, only the cast talking.'  and she's like, 'yeah la, it's a cny special mah,' and my sis chips in with, 'yes, it's behind-the-scenes.' 

and it hit me.  it TOTALLY hit me.

MY GRANDMA IS A FANGIRL.

omg i finally see tat it's all in the genes.  i see the SOURCE of the fangirlism in me XDDD

《海角7号》果然名不虚传 - 看完了神清气爽，让人突然想去海边吹吹那咸咸的海风，看着日出日落，等待彩虹的出现。


范逸臣，《无乐不作》
作词：严云农
作曲：范逸臣

( 当梦的天行者 )

范逸臣，《国境之南》
作词：严云农
作曲：范逸臣
 
( 当太阳再次回到那飘着雨的国境之南 我会试着把那一年的故事 再接下去说完 )

rite, recently work sucks, and tho i can't exactly say i have no life, i do get VERY LITTLE SLEEP. 

but todae, despite the horribly stressful work situation, i shall focus instead on the brighter aspects of my life - like how i scored nearly full marks on my recent jap test despite the last-min study (thank you kat-tun, doumoto brothers & johnny's ent in general :p), tat i got to watch more of the brilliant matsuyama ken'ichi in L: change the world (he has L down COMPLETELY, and can totally emote intensely with like NO expression); and today, i watched one of the fun-nest shows ever - the dash!, featuring tokio, an old j-pop band i've known since my jc days :)


果然，姜还是老的辣 ^_^

if one asked me last week why i'm watching 「プロポーズ大作戦」, i'd say it was for yamapi's effing good looks, but one episode in and i was completely hooked.  it's romance with a twist, inseparable frenship eroded by time and growing up, regrets and not living in the past.  apart from yamapi, whose iwase ken must be his best role since kusano akira in 野ブタ。をプロデュース, the rest of the cast were also fantastic actors, and their subplots really reinforced the main themes of the drama.  i cried buckets watching it, which was totally cathartic, and the theme song itself is beautiful :)

( cuz it's all about life :) )

ah well, wat would life be without pretty pictures and kick-ass stories, hey?  and dun forget, the music, omg the music!!

「明日晴れるかな」
作詞＆作曲：桑田佳祐

熱い涙や恋の叫びも
輝ける日はどこへ消えたの？
明日（あす）もあてなき道を彷徨うなら
これ以上もとには戻れない

耳を澄ませば心の声は
僕に何を語り掛けるだろう？
今は汚れた街の片隅にいて
あの頃の空を想うたびに

神より賜えし孤独やトラブル
泣きたい時は泣きなよ
これが運命（さだめ）でしょうか？
あきらめようか？
季節は巡る魔法のように

Oh,Baby.　No,maybe.
「愛」失くして「情」も無い？
嘆くようなフリ
世の中のせいににするだけ

Oh,baby. You're maybe.
「哀」失くして「楽」は無い
幸せのFeeling
抱きしめて　One more time.

或りし日の己れを愛するために
思い出は美しくあるのさ
遠い過去よりまだ見ぬ人生は
夢ひとつ叶えるためにある

奇跡のドアを開けるのは誰？
微笑みよ　もう一度だけ
君は気づくでしょうか？
その鍵はもう
君の手のひらの上に

Why,baby? Oh,tell me.
「愛」失くして「憎」も無い？
見て見ないようなフリ
その身を守るため？

Oh,baby. You're maybe.
もう少しの勝負じゃない！
くじけそうな　Feeling
乗り越えて　One more chance.

I take to myself

Oh, baby. No,maybe.
「愛」失くして「憎」も無い？
嘆くようなフリ
残るのは後悔だけ！

Oh, baby. Smile　baby.
その生命（いのち）は永遠（とわ）じゃない
誰もがひとりひとり胸の中で
そっと囁いているよ

「明日（あした）晴れるかな・・・」

遥か空の下

with ref to the entry on 22/3, MAN can i whinge.  LOLZ!  看到自己写的东西都忍不住要笑了... reading chuck klosterman's 'this is emo' essay (which in tribute i shall probably type out and place as an entry here) has given me an insight into my ideas and concepts i have towards romance/intimacy.  and i think it is mostly SPOT-ON.  he manages to articulate the mindset with which i view romantic r/ships. which can actually be a sense of relief or totally scary, depending on how u look at it.  in a sense, it could be said tat this complete and total enthusiasm i have for the mass media and the entertainment industry has ruined my life (or more like, my love life, cuz i more or less like the other parts of my life, thx very much), since i am essentially using it as a baseline from which i construct my (generally hypothetical) romances.

and if u bring tat to a deeper level, since we're in the era of information overload, where everything is basically mtv'ised, from love, violence, family, friendship, work, play, spirituality, basically the entire fucking way one leads one's life -- then how do i noe tat wat i think is wat i think?

i guess it's pretty much impossible to think tat ur thots belong solely to urself, and the pinnacle of egocentrism is to really believe tat u came up with some idea all by urself, as meryl streep so eloquently points out in her put-down of anne hathaway's fuddy-duddy sweater in the devil wears prada.  however remote and unconnected it may seem, there's a link there - the flap of a butterfly's wings and all tat jazz.

yet it could still be tat one absorbs these ideas floating out there in the ether, and assimilates or recombines it into one's own, so altho it's a mish-mash of old ideas, yet it's something supposedly new?... ... ... it's all becoming confusingly circular, and i've managed to puzzle myself into blur-ness.

movies are at their bestest and coolest when not only do they impress u with their cool effects or savvy plotlines, but when they inspire u to go learn more about the topic they were dealing with, as evidenced by cheong-gun, aka 'heaven's soldiers'. altho the plot itself is a bit wacky, i like tat it dares to show the us for the bully tat it is, and also for introducing the great admiral yi sun-sin to me :) i never thot i would be one of those ppl who wanna watch 三国演义-like shows where it's all about the battles, but i SO wanna watch the korean drama they made about him :p thanks to this movie, now i noe a little bit more about korean and japanese history. yay cheong-gun!! ;)

George Alexander Ballard (1862–1948), a vice admiral of British Royal Navy, complimented Admiral Yi's winning streaks by the Battle of Hansando highly:

"This was the great Korean admiral's crowning exploit. In the short space of six weeks [actually about 9 weeks, May 7, 1592 – July 7, 1592] he had achieved a series of successes unsurpassed in the whole annals of maritime war, destroying the enemy's battle fleets, cutting his lines of communication, sweeping up his convoys, imperilling the situation of his victorious armies in the field, and bringing his ambitious schemes to utter ruin. Not even Nelson, Blake, or Jean Bart could have done more than this scarcely known representative of a small and cruelly oppressed nation; and it is to be regretted that his memory lingers nowhere outside his native land, for no impartial judge could deny him the right to be accounted among the born leaders of men." (The Influence of the Sea on The Political History of Japan, 57p)

yes, evidently i'm still on my 'king and clown' kick - to the extent tat i spent the whole morning reading tiny chinese characters on the screen.

( 天地大杂亭，千古浮生都是客。 芙蓉空艳色，百年人事皆如花。 )

plus more praise for lee joon ki.

v for vendetta must be one of the most political films i've seen. being the superficial apolitical creature tat i am, i was initially drawn to it more by the thot of hugo weaving being v, which he did wonderfully, and the fact tat it was supposed to be based on comic book.

of course, turns out it's a departure from the original storyline, jus like 'silent hill', but i guess tat should be, cuz there're some things tat one can do on paper tat jus doesn't translate as well into celluloid. i like the use of the language in the film tho, the power of the words, and it's a testimony to the actors' enunciation tat i caught virtually every line despite it being delievered in a british accent at often rapid-fire speeds. (lolz, watch me channel my brit vocab now :p)

setting aside the violence in the movie, there's a lot of thot-provoking stuff in it, at least for me. those images of riots, marches and protests - it seems like they're things tat have only ever happened in the past, like 'i have a dream' and tiannanmen. do we see such things nowadays? no, but does tat mean most ppl are satisfied with their govt? i doubt it, but i guess we're less inclined to get off our asses nowadays to do something about it.

it feels like humanity and society as a whole has been getting progressively more and more sedated, bombarded by all the little distractions pumped out by the media - too caught up in the mundanity of our lives, chasing after the illusory creature comforts advocated as the symbols of success.

when one puts too much stock into such luxuries, they get promoted from necessities to needs. and tat's when one becomes too fearful of losing them. in tat aspect, i think the world still hasn't changed - many govts still control by fear. it's jus tat their methods have become more and more subtle throughout the centuries - from outrite executions to the covert spread of 'big brother'-like surveillance.

the best scene in 'bowling for columbine' imho was the interview with marilyn manson, where he dissed television/media for doing nothing but bombard their audience with images (ads, news, etc) tat inspire fear - it made perfect sense to me (watch it and u'll noe wat i mean). 'v for vendetta' jus demonstrates it more plainly - how the govt can control the media which in turn controls us really, no matter how much we'd like to think we're free of their influence.

in the film, v asked evey, 'is tat wat u think? or wat they want u to think?' and sometimes, when i ask myself tat question, i'm not very sure at all.