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Group before the drinks flow...

Last night at Tantric was thaaa bomb!! hahaha... Its been so long since i had so much fun, partially cos i'm drunk..keke... and full of surprises too.... finally saw Chung Peng, saw Janet and Terence etc... even Beven, Colin and Kelvin were there that night... Chris (D) launched his new website and invited us all the Tantric for a party. We were there very very early, at about 10pm, and were bombarded by videos of hunky naked rugby players on the various television screens in Tantric... haha... drinks started to flow and chocolates from Prestat started to be passed around. I went to Prestat to buy chocs as i promised Chris (D) before that i will let him try the ultimate champagne truffles. I ended buying 300g worth of chocolates from my old work-place. As Chris (D) birthday is coming up, we decided to celebrate it at Tantric too. A birthday song was sung when he was on-stage, a cream-filled cake bought by either the trevvy people or the fabulous sunday people was presented and the candle blown. When he came down i told him that he has another cake to eat, the one that is not filled with cream.. hahaha...

Sammi

Me and Sammi

Sammi and Stevie, the last 2 surviving icons of the community

Champagne!!!

After the champagne and multiple drinks...

As you can see, i am sooooo having fun. Marc is holding the cream cake..

However after the night is over when we were having supper at Niak Maf (dunno how to spell that place), when the cake was presented, realized that it was partially destroyed. Haiz... but the cake was still fabulous tasting. After travelling from Tantric to PLAY back to Tantric, i guess its hard to really stay in 1 piece. haahaa... more pictures can be found on my facebook...for videos, you can go to Daniel's blog at http://mongster.wordpress.com/

Chris eating the cake we bought

Anyway, Happy Birthday Chris (D)!!! HUAT AHHHHHH!

Last lesson for Ed Psy 1

Yesterday, we had our final educational psychology lesson with our tutor Daniel Tan. I was an hour late as i had set my alarm wrongly at 830am the previous night.... the class starts at 830am! Anyway, i rushed down in a cab and that cost me a freakin $22, just to catch the final group's presentation and the peer evaluation. In a way, i'm a little sad that this lesson is over as Daniel's lessons are engaging and oh so fun. However, a majority of me is sooooo relieved that this is over as the lesson is at 830am on a friday morning.

As what he mentioned at the end, "all good things must come to an end... so that more good things can come.."

However the best lesson that he taught us that still lingers in my mind is " Please see a counsellor when stressed!"

Class picture

Movies again...

I've nothing much to update on my blog recently except what movies i had watched... haha.... now for another 2 more movie reviews.

Shutter

Just 2 words, don't watch. If you desperately need to watch this movie, rent or download the thai original. Trust me. DO NOT WATCH! Don't say i never warn you.

Horton aka the cartoon with the elephant

I watched this movie at Jurong point with my NIE friends during a 4 hour break today. Compared to the other movies available at Jurong point, this seems to be the most promising. Reviews from magazines are also favorable and thus this movie was chosen. I had mixed feelings about the movie. Loved the graphics, the story, the music and the animation. Hated Jim Carrey's voice over for the elephant. You see the elephant and everything that it does is what Jim Carrey does normally in his movies aka slapstick humor. Can watch but not during the weekends, when the tickets are so expensive now... even GV had increased their prices...

2 new movies to recommend

During the weekend, i managed to catch 2 movies that are currently showing in the cinemas.

The Orphanage

This movie produced by Guillermo del Toro, the guy who gave us movies such as Pan's Labyrinth and The devil's backbone. The movie is about a woman who returned to the orphanage that she used to be in before she was adopted by a family. She bought over the building, to change it into a residence cum orphanage for disabled children. Her son starts to play with imaginary friends in the house and upon chancing upon his drawings, realized that he has 6 imaginary friends, one of them has a bag over his head. This boy disappeared on the day that the new disabled children moved into the house and nobody has a clue to where he went to and who abducted him for almost a year. The woman and her husband are worried as the child has AIDS and thus needs his medication. A medium and a seance later, she decided to 'play' with the 6 children ghost, to rescue her son and to solve the mystery of why they're haunting the place and why her son was abducted.

This movie is a typical Guillermo del Toro movie, where there are no cheap scares and a strong storyline to hold up the movie. This is definitely different from the typical Hollywood horror films as there is almost no blood and no gore. The whole movie has not much noise to begin with and thus the audience is constantly wrapped in a sense of apprehension and suspense. This is the type of horror films that should be made more than the gorefest of Hollywood.


Secret Sunshine

This is a korean movie about a woman who brings her son to Miryang, the hometown of her deceased husband. She decided to set up home to live anew in Miryang, cutting all ties with her family and life in Seoul. She opened a piano school and starts to befriend the town people. Similar to The orphanage, her son was abducted and later killed when she couldn't pay the total sum for the ransom. Deeply depressed and heart-broken, she started going to church, to accept God and whatnot. She decided to 'follow God's command' and forgive the murderer of her son, who is serving his sentence in prison. During the meeting, the murderer told her that he also accepted God and that God had forgiven him. He is at peace and he prays for the wonders of God everyday. This pisses her off as she accused God of letting him off so easily while she suffers in silence. The next half and hour of so shows her defying God and spiraling into madness.

For her role, Jeon Do-Yeon won Best Actress at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and she definitely deserved it. Great acting do not only come from her but also from the other actors in the movie. This is another movie that i will recommend. Go watch it. The acting from Jeon is enough.

Norm reference or criterion reference

In my opinion, norm reference is shit! There... i said it... for people that do not know what are these, norm reference is your typical assessment of students, where results of the whole cohort is used to draw up a curve. Top whatever percent will be A grade and stuff. Criterion reference is where there are certain guides or criteria and students are assessed based on those criteria. If you score an A, you are a A student. This is the difference between the 2. For the norm, you may score like 90 marks but if most of the students score above 90, after the curve is drawn, you will be a C or even a D grader. What shit is this right? However, the education system we have uses more norm than criterion. I just received my SMMT results and of course i failed. We were warned that after the 3rd try, if we still fail, the ministry will send a letter to the place where we're posted to; to warn the school of our results. I asked my tutor:" if u guys draw curve for every test, after the 3rd test there will definitely be people who fail, since only a A grade is considered pass..." He replied with a shrug and a laugh and said "yeah"

I think its time to break bond.

ocar movies

I watched a few movies that were nominated in the Oscar recently. Here are my views...

Away from her

This movie, where Julie Christie was nominated for Best Actress, is about an aging woman who starts to lose her memory. Not wanting to impose too much on her husband, she checks herself into an old age home. The home has a policy, that no guest can visit the patients during the 1st month. This is to enable them to settle into the new environment. However, when the husband went to see her after a month is over, he found out that she had forgotten about him and has formed a close bond with a fellow patient. She now sees her husband as a peculiar guest that visits her everyday. This slow movie is basically just showing how different people are affected by her attachment to the other patient (I can't remember their character names). Julie Christie is an actress that i'm not too familiar with, however she impressed me with her beauty (at that age) and her acting... very subtle and sad... This is a movie about undying love, from her husband, and how scary it is when you're old and losing your memory.

The Diving bell and the butterfly

Another movie about loss is this beautifully shot movie, about the editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby. He suffered a stroke when he was 42 and thus suffered 'lock-in-syndrome' where he can only communicate by blinking his left eyelid. From his restrictions, he was still able to write a book about his life, his memoirs. This memoir is then made into this movie. Along the way, the audience is given shots of the movie in his view, thus seeing what he is seeing...however this is done nicely and beautifully unlike the vomit-inducing Cloverfield. You will see flashbacks about his life, his family and his love, the mistress...not the poor wife. This movie was nominated for Best foreign film as the whole movie is in french. Beautiful movie that u have to watch.

La Vie en Rose

This movie is about the life of another famous French, Edith Piaf. The actress that played Edith won Best Actress at the Oscar's and while watching the movie, its not hard to see why. She morphed from an aspiring singer to a drugged addicted ruined body. Edith died young with liver cancer and throughout her life, she depended on alcohol and morphine to support her pain and body, to go on stage and sing. And sing she can like nobody can. What a voice and how much passion. The only complaint i have about the movie was that the sequences of her life are all jumbled up. I get lost sometimes wondering which part of her life is this etc. As the whole movie focus on her, sometimes i am left wondering who are the people around her. Anyway, the movie is great because of Marion Cortillard, the actress that played Edith. Its a role that's bound to win awards. Just catch the scene where she found out that her only love, Marcel the married boxer, died in a plane crash while on the way to see her. It's heart-breaking.