Drained

Been so busy at work, have so little time to rest. So many things to do at home as well. Small things that need to be taken care of daily are just taking up so much time!!

I've watched a few movies since the last post and I still have no time to post about them. BUSY BUSY!!!

Inception

Watched @ Eng Wah Suntec City

It's about dreams. It's actually like matrix. It's like a bridge that makes matrix seems much more realistic and possibly achievable. It's scary and yet so worth looking forward to. Paradox is apparent thru-out the movie. But it's a good show to watch. Make your brains think and think. Even though it's a movie that has a beginning and an end, somehow there's so many part of the movie which allows for speculation. So much areas left for imagination and interpretation.

Just think about it. Look at every detail of the movie from a different angle and you can find that the movie could have been telling a totally different story. I think that's what makes it magnificent!!! You know what's the best part? I only thought about this point NOW!!! almost 6hrs after watching the movie. How interesting is that!?

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 8 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 8 out of 10
Overall: 8 out of 10

Favourite Lines:


Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite in the world? An idea. Once an idea gets into your head, you can never get rid of it. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all rules.

Official Website

Pictures

Chloe

Watched @ The Cathay

It started off at a straight forward movie where wife thinks husband is cheating on her. So she turns to a social escort to get her to test her husband out. Somehow the results turn out unexpected. Interesting twist to the story. Not a mainstream movie for sure. But i'll watch it just for Amanda Seyfried at least. :P

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 8 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 7 out of 10
Overall: 7.5 out of 10

Favourite Lines:
Catherine Stewart: Did you find that waitress sexy? 
David Stewart: Which one? 
Catherine Stewart: The one you were flirting with. 
David Stewart: Oh come on, I was being friendly. 


Pictures

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Watched @ GVmax

3rd installment of the twilight saga. The problem about these sagas and trilogies or what not. It makes watching the movie feel like watch an episode of a serial. It just feels wrong!! I want a start, build up, climax, and conclusions.. but when in comes like this. There's no end to look forward to, cos we know it doesnt end here and u have to look forward to the next episode. AARRGGGhhh!!! We are being led on!! oh well.... that's life...

anyway, the movie's not bad.. met the usual expectations. it's as it was before, jus like a another episode of the series. But I wanna add, I like ALICE more than bella! hahaa..

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 6 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 8 out of 10
Overall: 7 out of 10


Favourite Lines:
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Charlie Swan: What's going on?
Jacob Black: [pause] I kissed Bella.
[pause]
Jacob Black: And she broke her hand.
[pause]
Jacob Black: Punching my face.
[pause]
Jacob Black: It was a complete misunderstanding.


Official Website


Pictures

Knight and Day

Watched @ Cathay Downtown East

Comedic action thriller which will leave you very lost for the most of the movie. BUT!! this is not the kind of movie you watch for the story line. Watch it for the comedy, watch it to be disgusted how cool tom cruise can still act like. Oh not to mention the camera angles which have to be constantly adjusted to make him look like he's taller than Diaz. Put aside the vague plot and pointless twists, it's actually entertaining!! Muahahaa...

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 6 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 7 out of 10
Overall: 6.5 out of 10


Favourite Lines:

Milner: [from trailer] Some people are gonna come looking for you now.
June Havens: Why?
Milner: They'll tell you I'm mentally unstable and violent and dangerous and it will all sound very convincing.
June Havens: I'm already convinced.
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June Havens: [from trailer] The pilots are dead!
Milner: Yeah, they've been shot.
June Havens: By who?
Milner: By me. No, actually, I shot the first pilot then he accidentally shot the second pilot. It's just one of those things.




Official Website


Pictures

Blending In

It's been more than a month since I last said something here about me. Work has been busy after the 1st 2 weeks. I think i'm working with a great bunch of people who are very experienced with their work and I'm learning loads from them everyday. I try as much as i could to ask and learn, listen and absorb, but I wonder how long I can last before I get sick of it. Well, at least for now I think i'm doing okay.

I'm still trying to get use to having less time to myself. With work taking up the bulk of time everyday, there's really not much time left to do my own stuff and also keep time to rest. This lack of rest might be slowly building up in me, as everyday i feel a little more tired than the previous.

So far I believe i still made the right choice to be a traffic engineer. I'm putting to use what i've learn in school. That is actually something i'm very happy about. Many people do not use the knowledge they acquired in uni and start everything anew with a different and unrelated job. I'm glad where I am and happy to be able to understand my job better than a usual civil engineer.

Karate Kid

Watched @ The Cathay

Re-make of the old Karate Kid but with many twists. White kids becomes black, karate becomes kung fu, Japan becomes China. Well that just show how much world perception has changed. Japan used to be the up and coming nation with all the high tech stuff and super efficient economy, but my china is the new dragon, everything is about china.

There's quite a bit of chinese propaganda in the movie. The movies seems to put the country in a pretty good light. It's nice to know that US movies are trying to change the image of china being backward and old.

The action sequences in the show are pretty tight. Perhaps that's Jackie Chan's credit. His trade mark funny actions are still there but much less intensity. Age played a pretty big part, his character ages too.

This is a good movie to watch. Entertaining and Yu Rong Guang is always good at being the villian. haha.

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 7 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 7 out of 10
Overall: 7 out of 10

Favourite Lines:
Dre Parker: You don't know the rules?
Mr. Han: Simple. You hit him, don't let him hit you. 

Official Website

Pictures

Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

Watched @ Cathay Downtown East

This movie is adapted from a very popular video game. A classic video games makes it to the big screen once again. I loved the parkour like jumping actions thru-out the movie, those are exactly the type of actions players of the prince of persia games hopes to achieve. Super cool.

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 8 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 8 out of 10
Overall: 8 out of 10

Official Website

Pictures

Backup Plan

Watched @ GV Marina

Romantic comedy starring J Lo, it's been awhile since seeing her on the big screen.  It's good entertainment. Plot is nice and catchy with good laughs thru out the show. highly recommended for a good time.

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 8 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 6 out of 10
Overall: 7 out of 10

Official Website

Pictures

Iron Man 2

Sequel to the 1st Ironman movie, not much link between the 2 other than the characters. Plot wise it's quite simple. But it's the high tech gizmos and gadgets that's most captivating. Just the suitcase size ironman suit? Super cool!!

Watch it for the action, nothing more could be asked abt the acting. it's not an arts film, it's action!!

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 7 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 8 out of 10
Overall: 7.5 out of 10

Favourite Lines:
Ivan Vanko: If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him. There will be blood in the water, and the sharks will come.
[looks at Stark]
Ivan Vanko: All I have to do is sit here and watch, as the world will consume you... 

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Tony Stark: I'm not saying I'm responsible for this country's longest run of uninterrupted peace in 35 years! I'm not saying that from the ashes of captivity, never has a Phoenix metaphor been more personified! I'm not saying Uncle Sam can kick back on a long chair, sipping on an ice tea, because I haven't come across anyone man enough to face me on my best day! 

Official Website

Pictures

1st week over

After one week of working life, i think i've found some sort of rhythm. It's not that scary as compared to the first day. I'm learning to absorb information with more relevance, able to make more sense out of them. But i'm still slightly cautious when taking in information, fearing that I might miss out something important or forget something really soon. I feel this is going to be a good experience. 

Day 1 in Kingdom of Sg Roads

First day jitters are still hanging around even though i think i had a pretty decent first day. 1st half of the day was some not-so-useful induction program, which i struggled to stay awake for.


When I reported to my department i realise many were on leave due to mayday off-in-lieu. That included my supervisor which left me kindda like a headless fly, but the good thing was i was among a bunch of friendly and funny people. Especially my buddy, total joker. Totally made me less stressed up, much more relax. 


It was tough surviving the first day when there was basically nothing for me to do except to clean up my table & cubicle. Tough to act busy when there's really nothing for me to act on. All that was cos my manager not around to boss me around, hope it will be better on my 2nd day when he's back. 


Gimme work!! :P


But as my buddy would say, enjoy your holiday while u can.... hahaha...

Butterflies

i'll be starting my 1st real job in a few hours. I'm feeling so so so nervous, excited, anxious, frightened, terrified... so many different feelings of horror all in my chest now.. I feel like pressure on my chest is so strong, it's constricting me to death, yet at the same time I feel like my lungs and other internal organs are going to expand and blow up! worst still, I feel so much gas in my stomach, I've been burping out gas for the past hour or so. That must be the work of the butterflies in my stomach, and perhaps the work of the butterflies in their stomachs too!!


I'm really looking forward to a new stability in my life, one with a good regular income so that I can start looking at plans for the future. Yet i'm afraid that the requirements and expectations to fulfill at such a position is beyond my capabilities. Suddenly i've lost confidence in all i've learnt in uni. Seriously, what Have I learnt in uni? I would be at lost if you asked me that qn. 


Breathe!!


One Step at a time!!


Eventually, you walk out of the fog and see the world in a clearer picture....


Breathe!!

Ip Man 2

Watched @ GV Marina Sq

Usually I don't watch chinese movies at the cinema, cos they are always out in stores or online within a few weeks. But this is an outing movie with friends so i watched. I have to say, i'm not disappointed with what I was watching.

I think the greatest credit has to go to the script and the director, they manage to make a movie about a man who was known to be unassuming, and made him into a cult hero. Impressive. Perhaps even more credit had to go to the guy who played the villain in the movie, he really managed to make everyone in the cinema hate him so much, that everyone cheered with the supporters in the movie when he was finally beaten. That is a great reaction indicating a great movie.

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 8 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 8 out of 10
Overall: 8 out of 10

Favourite Lines:
洪震南：为了生活，我可以忍。但侮辱中华武术，我不能忍！
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梁：师父，如果真的有10个人带上家伙来打你，怎么办？
叶问：跑！

Official Website

Pictures

Bounty Hunter

Watched @ The Cathay

Another Gerard Butler movie that comes of the assembly line. His movie are coming out so fast, there's hardly time to forget his previous one. The problem with this one is that it totally reminds me of the ugly truth, not totally the same, but there's essence of the previous show in it. That is a bad thing.

The other bad thing is that the plot is quite filled with loopholes. the opening and finale are just lousy. Not plots that are well thought off, just plots that are trying to give gerard butler a movie, so that they can squeeze as much $$ as they can out of him while he is still the popular man. disappointing. Notice how far he has fallen in movie standard ever since 300? tsk tsk tsk

There nothing much to say abt jennifer aniston, she is in her typical role. boring cos it's the same her, but than again, that's the her I wanna see. :P

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 4 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 6 out of 10
Overall: 5 out of 10

Favourite Lines:
Nicole Hurley: Life is making mistakes.
Milo Boyd: And death is wishing you had made more.

Official Website


Pictures

Date Night

Watched @ GV Vivo

Hilarious comedy, the plot is NOT out of this world, just a series of unfortunate events. Nothing very memorable, but being memorable is not the point for comedies. The laugh is all that counts, and laughs I've really had quite a few.

I think Steve Carrell has been typecast, his roles are more or less the same, goofy, underachieving guy who whacks out a good thing or two at the end of the movie. Tina Fey, i think it's the first time i've ever seen her a a lead. She's been around for ages and got famous for mimicking Sarah Palin. Great performance by the leading duo, good chemistry. They really did take my on a good comedic ride.

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 8 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 6 out of 10
Overall: 7 out of 10

Official Website

Pictures

Bangkok Aftermath

Back from bangkok for more than 2 weeks already, but have yet to post anything about it yet. Finally I've found some time to do it. Been pretty much occupied with this new game called three kingdoms, kindda regret starting it, cos it's really time consuming. WTH!! there are so many players who seem to be online 24/7, crazy!!

Anyway abt Bangkok, my trip there was pretty much disrupted by the red shirt protesters, cos they were right smack congregating at the place where I wanna shop!! I seriously have a very strong urge to just use "weapons of mass destruction" on them. But then again, there were too many of them, seriously scary, now that i'm looking back at it.

First day that we were there, the congregation were only beginning to gather, so it did not felt that tense yet, just seriously traffic jams. We checked into our hotel, wanted to start shopping when we realised the shopping centres were forces to close, only then we sense the situation is tensing. Best part was we even tried to go check out central world, which was actually a bad idea, cos the headquarters is pretty much just outside the place and density of red shirts were much higher there. The atmosphere was so dense, it was almost suffocating. Both of us basically freaked out when they start chanting and yelling their slogans, we just had to act calm and move as far as quickly as we could. Oh yah, turning back was no longer an option.

Saving grace of the day was that the Spa was still quite a distance away from the mess and it remains open. It was actually quite crowded there. Tourists mostly, I sense that most of them had no where better to go then there. We reached the Spa abt 4plus, and there was no vacancy till 6pm, we were just contented to stay there. Anywhere away from the reds is better. Suan Lum night market was our plan for that night, luckily that too remained open, few days later the Spa and Suan Lum area would have been messy too. I even managed to catch the Man U vs Chelsea game there.

Bulk of second day was spent at Chatuchak, good thing this place is really far from the tourist central. It's business as usual, as it nothing is happening at all. bought some stuff, walked alot, ate alot, pretty much accomplished all the required tasked at Chatuchak, but on a much longer time frame. Brought dear to this bear shirt shop, sells cool bear shirts, i seriously did not know how I was walking in that market. If you have been there you would know how complicated that place was. And yet I somehow found the place like a homing missile with GPS guidance, i just thought of the place and walked turned when I felt like turning and "TADAH"!!

We managed to squeeze some time to visit platinum and do some shopping there, it was OPEN!! or so we thought. As we shopped for a while and was thinking if we could get dinner at the japanese restaurant, all the stalls began frantically clearing and packing and  within minutes most of the stalls have they shutters down and the operators are moving out of the building, we took that as our que to leave as well.

We found a nice cosy restaurant near our hotel for dinner. it's a western restaurant, but we ordered thai food. not bad, and best of all it offers free wifi!! :P and more Spa to end off the day, traditional thai massage, not as acrobatic as we thought. We were served by 2 aunties were who talking non-stop among themselves, quite hilarious cos they talk as if we couldnt understand a single word they say. True, we could not understand a single word, but I could roughly tell they were talking abt US!!

Final day, we decided to venture around our hotel, pratunam area, and it had to be done early. The red shirts are not that active early in the morning, so we had to move early, cos judging from the trends in the past few days, most stall would close once the protestors gather in large numbers and start holding up traffic. We even manage to catch lunch at the japanese restaurant at platinum, that's was before things started looking rowdy all over again. thankfully we were headed to the airport soon after.

This trip gave me a new view of thailand, the one that's in political turmoil for many decades. And judging from the sights that we see in bangkok. This is no where near the end, even if this episode ends, the political situation is no where near being stable. it's too volatile. Some people are just too politically sensitive and totally not viewing the government objectively. It's like "if the government is not red it sucks"!! And yet on the other hand, you can also see people, who can go on with their day to day matters like nothing ever happened. I believe that is usually the case for the majority, they dun really care who's in power, as long as they are able to survive. Yet the minority that's voicing our their complains and whatsoever, thinks they are the majority and everyone wants to be like them. They need to learn that just because no one is saying "yes this government is good" doesnt mean that everyone thinks "this government sucks". Things are still going to get ugly.

I wonder when will be the next time thailand would be safe to visit once again.

Clash of the Titans (non-3D)

Watched @ Cineleisure lvl 9

So much hype had been brewing around this movie, I personally feel it has not delivered much. At least it has not done enough to out-do it's predecessor. I've watched the old classic, monochrome version before when i was a kid, and i briefly remembered the movie to captivate me much more than this version did. Oh!! I remembered the owl, though I have no recollection of it's usage. I only remembered it used to move.

Acting wise in this movie, it's hard to judge, liam neeson as zeus, feels alittle feeble. And sam worthington as perseus, felt like terminator 4 all over again. well, I think the biggest problem lies in the plot. This is supposed to be an epic movie, but after watching it, it felt like a summary.

It's like the whole original story was summarized into under 2hrs so that we could watch it in 1 showing. actually, I would be happier if they made it into a 4hr long epic movie. Much like the "10 commandments" sort of  way. The whole grandeur of the movie would be lifted. Unlike this haphazardly compiled version.

Also the fact that it was converted to 3D as a sales gimmick is really desperate. They are so desperate to ride the 3D wave phenomenon, that they totally flopped in it. Well that was the comments i had gathered, so i watched the non-3D version instead. Indeed there are several scenes in the movies that would do well with 3D effects. But the effects are just the same when you do it in post-production instead of pre-production.

What could have been a hell of a ride became just a walk in the park.

Spikefire ratings:
Story & Plot: 6 out of 10
Audio & Visual: 6 out of 10
Overall: 6 out of 10

Official Website

Pictures

Bangkok Here I come... AGAIN!!

In a few hrs, i'll be flying off to bangkok again. I believe it's my third time in the past 12 mths. This is a last min trip, dear and I decided to take cos i might be starting work soon and we both have no idea when our next free period will be. So this might be a good opportunity to bring her to bangkok and go to the places I went the last time with silie & russel. This will be a tightly packed weekend, many places to cover in this short period of time. I intend to be photo whoring this time around, I realised i have been taking very few pictures in my past few overseas trips.

Oh yah, in the past 2 days I ate stuff I really like once again! I'm treating my stomach really well recently. 

Thurs nite went to eat Korean food at Manna (Telok Ayer). I been there a few times and the food there hasnt disappoint. Really yummy bbq meats, the real korean style. How do I know it's real? cos most of the customers and the employees are korean, oh and the boss too!! However it's not cheap, quite ex actually. Therefore it's a place I would come only when i'm feeling rich or i'm eating with my family. 

Friday morning, after going to Bright Hill to pay respects to my grandma, we went to Toa Payoh's Fortunate Restaurant for dim sum. I've been hearing abt the place for years, but never had the chance to try it. It's really crowded, huge queue outside when we arrived but the queue clear up quite fast, so it was good. Service was very prompt. Service is hongkong style, where all the food comes in aluminium steamer trolleys and you will pick out what you wanna eat from there. It's good, well most of it. I really recommend the "xia jiao" (prawn dumplings) and egg tarts. I would come back just for these 2 items, but the rest were quite good too. Oh there's peking duck too, but we din manage to try it, cos they served it when we were done with dessert. Really full and satisfied.

And now it's time to head to BKK for another round of enjoyment... :)

I got it!

I've gotten the answer I wanted. I've been accepted. I'm going to be a traffic engineer. I've not been given the salary I wanted, but that's expected and i'm glad it's within my expectation of how much they are willing to offer.