The Long Forgotten Journey

Home town is a distant memory now that my parents are both in KL. It was like that since I "moved" out of Kota Bharu, Kelantan for studies in USM, Penang more than 10 years ago. Whenever it is time to go back for the semester break, I would somehow feel strange to leave the campus for I have somehow developed this indescribable attachment towards this beautiful small island. A place that I have spent most of my time growing up has become less familiar to me each time I went back, as if each layer of memories of the town has been peeled away, by the hands of time, little by little. Faces become strangers, places turn grey in the mind, names of streets become merely broken sentences that need to be completed. Nonetheless, there were selected memories where I could not seem to erase - the field where I had to run across to reach home everyday after school, the aromatic nasi dagang (rice) and ayam percik (chicken) that is uniquely Kelantan, the flood that hit our old wooden house each year in December (where the whole town folks came out to celebrate and play), the beaches, the nearby waterfalls, my beloved old school, and surprisingly, so much more...now they have decided to gradually flood my mind again. I can't wait to go back home, to where I was brought up, to a place where most outsiders would ask me the strangest question, "Can you buy pork in Kelantan market?" Kelantan remains a mystery to many.

SILK (2006)

Do you believe in ghost? Not sure but I think it does exist for I believe human has energy and I think after we die, this energy remains while your body decays. I like to believe that Ghosts are all these energies that are left behind on this earth. I like this film for it approaches the subject matter of the existence of ghost/ spirits, whichever one likes to call them, quite scientifically. Yet, it does not lose the charm of anchoring some of the emotions of a few important characters. Of all, Chang Chen's character, Tung is the most well developed. He plays this sharp officer pretty well. I also find the subtlety of his relationship with Jia Wei, played by Karena Lam particularly intriguing. Too bad, Hashimoto, played by Yasuke Eguichi started off pretty promising but ended up not great at all in the end. I could not empathise with him and his intention to kill himself. Though there are flaws in the story itself, essentially, it is quite an entertaining horror film. It anchors it down with the relationship between the boy and his love for his mother, a parallel to Tung's and his comatose mother. Quite some eerie moments in this Taiwanese thriller film of director Su Chao-bin, but it is also a sad one too.

Fan Fan One To One

This was a simple yet heartwarming gesture by Patrick. He bought me this album titled One to One recently. At first, I didn't think much of the album for it did not impress me like some other albums. After subsequent listening, I began to fall in love with a few tracks. It has that naive and straightforwardness kind of approach in her voice (though not a very good range). It felt as though I have traveled back in time. It gives me the feeling of lost young memories - sweet teenage dreams, the scent of innocence in the air, yet lingers with the bitterness of harmless angst and a mixture of indescribable confusions of being young. Wonderfully delicious.

A Bright and Colourful Mid Autumn (Mooncake) Festival

Last Friday was the actual mooncake festival but we stayed home and it started raining quite heavily close to midnight. Though we could not celebrate on the actual day, our family planned a gathering and dinner over at my sister's place in Cheras for the next night. My mum cooked her signature dish - dry chicken curry and I cooked chicken parmesan with basil sauce and "pulut hitam" (black gluttonous rice sweet dessert) and my sister contributed some other dishes as well. As usual, everybody gladly "sapu" my mum's delicious chicken! I was glad that my brother, Kenny who is now working in Singapore managed to make it back here for the dinner with his wife, Lynn. After dinner, the kids took their respective tang longs and we walked around the housing area and went to join the mooncake festivity at the park. It was really a happening occasion. Loads of families with their kids came out and celebrate. Lights and "tang long" (Chinese lanterns) were beautifully lit and decorated around the park. Kids running around, playing swings in the dark. It was truly a memorable sight.

The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Directed by David Frunkel
Starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Adrian Grenier, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker

Patrick came back the other day and said that I have to watch this film. So, we made arrangements and swapped schedule, he took over taking care of the boys for me to go watch the film. From the opening montage of different girls getting ready for work in their respective apartments in the morning, I already had a funny feeling that I would love the film. As usual, I would never miss a film that stars Meryl Streep. I think she is one of the most talented female actors alive in Hollywood. She plays the role of Miranda, the editor-in-chief of a famous fashion magazine, Runway. Her sharp, icy, vicious, ambitious and feared by all her staff in the office kind of personality made you believe that she embodies quite a lot of female bosses out there in the corporate world these days. Anne Hathaway is pretty good in this as well. You could believe her transformation from an "ugly duckling" to a "beautiful high profile" corporate assistant. The film tackles the issues of how most female working women are generally being misunderstood and stereotyped in the demanding work environment in quite a subtle yet effective way. It does not preach but merely lets the audience realized that it is tough to strike a balance between the two worlds. You hate Miranda throughout the film but you would surely feel for her in the one scene where she reveals how vulnerable it is to keep a marriage together, but then she quickly switches back to her "boss" mode that split second. Great acting! I love Stanley Tucci who plays Nigel in the film too. I really love the montage of Anne all dressed up pretty to go to work, walking on the streets in the morning, really cool editing there. At the end, it is the choices we make in life that make us who we really are. Do we really have a choice, I believe to a certain extend, we do. Are we the devil in disguise? Are we superficial in anyway? All men and women are...

Aidan's wild idea of a birthday song!

I did not expect something like this but Aidan came up with it one afternoon while playing by himself. Sometimes, it's funny how kids conjure up things to entertain themselves! He drew the sketches on the paper himself.

Almost the End and the Beginning Of

When the kindergarten announced that we had to pay RM40 for a photo session, I was quite taken aback for it is quite costly for a kindergarten graduation photo shoot but as always, like most parents, we would want our child to experience what other kids are experiencing and rather not let him feel as though he is left out of all the fun. So, we agreed to go ahead with it in the last minute. So, after paying this morning, I helped the teacher dressed all the children up for a photo shoot. It turned out that Ryan's class is quite an active bunch of kids who are almost excited about anything. I am not too sure how the actual photos of Ryan will turn out later but at least, he was having fun all dressed up and had a blast with the rest of his classmates. This is almost the end of his kindergarten year and he will be embarking on a much greater challenge next year - standard one at a local Chinese school which is famous for tonnes of homework and very strict teachers, like most other Chinese schools around. Let's just hope that he would be able to adjust well to all the changes that he is about to dive into!

The Banquet

The Banquet (2006)

Directed by Feng Xiaogang

Starring Ziyi Zhang, Daniel Wu, Ge You, Ma Jingwu, Zhou Xun

Not a very good experience watching a Chinese film in a theatre that was 1/4 filled up and it didn't help that when the film began rolling, a few young Malay male audiences started to laugh at the opening scene of a few MASKed artists singing in a pretty operatic manner. I did not know whether they found it amusing or just being your average mediocre Malaysian audience who just happened to have nothing better to do than spent RM6.00 on a ticket to kill time - on a regular Wednesday afternoon at IOI mall GSC, just for the fun of it? Maybe humour is just cultural or simply contextual? Nonetheless, from the very beginning of the film, I was being served with a dish that is visually stunning and captivating - with loads of slow motion effects and stylized kung-fu fight sequences. I was thinking, "okay, looks interesting enough, let's see how the story goes..." As we move along, we are introduced to different characters in the film - Ziyi plays Empress Wan, vicious and dangerously ambitious, Daniel Wu is Prince Wu Luan, who just wants to run away and escape from the duty of being an emperor one day, Ge You the emperor, which he played it quite interestingly, Zhou Xun the lovely and forever forgiving and optimistic Qing Nu who falls head over heels for Prince Wu Luan...all these are quite 3 dimensional characters. The only one that is not so convincing was Zi Yi for I think she is a little too young for her role. I would imagine Gong Li a better choice for the role, but I would always remember Ziyi in this small film called The Road Home by Zhang Yimou. She truly stood out as a naive yet determined young village girl who strongly believes in her love for a school teacher and brave enough to fight for it. As for Banquet, I love the cinematography, but after a while, the slow mo effects sort of got to me. Nonetheless, I was very impressed with the art direction, the costume designs and the music. All in all, it did deliver as a film which is quite character and story driven. But I still prefer Zhang Yimou's approach to making films as such for I could always remember that very MOOD and the richness in COLOUR and overlaying of texture in terms of storytelling (multiple angles/ different point of views) it brought forward in HERO, a visual that is too strong to miss.