Blessed Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is upon us once more. Not that I do not enjoy it. I love all the colour,sights and sounds that it brings. Above all the eating and red packets! But every year at this time of the year, there is nothing much to do for those non-chinese amongst us. The shows on TV are usually crap. All the stores are closed. One can of course go to the zoo or other such places if one desires. Or the beach. But somehow for me personally CNY is often filled with aimlessness. I guess it is a classic case of too much time and too little to do. An option would be to go on a overseas trip every year at CNY,Super Peak rates notwithstanding.

Watched Memoirs of a Geisha yesterday. Found it to be a rather good movie despite the hype. Cinematography was top notch and the set pieces were rather well done. The child actress who played the young Chiyo was exceptional. Zhang Ziyi was surprisingly good in her role. But somehow I felt someone else should have been cast in the titular role. She may be pretty and the top actress in chinese cinema, but somehow she did not make the role of Sayuri her own. Maybe she did not fit my mental picture of a geisha. It may be just me,but she seemed too thin and fragile for the headstrong and determined Sayuri. Another thing that struck me was the inconsistence in language throughout the film. We started off in japanese, and then miraculously everyone started speaking in english. And then at some points the dialogue alternated between english and japanese! I think it would have been better to either stick to english throughout or have all the dialogue in japanese accompanied by english subtitles to be more consistent. The other jarring thing I noticed is the difference in grammar and enunciation between members in the cast(even the same character!). For example the young Chiyo and the older Chiyo, the younger self seems to be more adept at english than her older self. Same thing applies to her best friend Pumpkin at various stages. Michelle Yeoh played the famed Mameha who speaks crisp and clear english. Likewise the Chairman played by Ken Watanabe. This makes them seem rather misplaced in their scenes with other characters who somehow do not match up to them diction-wise. The director should have found a middle ground to which everyone spoke the same way. But perhaps I am being too critical.
Rating: 4 kimonos out of 5

After the movie we drove around a bit especially around the Chinatown area. Agnes was not feeling too well inexplicably so we headed home. There were rehearsals going on for the big CNY show while we were there. Strange as it may seem to some, I have never been to Chinatown during the lead up to CNY.Maybe next year.

We had watched our movie at GV Grand at Great World City. But by sheer coincidence mum and dad were there at the same time. Somehow our paths did not cross.

Agnes has been busy at school lately and it seems to be taking a toll on her health. She seems tired and detached. May also be factored in that she not been well. Lack of rest,early to school and late nights all make Agnes a dull girl. In fact we are not sure if we can even meet up as much as I would like during this lunar season due to all her outstanding work and stuff she needs to do.

My fish (and lobsters) seem to be doing well. No major fatalities except for a couple the first couple of days (which is par for the course when new fish are introduced into an established tank). Even the clown loaches are doing well. Which is a good sign as they are the most sensitive fish in the current setup, meaning that if anything goes wrong they would be the first to exhibit any symptoms. Another concern of mine is the feeding of the lobsters. They are basically opportunistic feeders who prefer live food and willingly eat dead animals. The problem is how to fulfill their nutritional requirements without having to change the water in their tank at least once a day! Live food and dead fish cloud the water and smell bad after a few hrs. I tried dried brine shrimp but they do not seem to be taking too well to it. I could try feeder fish or worms.maybe that might work better..

11 months and counting

On Thursday Agnes and I celebrated our 11th month together. This months celebration was a bit low key due to time and all, but next month we are gonna celebrate in a big way. By then we will have been together a year! So between now and then we will plan what to do to inaugurate our year together.

On Thursday we met up but did not do anything special as Agnes had to go school the next and was thus a bit too pre-occupied to celebrate properly in any event. So we decided to hold off the celebrations until friday.
On friday, I met Agnes at NUS. She did her stuff and then we headed to Jurong Hill. I been wanting to bring Agnes there for yonks but never quite got around to it. Jurong Hill has a nice garden with tree's planted by heads of state and foreign dignitaries which is worth a look for anyone into such things. But the main feature there is lookout tower at the top of the hill. From that vantage point you can look down upon the entire expanse of the Jurong Industrial estate, including Jurong Island. Quite a nice view at night or even in the day where you can see far and away on a clear day. The view used to be much better as I can imagine in the old days as tall trees have sprung up on one side which have effectively blocked off the view on that side so the only side that is clear is the side facing Jurong Island towards the east. The tower is like a spiral not unlike those ramps at car parks that go round and round. At the base of the tower and under ground level is a restaurant which serves great Indonesian, Japanese and Teppanyaki cuisine. So that is where we went to celebrate on friday. We had initially wanted to try the teppanyaki but it was crowded and we had to wait. So instead we ordered japanese. The wait was long and we were hungry. But that was not necessarily a bad thing in that it gave us an opportunity to chat during the interminable wait. Despite the 'ulu' location,the place was rather crowded. Probably people who work or from the camps in the Jurong area and such. When the food did come it was not bad at all. Best part was that there was a free flow of japanese tea(read:green tea). After dinner, settling the bill and finally finding out who the mystery lady was with Vincent Ng, we went a-walking up the tower to the top. There was a couple up there and we probably interrupted their ..umm...never mind. It was one of those cool and foggy nights which made the already good view even more surreal. Like one of those scenes from Hollywood Hills or those hills overlooking Hongkong city. After that we made our slow way down to Sunny, and headed off to our next destination.
I made the drive over to IMM at Jurong East, where Agnes wanted to but some tea. Instead we did lots of other shopping too. Got the tea and then went out looking for clothes,I bought a belt, Agnes bought a cardholder for her NUS Card. We also found time for tea,milo,apple pie and a choco sundae at McDonalds. After that it was time to head back home as I had work the next day. Bummer!
It was supposed to be a low key celebration but in the end we managed to do alot and have quite a good time inspite of the little time we had. I can hardly wait for next month...

Less is more

I spoke about changing the background of my Love Divine blog in my last post. But I think the same should be applied to this one. The background is nice in itself, but somehow it is not quite me. Blue balls do not quite say LEON to me. Along with that is that my blog overall is quite graphics intensive and thus may take a while to load on slower servers. So I am gonna have to reduce the usage of .jpg and .gif files contained therein. Also some of the links are quite redundant since I do not visit most of the links there and some even do not link to the current sites. Cases in point are Izzy's (Sarongpartygirl) and Noel's blog which have moved yet are still linked at the old adresses. Some of the other blog links I do not read or have stopped blogging altogether. Some of the other links I hardly use anymore and many of those sites I do go to almost daily are not even linked! Such as Wilkepedia and Flickr for instance. So I will therefore made the necesary changes as I go along. Nothing to drastic or too abrupt though.

the obligatory weekend update

First off, Agnes has made her virginal plunge into blogging. You can go check it out at www.whitelionat2005.blogspot.com . In it she talks about how life has been since she stopped work and went back to school. Maybe she will keep on updating it from time to time. On a sidenote, I have to go and change the background for that blog. It works fine with bigger font text and pictures posted, but not so much with normal blogging. It makes it hard to make out what someone is writing sometimes.

With Agnes back in school it also means I have more time on my hands. There has been talk about resuming my part time studies. I have always wanted to own my own business someday. But thus far I have made little or no concrete steps in reaching that goal. It has until now remain just a pipe dream which seemed out of my grasp. But since I am going back to study also, I might as well study something that I might actually use, see my forays into English and Computer Studies, in my future endeavour. So now I am looking in to doing some management or business studies.

Hasli is going into learning to ride a bike. Good on him. He did ask me to join him, but it is not something I wish to do at this point. Hasli is also gonna pursue his further studies after he is done with the bike stuff. By the looks of what I typed in the previous paragraph, looks like I will not be joining him in that either.

My Motorola phone has been giving me problems lately. It seems that sending and receiving messages take longer,even up to 10 minutes. So I have reverted to using my old Samsung phone until I have things all sorted out. I would send the Motorola for repairs, but I have lots of important data in the phone which I am not willing to let the guys at the shop delete when they repair it.

Like they say old is gold. As in the case of the phone above, it seems that no matter how much technology advances we still fall back on the old and trusty things after a while. The Motorola can do lots of things that normal phones can't, but all the gizmos and features come with a price in terms of stability and dependability. Same thing too with my pair of glasses. I have this old pair which I use whenever my present pair(s) get lost or damaged. It has been around for ages. It does not look anything special. It does not have anti-fog or photo-chromatic lenses. It's frame is non-descript. So it is kept in its case until called upon, and whenever it is used. Makes me wonder is it ever worth expending all that money on something new when the old stuff does it just as well, only with less fanfare.

My beloved fish tank (or should be fish TANKS?) is doing well.Minimal fatalities and every one gets along fine. I have also acquired some 'lobsters' and crayfish which I keep in a separate tanks. I had initially bought them to act as scavengers in the main tank, but thought better of it once I got back. I ran the risk of them nipping and maybe even eating my fish if housed together. A problem accentuated by the fact that most of my fish and peaceful bottom dwellers which make them ready prey for any hungry crustacean.

Bought a new fan! I do have aircon and a ceiling fan in my room. The aircon is ok on hot days but I find it an exercise in futility to use it all day long. It is not a long term solution. Besides, the aircon is an energy guzzler and does little to help the circulation in my room anyhow. The ceiling fan is overkill to be fan. The room feels like it has been in a tsunami even at the lowest setting. To accentuate the situation, the settings are activated by a metal chain which extends just above the heads of a normal adult, by means of pulling on the chain to increase the speed of the blades. The problem with that is that the chain it came with was not very thick and broke easily. After much trying thereafter, we replaced it with a newer(read: stronger) chain which also broke. So now the ceiling fan lies dormant for the most part as you can't adjust the speed without being at least 7 feet tall or climbing on a ladder/chair. I have been using one of those clip on fans until now at night. I assume the motor blew out or something because it does not work anymore sice last week. In the inetrim I have been using the 'fan' function of my room aircon at night. So today I went down to Carrefour to get me a new fan. It cost $39.90 and works a treat. It keeps me cool without being too strong.
Much ado about a fan.

Speaking of fans, McDonald's launched their new Fan-tastic burgers not long ago. In my eyes it is a blatant rip off of the burgers Mos Burgers has been dishing out. The selling point of it is that instead of bread the 'bun' is made up of compacted sticky rice not unlike the sort served by Mos. These new burgers supposedly tie in with the upcoming Lunar New year, because as everyone know the chinese eat...rice.

I received a letter in the mail. The thing is it was addressed to Joyce Lim Boon Cheng at my address! Curious. I wonder how that happened. It was a birthday card from Pastor Mark. I did message Joyce upon receiving it, she told me to open it and read it who it was from. So I did. So now it falls upon me to send the letter back to it's rightful owner. I just do not know how or when I am gonna do it. Gonna have to speak to Agnes first before I proceed any further. I do not want there to be any misunderstandings between us. We all know about the Curse of the Ex...

Still not done editing all the pictures from my KL trip let alone posting them up. Which I will do in time.

The final thing I wish to address is how Agnes's going back to school has affected me personally. Before all this started, Agnes had sort of prepared me for lied ahead of us. She expressed that we may not be able to spend as much time together as we had before when both of us were gainfully employed. I told her that I gave her my fullest support and that I would do all I could to help her on her way. As predicted, Agnes has started school and we indeed have little or no time for one another during the week. To add to the predicament, NUS is a long way away from Sembawang, where I work and even more so from Bedok South where she lives. So for me to get there after work and then send her home thereafter has become a major hassle even though I drive. So we agreed to meet on Fridays and Saturdays only, unless some special occasion falls on any of the other days of the week. It has to some extent allowed both of us to have time to do our own stuff. It has also consequently made our weekend dates that much more meaningful and more to look forward to.
On the flip side it is also hard to squeeze in so much into what is effectively a few hours, since we only meet on friday evenings after work/school and then on Saturdays in the late afternoon/early evenings. I guess we have to spend our time together more meaningfully and plan it such that little time is unfilled with 'Us Time. Us Time is time spent together,JUST THE TWO OF US, doing stuff we BOTH enjoy. problem is Agnes has so much to do and so little time in which to do it that sometimes her school stuff intrudes into our Us Time. So on the days we meet we find ourselves doing school related stuff such as looking for books or stationery. Agnes even brings along her laptop and chool books so that she can squeeze in some studying/reading/learning while we are at my house. I know that it is inevitable and that Agnes would not impose on me if she had a choice, but sometimes I feel so secondary to her school stuff. That even our special time together has to be spent doing stuff that has nothing to do with me personally. That makes our actual time spent together even more of a premium now. Agnes has also not fully adapted to life in school after having worked for over 4 years, so she needs to talk to me about stuff on her mind. It is kinda hard for me to relate sometimes. Not that I am unsympathetic or unwilling to help, just that at times I feel that whatever she is going through is part and parcel of studying full time. Or that she is worrying and stressing herself out unnecessarily. It is hard to put myself in her shoes since I handle my stress a lot differently from her and it is still too early in the term to expect Agnes to be fully in the flow of being a student in my humble opinion. Like I just told her a while ago,to take things one step at a time, not to overthink things and that the main obstacle is in her head and not in the situation she is in. In short I just feel that she should take thing easy, at least for now, and not let herself be overwhelmed by all the changes in her life. Anyway she has family and friends who love and support her, and above all me to hold her and hug her and to listen to her every grouse and pain....