Monday, November 05, 2007

Madness & Literary Creativity

It's funny how suicidal poets/authors e.g. Sylvia Plath, Virgina Woolf writes good poems / novels. I have an analogy. Their very illness - depression that cause them to be suicial is the very force behind their literary creativity , perhaps. The situations they experience and confront have constantly position them in the midst of controveries - The "Eye" - The point where all the problems meet together. The emotional stress they have felt in handling what they have to face and most importantly their personalities have great implications on their perspective of life and the society they are living in. Their literary creativity is their only outlet - a relieve for all the emotional stress they have felt. The emotional stress as a kind of a force that is repressed by the society (all the rules and roles they have to fulfill represses their turmultous feelings) and hence displaced by their literary creativity.

Alone in love (2006) - a K drama

It's a recent watch. (I just love to watch dramas & films - there's no cure for it)
The drama's about a divorced couple who still on good terms and love each other. The entire drama explores why and how this couple get themselves divorced but still get along together in rather resentful manner. And how the couple's relationship has its implications on their friends around them.

It has got a very detached feeling to this watching of the drama. The main characters are "detached" from one another yet there's an attachment between them symbolized by a ball of entangled string pulling at both ends.

pic from http://www.hancinema.net/korean_drama_Alone_in_Love.php

It's very moving and touching (I don't mean the ball of string) esp nearing the end of the drama where the main female lead is singing a wedding song for her ex-husband and his bride.



pic from http://www.hancinema.net/korean_drama_Alone_in_Love.phpThis character is the most lovable of all in my opinion. A comic figure that's detached from the rest and in frequent odds with her sister and her ex-brother-in-law, much to the amusement of the audience (me).

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

The Lake House

Watched “The lake house” last night. It’s a love story with a mixture of thriller perhaps detective elements in it. And a good one too. It’s a love story with a fantastical, mind-twisting plot. Quite out of the imaginary. And I think the plot is pretty haunting. It makes you wonder how the two characters correspond together at the same time yet not at the same time being two years apart in time. Things, events, were happening around them, were moving on concurrently yet their correspondence stood still. The story being presented on screen linearly but one still has no idea of where the story ends even though the entire movie has already ended with the couple at the lake house. After watching the movie, I fell to connecting its end with its beginning. Still confused over how it actually happened – how had she saved him from death arms? The plot is like the circle with no ends. This is the fantastical part. The plot is like the circle but it is presented on screen in a linear way. It falls on the viewer’s part to connect the plot together and this becomes interactive in a sense. Even the song “This never happened before” played when both characters met midway in the plot, cosing together – I call that cosing although they were dancing, is very good and simple and strong and exactly fits in the story and it’s as haunting as the plot. I still have it singing in my mind the next morning. It’s a very moving song.

On the whole, it’s love and I don’t feel I’m up to it to call it a romance. It’s love rather than romance. Its due to this scene, a v. impt or if I’m not wrong a pivotal scene of them cosing together. The way they cosed together showed the strong attraction they had for each other. The word “romance” has a soft, elusive, provocative and a feather light element in it. However, this (the story or the relationship between the 2 characters) is strong, steady and radiating with a resonance and this element can probably be called love.

And one more thing that comes to mind: the song “This never happened before” feels like one of the Beatles songs. One of those timeless classics one hears over and over again.

Monday, February 26, 2007

To 香子兰 vanilla

别来无恙? 不知你是否记得新年期间到热带雨林去的新加坡朋友? 海南岛之旅让我印像最深刻是海边沙滩风景宜人,有很多的稻田及其他农作物。还有因为台风的关系有好几棵木瓜树“中风”瘫地。有许多的第一次。坐飞机。那庞然大物竟然能载100多名乘客和行囊极速冲天下降。很不可思议。看到南海观音三面像。十分壮观。站在船板上不停摇晃对着一尊石像拍了20多张相片。厄,还有点晕船。坐“三脚猫”类似小卡车但只有三个轮的运货车。每当启动引擎时就会发出“突突”声,行使时随着“突突”的声响小卡车边行使边狂震不已至到停下为至。

人最在意是衣食住行。“行”已经提了。“衣”与“食”方面都是千遍一律。“食”方面:难以下咽。好像吃盐。因为吃的都是菜瓜之类,而且菜太咸了,吃了许多的米饭,所以很健康。现在了解为什么古时的人赶路的时候都以米饭包子作为粮食。谷类是平性不容易上火,而且能充饥耐饿。“住”:在旅店。用方面还可以。

回到新加坡,感觉舒服极了。不管这么样,在熟悉的地方活动是最舒适的。

还有,谢谢你的“小猪”!

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

War on the roaches

we were all feeling extremely murderous yesterday. i had been clearing the cupboard and accidentally uncovered the nest of the cockroaches amongst the wine bottles in their boxes. it was of a different breed, with very long legs in comparision to its small short round fat bodies and very tiny wings. it would not be a cockroache if it's not for the distinctive feelers and head like that of the american breed except it was certainly significantly smaller in size and extremely light-coloured in brown.

how i discovered was a case of innocence. in fact i had not thought of clearing the cupboard. In the first place i was just clearing the dried plates on the table and returning them to the lower drawer below the cupboard. when it came to the forks and spoons and chopsticks i had to put them in the cupboard. As i was doing that, i realised the cupboard was very messy and dirty in a certain sense, quite a number of unwanted stuff was not cleared. As i started clearing, I thought if i were to clear the upper cupboard why not clear the entire cupboard if it had to be cleaned. Just as i was lifting the wine bottle out reading the contents on its label, out jumped a cockroach and there went the rest of the cockroaches. At that time, my father and brother were working at their desks and i announced loudly there were a lot of cockroaches on the bottle including the eggs. My brother screamed (sort of 'cos his voice become rather highpitched) at me to get the bottles out 'cos the cockroaches would escape to his place as i was dumping them onto the carpet.

instantly, my brother, armed with the insecticide, started spraying at the bottles and the boxes once they were outside the office door. my father did the job of clearing the carcasses naturally because those wine bottles were his favourites.

This meeting with a large number of cockroaches was a hair-rising event 'cos it was disgusting and the very fact that they could crawled about anywhere and most pobably getting intimate with you crawling about on your skin under your clothes.

More on Snowcake

do admit the movie is taking a lighter and brighter look at autism. i think it's ok. 'cos people with this sort of illness can be quite depressed 'cos they are anti-social and rejected by others because of their wierd ways, behaviour and habits. i had seen reports of people with high functioning autism taking sucides and are dead. to day i have seen 2 to 3 reports of such. these people are really talents. it's a pity. the movie shows us how we should treat people as such. individually. putting aside our prejudices and differences and accept the person as he / she is. It's easier said than done, of course. But by learing more of this psychological illness, we will be able to treat them with more care and consideration and loving kindness. In turn, we will be able to make the place we live in a better place.

the lady with autism in the movie is lucky to have understanding parents and an understanding daughter too. the lady is able to take a more optimistic view towards her life despite difficulties that come along with her 'disability'.

i believe all individuals have the ability to survive in this world or else we won't be born in this world. But to survive, we are still interdependent of each other. Where do our clothes come from? What made the clothes? How are the fabrics being made? How is the yarn being spun? Without the people, there will no such thing as the civilisation. :) Without this world, there won't be humans and other living things.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Snowcake

Went to watch snowcake on 1/1/2007. A warm hearted movie. Surprisingly nice one. The main cast are Alan Rickman as the ex-prisoner giving a lift to a young girl who was the daughter of autistic Linda, Sigourney Weaver as the autistic Linda, Carrie-Anne Moss as the neighbour of Linda.

The movie tells us about the outlook of life through the stories of this three characters. How they view life and the relationship between each other affect the way they behave and handle the emotional stress they face at life major events eg. the death of Linda's daughter. Linda had chosen to take a positive attitude towards the death of her daughter in memory of their relationship and strong bondage they had in the past.