Kiru Biru ni ban o mimashita. dai suki desu.
WARNING: Spoilers! ;)

Watched Kill Bill Volume 2 tonight and it was quite the ending to the movie. There was probably greater Tarantino style direction in #2 than #1, more of a character development and plot than the first. Volume 1 had crazy fighting and to me, better and longer lasting fight scenes than #2 had. The fighting in #2 seemed to go by real quickly in the amount of time they had. What ruined the movie for me was (with a full house), the laughter in scenes where there shouldn't have been. This occured mainly in the Chapter with Pai Mei (White Eyebrows) where The Bride (B..*beep*) learns her Shaolin kungfu. I mean, okay .. the first time may be funny - but do you have to laugh every single time the same words or action is repeated? Especially if you sit in the row right in front of me?! Given that Tarantino didnt explain the background to all the arts, you cant expect most anglos to know that the Eagle Claw and Crane are real Shaolin martial arts and the moves arent meant to mock anything, because that's what it is meant to be - based on the eagle's claw and the crane, that is why the "fists" or palms are held in that way *insert laughter here* and the moves (forms) are like that *insert more laughter here* . The 5 Point Exploding Heart palm strike *insert more snickering* (or soemthing similar to that affect - correct me if I'm wrong :) okay it may be a stupid name (to most people) but theres a reason its called that. Obviously cos it uses 5 pressure points for the execution and kills you pretty much once you move. Also another sticking point was the subtitles when Pai Mei speaks cantonese. Lucky for me, I understand it, but the subtitles at times wasn't anywhere near what he said. And Uma, was speaking a combination of mandarin, cantonese and english (sometimes even in the one sentence) even though Pai Mei refers to her speaking 'Cantonese'. Even her 'yes' and 'no was Mandarin ( no = "bu") and cantonese (yes = "hai").. which is like hm okay. Maybe there was a reason behind that, but thats just minor anyway. Just a gripe :)

All in all, Kill Bill Volume 2 ends the movie well, pretty much a predictable ending. As a whole movie it would've been good, one 5 hour long movie. Volume 2 brought his Western "spaghetti" movie influences out, mishmashed with the other Chinese martial arts and Japanese samurai fighting. It was good to see that Quentin put the effort into the movie to get all the cast into fighting mode, with Sonny Chiba (who played the Samurai Sword/Sushi maker in Vol 1) training the cast in samurai fighting, Gordon Liu (playing head of Yakuza Crazy 88 in Vol 1 and Pai Mei in Vol 2) comin from shaolin background anyway performin his fights, Yuen Wo Ping and stunt crew trainin people up.. and David Carradine from the old 70/80s Kung Fu series (which even my parents remember watching back in HK...). I was surprised to read that Tarantino orginally slated Warren Beatty (?!?!!!!) to be in Bill's role. Luckily, he changed his mind to Carradine.

Quentin is one helluva movie geek and it shows. Kill Bill pretty much played homage to all those movies that had an affect on him and wanting him to become the man he is today. Props to him. To most people goin into the movie blind, with not much of an idea on (mostly) the Asian cinema influences, then it really detracts (is that the word hmmm) from the viewing of the movie as a whole in understanding what he was trying to do - which lead to much of the constant laughter as mentioned above. I don't think this movie will influence the audience to start hiring out the old Sonny Chiba StreetFighter series of movies or the HK golden era Shaw Brother films or much of the Westerns, but it would be good if it did so they could watch it again and understand what Tarantino was trying to do - although this won't neccessarily mean they wouldn't like or understand the movie as a whole in any way, it would just help it if they had the background knowledge.


I'm dead beat. Going to get my RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) in the morning which will be fun.
Going into work again on Sunday for a few hours which is even more fun. Hopefully relax on Monday and catch up on all my tv shows I've taped throughout the week. eeek.

Labels: movies

Drive On!
I seemed to have a holden themed gift thing goin on this year. Friends bought me a Holden ceramic mug and a Holden autoart limited edition (7298 of 8004 - not that that really means much at such a high number... only if it was 8004 heh) model of Jason Bright's 2001 Holden Racing Team VX Commodore, which was nice of them.. since I am a Holden boy after all. Waiting for the day to get my HSV GTS300 (or the current days model...), another 10 years I'd say ;)
Coincidentally, driving into the city for dinner, I heard on the radio an ad for genuine Holden merchandise including T-shirts, models, caps, jackets, and.... G-Strings! Now, I don't think any rev head guy would want one for themselves.. I wonder what their partner would think if they got them one instead. A strategically placed lion perhaps?


The Newlyweds

Last night's dinner at Wagamama down at King Street Wharf was entertaining at the least. One of my friends (male) proposed to another whilst his girlfriend was in the bathroom. (Don't ask, I can't even remember why, the whole night I was in tears from the laughter.). One (the one that got proposed to) happily asked if we were having an Asian meal when we were eating. Not realising what he said nor realising the place we were at I think, the rest of us jus broke down. I'm sure he didn't notice the chopsticks on the tables or the noodles we were eating. It was quite Oriental indeed. The proposer decided to call the proposee "the blonde one" for the night, as is Jessica Simpson the blonde one in the Newlyweds. I don't think anyone else disagreed heh. The two were copping it both ways from each other throughout the night, some I just dont even want to repeat. The conversations we were having, does not go well when you are eating. I don't think the table of 12 behind us were happy that we were 'discussing' them so loud.

The service at Wagas' was a bit outta wack, with my friends who got the 'Happy Meal Deal', finished their mains before the entree even came out, and one of my other friends got his dish (the grilled salmon ramen) a good 20 minutes after everyone else had theirs (one or two had finished). When one of the waitpersons served my meal, he asked what the occasion was. My friends mentioned it was my birthday, and I asked him, so, do I get a free meal :c) (giving him that lovely smile too!), to which he replied, "um yeh I'll see what I can do".. turning around as fast as he could and walked away, not to be seen til he came and collected our plates when we were finished. He asked me what did I have for dinner. To which I replied, "erm the chicken ramen". Him: No you didnt. You don't have to pay for it, its on the house. *sweeet* shocked faces all around. Then I realised I ordered one of the cheapest dishes there was! We stayed around for a good 30minutes afterwards, til another waitperson asked if we wanted anything else, so we got the bill. It was at this point, one of my friends brought out his 3 Entertainment cards for discounts at Wagamamas. She then went ahead and consulted the aforementioned waitperson who gave me the free meal, pointing to us with the 3 cards in hand. I don't think he was too happy to see 3 of the cards. Our bill came, and the total ended up being over 50% off the actual price, so the seven of us ended up paying less than $10 each for our meal. LOL. In the end, it turns out the waitperson was the manager (or so it seemed with all the other tasks he was doin...). He was probably glad to see us go, and memorise our faces to put in his lil black book.

Labels: birthday, life

There goes another year..
I turn 21 23 today. Forever 21 I say.
It doesn't feel any different although I think my body says otherwise.

Thankfully, yesterday was an easy day at work after meeting our project deadline a day ahead of schedule even though we still had a few bits here and there to do. Also organised yesterday was a lunch gathering for the new graduates at work (6 of us) that the General Manager of IT said would "sponsor" our first lunch to get to know one another. Given a $150 budget for lunch, so tempting was the $25 banquet on offer at Thai Tanic that we decided against it. Earlier in the morning, our team leader also shouted the team (4 of us) some 'coffee' (hot chocolate for me.) due to the hard work we put in for the last few weeks. So for the first day since I started work, I hadn't had to pay anything for eating out, which can get quite heavy on the hip pocket in the north of town.

Last night, was memorable. Caught up with another friend whos birthday celebrations it was as well, someone I've known from my first job 5 years ago. She didn't go to well. For me, with a few drinks here and there and no food to go down with it didn't do my stomach any good. Nor did it help my pool game. Trying to eat a hot dog at the end of the night was a bad idea. Luckily the contents of my stomach agreed to stay put.
Early in the morning, headed off to the GoodBar with my best mate (who I've known since kindy) for some ol school hiphop beatz. The atmosphere was aiiight, tight but a bit too loud. Ordering drinks at the bar -
Me: CC and dry and a lemonde thanks
Bartender: Sorry?
M: CC AND DRY and a LEMONADE!
B: bourbon and dry and a vodka lemonade?
M: NO! Double whiskey and dry and a lemonade!
B: OK!
so he goes off and pours a double whiskey and a vodka lemonade.
I gave up trying to correct the order. The vodka lemonade didnt even have any taste to it. It was just like water.
Left the place after an hour, my ears were ringing from bein under the speakers, I couldn't hear myself talk.

Surprisingly, I woke up early today. I think my body clock is trying to correct itself after all these years of sleeping in.

Another day, another year. I feel like my life is goin to waste.

Labels: birthday, life

Toyriffic
My sis returned home from her business trip to HK today and came back with some gooodies I got her to buy for me. After a lil fretting over the ipod, ipod mini, rio, zen, or the iriver digital music players, I settled for the iriver H140 which, like the ipod, has a 40 gigabyte hard disk but also has an FM tuner, voice recording, support for mp3, wav, wma, asf, and ogg... well, it just couldn't compete as much as the others. Even better, the store my sis bought it from threw in the iriver iFP-140 64mb flash music player in for free! bonus. What's good about the H140 is that I can use it as a portable hard disk, plug straight into USB and Windows automatically detects it as a mass storage device, with no software to be installed. Couldn't ask for any more. Now the big test is to see if the internal Lithium Polymer battery lasts longer and better than the ipod ones, which has reported a few problems lately....

Now if only my iriver came along with a few accessories such as this (not including him in the middle :), or these :D
I mean, what kinda homie wouldn't have an iriver or be seen driving one of these babies (and the hummer).


Talking about homies, I watched Starsky and Hutch tonight, and it was quite good indeed. Typical Stiller humour and 70s style action, nice mix.

Kill Bill volume 2 is out in a week. Can't wait til Bill is killed. Sis also bought Volume 1 on DVD from HK, hopefully its the Japanese uncensored version. Gotta love the gore.

Labels: life, movies, shopping

It ain't over til it's over
I didn't think it would happen so soon, but it did. After such long, hard work.. it finally came to this. After much heated debate and angst, I walked out the door and decided enough is enough. I fired off an email to the manager and let him know what I felt. Even though my 3 months had passed I decided to take the fast way out and leave straight away. So this is it. Back into reality where I belong. I won't be going back. Leaving everything as it is and let someone else sort out the mess. I'm not known as a quitter but sometimes you just gotta do, what you gotta do. I craved for this long lost feeling of freedom and now I have it back again, so soon. It was only a matter of time. Onto bigger and better things I say!
Here I tender my resignation to thee, effective immediately. Best Regards.

Labels: life