Illusion of Words

Once comments

The movie ‘Once’ is an independently made movie of independent street musicians. I saw the soundtrack all the time on Amazon’s bestseller list, so I thought, let me see how good it is.

The story is refreshing, about a guy and a girl who meet one day. And their story, that does not span over a long long time. So we never know their names, because they never bothered to introduce themselves. Anyway, the songs are great - the theme song, ‘Falling Slowly’, was even given an Oscar just recently.

It is rated R for foul language, however, besides that, you cannot find any fault deserving a R. The f-words spoken, I think, are typical of Irish folks, so while I still do not condone them, it at least is better than rage-fueled rants.

So while it may not be very well-made, nevertheless it is an enjoyable movie, simple and nice, and makes you think about how some beautiful people and things may happen only once, and that you better cherish them.

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Wood/Plastic Models

Well, I’m not an avid ‘model-builder’, seeing that I’ve only built three of them in my entire life. Models actually don’t take any skill, you just need patience when sticking all the pieces together. Which can really cause frustration at times. But anyhow, here are my wood/plastic models.

My first model, a wooden sailing ship. Made it quite a number of years ago, but only did the sails two years ago, because the how the sails should be tied can be kind of confusing.

Ha. A F-15c Eagle, American fighter plane thingy. All the way from USA, given by my uncle to my brother, who was not interested in doing it, so I made it. It’s very detailed for a plastic model, made by Revell.

This, according to the name on the box, is St Petersburg Church. But I think, more accurately, it’s St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. Picture of the real thing here.

Lastly, the models in a group photo, so you know their relative sizes. Can you spot an unwelcome guest standing on the church?

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Chinese New Year Malaysia

I’m not sure if what I observe here is applicable to West Malaysia, but at least it’s in Borneo. The original CNY is generally a festival surrounding relatives and those with blood connections, but here it has morphed into a friends-CNY.

What do I mean by that? Well, the custom here is laid out well for the first day of CNY. Everyone visits relatives - especially the older ones. The rest of the days, ranging well into the fourth day, belongs to friends, generally. I believe that in other places, the tradition is that generally only relatives visit. Here, students especially gather in large groups and go from house to house, usually for an entire day.

Why is it so? There’s this concept of ‘open house’, which is actually more a tradition of the Malays. Therefore, with the Malaysian Chinese incorporating it into their CNY festival, CNY in Malaysia has become, in a way, truly Malaysian. Wikipedia even says, ‘An open house (or “rumah terbuka”) is a Malaysian concept whereby people celebrating various holidays will invite friends to drop by for festive snacks and fellowship.’

But this CNY Malaysia doesn’t end there. When you enter a house during CNY, you don’t often see oranges and the likes. Instead, there are boxes and boxes of cakes and cookies, courtesy of the Malay ‘Hari Raya’ traditions.

When you take different traditions of different races, and mix them in one festival, you may get a much more festive and wonderful time. And the Malaysian CNY is one of those times.

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CDX the game

Just found this game quite recently, though I daresay it’s an ancient game, but anyhow, not bad. Realistic, though a little dragging when changing scenes, but hey - that’s perfect for more multi-tasking. BBC game, I think it’s kind of promoting Rome, the drama series which is supposedly really violent. I’ve never watched it, probably never will, but the game, while not for children, is quite violence-free.

There are four episodes, and generally you either control Adam the wheelbound guy or Liz his ex-girlfriend - I think.

http://cdx-thegame.com/

Posted in TV/Movies, Games | 1 Comment »

Looking Back

Looking back into the past week, CNY, Chinese New Year, is always a festival of mixed feelings, at least for students. I have since retired from that student life (at least for now), but I still remember the good ol’ days. CNY ranges anywhere from mid-Jan to mid-Feb, or perhaps even later. These relatively early dates, so close to a long year-end holiday just a few weeks before, can cause some CNY symptoms. Which is, students have this mindset - school hasn’t really started yet, wait till after CNY then I’ll start studying hard. After all, everyone wants to enjoy during CNY, and hasn’t really gone back into ’study mood’ since last year’s holidays.

So it creates this atmosphere, at least for me and people I know.

CNY is also a time of firecrackers and fireworks. Spectacular, to the newcomer, but the fireworks that are spreaded all over the town makes it hard for spectacular photos. Of course, the sounds and smoke can be quite annoying, especially when one is trying to enjoy the CNY’s eve movie. Fireworks are hardly legal around here, but apparently a lot of people don’t care. They don’t mind shooting off hundreds of ringgits in a few minutes. It’s mind-baffling, why anyone would waste their money on such unproductive and illegal business.

Truly quite ugly pictures of fireworks, hardly the work of even an amateur, but….

Looking still further back, and bringing the past into the present, recently I’ve been rewatching old episodes of Alias’ season 4. I know it has ended for two years already, so when rewatching, it’s kinda funny, to remember how jumpy and excited I was during the first time I watched the episodes. It’s almost comical now, to see Sydney (the main character) in deep distress over her season 4 premiere’s dilemma of ‘my father killed my mother who hired a hitman to kill me and now my half-sister who doesn’t know who killed our mother wants to kill whoever it was that killed our mother’.

Quite a complicated, messed-up thing that we know only existed because the writers thought the actress as Syd’s mother wasn’t coming back, so they wanted to kill her offscreen, but towards the end of the season, she was coming back, so what else? Ended up Syd’s dad killed a clone - the handy dandy Alias excuse.

Ah, the good ol’ days. But funny how I can still go on and on about a drama series that has since become non-existent.

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Time

We all know time goes fast. The world does not need anymore expounding on that topic. But here, I must mention the lyric of a song. I never thought about it that way, but it’s so true. Pink Bullets, by The Shins.

‘…. the days were long, but the years were short…’

True, you live in the day and wonder why the hours pass so slowly, but suddenly, the sun has set and risen again, and years disappear into the horizon.

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STMS English

It’s suddenly 2008, I know I haven’t touched this blog in ages, due in part to laziness. Anyway, the past month I was in school, well, still around my home compound, but in the hostel. Which sucked in the beginning, but became better because you know, you eventually get used to something no matter how terrible. I think.

One month isn’t such a long time, come to think about it, even if I was thinking in the beginning: ‘This is going to be the longest month of my life.’ But it wasn’t. It may well be the shortest. So many things happened - actually, one huge thing happened that isn’t worth reiterating.

I’m rambling on here. First things first. What is STMS? It’s Short Term Missions School, a special course created by MTS. There are four versions, STMS Chinese (v1.0), STMS Iban (v2.0), STMS English (v3.0), and STMS College (v3.5). The one I joined is only one month compared to the others.

So what do we do there? We go to classes, learn about different aspects of Christian life and the likes. We live in a great Christian community, surrounded by wonderful people generally after God’s heart.

And what’s the point of it? To learn. To grow in Christ, to get closer to Him. The entire course climaxes in the missions trip - for us, a 6 day 5 night trip to 3 different longhouses.

Ok, so what did you learn? Well, spiritual warfare never seemed so real and alive. I saw the importance of prayer and personal time with God. Nothing else is worth deleting that daily quiet time with God from our schedules. We failed in that aspect, and allowed the devil a foothold. But God works his own miracles, and in His time, we found freedom.

Well, any incident worth mentioning? There was the night at the longhouse. The electricity generator was shut down, and in the darkness, the rain roared above our heads. Oh, I love thunderstorms, but this one - this had a different vibe. Water leaked from the tin roof and you know how tin roofs can magnify the thundering of rain. So what I was trying to say is, we’d just been wearied by fighting in the day, and it seemed like the forces of evil were having the advantage at that time. The most beautiful thing in the entire situation (yes, beauty can be found mostly anywhere, anytime) was that those around me were praying aloud. Crying out above the storm in a intense fervency.

The next night, instead of thunderstorms, the skies were lit by stars. The funny thing was, only above our area were the skies clear. Far into all other directions, thick clouds blocked the stars. It was simply breathtaking. Like God was saying, ‘Have faith in me, it’ll all be alright.’ It was a great comfort to our battered and sore souls.

Is that all? Hardly. But it’ll do no good to bother you with too long an essay. So I end here.

Okay, last question, I promise. Why aren’t there any pictures? It’s like so boring, who will read it? That’s an extremely good question. I mean it. Well, I didn’t really take any pictures of the entire thing on my part, and even if there are pictures, they’re only of the graduation part. So why I don’t put them here? Because 1. the camera is quite far. 2. the computer’s usb hub sucks. 3. I’m not going to spend precious time trying to make the camera connect, i.e. let the computer ‘discover’ that there’s something in its usb hub. 3. uploading pictures too takes some effort.

But just to appease your appetite for pictures, here is one.

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