Life Update: ARGH I HATE 2014 ALREADY Edition

All evidence suggests that 2014 is the year of sickness and health-related issues. In the past ten days, I have sprained my foot and had two wisdom teeth taken out. Now I can walk properly again, but the right side of my face is so swollen that I'd rather stay home.

Because I really like taking unflattering pictures of myself:


I LOVE rom-coms. It's all good as long as annoying actresses such as Sarah Jessica Parker stay out of it. How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days is the first movie I own. That was 10 years ago. With the current McConaissance, "10 years ago" feels like the Stone Ages. There's no denying it - what's not to love about rom-coms? Predictability aside, they are funny and sweet sometimes they make you sick. Frankly, predictability is not even a problem. You don't have to hide behind your fingers praying to God for a happy ending. Because the moment you pop your rom-com DVD into the DVD player, you have signed up for one.

The true problem with rom-coms: they set unrealistic romantic expectations. If they were real, I wouldn't be here blogging about rom-coms after watching them on my laptop on my bed with a swollen jaw. Instead, there would be someone tall, handsome, with a nice smile and eyes as deep as the ocean holding an ice bag to my jaw!

The reason to this rant is that I have just watched The Proposal upon my friends' recommendation.

The Proposal

1. I LOVE YOU SANDRA BULLOCK.
2. Still don't understand the "hotness" of Ryan Reynolds and how he's managed to marry two of Hollywood's hottest actresses - Scarlett Johansson and Blake Lively (hate Blake Lively but she's pretty).
3. I laughed so much. My jaw hurt but it was OK.
4. Amazing scenery! Interesting fact: IMDb says no filming was done in Alaksa, where the movie was set.
5. I love the ending omgomgomgomgomgomg. I melt and melt all over again if that's possible.


Yesterday I watched New York, I Love You and Don Jon.

New York, I Love You

After spending three days in the city of New York last November, I have fallen in love. Not that I think it's a great place to live, but it's definitely a great place to travel or spend a few months in. I picked up New York, I Love You at the movie rental place, thinking it would be a more rom-com version of Paris, Je T'aime. I miss my carefree exploration of cities, a tribute to New York would surely take me back to the city for two hours? That wasn't right. There are segments that I like, but overall New York, I Love You was a lot darker and messier than its predecessor. I didn't get to see much of NY, just numerous dark street corners. It didn't feel like a tribute to New York at all, the same stories could have taken place in another city...


Don Jon

I was looking forward to watching Don Jon. You know what happens every time? Expectation leads to disappointment and it was the same for Don Jon. I feel that several elements that I couldn't pinpoint were missing. Perhaps it was the lack of character development? Perhaps it was the repetitiveness of several scenes? It was an interesting movie to seat through though. And no doubt about it, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a smart guy. He wrote/directed/starred in a movie about a porn addict and cast Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore as two women who changed his character's life!

I love Julianne Moore and I think she's much more beautiful than ScarJo. In fact, I've liked her for 10 years!!! Her at the 75th Academy Awards. SO PRETTY.



P.S. NEW LAYOUT! After creating a new layout for Fish and Tadpole, I thought my blog could do with a simplistic layout too. So I made a similar header and stole the code I wrote for F&T and voilà! Now the italic and big text come in colour, the blog post area is also wider, allowing for larger images. Hopefully these will increase the readability of the blog~ Still not sure about the red and orange theme though... gonna play around with the codes a little bit.

Planet Earth Is Blue And There's Nothing I Can Do - A Review of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Spoiler-Free Three-Word Film Review:
Go see it.

Spoilersss-Containing Essay of a Review:
If we have to be shallow, films are merely entertainment and their main duty is to entertain. Not gonna lie, I have enjoyed myself a lot for the duration of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It made me laugh, it gave me thrills, it brought tears to my eyes... It was also aesthetically pleasing. Never thought I would see this level of cinematography in a Ben Stiller movie. Loved the overhead shots (appeared in the trailer too), loved the panning shots, loved the scene in which Stiller skateboards down an Icelandic highway. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was pretty much what you should treat yourself to after a harsh week at work.

I guess it helped that I didn't have high expectation for the movie. In fact, I didn't have expectations at all. For the past few months I have been quite behind the movie scene. I hadn't even known of the movie's existence before I returned home to Hong Kong. But I was glad I'd been living under a rock. Films are always more enjoyable when you know close to nothing about it (because knowing absolutely nothing is impossible). Now I would skip watching trailers, previews and other forms of media that would "spoil" movies... if I could.

Calling a movie delightful does not mean said-movie is perfect. There are a lot of flaws in this movie. I'm too young to know the original story of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Some critised that Ben Stiller's adaptation has lost the spirit of the original story. But some new elements have been added too. Space Oddity and the Jack Johnson song haven't gone out until the 60s and the 21st century respectively. And online dating. I would be very surprised if that has been around since 80 years ago. These all add freshness to the story. Adaption isn’t necessarily synonymous with carbon copy, is it?

Now I will move onto points which I cannot defend:

As I have said, I like it when I don’t know what to expect, but this isn’t the case when what you aren’t expecting is... rather messy that feelings and emotions clash and there’s nothing left at all. When you head into the Secret Life, you think you’re in for a comedy dramedy about a big adventure. You have Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig! You have “adventure” as the main theme! Of course this is going to be a funny exciting adrenaline-inducing two hours of your life! But boo, no.

Is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty funny? Yes, it made me laugh, uncontrollably at times. But some scenes that you know were intended to be funny failed miserably. Neither was the Benjamin Button reference funny, nor was the extremely silly and long fight between Walter Mitty and Ted Hendricks (featuring a Stretch Armstrong toy). And don’t even get me started on the overly long dream sequences. One or two is good. Three is max. I've lost count of the number of daydreams Walter had.

As for the "adventure" bit, again I don't think the film is successful in doing what it's set out to do. You wouldn't want to get a backpack and travel to exotic corners of the world. (OK I lied. I would catch a plane to Iceland in a heartbeat.) Yes, Walter has been to Greenland, Iceland and even Ungoverned Afghanistan. He has swun with sharks in an ocean, escaped from a volcanic eruption, climbed the Himalayas. But how has he changed? Or rather, has he really changed? After his journey, he dressed smarter, he looked cooler, but do we know how has he changed spiritually?

My sister feels that "Ben Stiller made a movie just so he could get in front of the camera for three quarters of the movie's runtime". She's right. But this is a common problem for directors/actors. Personally I love Zoolander, which Stiller also directed himself in*. I guess my sister's issue isn't too big a problem in there because it's essentially about a narcissistic male model. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is totally different from Zoolander. Perhaps Stiller has grown old and decided to do something more serious while still maintaining hilarity. Various directors and actors had actually tried re-making The Secret Life of Walter Mitty for two decades. Had they been successful, the end product would have been very different. I was glad that Ben Stiller was the final contender. Despite the flaws in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, I had a very fun Saturday night.

* I'm a proud alumna of the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too. No, contrary to popular beliefs, it isn't a school for ants. They have rebuilded that.



On a side note, I watched this movie at Cine Times, the new cinema in Times Sqaure 13/F. Cine Times is the second cinema in Hong Kong with the new Dolby Atmos sound system (I believe The Grand installed it last summer). The pre-movie advertisement has shown the potential for this system. For the few minutes of the clip, I regretted paying the extra $30 for the Atmos version. It was loud and scary! But luckily (or unluckily?) none of the scenes in the movie matched up to that... It would be cool to watch an action movie utilised with this Dolby Atmos technology... if I don't get a heart attack and die.

Bonus: And because my mum said I look so much like my Bitstrip avatar...

Here's me at the cinema...

2013

What a year.

It's that time of the year again! Time to look back and reflect on things that have happened / not happened, decisions made / not made, paths taken / not taken. With the help of the 8000+ photos I took this year, I'm going to condense 2013 into a not-so-condensed blog post.


January

New Year's Eve celebration with the family. It's our tradition to count down whilst drinking red wine and munching foie gras on toast. I love New Years partly because of the excitement, but mostly because of the fact that it lets you "turn over a new leaf". Technically you can start a year with any day in a year and end your year with the same day 365/366 days later, but it's different.



"Sem break" = seeing my friends and eating lots of crap.






Singapore 16 - 18 January
I've never liked Singapore. I feel that it thinks too highly of itself. A competitor of Hong Kong my arse! It's clearly less superior (save that it's cleaner?)... Anyway, my sister and me went there for three days for her birthday. In Singapore we walked around and sweated way too much, but we ate even more.









Then I went back to university. Worst semester ever. Thank you for making me feel like the most stupid person on earth, my dear professors and classmates. In midst of a horrible semester, I passed my driving exam. First time!




February

Boring month. To make matters worse, this year's Chinese New Year fell on February. I've always hated CNY with a passion. To me, it's merely a time to eat turnip cake (and proceed to get a stomach upset) and "gather" with relatives that you only see once a year. The red packet money wasn't even good!

The only two memorable events of February:

Cocktail-making class... only fun after a few drinks though.




And drumroll please: Standard Chartered 10k!




March

My birthday month was sadly quite uneventful. Spent the month studying and catching up with friends in my free time. Also tried defeating my inner demon. Most importantly, I turned 19. Last year to be a teenager!









April

From my album there are lots of selfies dated April. It also seems that I had plenty of time to paint my nails, eat burgers, eat cakes, drink convenience store-bought bottled alcohol and doodle turtles on iPhone keypad on Whatsapp.







May

Finals a.k.a. Fuck I've Never Actually Learnt Shit.

I don't know was it stress or the various things thrown altogether at me in life that made me feel how I felt. I don't know what it is that if you like to crack jokes and make people laugh, you would be assumed to be a happy-go-lucky person with no personal problems and worries. Rubbish.

It was quite a bad month and I'd rather not talk about it. I'd just like to thank my friends for being here and apologise to my mother for making her worried.

I did eat a lot though:



Posted this black burger for lols. It was SO salty.





June, July, August

Not gonna bore you with my summer again. Please take a look at my previous post if you haven't already.


September

September marked the start of my exchange journey. I left my family for the second time in my life for Toronto. This time around I was living alone, much different from boarding school. I'm a homebody but I also love solitude and freedom~

In my first month in Toronto, I did a lot of firsts - first time living alone, my first laundry, did house chores for the first time (spoilt yes), ran my first 5k... I visited the beautiful Toronto Islands and went up the CN Tower and absorbed the mesmerising views of Toronto from above. It was a whole lot of experiences in a month, but that was only the beginning ;)








I wrote detailedly about my first three weeks in Toronto when I was still in the mood... Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3.


October

This month I went to the ROM, the AGO, attended Nuit Blanche... I ate Five Guys, ramens, cupcakes, sushi, bibimbap... I did the crazy CN Tower climb (I can still feel a sharp pain in my messed up knees sometimes)... I went to two universities in Canada to visit my friends from high school. We didn't actually talk to each other anymore. But one of them invited me over after seeing my Toronto photos on Facebook. I only resumed posting photos on Facebook to document my life this summer, who'd have known they would rebuild friendships? I love being a Paulinian - even if we're scattered all around the world, we still feel like a community.













November

November was a very special month. It was so much packed into one month! I had external exams and mid-terms. I went to New York, Washington D.C., Montreal, Quebec City and Niagara Falls. My sister came over from Hong Kong. My friend Garen visited from the States. I was contented that Toronto was starting to become "my city" - I could show people around and take them to "local places". It was then my love for this city started to blossom.















December

December normally is my favourite month of the year. But the first half of December this year ended in the blink of an eye. I visited some places that I'd wanted to go. I met up with some more old friends. I said goodbye to my new friends in Toronto (whom I'm missing terribly) early and flew to London to reunite with my family.





My parents and my sister were in London for their winter vacation. I did what I do usually when I'm in London - eat, watch cooking shows, sleep... I met up with two friends from my school in London. We were all amazed by how much difference a few years would make. I had plenty of fun with my friend Sharon.
















After a little more than a week in London, I flew back to Hong Kong to reality. On my first day back, I headed to Causeway Bay to run some errands. The familiarity scared me. In an ever-changing city like my hometown, things seem so different after you've been away for a week... HK was busier than when I'd left, a few shops had closed down and a few new ones had opened. But it was almost as if my four months in Toronto had been a dream. My exchange journey is one of my fondest memories... what if all along it's been a dream?



Yesterday, I went hiking. It was a frequented trail with a splash of newness added in. Today, I went for karaoke at 11 a.m. then for a farewell lunch/tea/lunea/lea/tunch/teaunch with my buddies. Just the good old holiday routine. The end of the year constantly reminds me of how fast time goes. With each of us heading towards a different goal, I know one day getting together for a meal will become an irregular special occasion...








2013 is a roller coaster of a year. It's probably one of the worst and the best years of my life. Still I'm thankful for every experience and emotion, for it is experiences that define and shape us into who we are.

Now we're heading onto a new year. 2014 is looking like a pretty big year for people around me and myself. But what exactly will happen? We can't predict the future, but one thing is for sure - growing up is scary.