Tis the season to be shopping

Christmas-
The time of partying, meeting up with friends, class outings, unable-to-get-movie-tickets-ing.
The time of giving, shopping, sales, unable-to-get-that-sale-item-ing.

With Christmas here and new year round the corner, it’s the perfect excuse to be out boosting the economy. Perfect time for the shops to clear their warehouses of leftover, out-of-season inventory. So the shops dig out their sale signboards and leftover sale items, hang them all out or dump them in a trolley and crowds will appear, as if on cue, at their stores.

Yeah. Scores flock to Orchard like there’s no tomorrow.

I went shopping (more like, attempted shopping) with my sister last week and we met a quarter of Singapore in the corridor leading from Wisma to Taka, a quarter in Mango (50% off! selected items) and the remaining half between us and all sale items. If it weren’t for the necessary, I would rather be rotting at home with Monopoly Online.

Don’t get me wrong. I love shopping, and I love sales. I’m the kind who shamelessly make for the bargain/sale corner the minute I enter a store. So I perfectly understand this thrifty (cheapskate) mentality.

But this kind of shopping is draining. It’s draining enough to watch. People elbow their way to the sale items, dig through the whole mess of clothes, bags and shoes in a trolley and then queue up for the fitting rooms like it was for the ten million dollar TOTO ticket.

No thank you. I would prefer to go stroll in Orchard on some relaxing weekday afternoon and discover (to my surprise) a sale I can make use of, then return home feeling happy and accomplished.

Stay home, on a public holiday.

Huh?

If you’re wondering, I got this from Likoon.

Rules of the game:
1. Post 5 weird/random stuff about yourself.
2. At the end, list the names of 5 people whom you want next to do this, and leave a comment “YOU ARE TAGGED!” in their blog and tell them to read your blog for rules.

1. Who came out with this game?
2. The hair near the front of my face, otherwise known as fringe, is too short.
3. I’m still missing a piece in that jigsaw puzzle I did.
4. What did I have for lunch yesterday?
5. Lizards are partying in my house.

Tagged!
Amanda
Michelle
Steven
Huiying
Li Hao

Of respect

Indeed, this is very cliched. But the most overused cliches are also often very wise. And so, I must say it too, respect must be earned.

You don’t get respect if you keep saying that you’re not respected.
You don’t get respect for saying illogical, insensible things to gain attention.
You don’t get respect for repeating what you have done for all to hear.
You don’t get respect for pretending to care, when you don’t remember.
You don’t get respect for asking questions, but not listening to the answers.

Respect is already shown to you, when she keeps quiet to your nonsense, no matter how unreasonable you are.

Shooting again!

Back to the good old times of shooting. Felt really excited to (finally) receive the email on resuming of air rifle trainings since… stopping for exams after the first 2 trainings (technically only 1 for me, didn’t go for the second).

So lazy Oiying got off the couch and out, travelling 1 hour+ to CDANS. I thought I was going to be late. Contemplated taking a taxi as the bus was nowhere in sight. Decided that it was a silly thought, and it was proven stupid when I arrived. The range was still dark even though I wasn’t early and for a minute I thought I got the date wrong. Since the holidays started, dates and the day of the week have been meaningless to me, unless of course, if there’s some movie to catch on TV and I still missed Legally Blonde.

Anyway, very few people turned up for training and the beginners’ clinic but I still met a few people I know. I hope I get all their names right this time.

I cleverly recorded down the gun numbers me and amanda used the last time, but stupidly forgot to remember which one was mine. So I randomly picked one, turns out my short finger couldn’t reach the trigger and after the coach adjusted it, my weak finger couldn’t pull it. Add the bad trigger to next-to-zero training and I got (no free banana for guessing) very bad shots.

Coach said, “I’m sure you’ll pick up pretty fast.” Yeah. It would help if I have my laogong back. I miss 503810!

Though I’m sure he’s happily married to someone else now.

After a short but tiring fling with this (I hope) not-my-laogong-to-be, I went home, 1 hour+ again. Glad to know there will be regular trainings in January, gladder to know there will be a chartered bus from school but not so glad to know we have 2 trainings before the first “friendly” “for experience” competition. Those words aren’t very encouraging, although they had good intentions.

—

It’s so easy to record down chronologically what happened during the day, it’s so much harder to write down thoughts. I reread what I typed above, and almost bored myself with my uneventful, uninteresting day.

I joined air rifle again with mixed feelings.

For one thing, I miss shooting. People ask, “Isn’t it boring? All you do is just aim and shoot!” Yes, it is. I won’t deny that it’s not boring, when you are standing there in the lane and carrying out planned movements over and over again. But I’ve stayed with it. After 4 years of it in secondary school, I thought I wouldn’t choose it again in JC. In fact, all of us shooters thought so, but all of us joined air rifle again. It’s the same now. I miss it.

You don’t know what you miss, until it’s taken away from you.

Maybe I’ve no distinct hobbies, I’m not overly passionate or obsessed over anything. Maybe I learn to like something when I have it. Maybe I can’t appreciate it till it’s lost. And maybe, I still wouldn’t appreciate it as much as I would like to, when I get it back.

I guess I can’t really say I love shooting a lot, because if I do, I would have worked harder for it. I’m lazy, I get bored easily, and I detest practising to perfection, anything for that matter. It makes me hate what I do. I’ve spent 6 years in air rifle, and I am still here, only here. My little achievements in air rifle could barely justify the amount of time I was in it, the excellent coaching I had and the good equipment and support from the schools I had all along.

I’m guilty of this display of lack of interest. But yet, I would say, I love shooting and would really want to get back into it.

On the other hand, I wanted to try out something new. Go-karting, archery, fencing, some art or music club… But with the attraction of the new and unknown comes the the fear of the new and unknown. It’s always more comfortable to do something you’re good at and sure of. Still, if I could commit myself to a bit more, I would like to try that, some time.

Then again, the well known can also cause fear and uncertainty. After 6 years in air rifle, I know too many people in the field, the coaches, the friends. Teammates who are doing much better than me now and the coaches who have helped and taught me makes me feel ashamed of being so mediocre. The stress of competitions past that still seem to linger in the range and the competitiveness of the air rifle sport in general also deters me. Although CDANS is much further away for me, I feel more comfortable going there, as it is part of my memories of more relaxing, enjoyable time play-shooting with my friends, when we were still new to it and pretty much trying out shooting by ourselves.

Moreover, I doubted the new air rifle club. Where are we going to train? What guns are we going to use? Will we stand a chance at all in the competitions?

Nevertheless, when the email came about the newly setuped air rifle club, I jumped at the opportunity and join it, despite the distance, despite my fears and uncertainties.

And I’m glad I did.

—

Little things that made my trip today:
A girl playing solitaire on her mum’s PDA.
An old couple walking on the pavement, the balding, greying old man in singlet and shorts holding the hand of the limping old woman.
A young guy and girl discussing unimportant things loudly on the bus.

The heartlands again.

如果．爱

I must agree, with many, that the musical element of Perhaps Love was overplayed.

The first time I saw the trailer on TV, one thing popped into my head – Moulin Rouge. But no, just as the director said, it’s not Moulin Rouge. Moulin Rouge is a musical, but Perhaps Love is not (at least not the kind of musical I know). I would say it displayed the technique of “cut and paste” at its best. (or do they call it montage?)

Although the whole movie was made up of intersecting scenes from the musical within the movie and the movie’s reality, it was not a big mess of conflicting moving pictures. The musical scenes and reality scenes complemented each other, and together, they told the story of Sun Na, Lin Jian Dong and Nie Wen in a structured yet beautifully novel manner.

Unlike many love movies that try too hard to evoke emotions in the audience, Perhaps Love adopted a “let me tell you a story” approach, where the audience remains as mere onlookers. Emotions are not conveyed through mushy dialogue and tear-jerking background music. But everything was clearly told by a red eyed Lin Jian Dong repeatedly typing 3 words into his laptop, Nie Wen’s back view as he watches himself on screen as the passionate circus master or the little changes in Sun Na’s expressive eyes as she listens to Lin Jian Dong’s voice recordings.

I like the idea of a narrator in the story, playing an omniscient phantom in the movie. He begins as a mystical character who collects scenes from people’s memory that had been “cut out and thrown away”. Then he evolve to seemingly become a character in the musical within the movie, and later a writer who wishes to write Sun Na’s memoir. Although he was never always around, his presence could be sensed by strategic appearances in the movie as the chauffeur, or the inquisitive stall tender of a noodle stall. At the end of the movie, he eventually published the memoir and passed a copy to a teary Sun Na, who realises how precious these memories she had tried to forget actually are.

Perhaps the best about this movie, were the multiple twists to the story starting from the second half of the movie. These are, however, not ordinary plot twists that merely change the expected course of the story. It brings out the thought processes and emotions that the characters went through. The ending to the musical within the movie was most passionate and meaningful, showing that sacrifice can also be a form of relief. Only after releasing pent up emotions through the circus master’s sacrifice could Nie Wen (the director who played the circus master in the musical) finally relax and recover the hunger he always felt after making a movie. His forgotten dream of making a simple love movie was remembered once more.

A simple story laden with compound layers of emotions, meticulously and poignantly told.

This Quirky World

They’re selling green bags in supermarkets now – an attempt to decrease the use of plastic bags. I saw a woman purchasing one and she watched silently as the cashier packed it into a plastic bag, together with all her groceries.

Let’s start with a song…

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two
and speak my point of view
But it’s not sane, It’s not sane

I just want some one to say to me
I’ll always be there when you wake
Ya know I’d like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I’ll have it made

And I don’t understand why I sleep all day
And I start to complain that there’s no rain
And all I can do is read a book to stay awake
And it rips my life away, but it’s a great escape
escape……escape……escape……

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
ya don’t like my point of view
ya think I’m insane
Its not sane……it’s not sane
— No rain, Blind melon