Month: June 2004

Firstly, WTF???!

I wanted to sleep, and was on the verge thereof. Closed my eyes even. A split-second later, complete silence. No air-con, no PC fan hum. I cursed the electrician and his newly installed power switchboard, then looked out the window and realised, ok, the whole neigbourhood’s a little dark. Nair mind, Teo Chee Hean’s my neighbour. Power sure come back one. Defence Minister leh.

Several SMS exchanges later, it dawns on me that this is something big. My farder the conspiracy theorist said, ‘I think sabotage you know?!’; My mum, sis and bro-in-law, who between them have twenty seven torchlights, turn them all on. My nephew screams for the whole family to muster round his bed. My brother reports via sms that all is still well in Chinatown, and that the official explanation of a gas disruption to the power station is complete BS.

The power’s just come back on, and after two hours of being lost in the unpowered wilderness, I quickly turn on my computer, hoping to log on. I can’t. I write this on my trusty offline blogging tool.

Two hours of a power failure and my whole life turns upside down.

I’ve taken the very desperate measure of taking out my phone’s SIM card and putting it into the Nokia D11 wifi/gprs/gsm combo thingie and stuck it into my computer just so I can get online and figure out what the hell’s wrong with my internet connection through SCV Maxonline. Fuck!

It’s been a very, very long work day, and I am very, very exhausted. I will sleep soon. But I will wake up after two hours. Such is my plight. (Alamak, punctuated like George W. Bush’s speech pattern).

It’s not that I am defeatist about my affliction. It is chronic, and there’s little I can do about it. I have only the respite that my habitual Sunday afternoon nap affords me, and I really look forward to that.

I’ve changed my mind about Windstruck. It is still a dumb movie, but it warrants a little more talking about. If you’ve spare time and are really not impressed with other box office offerings (or have a huge crush on Jeon Ji-Hyun), then this is the movie for you. The opening half hour draws you in. The slapstick has heart. You giggle along. You think it’s a romantic-comedy-melodrama and you’re strung along, liking the characters along the way. Then the knives are out. Director Kwak Jae-Yong is ruthless in sticking it up every genre Korean audiences (and lovers of K-everything) treat as staple: Romantic melodrama (Titanic); Romantic comedy with supernatural element, k-style (My Sassy Girl, incidentally, Kwak’s own film); Gangster flicks (Friend); Teen gangster flicks (Volcano High). The references are deliberately painful too. Kwak seems to enjoy killing you softly with k-melodrama, over and over and over and over again in the last half hour of the film till you want to swear yourself off ever watching another Korean film, whether or not Ji-Hyun’s in it.

Bumbling, good natured feller meets tough as nails pretty chick, meets with an accident, helps out as some supernatural force… voila, K-Film box office success!

In other news, everyone else around me seems to be having relationship problems, which I’d write about if I could make sense of them without getting the ingredients of their troubles mixed up. Seems to be the time of the year for these Troubles. So fashionable even those not in a relationship seem to want to display the anguish of having the Troubles too. To those, I say, stop the nonsense right now. I’ve enough on my plate. I’ve had friends telling me stuff till the cows have come home, set up a cottage industry and left again on a global franchising push, and there’s still no apparent solution to their woes. I can choose not to listen, but you’re just too loud. So, bugger off, I can buy my own tea.

Teh Ice. Spize Restaurant. River Valley Road.

Parting shot: Why Becks did what he did at Euro 2004.

I’ve changed my mind about Windstruck. It is still a dumb movie, but it warrants a little more talking about. If you’ve spare time and are really not impressed with other box office offerings (or have a huge crush on Jeon Ji-Hyun), then this is the movie for you. The opening half hour draws you in. The slapstick has heart. You giggle along. You think it’s a romantic-comedy-melodrama and you’re strung along, liking the characters along the way. Then the knives are out. Director Kwak Jae-Yong is ruthless in sticking it up every genre Korean audiences (and lovers of K-everything) treat as staple: Romantic melodrama (Titanic); Romantic comedy with supernatural element, k-style (My Sassy Girl, incidentally, Kwak’s own film); Gangster flicks (Friend); Teen gangster flicks (Volcano High). The references are deliberately painful too. Kwak seems to enjoy killing you softly with k-melodrama, over and over and over and over again in the last half hour of the film till you want to swear yourself off ever watching another Korean film, whether or not Ji-Hyun’s in it.

Bumbling, good natured feller meets tough as nails pretty chick, meets with an accident, helps out as some supernatural force… voila, K-Film box office success!

In other news, everyone else around me seems to be having relationship problems, which I’d write about if I could make sense of them without getting the ingredients of their troubles mixed up. Seems to be the time of the year for these Troubles. So fashionable even those not in a relationship seem to want to display the anguish of having the Troubles too. To those, I say, stop the nonsense right now. I’ve enough on my plate. I’ve had friends telling me stuff till the cows have come home, set up a cottage industry and left again on a global franchising push, and there’s still no apparent solution to their woes. I can choose not to listen, but you’re just too loud. So, bugger off, I can buy my own tea.

Teh Ice. Spize Restaurant. River Valley Road.

Parting shot: Why Becks did what he did at Euro 2004.

Cloudless sky. 1.45pm Sunday.

Sunday turned out blue cloudless skies, brisk, hot winds and a motherfucking big headache from not drinking enough water. All Sundays should look like that though. Except for the headache.

I had my Jeon Ji-Hyun fix last night, even if the movie was the stupidest thing I’ve watched in a while. I knew it was gonna be a pretty daft movie, even if the film deliberately took the micky out of fans of k-melodrama. But just like falling in love against your better judgement, you’re compelled to watch it. I looked at my watch no less than five times in the second hour of the film.

My headache’s worse now because I spent an hour at Tekka Mall, at this Shin Seong Hypermart, trying to buy supplies for this week’s work. Little India on a Sunday is too little for all the Indians. Worse, the non-Indians think it’s fun to throng there on a Sunday arvo too, all happily partaking in jaywalking joy. I must try that some time: eat some curry, then dodge cars.