What Christmas means to a Singaporean.

Christmas is a time of celebration, associated with white snowy landscapes, flying reindeer and a certain fat man in a red suit and white beard. It is also associated with expensive Christmas shopping and the making of difficult decisions on whether to buy gifts for people you don't know a lot about.

Honestly, if gifts were up to me I'd request cash upfront. Do it the Chinese way you know. Give people cash but put it in a red packet, call it an angpow and tell them it gives them luck. No guilt, people always love it, and on top of it if they strike 4D using the money you gave them, you can ask them for a treat. If they are "cheena" enough and obliging, you can rub them on the belly like how people rub those fortune god statues.

I love Christmas. You only get big festivals like Christmas that many times in one life, and they remind us of what it is to be human. For one, you don't have to work. When you work, it kind of takes your soul out of you. By giving you your life back, Christmas sets you on the path to finding yourself. You realise that life is not totally about work, and the living room couch never felt more comfortable. Then you realise that you're still paying the installments for your couch. Ow.

I don't get Christmas songs though. They were definitely not written with tropical countries in mind. It is kind of hard to dream of a white Christmas if you are Singaporean, although technically Singapore is "white". I mean, look at our leaders. Perhaps some creative Singaporean composer could come up with a Christmas song for Singapore. But of course, there will be some criteria set on the song by some random ministry, like how it must have the words "Singapore", "home", and "Merlion". And for the music video, Santa Claus is LKY handing out progress packages, and on Christmas morning Singaporeans wake up to find more money in their bank balances.

When I was younger, I used to wonder just how Santa Claus would fare in Singapore. For the record, one of my adult relatives actually told me Santa Claus came in through the rubbish chute in HDB flats. If you thought Santa had it tough overseas trying to squeeze into chimneys, you have not seen the inside of a HDB rubbish chute. Those places, next to rubbish collection centres and sewers, are the closest things to hell on Earth. They are cramped, they smell, and while Santa is trying to clamber through them I would imagine he would have quite a few critters running up and down his clothes. Hohoho! Ticklish!

In any case, Merry Christmas to everyone. Try not to be upset when you get another useless article of clothing for a present. Remember, always do the right thing. Smile, thank the person, and donate said item to the Salvation Army.

Unnecessary dairy overlap - a message to Subway.

Ataque de Pánico! (Panic Attack!) 2009

To the aspiring moviemakers in CS, this film was made for US$300, and after some Hollywood directors saw it on Youtube, the director was offered US$30 million to make it into a new movie.

The sponsor? Sam Raini, the director of Spiderman.

The full article is here, but the movie isn't half bad too. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8417789.stm

How "singers" sing.

Why is it that singers who sound so good in your mp3s always sound horrible live? Well, here's the reason. Remember how there was a period of time even Paris Hilton could cut a CD? This video shows that with great post-processing, anybody can become a singer.

Anybody? Well, even babies. Behold, the power of autotuning, using nothing but the original voices of the tots here, and some audio manipulation. If you're wondering why it sounds a lot like some of the music nowadays, I guess the cat is out of the bag.

Do not watch this shit.

When I bought the tickets to this movie, I have to admit that I was totally sold by the trailer and star power of the movie. In the trailer there were special effects aplenty and it seemed like an expensive production helmed by A listers. How much could it go wrong?

Well, apparently, if you put the wrong directors in charge of the whole thing, the movie could become 300 meets Alice in Wonderland. There is plenty of flash and action, but half the time you are wondering which rabbit hole the plot went into, or whether the plot is fast disappearing like the Cheshire cat.

The Pang brothers aren't exactly bad directors. They managed to score a hit with The Eye, that Ring meets Shutter sleeper hit horror film that actually did quite well at the box office despite a relatively simple plot. However, in this film it was probably the first time they got a big budget and even bigger actors, and they proceeded to overdo everything without nailing the basics.

The plot was simple enough. Bad warlord tries to take over the kingdom, and heroes have to stop him. Then heroes try to find a guru to train them, which becomes an excuse to introduce a love interest for Wind, played by Charlene Choi, who was given an extended slo-mo sequence, supposedly to showcase her allure. Here's what a moviegoer near me in the cinema had to say about it.

"Wah lau eh, totally not chio can. Kanasai."

That's reality for you. So after training, our heroes set out to save the world, but apparently there is a complication. Wind was forced out of his training too early, and he is now a vigilante demon who knows not what he's killing. Cloud takes on the bad warlord, and appears to be totally whipping his ass till Wind shows up and messes everything. By some freak accident, the warlord actually gets killed, because it is time for Nicolas Tse to actually do something in the movie aside from posturing and looking like an effeminate and impotent bad guy.

After killing the warlord, Wind runs away with the national treasure, a dragon bone that represents the future of China. In the ensuing chase, Nicolas Tse, the soldiers and Cloud catch up, and a fight for the bone occurs. Now, this is one of the movie's biggest what the fuck moments. Nicolas Tse tries to steal the bone, it gets destroyed in a big fight, he runs, and the next thing you know Wind and Cloud are duelling it out somewhere. There is no mention about the fate of China, or of Nicolas Tse from this point.

Let me get this right. You have bad guys who are trying to steal a treasure, and heroes who are trying to stop him. One bad guy gets the treasure, but it gets destroyed, the bad guy runs away, and the good guys proceed to kill each other. Right. Then I would like to ask, what were the bad guys or the treasure for in the first place?

The only explanation I have for this is, for a moment the directors were trying to do Indiana Jones meets Tian Long Ba Bu, then suddenly they realised that their leads were not Harrison Ford and Qiao Feng. I'm sorry, I know this explanation is really far fetched, but I think if you watched the movie, you'd agree that the plot was worse.

It has been a long time since I watched a movie that left me absolutely mortified at how bad it was, and yet I sat through the whole thing just hoping that somehow, somewhere the movie would redeem itself. Then Cloud got himself killed. Fuck. The movie is called Wind Cloud and Cloud is dead. You know how central Wind and Cloud are to the original story? Here's an analogy. Is chicken rice the same thing without chicken or rice? All the special effects just felt like someone putting a lot of chilli over the whole thing. You could drown the whole plate of chicken rice in chilli, but without chicken or rice, just who the hell is going to eat that shit?

If I had $6.50 and I had to choose between watching this movie or using that cash as toilet paper, I would do the latter. Of course, that would present the problem of having to find something to do with the 50 cent coin, but yes, I would still choose that alternative.

A night about town.

I was in the vicinity of Zouk last Friday night because I got word that some friends were drunk, and I had to go take a look. It turns out that I wasn't disappointed, because I was treated to a highly entertaining display of F words uttered by the most unlikely person ever, and the rest of my friends were doing their best to prove that they had jelly for legs.

After awhile though, that got a little more silly than I thought, and since I couldn't get into the club as I'd arrived late, I took a walk around the area. Walking around, I was remarking to myself that the pavements around Zouk must be mighty comfortable, since there were so many people sprawled around in all positions sound asleep.

It was weird to me because I could have sworn that the pavements were as filthy as the ones all over Singapore, if not filthier, as some of them were lined with puke, cigarette ash and the presence of the drunks of nights past. But that didn't stop anyone though. I guess when you are drunk any flat surface is home. That applies especially if there isn't anyone to take you home. The only catch is, even if there is, the home is not necessarily yours.

I saw many girls slouched against walls looking glassy eyed into space, with faces red but definitely not from embarassment, because they certainly didn't make any attempt to cover up. They might not have been able to anyway, because I don't think boutiques operate for 24 hours. Perhaps they could have gone into the nearby hotel to request for a bath towel, but nah, I guess it doesn't go with the dress.

I spied another girl of not more than 18 driving away from Zouk with a cigarette in hand, giving her best impression of "bad girl". It wasn't half bad, because she was dressed fittingly for the part, in a dress so short I think they must have ran out of material when they were stitching the hemlines but decided to sell it anyway so young skanks would buy them. They succeeded.

You might notice I haven't mentioned guys. That's because there weren't any. There were only two types of people there that night. Young girls, and wolves in heat. The latter, they had but one thing in mind, and Zouk has better drinks and girls than Geylang.