on my way back was listening to jay chou's 发 如雪, and i realised it's the first time ever that i've found a pairing that fits it perfectly. WATCH THE MOVIE and check this out:
狼牙月 伊人憔悴 我举杯 饮尽了风雪 是谁打翻前世 柜惹尘埃是非
缘字诀 几番轮回 你锁眉 哭红颜唤不回 纵然青史已经成灰 我爱不灭
繁华如三千东流水 我只取一瓢爱了解 只恋你化身的蝶
你发如雪凄美了离别 我焚香感动了谁 邀明月让回忆皎洁 爱在月光下完美
你发如雪纷飞了眼泪 我等待苍老了谁 红尘醉微醺的岁月 我用无悔刻永世爱你的碑
rap: 你发如雪凄美了离别我焚香感动了谁 邀明月让回忆皎洁爱在月光下完美
你发如雪纷飞了眼泪 我等待苍老了谁 红尘醉微醺的岁月
啦儿啦 啦儿啦 啦儿啦儿啦 啦儿啦 啦儿啦 啦儿啦儿啦
铜镜映无邪 扎马尾 你若撒野 今生我把酒奉陪
it's just all that talk about what would you be in your next life, and the last puppet show that Gong-gil puts up for the king, where puppet Gong-gil confesses to puppet-Jang-seng that he was the one who stole the ring all those years ago, and said sorry and wanted to run away together.
and the long scene of Jang-seng copying out Gong-gil's handwriting to make himself scapegoat, then in the jail cell alone telling the ring story to the guard, and it's just devastating how he has started to love Gong-gil since he was a kid, all the way til the end when he's going to die for him, without even appreciation for his sacrifice.
你发如雪纷飞了眼泪 我等待苍老了谁 红尘醉微醺的岁月 我用无悔刻永世爱你的碑 and the last line reminds me of the start of the show, where Gong-gil appeared dancing and i was really dazzled when i first saw him. the only other time he's that radiant is at the end where they were walking the rope and about to die. both of them. goodness, the irony...
just came back from The King and the Clown, am totally bedazzled. the movie just blew me away, i've never walked out of a cinema feeling like this since... lotr3? even so, it's different. the whole story's so bittersweet and tragic, because at the end it's really just a series of misfortune that snowballed and not anyone's fault.
for the hopelessly uninformed, it's a korean movie that grossed the third highest ever in box offices in its home country. the story's set in the 1500s when korea was still under dynastic rule. two street performers, Gong-gil (pretty uke) and Jang-seng (fearless seme), who were together in a troupe that performed to please aristocrats, but were non-conformers. when the show's messed up the manager pimps out Gong-gil to appease their employers and Jang-seng eventually runs away with him to the capital.
they met up with another troupe and started performing satires that mocked the emporer and his favourite concubine, and of course, got caught. they were being beaten up when Jang-seng asked to perform in front of the king, since he's the one they're mocking. if the king liked it, they were scot free, but if he didn't, then they would be executed.
the king had 20 screws loose in his head, was very amused by their crude humour, and kept them in the palace, scandalising many court ministers. was also very taken by Gong-gil and started abandoning concubine. every night Gong-gil got called to serve the king (mind out of _gutters_) putting on puppet shows. eventually the king's childhood trauma of the conspiracy that killed his mum was revealed and you see 20 more screws fall out of him.
the ending was beautiful. the best thing i've seen in years. the plot uses a cliche but also a setting that is so original. i mean, male clown concubine of ancient korean king? gee. the characters suffer much stereotyping, but in a way that works. Gong-gil was the typical uke who cannot protect himself but has rare moment of inspirations where he hacks people with parangs. rather wimpy, actually. throughout the whole show i was waiting for him to step up and bodily protect Jang-seng, but he didn't really... i guess that's because he been sheltered by Jang-seng since he was a kid, it's just a state of things and i find very easy to accept. he's just uke but strong in his own ways. Jang-seng reminds me a little of Heero in the Shinigami's Lover fic in that he'll sacrifice anything for Gong-gil. getting beaten up when he was a kid for Gong-gil who stole a ring, then getting beaten up when he refuses to pimp his sweetheart out, then getting beaten up being scapegoat for Gong-gil suspected of treachery.
the ending scene where Jang-seng was on the rope talking about him being blind, blinded by the first time he performed with his partner, blinded by the money when he came to seoul, blinded when he didn't see his partner's heart stolen in the palace, god. was one of the most powerful and emotionally charged exchange ever. and especially when Gong-gil joined him on the rope and asked what would you be in your next life, and Jang-seng said 'clown', but it's just so subtle, when he means 'together'. then Gong-gil cried and smiled and god it's so beautiful.
it's so many subtle connotations, subtext, gestures and how everything links together and the smallest things are so significant. it's the characters and their depth and dynamics, small things like how Gong-gil smiled when he successfully did his couple-flips with Jang-seng, how the evil concubine regally accepted her death when the usurpers charged in, how Jang-seng wanted to end his and Gong-gil's friendship by destroying their performance's rope, and how they ran towards each other on the rope at the end, like the two blind people they mimed but this time they found each other.
of course i'm not making sense and you just skipped the words and looked at the pictures. but go watch it, it's worth every single cent. totally took my breath away.
it occurred to me today, as i sat with eyes 1/4 their usual size behind my computer today and yesterday and the rest of the week, that i haven't blogged for a long time.
it's not that i don't want to, i'm just uninspired. this break is starting to feel like a ummm... a school holiday! yeah, that's it. everyday's the same. since the 5-7 clementi town camp i've been rotting at home every single freaking day. cannot. blog. about. mundaneness. will. fall. into. satanic. clutches.
still the same. has not been able to overcome money management problem even though i step out of the house an average of 30min a day for grocery shopping. like today, went to cold storage with intention of getting just one packet of apple chips (just give me one packetgodi'lldoanything!) and then ended up spending $30 buying daddy's day gift of a guiness sixpac. garh, it's just fermented beverage -- decayed drinks! how can they cost so much??
and then the other day, on swimming excursion with sy. swimming right? 50cents admission right? wrong. spent $20 that day, because someone upstairs hates me and made me lose my locker keys. and apparently admission was like, $3.15 cos we went safra, and sy refused, refused, to sneak in with child tickets. like that damn machine that ate them up can tell.
and am now completely obsessed with bleach and naruto (both mangaverse). so many crack pairings in bleach, can't really get into any of them, but i love the canon. renji and ichigo roxmysox. but bleach was two weeks ago, more pressing now is naruto AND I MUST MUST MUST GET MY HANDS ON VOL 33 TOMORROW OR I WILL DIE. DIE SO HORRIBLY GRIEFING RELATIVES WILL NOT RECOGNISE.
it pleases me to no end that in the span of the space between two chapters, 2.5 years can pass!
ms: rah! time flies like superman and fruit flies like bananas! ms: rah! behold the new and improved cast! look how they have... grown? ms: omgthey're sixteen! legal!
and of course, somehow along the way i discovered love - real love, not the fleeting puppy love i had a few years ago - for sasu/naru! :D spent the whole of yesterday and today reading fics that make me thrum in happiness. especially loved one AU whackfic about cyperpunk. sasuke being an andriod and naruto being a mechanic. then discovered maldoror is in the fandom too and was much delighted.
also, have found website of publisher of the moon bleu series. is unfortunately and entirely in chinese, which makes my eyes swim and my alt+tab appealing. so far so good but is unable to communicate to ask for shipping prices because is unable to type chinese. rah!
so. recce at sarimbun began bright and early at 8am today at sarimbun. any normal person would expect her normal employer organisation to end her normal briefing at a normal time like, say, 12noon max. this normal employee did.
just to be safe, because she knew her company was a wee bit deviant from your normal 9-5 offices, she told her long-suffering friend emily to meet her in town at 2pm. (look, 2 hours buffer time, foolproof!)
first we had briefing.
then we went on the land ex recce, in which we immersed ourselves in the tropical ambiance of the back of anuar's van and chugged around for the next four freakin hours like faux illegal immigrants in oil tanks. we visited frog farms (cuddled bullfrogs, passed them around, watched them mate), visited dams, visited goat farms (smelled goats, fed goats, watched them mate), visited dead ends in roads where we had to play Traffic Jam, the irony, and many many more.
in the end reached town at 4, ended up watching xmen and came out of cinema with a HuH?? with emily. if you thought the last stand would really be the last stand, how naive can you get? magneto is still a magnet, charles hopped into a body as crippled as his last one, angel flew around looking for his role in the plot, the depowering boy was the most underutilised plot tool ever, logan is straight! scott is straight! and ugly!, great big furballs become ambassadors (i thought that only happened in lion king). did somebody say lOOse eNds?? did i say hUh?!
the last stand can never be the last stand, like final fantasy is never final. hell, since jean grey is phoenix she can probably be reborn. again. and again and again and again.
let hold our breaths and wait for the next installment, X-men: The Real Last Stand.
once upon a time, there was a confused girl who had no direction in life. on one fortunate yesterday, she decided that she had dawdled at the fork in the road for too long, it's time to move on. here is an analogy to the choices she faces: on our left, we have soft creamy cheesecake with disgusting almonds in it, on our right, we have apple chips hair-raisingly grannysmith flavoured: both come in packages of good and bad and she can't make a choice, not one month ago and what the hell definitely not now!!
so she picked one anyway, and followed through with her decision, and if you have no idea what i'm talking about you sad wols person i'm refering to universities.
and anyways she picked the one starting with N, continuing with U and ending with S just because she wants to continue being one closet elitist bastard reveling in her Scholarly status, and she decided she should start to look through the package sent to her eons ago that had since been an immense help in dust collection (collect the entire set!). it said that in order to matriculate in year 2006, our main character has to fill in this foolproof OAM form that deceptively does not require any filling in at all. this form has to reach the Registrar's office by 5 June 2006, and, after a few silent awkward beats, it dawned on her that she has exactly 2 days to get it sent. then it also dawned that it was saturday and sunday and not only was the post office retardly closed, the Registrar was too. and as it dawned it got brighter and brighter, and she realised she has a camp on monday and she was facing a potentially devastating future in which she'd miss her deadline for university acceptance and continue to work for another year in Inno!!!!
so she packed herself up and headed down to the uni itself, only to find that the Registrar was really closed. (what the hell would it do that for?!) she saw, through the glass door, a pretty white box on the table right in front of the door that said 'for OAM forms submission'. she thought, and thought, and thought, and decided that barging through would involve alarms ringing, security guards manhandling, and her screaming 'but i just wanted to hand in my form!!' and so she made a smart decision and kicked the form in under the door.
of course, to avoid it being mistaken for trash, she also wrote on the envelope these exact words 'would some kind soul help me stuff this into that pretty white box on the table please?'. mindful of illiteracy, she also adorned the envelope with an illustration of a trash can and an 'X' across it with the words 'NOT FOR BIN'.
there concludes our heroine's adventures for the day. the narrator predicts that she would successfully matriculate (the word brings to mind the images of umbilical cords. don't you think so?) this year and go on to have a bright future because the form successfully went into the little white box.
Fin.
This is a work of a real and fucked up person in a real and fucked up world. Any resemblance to fiction is purely coincidental or subconscious plagiarism.
i have one leg in my coffin already, but the prospect of 3 days (3 days! not hours!) of homeslacking makes me accidentally lose the lid and nails. it's really like what i tell the kids... you have to go through the worst before you learn to appreciate what you have. ms's comfort zone has expanded to include back to back camps, ole~!
my ass.
will never do back to back again. was totally goner for this camp. no energy to do cheers at all. but is weirdly one of the camps that ended off on a high note cos taught billy banja for campfire item and we did it again with buddy group during final debrief. am the only group that taught billy banja, thank whoever's upstairs.
knew from first day that this camp would be a Learning Experience and it didn't disappoint. this is the first time kena sec school group that don't listen and challenge the trainer... reminded me a little of rvps. 'let's do it, the GROWN UP way!'
first day was a whole day of stress. screwed up bus boarding in the morning and everything went downhill from there. damn blur cock. in the evening even idham had to step in... would have preferred if it ended there but other trainers kept stepping in after it was broadcasted that i was having trouble. knew they meant well but i really could have handled it myself. just needed to adjust expectations and methods.
on the whole camp still ended well. didn't had chance to do much debrief cos group's attention span was shorter than a fly's. but it seemed like almost everyone enjoyed the camp so that's good. group was crazy about water. kept wanting to go inside until even i sian already.
even so can see improvement from beginning to last day, so hopefully i accomplished something. am too shagged to blog as usual. seems like i haven't been un-tired for a very long time. will have chance to sleep more than 5 hours today, hurrah~!
