Sunday, February 25, 2007
This is all going to be random. I am feeling sort of freaked out and psychotic right about now.
Hmmm listening to the Letters from Iwo Jima movie doesn’t really seem to help as the song is really quite short. Ah well. Anyway, this week I have many things on! It is so scary.
Anyway, Sunday (today) I have a National Vertical Marathon challenge where I have to climb up 60 flights of stairs! I am sufficiently traumatized.
Also, Esme the chick (as described by Adeline – ahh she’ll kill me for this~) has done me a great favour by informing me of the tests we have this week!
Monday: Bio SPA skill B and D
Tuesday: Is all lectures. Yay.
Wednesday: Math mini test on Probability, Handing in of information on ODAC handbook.
Thursday: Biology Photosynthesis topical test and GP timed practice, comprehension
Friday: Chemistry test on Kinetics, Equilibrium and Periodicity
In other words, I am screwed and dead.
But well, it’ll be an eventful week alright.
And what other random thing do I want to post?
Ah yes…
I have been staring at Bleach for a while (I have to anyway, the Sixth Division’s Taichou and Fukutaichou are currently my wallpaper) and I have discovered something.
Bleach has almost no bishounen at all.
Okay, one might say that Kuchiki Byakuya would count as one, and Yumichika from the Eleventh Division is undeniably a bishounen but that’s all!
Out of the – counts fingers – many, many male characters in Bleach, not one of them are bishounen at all!
Ichigo – No, eew.
Chad – Fits height but nothing else.
Ishida – Might be able to pull it off but not really…
Urahara – Is good-looking in a ruggish sort of way but not Bishie material at all.
Toushirou – Is too young. Lolishota maybe.
Just to name a few as I don’t want to continue with all the other guys in Bleach – imagine Zaraki Kenpachi as a bishounen – there are almost no bishounen in Bleach at all!
And for that, I want to be like Kube Tito! His art is fantastic. I don’t want to draw bishounen but that’s all I seem to be able to draw now, which is very sad.
His males are good-looking and like males, which is excellent as I don’t want any gender confusion. Renji is hardly bishounen material; all his males are really just hot and delicious-looking.
Oh I am so raving here.
Anyway, I stopped at episode 73/74. I am thinking of skipping the Bount arc as it is a filler arc. And also, I have started watching Hanakimi, every now and then because I think the main lead, Wu Zhun, is hot. He acts as Quan. Look out for him!
Yay randomity rules. :D
Posted by norbert at 2/25/2007 12:37:00 AM
Saturday, February 24, 2007
These few weeks have been busy and vaguely annoying-
Hmmm my mum just asked me to fix a clock. It refuses to open its battery catch, so I can’t do anything to it. Evil clock of Doom.
Anyway, last few weeks have been rather tiring. I’ve done pretty much things, kept up with my tutorials and stuff and now it’s Chinese New Year again so quickly that I’ve decided to possibly go on a philosophical and pensive thread of thought here.
But of course, somewhere, somehow, I’ll be distracted by something and then we’ll all see what a random and insane blog this is. Ah well.
Well I decided to do this 18/06 tribute thing. I mean we’ve been in the same class for like a year and we’ve gotten quite close and we know each other pretty well now, aside from Zhi Wen who I feel is basically a much quieter, male and milder version of Adeline. And he’s taller too; frequently described as a block of wood or occasionally, a stone fish.
So here it is, CONGRATULATIONS ALL, YOU’VE SURVIVED ONE YEAR WITH ME!
And yes, I love the fantastic family tree we’ve got; it’s so dysfunctional and insane that it’s so perfectly our class.
First: Anushka! Nush, Nush-nush, Raktim, Poke.
She comes first as she’s the first person that I really got close to in JC1. We first talked every now and then and she saw my insane side and talked about Nickelback and cats and sometimes homework, when our minds permit it. Now we just tease her about Raktim and poke her. Yaarh, she’s very pokable. :) But she’s such a sweet dear that making her do stuff is almost like bullying her. Well, I say almost. She’s really quite a brilliant person and she taught me many random games, like Jolly. Very smart too. Don’t sit next to her during an exam, she’ll freak you out.
Then there’s Aggie! Or Agneesha, or just plain ‘Nessa or Nehneh1 to Rachel.
The dear Darlingx, the cute one, the organized woman who made me discover that I liked organization too, though she still has a long way to go before I’ll start colour coding my notes – wait I’ve already done that – I mean well… you get what I mean. Anyway, she’s almost as narcissistic as Fitrah and really quite a wonderful person. She makes me feel all warm and fuzzy sometimes, when we get into our Darlingx husband and wife mood. And she’s an excellent talker and fast on her feet too. Ah I love her World Peace joke and the mutually exclusive example. Lots of love, Aggie!
Oh man, this is beginning to get really random.
Next is Esme! Or Smee, or Smeep, or Meep/Meepy. (She doesn’t like that last name.)
Haha I wasn’t very close to her in early JC1, only knew her as a sort of quiet, vertically challenged NY girl who was quite studious. And not to mention, terribly, terribly, terribly cute and adorable. She just leaks cuteness like Fitrah leaks narcissism. When you look at her, you just think one word: CHIBI. She’s that cute. She has this expression that we all call The Esme Face as she’s the only one who can do it to utmost cuteness~ hahaha oh no I am beginning to ramble! We’re kind of alike as she sort of like the same anime and stuff yay. Ah haha. And she’s gotten louder! Much louder than before and she pokes people on a more common basis. I seeeeee an INFLUENCE. Mua hahahaha.
Esme, you can create your own theme song, character and probably a very successful anime series.
And Agapera, who people are attracted to for no apparent reason. Also known as Aga, Pera, Gagapera, Aibei~, Agar-agar.
She’s got this… thing in her that just makes people want to talk to her and laugh. She makes you feel that with people like Agapera around; perhaps the world won’t blow up tomorrow, though it COULD be because of people like Agapera that we tend to lock insane people in asylums. She’s got the class name of ‘Bobo’, which came about one day during our traditional gossip sessions during lunch. Don’t take it too badly, Aga! It’s an indirect way of saying we love you. Of course, with a name like ‘Agapera Chor Ai Bei’, people tend to make fun of your name too. She’s quite a dear, very endearing and quite blur, which makes her even more amusing. But we all love Aga, for she’s just so Aga.
And who can forget Xinli, the one who makes us all laugh? XL.
She, Aga and Yingting should just go make a sitcom by putting them next to each other. Get those talkshow things, where just the three of them sit together on a chair and a topic is shown on the screen. One of them might start on the topic but then they’ll get so random and insane that you’ll just sit there and laugh at how mad some people can get.
But Xinli alone, is probably enough as a weapon of mass destruction. Known as E. Coli to everyone else and probably herself too, she has this sense of style that is terribly unique to her. Tends to think about food too much and also a tad too much about Youtube and Japanese dramas. She’s amazingly random and thinks of the weirdest things. We all remember once during the Speak EZ session, when she was grading Litian on his speech…
Litian: … Like for example, as an analogy, let’s take Xinli and Joel –
Xinli: LOUSY! Lousy! Bad example to use!
Of course, he got a rather bad mark later. Xinli also tends to think too much about Yaoi. You have been warned.
VeNoRica: Veronica, Veron, Tissue Paper.
She is this amazing girl who is so organized that it scares me. Ah many things scare me anyway. Her hair is a wonderful example of natural chestnut, but she dyes it every now and then to black. Then she just looks weird. She came up with the family tree and the Relationships Web which I still have and laugh over. She has many songs that I want and have not found. I want her songs in her laptop. She’s part of this group called the Kiasu Chicks, who speed to the canteen the moment the bell has rung. Very reliable and a rather ill-appreciated Class Treasurer. We’ll pay you back, Veron!
And I’ll do everyone else another day because I got bored of doing this. Hahahaha.
ANYWAY TODAY I WATCHED LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA.
I think Nino looks like a RABBIT. A nice, rather tall and thin looking RABBIT.
And the theme song is a wonderful creation by Kyle Eastwood. I wonder if he’s related to Clint Eastwood in any way.
This movie is a fantastic movie; you should watch it. For Nino, for Ken, for whomever, just watch it. The portrayal, the buildup and the way the friendships were forged and torn apart so quickly is so bittersweet that it’s good. And the way Ken’s character, Kuribayashi describes his relationship with Saigo (Nino’s character) is almost sad, for in the movie, he recognizes Saigo as he had ‘saved’ Saigo twice before, from punishment for ‘conspiring with unpatriotic words’ and potential death for running away from his post when the situation became hopeless. Kuribayashi then remarked cryptically that ‘everything comes in threes’, hinting to something else. He eventually saves Saigo from the last, desperate attack from the Japanese, by asking him to remain in the caves to burn the military documents while everyone else attacked the Americans.
The director humanized the characters so much, especially the conflict of Shimizu (who has a nice name), one of Saigo’s closer friends upon the death of his close team mate from ‘honorable dysentery’ and how he got kicked out of the Kempeitai (secret police or whatever) for being unable to kill a dog that was considered too loud in front of the family who was owning it. Shimizu was just walking away from the household when the dog began barking again, causing his superior to turn back and really shoot the dog, before kicking Shimizu and discharging him from the Kempeitai.
Saigo’s feelings about the war were typical of any soldier, perhaps he was the personification of the emotions of all the soldiers on the island. Lieutenant Nishi’s camaraderie with the American soldier, Sam, was also hauntingly reminiscent of how men would get together like best friends, forgetting their differences when talking about the same topic. Nishi had competed in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics Equestrian Section and was a Gold Medalist, and hence he knew English and was able to talk and befriend the soldier that the Japanese had wounded. Takeichi Nishi is also a real person. The event of him befriending an American soldier is also true. However, his horse, Uranus’ death was a bit too early in the movie (it died in a shelling attack), for in reality, Uranus died a week after Nishi’s death. Actually, Nishi’s cause of death was also unknown. This event reminded me of something that Terry Pratchett that written before, that the enemy on the battlefield is probably someone like you, a mother’s son, a wife’s husband, a child’s father… and that he probably wants to get home as badly as you do.
Shimizu’s death was also painful, and Saigo’s tears for his friend is, I think, the guilt of knowing that he had sent Shimizu to die, instead of Wikipedia’s explanation that Saigo ‘realizes that he will probably die no matter what he does’.
I guess that was just one part that really struck me; there were other parts as well, like when Kuribayashi had realized that he was dying and wanted Saigo to bury and hide him on Japanese soil so that no one can find his body. He shot himself with a gun, I think it’s a Colt 45 or something, that he had been presented with when he was in America as a gift.
Historically though, Kuribayashi’s (yes, he’s a real person) body has never been found and the cause of his death was never certain. The movie was inspired and mostly based off the ‘Picture Letters from Commander in Chief’ that had been found on the island. Throughout the movie, Kuribayashi writes to his son, drawing pictures of his time in America when he was in the caves. Surprisingly, he is quite a good artist.
The American soldier was eulogised by mother’s words in the movie, that one had to do what he felt was right, because it was right to do so. This completely clashes with Shimizu’s education of the American soldiers in the Kempeitai Military Academy as he was taught that they were savages, for the words the American soldier’s mother had used were exactly the same as his own mother’s words, thus contributing to his inner conflict.
I guess they were trying to portray Nino as the older person, as Shimizu sounds mostly like a youngish person who had just graduated from military school. However, Nino CANNOT be portrayed as such. In the movie, he is already a father but he still looks like a 19 year old. He actually looks like his wife’s younger brother or something; his wife looks older than him anyway.
There was this scene in the movie that just reeked of pain, the scene where Saigo gets transcripted for war and that the Patriotic Mothers of the Country were there congratulating the family or something hurt a lot. Hanako, Saigo’s wife, had begun crying and was asking them to not take her husband when the Patriotic Mother remarked that she should be proud to have been able to do something for the country, and that she was not the only one who had lost a son or a brother or husband to the war. This sort of shuts Hanako up but later at home she continues crying until Saigo comforts her by promising to return for the sake of their unborn child.
That happened to be a girl. That Saigo knew of even though letters took eons to pass out between family and soldiers, or don’t even get passed on at all. Well, well. He can calculate the time and all, but the gender? Erm.
The ending was quite taseful as well, though I get the feeling that Eastwood didn’t exactly know how to end his movie but decided to do so anyway.
Anyway, this is a FANTASTIC MOVIE – four and a half stars out of five, because everyone died in the end and predictably, Saigo didn’t die.
But I don’t understand why he smiled to himself after being rescued by the American soldiers. Oh well.
I think Nino looks nice! And Shimizu too. Much <3 for the movie.
Go watch it! It’s worth the time and money I took out for it, unlike the crappy, irritating Covenant story.
Posted by norbert at 2/24/2007 11:34:00 PM