**spoiler…well not really, but IMO, if I’m going to watch a movie, I refuse to read any reviews about it till I’d watched it**

Watched The Prestige today. Was confused in Act 1. Entertained in Act 2. And in Act 3, the ending, the prestige, I couldn’t quite make up my mind how I felt. But I am leaning towards…it was a crappy ending.

I love when someone writes a review that sums up how you feel about a movie you can’t quite put your finger to what’s wrong about it:

Watching The Prestige is like observing a magic act where the magician’s sleight-of-hand isn’t deft enough. The trick almost works, but not quite… With its mechanical twists and turns and lack of heart…As is too often the case with narratives that try to be oblique to the end, the film’s climax is strangely predictable. The Prestige goes to a great deal of trouble – including a triple time-line – to protect secrets that aren’t all that surprising or hard to guess…The Prestige is too well made to be considered “bad,” but it fails to deliver in ways that will earn it more shrugs than raves.

I’m awake at 4am now.

I had a dream that I was on a ship during a storm.

I wake up at 4am completely nauseous with a pounding headache.

I got seasick from my dream?

WTF?

We headed back to Tioman again for the long weekend. On the way up, I had a funny craving for strawberry-flavored Pocky (IMO, one of the very few snacks where strawberry is far better than chocolate). I found instead, Rocky. Thinking it was a pirated version, I was apprehensive. I bought it anyway, and I found it, actually, to taste nicer than Pocky. Both had the right brand name “Glico”. Hence, I vowed to do a taste-test.

In a very scientific test, I got friends to vote which is better, without identifying which is which, or if they found it to taste the same.

Pocky won 4-3. But the unanimous vote was that they -did- taste different.

It’s a consistent mystery with Asia-produced snacks, methinks. Quality control doesn’t seem very stringent for Asian manufacturers: the most obvious one to me is the Kit-Kat bar which can taste vastly different if produced in different places despite the same brand name.

I learn upon coming home that “In Malaysia, Pocky was renamed by the Glico Company as Rocky, perhaps to avoid a vulgar word in Malay with similar pronunciation. (Wikipedia) “ so it wasn’t a pirated version after all. So what’s that vulgar word in Malay?

Tioman was great as usual. I finally got to dive, but it wasn’t all that pleasant. I was fine till towards the end of the dive that I felt a little chilly underwater which made my nose block up, and gave me a horrid ‘sinus squeeze‘, which essentially feels like someone stabbed your eye with chopsticks. Add to that, seasickness which I am prone to. Bleh. I was done after one dive. Really need to clear this chronic sinus problem of mine.

Some pictures taken of the wonderful island.

Someone found a baby python, which Amin promptly picked up. It didn’t take long that it tried to coil itself around his wrist, probably in hope of cutting off his blood supply to his hand.

Ants are absolutely fascinating beings. Read this article to see why.

I See Dick, on the Causeway Link bus home. It looks like one of those pictorial games where you try to make out a phrase with a series of pictures…make a guess?

P.S. I’m trying to find the old “Okay Pocky!…Chocolate and Strawberry!” commercial screened in S’pore in the ’80s…there’s a whole host of new strange ones that just doesn’t make it. If someone finds the old one, please let me know.

I lost my keys last night.

Actually, I lost my keys on Saturday (probably), but only realized it last night.

So I was moping around at home after I realized the loss. My keychain held all the keys in the house and the mailbox key (all of which I’d have to change). I checked the bag that I took swimming over the weekend, not there. I checked my usual handbag, not there. My mind rewound to the possible moment I could have lost it. My guess was that I must have left it hanging on my mailbox. I have a horrible habit of leaving my keys hanging in the keyhole as I toss away all the junkmail into the bin next to it. It must have finally caught up on me and I must have left it there, I thought.

I guessed if someone wanted to rob the house (after all, the keys were hanging right on the mailbox where the apartment number is), they’d have done it over the weekend or that Monday workday. So as we were cooking dinner last night, I had a random thought that someone -could- have saw the keys hanging there and out of kindness, put the keys into the mailbox with the assumption that the keys-owner would have a spare mailbox key. It was a long shot. I asked Pat if he thought someone would do that. He said Yes! And I said Yes! I create the possibility that someone kind did that.

Which led to the next problem…assuming someone did that, how do we get into the mailbox? Which followed a discussion on when we thought the mailman would come, should we ask the landlords for the spare, etc. Then I remembered that we did have a spare somewhere that Pat was supposed to keep. As the pasta sauce was stewing, I randomly decided to grab a chair and climb up to the top shelf to look at Pat’s stash of random stuff. I saw a bunch of keys that could look like our spare keys. It felt like such a long shot – (a) that the random bunch of keys (our house is really messy so random shit just turns up everywhere) could hold the mailbox key and (b) my lost keys were actually in there because some kind person dropped it in there.

But you guessed it, God is Good! I went downstairs, inserted the key, it turned! I opened the mailbox and HALLELUJAH! My keys were sitting right there! It was so weird, but oh the pure joy oh joy!

I vowed to be extra kind to someone today to pay it forward. Well…I should be doing that everyday anyway.

Beauty Queen: Saw Little Miss Sunshine a couple of weeks ago. A really delightful film. Superfreak!

Rats: Saw The Departed. It was really really good. Jack Nicholson is my top 5 fav actors ever. Never liked Matt Damon nor Leo much, but I have to say they were top notch. Great plot (wanna watch the HK Infernal Affairs now). Can’t say more about it because you really have to watch it yourself.

Maids: After The Departed, we strolled to Alliance Francaise to catch Eric Khoo’s No Day Off. He did a very good job telling the story. Although No Day Off was sandwiched by 2 really crappy ARTY movies in some Korean film festival. Which was weird cos the write-up said nothing about them…it’s like they sneakily slotted them in like commercials because no one would ever wanna pay to watch them. Really.

Today, I called an automated touch-tone system (whose? I shall reveal later):

“Please key in your ten-digit receipt number now.”

1 second pause

“To repeat this message, press zero now”

The problem is, my receipt number starts with a ZERO, so the message kept on repeating itself. And after I insist on putting in all 10 digits, I get a long pause then

“We’re sorry, you have not entered enough numbers.”

YEAH FUCK-WIT! Cos you keep using my first number ZERO to repeat the bloody message and reading only the other nine!!

-the end-

P.S. KNNCCB!

I take back what I said about Myspace. When you get into sending stupid shit to your friends and getting some back in return, it makes for a good mindless LOL time.

Like the Lionel Richtea picture. And this video I got posted on my comments from Natty:

Bollywood MJ…the best there could be

and I don’t know why, really. I laughed all day and am still laughing this morning. Whatta great picker-upper!

From Natty’s myspace pix

In between a fabulous wedding #1 (SG), and planning for wedding #2 (SF), the Chansidines celebrate their 1st (ROM – when we got legally married) anniversary! It’s ridiculous, but who cares? Whoohoo! The celebrations never end!

My soul is so knit with yours that it is but a divided life I live without you…What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life – to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? – George Eliot, Adam Bede