It’s kinda creepy how people keep saying how Heath Ledger looks like my husband. Well, it’s only creepy now, people have been saying it for years. And they are bringing it up again cos he’s in the news.

I just never saw the resemblance, thankfully. Would be creepy if I did. Altho’ I think both are yummylicious.

RIP Heath. I really liked that actor. He seemed like a good guy and was just fantastic in Brokeback. I am looking forward to watching The Dark Knight. The trailer looks soooo bad ass.

There seems to be a lot of anticipation about the new Sakae Sushi restaurant on non-Singaporean websites here. Gothamist wanted to go try it out but it was closed. Midtown lunch had to beg to go see the restaurant. I bumped into the owner at some Singapore festival last summer and he mentioned how hard it’s been to get all the licenses together, etc.

Midtown lunch also posted a sample menu. And I baulked. Then sighed. The base by which I measure how (a) good and (b) expensive a Japanese restaurant is is by the (a) quality and (b) price of their salmon sushi, which is my favorite sushi.

Based on the Big Mac Index, current values (US$1 = S$1.4167), and assuming that the Big Mac prices haven’t changed (US$3.41 here and S$3.90 in Singapore), show that the SGD is 18% undervalued against the dollar.

Using the same model, 2 pieces of salmon nigiri at US$3.90 in NYC vs. S$1.99 in Singapore leads to the SGD being 64% undervalued against the dollar. That would exclude the ~20% tip that’s tacitly mandatory, including which the number goes to 70%

OR, economics aside, it could just simply be that NYC is FUCKING EXPENSIVE!!!!

In Oct 04, I wrote “Eating Japanese food in Singapore for 1/4 of the price I’d have to pay in San Francisco makes me very very very happy”. Flip the emotions today.

Is it wrong to think that my husband, at this age, looks SOOOOOO HOT & CUTE in this picture?

And he is just ADORABLE here! Who would have thunk? He’s a natural blond!

*heart melts*

*TOTAL SPOILER WARNING FOR: Last King of Scotland (film), Harry Potter and Bad Santa*

Why oh why do they ALWAYS do this to me? We watched Last King of Scotland last night…absolutely brilliant, mesmerizing acting by Forest Whitaker. I was enthralled by the entire movie…at the climax scene where Amin’s men skewers Nicholas, I was thinking “FUCKING FABULOUS ENDING!” (Nicolas deserved every bit of it…what was he thinking? Fucking his wife AND trying to kill him…like, duh!).

AND THEN, conveniently, instead of letting Nicolas hanging, skewered and slowly dying (Amin told him that it takes 3 days in excruciating pain for a man to die like that), Amin’s men tosses him to the floor and go and laugh someplace else. Suddenly Dr. Junju (the African doctor) cleans him up and puts him on the plane where the French hostages were leaving from.

WHAT?

The movie that the perfect, deserved, tragic ending, but it’s like the movie studio decided to follow the test audience’s opinion and decide to let the white protagonist live, and of course, kill the black man.

It was sooooo frustrating. Great movie till the end, then it leaves a bad taste. Bleh! Just like Harry Potter. Just like Bad Santa. Goddammit!

But anyway, Forest Whitaker was truly brilliant. He captured evil and charisma in one persona almost as well as Bruno Ganz did as Hitler in Downfall. Although I’m biased…IMO, what Bruno Ganz did was beyond comparison and that movie was shot to perfection. Just brilliant anyway though. I (heart) Richard III-esque characters!

This made me laugh out loud:

My friend sent this to me via this link. Not sure who made it.

A stroll in the many Chelsea Art Galleries is fast becoming one of my favorite things to do in NYC. It represents to me the best of what NYC has to offer, aside from bagels and pizza. It’s free, seldom crowded (whoo!! Non-crowds in NYC! whoo!!!), and you get to pop in and out of galleries so you get to enjoy the outdoors sporadically instead of feeling vacuumed in a huge museum. Don’t get me wrong, the MET, the MOMA, et al, are splendid…but they require more of an investment in time and money. And don’t get me started on the crowds, especially at the MET. It’s just ridiculous. And sometimes, the MET can get too…overwhelming. Too much to see and you tend to already expect what you wanna see. Chelsea art galleries are more like a day of serendipity…you never know what to expect. While there are hits and misses, who cares about the misses, you just walk out of the gallery and move on to the next one…but the hits are just FABULOUS.

Here are some I took in a couple of hours all in one block of galleries (24th St between 10th/11th Aves).

Random graffitti outside:

Israeli artist, Yigal Ozeri at the Mike Weiss Gallery. Would you believe these are oil paintings and not photography? The woman is the artist’s muse/model. It gets kinda creepy after a while cos the entire gallery is filled with pictures of her. Like an obsessive psycho.

I didn’t make a note of which gallery this was but it was just a tiny narrow room with nothing but this red paint on the walls. Pretty cool.

These was one of the ‘misses’…it was one of those art I didn’t get. It was a HUGE dark room with only a blue light beamed at the corner. I don’t get it. But we still got a great Chansidine shot in:

Another one I forgot to make a note of. Just a picture on a mirror. Pretty creative.

I interpreted this as he is gay (as we all know) hence the look of discomfort

And now, for the big HIT of the day – Matthew Vescovo at the Ramis Barquet gallery (532 24th St). I’ve never heard of him before but I’m sure I’ve seen his stuff somewhere. And now I discovered a new artist to love. Just genius.

Title: New Ones

Heh!

Title: Appreciative Athletes: Clogging the Spiritual Lines to God

Title: Nuture vs. Capture (tooooo true!)

Title: The Great American Distraction Machine.

The cylinder in the middle rotated and had pictures of starving children, war in Iraq, global warming. On the middle circle, there are pictures of people with their backs towards it and facing towards the outer rim, smiling. On the outer rim are pictures of football players, weight loss ads, ipod, the Oscars, Santa….things to distract us from the problems we have. Very clever.

The reason why we headed to Chelsea that day was to check out the opening of Luis Gispert’s short film ‘the world is yours’, for whom Pat’s friend Roger Snider took the stills for. He specializes in taking pictures of BIG TRUCKS…def. an interesting sub-culture:

Other stuff at the exhibit:

P.S. The “WAH LAU” and “I LOVE SINGAPORE” buttons were our Christmas presents from our Singapopo friends! How sweet! Pat loves ‘em!

Distorted love?

Chelsea rocks!

Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. It’s just timeless.

2spare via the Gothamist:

Pakistan Airlines in 1979

I love today’s affirmation:

I am the perfect age right now. I have been younger and I will be older. I will never be this age again, so I make the most of this time and enjoy myself to the fullest.

If you hadn’t noticed already, I’m gonna try as much as possible to update on my blog the daily affirmations I get from my Hay House calendar. I’ve had this calendar for the past 4 years or so already and I LOVE it. Looks cheesy, but these daily affirmations have been such an inspiration in my life.

• Maintain a positive attitude in studying for the CFA.
• Pass the bloody CFA
• Adopt a more patient attitude towards the massive crowds of tourists or simply massive crowds of crowds all over Manhattan.
• Controlling my temper (which tends to arise when I am in massive crowds of crowds in Manhattan.
• Continue to count my blessings that I live in wonderful Park Slope and not Manhattan.
• Participating more in my local community e.g. helping to organize meditation/yoga sessions, joining the Park Slope Food Co-op (after the CFA please), and establishing OurRipple.org (I came up with the idea on New Year’s Eve…more details when I have finalized the logo, the Mission Statement and Goals…)
• More family time, more family time, more family time.
• Continue to be a loving wife, daughter, sister, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, aunt, friend.
• Empathize.
• Be grateful.
• Make it to Burning Man.
• More yoga, more meditation, more yoga, more meditation.
• Continue to go to the dentist regularly.
• Be kind.
• Eat less refined carbohydrates and empty calories. Eat more organic, hormone free dairy/meat. Buy more local produce.
• Learn more recipes. Cook more.
• Watch as much excellent movies/tv shows as possible.
• Continue to read read read.
• Less mindless surfing on the internet.
• Stay happy and positive at work.
• Set daily intentions.
• Drink more water.
• Moisturize.
• Lowering my carbon imprint by recycling more and not buying any unnecessary stuff.
• Clearing out clutter in my life (links with above: not buying stuff to avoid clutter). Being neater.
• Keeping my hair short. A part of my resolution to clear out clutter, I chopped off my hair. I feel so much lighter in my head, less bogged down and freer. What a relief. Everytime I cut off my hair, I wonder why I didn’t do it sooner. So I resolve to cut my hair as soon as it starts to bog me down and not procrastinate. I plan to go shorter the next time.