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Tekken Live Action Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:08:00 +0000

Wow, its been a while since I've posted on my poor little blog. Well today, I wanted to talk about the Tekken movie. I used to play Tekken quite a bit, especially Tekken 3 back in the PS1 days. I haven't really kept up with the franchise lately but I hear there's a Street Fighter vs Tekken game coming out soon which is pretty exciting!

But anyway, the movie! We finally got around to watching it. First off, I'd like to make it known that I love 'bad' movies. I say 'bad' because that's what most people tend to call them. I loved the Street Fighter movie with Van Damme and I thought the Dead or Alive movie was awesomely hilarious. However I didn't like the Chun Li movie, it didn't seem to reach the target of "so bad its genius". In my own terms, it was just normal bad. So when I heard about the Tekken movie a while back, I was quite excited! I was hoping for epic corniness mixed in with awesome fighting.

Let's get through the story outline first. The main character of the movie ties in with the main character of the game, Jin Kazama. In the movie, he's some street smart guy that makes his money illegally stealing stuff from the Tekken corporation. The Tekken corporation are what is equivalent to the government in this future world of Tekken. Near the start of the movie, Jin's mother who taught him how to fight is killed by Tekken. Around this time, the Iron Fist tournament run by Tekken is starting. To get revenge for his mother's death, Jin is determined to enter and win Iron Fist in order to get close to and kill the head of Tekken, Heihachi. Little does he know that the true evil guy is not Heihachi, but Heihachi's son Kazuya who is determined to take over Tekken from his father and called for Jin's house (and subsequently mother) to be blown up. And little does he know that Kazuya is actually....drum roll....well if you're a Tekken fan, you will know how I was about to finish that sentence.

Along the way you get to meet other Tekken fighters like Marshall Law, Brian Fury, Yoshimitsu, Raven, Eddie Gordo, the Williams sisters and a couple of others. There is also Steve Fox who plays the part of a retired Iron Fist competitor who has now taken Jin under his wing.

So how did the movie fare for me? The fighting was pretty good. However it did look a bit too choreographed and they did one too many leg bars. So I would say it was adequate but not the best fighting for a movie that is based off a fighting game. I didn't get very bloodlusty or flinchy watching the fighting which meant it was just alright. I think a lot of it was due to the sound effects, I know real fighting isn't bish-bashy like those old Kung Fu movies, but it does make watching a fight a whole lot more enjoyable and the sound effects in Tekken just wasn't supporting the choreography as well as it could have.

The story...lol well yeah. Hmmm...I'd say pretty good given that my expectations were very low and for a movie like this, I don't really care much about the story at all. It does follow the Tekken lore from the games but also misses out on a lot of it. Like the whole demon thing in the game! How awesome would it be if Jin just suddenly burst out in demon-ness in a fight? That could have been awesome! Or really really awful...

The writing in this movie is awesome according to my standards of awesome bad movie writing. I did enjoy the corny lines and the bad acting that went with it. Okay, it wasn't bad acting, it was just there's no way to say those lines without it being funny and over the top. So I loved that aspect of it. And the predictable flashbacks with wise advice given to Jin at key moments, so predictable and corny! Just all round goodness.

One thing I really did like was the video game homage they've given to the movie. As its set up as a tournament, they've got the contestants introduced in the similar manner as the game would, from the fight selector screens to the pre-battle poses. And I loved how each fight would have a location and the stage then transforms to be that Tekken battle arena, with ancient ruins, or beautiful blossoms in temple grounds. Completely pointless and made no sense when you think about it but just a lot of fun.

There's also a fair amount of eye candy to be had whether you're a guy or a girl. There's a fair share of scantily clad female fighters with (I have no idea why...) more than a fair share of butt crack showage. Have we moved on from cleavages to butt cracks for sexiness? Last time I was out on the street in real life, any cleavage I see is still way sexier than all the butt cracks out there! For the girls, there's plenty of ripped muscly guys fighting to feast your eyes on. Jin is pretty hot, though he's perpetually covered in blood even when he's not fighting. He's also got a weird accent that I can't really place. In terms of which character looks most like their game character, Heihachi and Eddy Gordo win I think. Steve Fox loses miserably as he's meant to have hair and be a whole lot younger than Nina Williams.

So in summary, I did enjoy it overall. Not the best fighting game movie there is, but definitely way better than the Chun Li movie. Not quite up to Van Damme Street Fighter awesomeness though. Watch it if you're a fan of Tekken or you like corny action flicks. Give it a miss if you're into complex stories and character development.

Here's the movie trailer:

Hooby Groovy on Etsy

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 05:43:00 +0000

I've decided to dip my toes into running a small business. So last week, I set up shop on Etsy under the 'brand' Hooby Groovy. Check out my store here. I have also set up a Facebook page for it, like it here.

So far, I'm focusing on iPhone and iPad cases. In the future, I'd like to try my hands on bags and other accessories. And then see where my interests move onto next.

My time has been taken up by 2 things associated with my store, namely creating stuff and marketing it. So I will blog a bit about both.

In terms of creating things, I think I'm steadily increasing my sewing skills so that's pretty cool. I'm learning heaps about how to work with different types of fabric and how to mix them up so that they won't crease or pull or do weird things. But easiest is to work with the same types of fabrics so I like that the best obviously. I think most of my time is taken up by cutting fabric, more so than sewing them together! Sometimes I wish I just had a mold thing that would do all the cutting for me.

Marketing has been a whole different boat though. Etsy has tons of sellers and tons of items. So its hard for buyers to find my store and items. So I've been spending time on the Etsy forums socialising with other sellers for 2 reasons: to get tips and also to get them visiting my shop. I've also set up that Facebook page so that everytime I list a new item, I can update that page and hopefully my 'fans' will visit.

Other things I will be trying soon is being more active on other forums where my potential customers hang out. And possibly look into other places to list my items, not just Etsy.

I've also been learning more about product photography. What do you think of my efforts?

All in all, I'm taking this all in as experience and not setting my expectations too high. If I can learn heaps about running a business and I have fun in the process, I'm happy. Though lots of sales and money coming in would be ace too. ;)

Well here's what I have on sale so far:

A Bird in Hand iPad Case

A Bird in Hand iPhone Case

Young at Heart iPad Case

Young at Heart iPhone Case

Singing in the Rain iPhone Case

Singing in the Rain iPad Case

If you're in the market for an iPhone or iPad case, drop by or contact me! :)

A Little Cure

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:06:00 +0000

A friend and ex-colleague of mine invited me to a lecture he was giving at AFTRS so I went along for it last night. It was focused on the use of sound for narrative purposes, in particular video games. I enjoyed it a lot even though I don't really know what my goal was in going to the lecture. There were many things that I learnt, some things I already knew. But I realised that even more than learning something new, what I enjoyed the most was once again looking at video games from a design/narrative point of view.

Lately, I haven't been playing many video games, besides the odd casual game or two on the iPad or PC. And I haven't been keeping up with industry news much either. My mental space lately has been in quite a negative state lately actually and I've been having a more negative, skeptical view of video games and the industry in general. I think its a completely natural thing that occurs when you've worked in the or any industry for a while and you know the workings of it so well. So for me, I had gone past that initial wonderment of games and how it was built and what kind of creativity goes into games and had ended up at the (for the lack of a better word) business side of things.

Primarily, making video games is a business. People make games to make money. Sadly, the people doing the actual making of the games normally don't end up making the majority of the money, but that's a whole other topic. But yeah, its a business. And with business comes processes, budgets, systems, hierarchy and a whole lot of politics.

It's a little difficult to try to explain what I'm trying to say or what I have in my head but basically the biggest question for me when I started in the industry was "What kind of story/vision do I want to create/share with the world?" and over the years, it turned into "What am I doing here? Why are things done this way?"

I love story games, actually more to the point is I love stories. If they come packaged with good solid gameplay, all the better. If the gameplay is forgettable, that's fine. If the gameplay is so bad it destroys the story, that pisses me off. And I think the essence of a good story is that I'm able to escape into it and put my own self in that story. As much as I love being in a story, I would also love to be apart of creating a story or a whole new world for other people to be able to escape to.

Well, that's what was in my head when I first started work in the industry. And I used to push quite a lot for that idea of creating a world, within the constraints of the gameplay, licenses, etc of course. And over the years, that push got less and less and my brain started filling up instead with "the business side". The politics and the numbers and the drama that was going on out of the game's story.

Well, last night's lecture brought back a little of that old vision to me. For a good 3-4 hours, I was looking and thinking about video games purely from a "how do I tell this story and create this world" point of view. I wasn't thinking about any negative stuff.

This is a good thing, it's a healthy thing and I feel a little more positive and healthier from it.

And Yet Another Hobby

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:25:00 +0000

When I came back to Melbourne after my trip to Malaysia, I received a present from Chen-Po and it was an iPad!! I love my iPad so much and can't bear to be away from it for long. Anytime I want to do anything computer/Internet related, my first thoughts fly to my iPad. My poor laptop must be feeling so neglected. Anyway, I decided to make a case for my iPad so I could cart it around and have it protected. This is my handmade iPad case:

It took me 3 weeks! And throughout all 3 weeks, I kept thinking that if I had a sewing machine and knew how to use one, I could have done it in 1 day. Which was the best time for a friend to ask if I was interested in doing a machine sewing course at CAE. So, for the past 4 weeks, I've been attending a weekly class at CAE and out of that, I made pyjama pants for Chen-Po:

If you can't see, it's also got cargo style pockets on the side, so here's a photo showcasing that:

A couple of weeks ago, I also took the plunge and bought a sewing machine. After a long and confusing day at a craft fair looking at all the different brands and models, I finally settled on the Singer Confidence 7470. Interesting fact, everyone's mums/grandmas have Singer sewing machines. Here's my fancy Singer sewing machine:

Another thing I've made is an iPhone 3 case (I don't know if it will also fit an iPhone 4, I should check).

So there you have it, I now have a new hobby which is sewing. I think the part that I enjoy the most about sewing is figuring out how to put all the different pieces together so that bits of fabric transform into something functional and 3-dimensional. And of course, I love browsing and shopping for pretty fabrics.

I'll be blogging more about what else I've created so stay tuned!

Melaka 2010: Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:20:00 +0000

Melaka (or Malacca) is situated about 150km south of Kuala Lumpur, approximately 1.5 hours drive along the North-South Highway. Just as we left the boundary of Selangor and entered Negeri Sembilan, we had a little bit of a hiccup with the car overheating:

About 5 minutes later, one of the highway patrol cars pulled up on the other side of the highway and came over to see what was wrong. Here's one of the guys waiting to cross the highway:

Another few minutes, another car pulled up to help and then a big discussion and debate started on what could be wrong with the car. They figured the radiator was rusted and probably got clogged up. We put heaps of water in, by we I mean Terence, Sae and I were happy to stay in the shady interior of the car. I ventured out to take a photo of the operation though:

After that, we continued our journey driving slower this time around. We made one stop at a Seremban petrol station to top up our water supply and then went on to Melaka. First stop in Melaka was the apartment we were going to stay in. From there, we ventured back into Melaka Town and hunted for Jonker Street.

Melaka's full of one way streets so it took us heaps of rounds before finally getting close to Jonker Street. It being a Saturday night, Jonker Street had been shut to cars and a night market had started up, complete with a stage equipped with karaoke set.

Here's some photos of the kind of things sold in the market:

We had planned to maybe snack a bit and then later on, go for some satay. But we overdid the snack part and so pretty much made our dinner from bits and bobs from many stalls in the market. Half way through our exploration, it started to rain and so we went into one of the shops and had more food in there.

The rain was good for driving people away though and so when we went back out, it wasn't so crowded anymore. We decided to check out what was on the stage (Karaoke session had finished for the time being) There was a show on by this troupe of people, some kind of Indian tribe maybe? My Mandarin sucks, so I couldn't understand a lot of what the MC was saying. But they had fire dancers:

After watching the show and engaging in more snacks, we left Jonker Street and headed to the river. We decided to take the River Cruise along Melaka River. The ticket box and starting point for this is located near the old Go-Downs (is that where the word Gudang comes from maybe?) along the river:

While waiting for the cruise to start, you can get a quick foot clean at the fish spa right across the ticket box (We didn't but thought what a good idea to set one up right there):

And so the cruise was pretty good, the river was surprisingly non-smelly (Except for one tiny, tiny stretch). Seems that the city paid heaps to get the river cleaned up and they must have paid a lot to pimp up the buildings running along the river too. I liked the murals painted along many of the buildings, many depicted Melaka's history of which I can quite proudly claim to know much of, having had it hammered into my head all of high school. Parameswara 1411, Portugese 1511, pretty good eh? ;)

Well, here's some photos of the river cruise:

After the cruise, we walked around a bit around the Stradthuys and the old Dutch (I think) church:

All the trishaws are super pimped out

Cannons used to guard the port, now it points right at some cafes across the river

We finished the night by driving past the Famous Melaka Maccas (completely made up honorary title) at Dataran Pahlawan:

Pretty good and adventurous first day and the weather was a real blessing. The entire night was cool and slightly breezy, ideal for exploring Melaka.

And I learnt that Melaka is the home of Mamee:

All those ads ended up working and I satisfied my Mamee craving at the night market.

Japanese Buffet at Mizu in Taman Tun

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:13:00 +0000

Right before our trip to Melaka, Sae, Terence and I went for a Japanese Buffet lunch at Mizu. Mizu is located in TTDI Plaza in Taman Tun. When we walked in, we were expecting to see tables laid out with big plates filled with sushi and sashimi. Proper buffet style. However, none of that was evident and we were ushered to our seats filled with fear that we had gotten the day wrong and we'd have to get the much more expensive ala carte lunches. Turns out it was a buffet alright, but instead of piling your own plates, Saturday at Mizu offers more of an 'order what you want' style buffet. We were given a stack of ordering slips with the full lists of foods available and just had to note down the quantity of each item we wanted.

For the lazy, it's a good system but not so much for the environmentally conscious; we went through heaps of slips of paper because we were hesitant to order so much all in one go. According to Mizu buffet veteran Sae, anything we left uneaten would be weighed and we'd be charged based on that weight.

Here's all the dishes that we had:

Soft Shell Crab Salad

Edamame

Salmon Sashimi Salad

We didn't actually order this beef sukiyaki. But since its a buffet, we just accepted it anyway.

The unordered beef sukiyaki also came with some chicken teriyaki, yumm.

Beef and salmon teriyaki

Prawn tempura

Our selection of sashimi, there were Salmon, Tuna, White Tuna and 2 others that I can't remember.

Our selection of maki rolls, the row on top is the special Mizu Maki and I can't remember what the one on the bottom was, possibly soft shell crab?

To finish off, we each had a black sesame and a green tea ice cream. I love green tea but this time around, black sesame won.

And once again...

All up, it was RM50 per person for that Saturday's lunch buffet. Awesome value for some really yummy and normally expensive Japanese food.

Chicken Pox and a New OZ PM

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:39:00 +0000

I've neglected my blog for more than a month now and Chen-Po's nagging me to post on it more.

I've just returned from a trip to Malaysia and amongst the boxes of dodol I bought from Melaka and a whole lot of books, I also brought back Chicken Pox! Yeap, some special famous Malaysian Chicken Pox courtesy of my little nephew. Who actually was already vaccinated and should not have gotten it in the first place!

It's going to take me some time to get used to the fact that I now have had chicken pox. I've gone through 27 years of remembering that I've never had it and now I'll have to do a complete flip on my memory.

Anyway, the worst of it is over and I'm just waiting on the scars to disappear. There's a whole lot of debate about whether or not I'm still contagious or not. Some sources say once I've scabbed, I'm not contagious, while others say I'm contagious until all the scabs have fallen off. Which one do you think is the right one?

My Malaysian trip was really good, lots of time with family, not as much time as I would have liked with friends and of course lots of food. I'll start posting pics in my next post.

But first female PM in Australia huh? Wow, exciting times and I've been following that news since this morning. Election seems inevitable in the next few months so I wonder what Julia Gillard will be able to do between now and then. I'll be looking forward to watching Q&A next week for sure to hear what the panelists have to say and what kind of questions the public's got. Much as I like to go into Girl Power mode every now and then, I hope they're not going to place so much emphasis on her being the first female Prime Minister. Over the top focus on any Girl Power issues tends to piss me off.

I'm off to the library now so Hooble-Toodle-Doo. (Been watching The Hoobs on ABC, best kid's show ever!)

Back to Sparring

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Thu, 06 May 2010 02:54:00 +0000

I did a Kung Fu Sparring class last night, almost a year since my last one. Everytime I go, I seem to get a new injury, which makes me afraid to go again. So far, the 2 major ones that are still plaguing me from time to time are my right knee and my right elbow.

But yet, I never stay away for too long because sparring is just so much fun! And so humbling! In normal classes, you know exactly what attacks your opponent is going to throw cos you're meant to be practicing certain techniques. But in Sparring, all that goes through the window, the opponent is moving constantly, throwing anything and everything and its just so bloody tiring! Before I'm half way done, all I can think about it wanting to stop and take a breath. And I just keep yelling at my opponent in my head, "Just stand still so I can do that technique that I know." But of course, they won't and I never pull any of the techniques that I'm thinking of pulling because in Sparring, my body doesn't want to listen to what my brain is thinking. For example, I see a punch coming and then I think, I could do a high Bon Sao into his ribs. But I can't, because by the time I finish thinking that, the punch already came and I already blocked it with some crappy block that my arm has pulled out of nowhere.

I like to think that I have a somewhat decent fitness level, but there's nothing like two 2-minute rounds where I have to be constantly moving, kicking, blocking, punching while trying to breathe to let me know that I'm pretty damn unfit and if I was in a life or death fight in real life, I wouldn't survive long enough to flee to safety.

In last night's class, I did 3 of those 2 round sets. In the first, I was an attacker throwing only punches, then I was the Wing Chun defender having to fight against punches. In the next set, it was the same but instead of punches, it was only kicks and it was hard because my kicks suck big time! In the last, attackers were doing both punching and kicking and the round where I was getting attacked was by far the hardest round ever. My opponent was Kieron who goes pretty damn hard all the time and he was just relentlessly attacking me. Towards the last 20 seconds or so, he was pretty much just punching my face over and over and the only thing I had any energy left to do was to hold my hands up to protect my face. I did not have anything left in me to even step out of the way or hit back or kick or do any block that would have forced him to change what he was doing.

Oh, and I did get my left elbow busted up in the first set of the night, so that meant one whole arm was out of commission for the rest of the night. All I could do was hold it in guard position and depend fully on my right arm to do everything else. I'm not exactly sure how I injured it, judging from the bruises, I must have taken quite a whopping kick and blocked it with my elbow.

Chen-Po didn't do last night's Sparring but he did come by to take photos of it and here's what he took of my last 2 rounds as attacker and then being attacked:

Here's me preparing to be attacker. Doesn't the mouth guard make me look like a monkey? :D

I've lost a shoe! But somehow I managed to throw what probably what a wussy-ass strike with my maimed arm.

After I was done, I just had enough left to collapse down by the side. I have no idea why I look like I'm smiling here, I remember I was just wheezing and feeling like crying at the time, I was that dead.

Hopefully my elbow heals up in time for next week's class, learning techniques is good but I never really know if I've actually properly learnt it until I have to bust it out in a split second without having to think about it in a fight.

Here's a video of our grading that I blogged about a while ago:

Rock Climbing

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Thu, 06 May 2010 02:08:00 +0000

We went rock climbing a couple of weekends ago at Hardrock CBD. Its quite close to where I live and so I pass by there almost everyday and ever since they opened, I keep saying "I want to try rock climbing, must try it one day." Years go by and still it was a "Must try it one day" thing. So I decided to do it once and for all and rounded up a group to go.

After handing in a form with our personal details, we went through a mandatory introductory course on a training wall. In the course, we learnt how to attach our harness to the ropes for both climber and belayer positions, and how to belay properly. I went up the wall first and Chen-Po was my belayer. It was quite easy going up, but at the top, I was supposed to let go completely so that Chen-Po could let me down slowly. At first I could not do it! It was just really, really scary to let go and trust the rope. I think most of that fear also came from Chen-Po asking me over and over again about the belaying process and getting it mixed up at the start. While I was at the top, he kept asking me, "Have you let go?" and I said "Nope!" and then everyone would tell me to let go and I'll go "Nope!" But finally I did let go and found that hey, I could just sit in the rope and it was all nice and steady.

The first proper wall we tried was a fairly easy one. Donald taught me to look out for the numbering on the wall at the bottom of each path. The lower the number, the easier. So we started on one that said 7. Though I think the 7 was the difficulty for the path only using that certain colour holds. But being new to it all, I just went up any way I could regardless of colours. I soon learnt which colours meant easier foot or hand holds, some were just impossible to hold as they were so tiny!

After conquering that first wall, we tried one that was harder and wow, it was much harder. I think the next two or three we did, neither of us could make it to the top. We tried a couple of easy ones after but even those were starting to get difficult for me as my muscles were starting to give out and the skin on my hand was red and sore. But as I climbed more, I learnt to trust the rope a whole lot more too so when I got stuck, I sometimes just let go, swing around a bit and then grab on to a different path of the wall to attempt again. Chen-Po was also a really good belayer and was on the ball tightening the rope every single step that I took, so sometimes I used that to my advantage, letting him give me that extra push for bits where I couldn't quite reach.

We were climbing for more than 3 hours and by the end of it, my hands were killing me! I probably could have done much better in some of the climbs, but half way, I just look at a hand hold and think about how sore my skin would be just touching that hand hold and then give up. But the sense of achievement that came from every single step was really good. And I also liked that it got me thinking about which path to take and got me reading signals from my body about what I could or could not do. Though I think I tended to trust my upper body strength a lot more than my lower body, my back muscles were really sore the next day but my legs were completely fine.

I'll definitely go rock climbing again one day, it was heaps of fun and I felt pretty proud of myself if I climbed higher than Chen-Po. :)

Review: On Parole by Akira Yoshimura

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:51:00 +0000

Main character Shiro Kikutani has spent the last sixteen years in prison, serving an indefinite sentence for the murder of his wife and for causing the death of the mother of his wife's lover. Now, he's been granted parole, though he is still to be supervised by the parole board for the remainder of his life. Kikutani must now face his new life away from prison in a Tokyo that has vastly changed in the last sixteen years. Whilst trying to find his footing in his new life of freedom, Kikutani still ponders about his past and digs deep to try and figure out his real feelings about the murder he committed.

One of the biggest fears Kikutani has is people finding out about his past. And so that becomes the top priority in all his interactions and actions. However, he doesn't do it out of remorse or guilt of his crimes. Instead, he is perplexed and confused that he does not feel any remorse for what he did. And so, alongside working out how to be a normal person in society again, he is also often in a turmoil with himself about what his prison sentence meant.

Amongst the characters that play a big role in Kikutani's new life are Kiyoura; the parole officer who fought for him to be granted parole and who takes care of a halfway house rehabilitating ex-convicts, Takebayashi; Kikutani's new parole officer when Kikutani moves out from the halfway house and Akiyama; a chicken farm owner who hires Kikutani. These three know all the details of Kikutani's past and still accept him and want to help him lead a normal life. At first surprised that there are people willing to help ex-convicts who have committed such heinous acts, Kikutani learns to trust these men and he feels extremely indebted to them.

I thought this was a really good book. The story spans about three years from the time that Kikutani is let out of prison. Nothing very spectacular happens, Kikutani's life on parole borders on boring. He goes to work, soon he moves into a new apartment, he wants to revisit a place from his childhood, he buys some fish to keep him company, little mundane activities that everyone goes through in their lives. But through Kikutani's eyes, each step in this 'normal' life that we often don't even think about becomes such an important, often scary event. It was a really interesting perspective to look at these things from his point of view.

Another thing that was interesting to me was that even though Kikutani was out of prison, his life was essentially the same as being in prison. In prison, he had a strict routine to follow, and out of prison, his life had become routine as well. Though there were hundreds of inmates and guards around him in prison, all he could feel was the loneliness of being by himself in his cell. Out of prison, there were so many people around him on the streets and in his apartment block, but he was still essentially all alone in his tiny apartment. His fear of letting people know what he had done was imprisoning him all alone in the big busy city of Tokyo, more so than the bars in the prison. It seems so obvious to me now after reading the book, sort of like, "well yeah, of course an ex-convict would feel that way!" but then I never thought of it that way before.

One little anecdote in the book that struck me quite a lot was when Kikutani was remembering a fellow prison mate. The man was on death-row and asked to be able to keep a bird. Permission was granted and he took great care of the bird, making sure that it was well fed and changing its water constantly. However, after the execution, prison guards found the bird dead on the floor of his cell. It had been strangled to death. I immediately thought that I could really understand why the death-row prisoner would do that. Such a simple little event, but the great characterisation behind it really blew me away. It was just one of those little moments in a book that makes me think "this writer is a genius". (In A Thousand Splendid Suns, that moment was the bully pointing a gun at Laila's face.)

One little tiny criticism I would have of this book is that I felt unsatisfied at the relationship between Kikutani and his brother. While in prison, his brother seemed to do a lot such as visiting him and writing letters despite the deep disapproval of his wife. It seemed like his brother was the one that also connected Kiyoura to Akiyama when it came time to find Kikutani a good job. But out of prison, the relationship was severed. Kikutani had no wish to contact his brother as he knew of his brother's wife's disapproval and he was also disappointed that his brother would not stand up for him against his wife. Furthermore, they lived in the same town where Kikutani had once lived and that was where he had committed his crimes. So I could understand why Kikutani did not want to seek his brother out. But I would have thought his brother would have continued his kindness to Kikutani and tried to keep in contact, since he had done so while he was in prison.

Overall though, I really liked this book. It was another one of those books that got me thinking from a new point of view and I think that's what good stories and characters are all about. I'm very pleased that I found this gem at the library and I'll definitely be looking up to see what else Akira Yoshimura has written.

My Level 2-2 Kung Fu Grading

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 15:24:00 +0000

I did a Kung Fu Grading today, to get to level 2-2. Sifu Julian's system has 10 levels, and each has 3 sub levels (eg: 2-0, 2-1, 2-2).

I get really nervous about grading, I find it hard to wrap my head around the theory and the names of everything. So I've been putting off grading but Matthew and Ptolemy who started last year have caught up to the same level as me so I can't let them overtake me!

Well today's grading went well I hope. I only did one mistake, which was step towards the wrong side for one of the moves, but Sifu asked me to do it again and I did it right and it was all good. And I didn't stuff up the Shil Lim Tao form, which I get paranoid that I will do. I still sometimes get the order of moves wrong from time to time, even after 7 years! Lol, I'm not a very good Kung Fu student I guess.

Here are some photos of my grading:

Here's all the people who graded today, it was the biggest group I've seen so far and todays grading took about 3.5 hours!

Here's how me, Ptolemy and Matthew spent that 3.5 hours.

Finally it was our turn to grade, here's me demonstrating a Leading Jut Sao against a Leading Round Punch

Bil Jee strike

Demonstrating the Shil Lim Tao form, this is the bit where I get worried that I'll do too many or too few of the Wu Sao/Fuk Sao bit.

Palm Strike part of the Shil Lim Tao form

Chen-Po graded to Level 6 today, he had to do Bon Sao/Lap Sao blind-folded! It'll be another 7 years before I'm at that level, I think!

I'm quite proud of this photo that I took, isn't my Lou Kong so handsome? So muscley *swoon* ;D

It will be at least 3 months til the next Grading if I do decide to grade again so I can take it easy for now and just enjoy classes normally without having to stress about grading. :)

Recent Library Loans

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:09:00 +0000

This year, I resolved that I would read a lot more books but I also resolved to spend less money. So I decided to join the City Library in Flinders Lane. I have no idea why I never bothered to join before, its been a really great experience so far and I've enjoyed all the books I've borrowed.

Normally at book stores, I normally go for the authors that I've read or if a pretty book cover happens to catch my eye, I'll have a look too. At the library, the books are all old and browned and squished together tightly so the pretty book method doesn't work too well. Also, the library might not carry the whole range of books by authors that I like so just honing in on authors doesn't work all that well either. So I've adopted a new, random method: just pick a shelf, and just pick a book with a title that might grab my interest and then see if I wanna borrow it. So in this way, I'm opening myself up to different authors and different genres too.

In my last trip, I picked up Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns (which I just did a review of), Andy Quan's Calendar Boy and Haruki Murakami's Birthday Stories: Selected and Introduced by Haruki Murakami.

This is a collection of short stories written by Andy Quan, an Asian living in Canada. The common themes linking the stories together are of racial and sexual identity. The main characters of all the stories are Asians, usually looking to fit into the Western society that they live in and trying to find the right lifestyles for themselves. Its obvious that these themes are very personal to Andy Quan. Apart from the homosexuality thing, I could really relate to his East-living-in-West stories. And one thing I told Chen-Po after reading this "If you think Asian men are emasculated, imagine Asian gay men!" I enjoyed this collection quite a lot, I actually read it in one sitting.

For this collection, Haruki Murakami selected various short stories themed around birthdays and translated them for his Japanese audience. Later on, this was released in English, the original language of the stories (except for Murakami's own contribution Birthday Girl, that one got translated instead). I found this collection to be alright, just alright. A lot of them seemed quite depressing to me. I know birthdays aren't always happy but reading a whole bunch of stories one after another about not very happy birthdays was a bit too much for me. So perhaps I would have appreciated the stories more if I had just read them one by one slowly, as each were good in its own right.

Yesterday, I got a new collection of books from the library to last me the next 3 weeks, so Happy Reading to me!

Crispy Skin Pork aka Siew Yuk

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:27:00 +0000

I tried my hand at making crispy skin pork today, trialling a very simple recipe from this cookbook I have about Asian Food. The result was yummy but I didn't quite get the skin right, it was too tough. But the rest of it was pretty much perfect. I wonder if maybe our oven is too hot? Chen-Po suggested that I lower the temperature and cook it longer next time. Maybe that will give me my yummy crispy skin.

Well here are some photos:

This was when it was still in the oven

And here it is all cut up

Here's some photos of the other dishes I prepared for dinner tonight:

Fried egg, sunny side up for me, broken yolk for Chen-Po

Celery, mushrooms and carrots

Curry chicken that I cooked last night, though we've finished all the chicken in it. All that's left in it is potato, sweet potato and carrots (My mum was appalled when I told her I made chicken curry with carrots, apparently its SO NOT done!)

Here's our dinner for tonight.

Quite a nice dinner if I may say so myself and tons leftover for lunch and more dinners haha. This tai-tai knows how to feed her hubby. ;)

Actually, I wanted to learn how to make Char Siew/BBQ Roast Pork so I could make Char Siew Pau but the recipe looked really hard plus it called for meat hooks to hang the meat up in the oven. Way too ma-fan for my beginner level skills. Maybe I will just buy pre-made Char Siew from the shop and make the Pau myself.

Well wish me luck for the next time I attempt Crispy Skin Pork again, hope I can get that yummy, perfect textured skin. :)

Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 04:42:00 +0000

Mariam is married off to Rasheed at 15 years old. Many years later, 14 year-old Laila becomes part of their household as Rasheed's second wife. Slowly, both Mariam and Laila form a strong bond, akin to mother and daughter and this relationship is key to helping them through some really tough times.

This story is set in Afghanistan, starting from the times when they are fighting off the Soviets to when the Taliban come into power and then the Sept 11 incident.

Despite hearing about Afghanistan almost every day in the news, I really don't know about and find it hard to imagine life there, so this book was a real eye-opener for me. And while it doesn't focus too much on the history or political issues, it really helped me understand a great deal more about the whole conflict in that troubled area. So immediately, I'd give this book my recommendation for the whole educational aspect.

As mentioned, my only exposure to life in Afghanistan comes from the news, so I had lots of preconceived, biased notions in place. So I was very glad when a lot of these weren't really the case. For example, I expected that all women in the this book would be treated appallingly and all men to be complete monsters. I really liked that this wasn't the case. Rasheed is probably the most evil and mean but even he has some good redeeming things. However, the characters have been written in a way that you can understand how they would have come to be the people they were based on the society that they were in. So you can sort of see where Rasheed is coming from when he does the horrible things he does.

Main characters Mariam and Laila are great, they are both very different in their temperament and both very strong women. Laila isn't afraid to stand up for herself and regularly engages in shouting matches with the abusive Rasheed and even ventured out to punch him (that didn't end too well for her though). Mariam is the quieter, less obviously bold one of the two but what she does do in the book (which I won't spoil here) shows even more courage than Laila.

There's a lot of violence in this book. As mentioned, Rasheed isn't the nicest of husbands and thinks it well within his right to show his wives who's boss. Apart from the domestic violence, there's always the undertones of violence to everything. This is done really well in the book. For the first half of the book, the mention of any conflicts feels quite distant. Everyone is living in a pretty stable, peaceful town and the fighting is far away. But perhaps the knowledge that all that is going to be shaken lends a lot of impact to little incidents. For example, when Laila was a child on her way home from school, she heard her name called so she turned around only to be confronted by the barrel of a gun. Immediately after, I found out that it was just another kid bullying her with a water pistol. But just that one sentence of her staring at a gun turned me cold. Definitely the most memorable part of the book for me. I wonder though if that incident would have had such an impact in the way it was written if read by someone who is completely ignorant of the violent history of that district (in this case, maybe an alien).

Another memorable event is when Laila is about to give birth to her second child during the time when the Taliban is in power. Most of the women's hospitals has been given over to men. When they finally do get to the one remaining women's hospital, the lines are long and doctors are scarce. Turns out Laila needs to get a Caesarean but there's no anaesthetics available so she has to go through with it feeling everything.

All in all, I really liked this book. I finished it quite quickly as I didn't want to put it down and just spent the whole day on it. I'm definitely going to get my hands on other Khaled Hosseini books if they're anything like this one.

Ancient Megastructures

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:30:00 +0000

I normally have a thing against people with big egos, but lately I've decided to change my way of thinking. Nowadays I think that its okay to have a big ego as long as your big ego results in something great, epic and magnificent.

This change was brought about from watching several episodes of National Geographic's Ancient Megastructures. The episodes I've seen are about Petra, Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat. Some of other structures in the series are Hagia Sophia, the Colosseum, the Great Pyramid and a few others.

One lesson I've learned is that behind every great structure, is a crazy egomaniac! All three structures were created by kings or emperors who were determined to prove that they are gods and that they need this super awesome structure to show how great they are, and more often that not, these structures are built as their tombs.

Only an egomaniac would have the balls and the insanity to say, "Look, I'm so awesome that I'm pretty sure I'm a god, so we're going to build me a city to be buried in right at the top of this rocky, steep Andes mountain 2.4km above sea level. You all can do that without any metal tools or wheels, right? Oh, and it rains like crazy too so landslides might happen while you're building this."

I'm sure a lot of hardship and deaths and slavery came into the equation while building these structures. But I'm all for the positive side of it; these structures would have brought about new engineering techniques, crazy ingenuity and great perseverance.

For example, Machu Picchu's dual ladder system of shifting the big blocks of stone around on steep terrain where there would be no place to have lots of workers doing heavy lifting. Or Angkor Wat getting built on a water table because its in the middle of a great big swamp. Or Petra's hydraulics system that ensures the exact pressure and flow of water throughout so that it wouldn't burst. The best part is how these structures are still standing today. In the case of Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, no cement or mortar was used at all, yet the structures are strong and the blocks still perfectly aligned.

I also love hearing about their water irrigation system. I have no idea why; I certainly have no interest whatsoever in how water is supplied to us these days. I think it's something to do with playing Zeus (the game, not the god) and building cities and always having to make sure that my water carriers can get to everyone. Truly, water supply is the first thing any government needs to take care of.

I'm sure a lot of modern structures are pushing the limits and creating new techniques and technologies. But somehow, it doesn't feel as awe-inspiring when the reasons behind them isn't as crazy as "god on earth here, need a place to be buried to make sure I join my fellow gods in heaven."

So to all egomaniacs out there (and there are a lot of you!), either build something great and almost impossible that will last thousands of years, or shut your pie hole. :)

Review: God of War 3 (PS3)

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:15:00 +0000

God of War 3 would be the first God of War game that I've played. It's a bit weird to start at the final game of a trilogy, but never mind. At least I can add 1 more title to my frugal list of completed games and I can safely say I know the whole story of the trilogy.

So, in God of War 3, main character Kratos is hell bent on killing Zeus and on his way to achieving his goal, he's pretty happy to kill the rest of the Gods as well as destroy Olympus. My main mission was to just finish this game fast, so I played on Easy or Spartan as they call it in the game. It was pretty Easy, I could probably count the number of battle deaths I had on one hand. I think I died more times doing stupid things like jumping into gaps because I was too lazy to glide across them. There are 3 modes available when you boot up the game: Easy, Normal and Hard and once you've beaten the game once, you unlock Very Hard. I did try my hand at Very Hard just to see how very hard it was and I died in the very first battle against the popcorn enemies.

God of War 3 was definitely made with the intention to impress and it does so right from the start. You see Kratos climbing up to Mount Olympus allied with humongous titans. Some of the battles even takes place on Gaia, one of the titans assisting Kratos. And one of the first boss battles against Poseidon is really epic. You'll fight parts of Poseidon while on Gaia, while she's trying to climb up Mt Olympus. This sets the expectations for the rest of the game way up there and I must say it doesn't disappoint. I'd say God of War 3 is one of the best looking and most epic games on the PS3 out at the moment.

Kratos wields his trusty chained and fiery double blades at the start and as you progress and kill more gods, you acquire new weapons and abilities. My favourite were the blades from Hades, mostly because I'm partial towards the colour purple and they seemed pretty nice and fast. Each weapon gives you a different magic power, accessible by pressing R2. Again, my favourite was the Hades magic which summons a soul to fight for you for a little while. There are also several items that you get throughout the game and these can be used by holding onto the L2 button and pressing each of the different buttons to use each one. For example, L2 and Square brings up your bow and arrow. My favourite item would be Helios' head, which you can use as a torch. And when you shine the torch on certain areas, you can unlock secrets, like chests, or doorways.

Collectibles come in the form of orbs; green for health, blue for magic and red for points that you can use to upgrade your weapons. Being on Easy mode meant I easily maxed out all my weapons. I wonder how far I would have gotten in other modes, maybe I would have had to be more selective about which weapons I would concentrate on?

What makes this game so good is definitely the cameras. I was not surprised to see that they had a whole team just for the cameras in this game and had developed dedicated camera tools. The work and effort definitely shows. God of War 3 features non player controlled cameras and each are set just right so that you always have a good view of what you need to see and are never confused about which way you're facing or where you need to go. I know many people tend to prefer controlling their own cameras, but in a world as vast as Olympus, I think having the player able to fully control their cameras would just serve to confuse, rather than help drive the game forward. I fully believe that cameras are the hardest things to get right in any game but God of War 3 just really nails it. Excellent proof that it's worth putting the time and resources into getting it right.

Of course, there are many other things done very well in this game, the battle system is solid, the story and characters are interesting (though Kratos is such a meanie sometimes), the voice acting is really good especially Daedalus and the environments are gorgeous. One thing I didn't think stood out that much was the music. I was surprised to see that they had 5 composers working on the music. The only music that really stayed with me was this one where it sounds like the choir is chanting "Kratos, Evil!" Its nice to see resources go towards the music of a game, but in this case, I don't think it was that worth it judging from the results.

Another thing which I was a bit bothered by was the violence! The level of gross gore is really high in this game. I think I've got pretty normal levels of blood lust, but this one was a tad bit too much for me at some points in the game. One particular nasty instance that I can still remember vividly is the finger nail pulling quick time event. I just cringing and going "Ew, ew, eeeewwwwww!" I really wanted to look away but since it was a quick time event, I couldn't because I needed to see what buttons I had to press in order to succeed the quick time event. Of course, level of violence is purely personal opinion, so if you're into guts and eyeballs and all things gross and bloody, God of War 3 packs many treats for you then.

Finishing the game unlocked a bunch of stuff, the best of which were the development videos. Its always interesting to see how a game was developed and to see how other studios do things. In the case of God of War 3, you can see that they definitely didn't stint on anything. The expectations for this title would have been huge and they definitely didn't shy away from the challenge. I imagine after developing the 2 previous titles, it would have been so easy to just take the lazy path and up-res assets for the PS3 and reuse or port their existing technology. But they didn't do that and wanted to make it bigger and better. It was also apparent that they were heavily supported by Sony. After all, this is one of the biggest flagship titles for the PS3.

Overall, a really solid and enjoyable game. A bit too violent than I normally enjoy but I'm willing to sit through it for such high quality gaming.

A New Career

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:46:00 +0000

These days, I'm calling myself a "tai-tai". Or for those who don't understand what that is, I will also call myself a "lady of leisure".

So, I've just recently left my job and am like a leaf suspended on a twig, free to fly in whichever direction the wind blows. Actually, this leaf is going to be more like a brick and just stay still and take a break. Just for a while. Or so I think...

Women in society have come a long way. Everyone expects us to work these days. I keep getting asked what am I going to do in terms of working. And when I say that I'm not going to work or look for work, I get the usual jokes about having dinner on the table for my husband. In the olden days, those probably wouldn't be jokes.

However, I do intend to try to somewhat be a housewife-y type wife. I'm going to learn to cook food beyond chucking stuff into a wok and stir fry. And seeing that I'll be spending a lot of time at home, I would like to attempt to keep it tidy. But I'm definitely not going to spend all my days cooking and cleaning *cringe*. And I'll have to resist the temptation to just spend all days surfing the net, watching TV and chatting on MSN. I intend to be pretty productive with my new-found time.

But not too much...after all, the point of taking a break is to take a break right? :)

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 02:18:00 +0000

The Good Earth chronicles the life of Wang Lung the farmer, starting on the day of his marriage to O-Lan and ending near the end of his days. This book was written by Pearl S. Buck, an American writer who has lived a lot of her life in China. The Good Earth has won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and is the first novel in a trilogy.

I really enjoyed reading this book and I really liked this style of writing. The language is simple and there are not much reflections by the characters or lengthy descriptions or explanations. Wang Lung's life is told in a series of events and actions and simple thoughts. Yet there is a lot to read into it and it is easy to picture and understand the life, culture and society surrounding Wang Lung. I'm curious though, whether or not this would be because I am Chinese and therefore already have that the same mentality, traditions and culture already ingrained in me. I would love to know how this reads to someone who did not grow up in a Chinese family or amongst a Chinese community.

I liked the characters in The Good Earth as that they were very believable, being flawed and shaped by their environment. My friend Dioni and I were discussing the book and I mentioned that I hated Wang Lung and Dioni said that he is just a by-product of his time. I completely agree with her but I still thought he was detestable. I think I found him to be a hypocrite. He seemed to have very low self-esteem and was worried about all this on-the-surface things, like how he is poor or uneducated. Yet, instead of empathising with O-Lan, he put her down for the same kind of things, only it was her looks. And taking away those little pearls from O-Lan to give to Lotus even though he was already so rich is just really mean!

Besides the characters, two elements play a big part in The Good Earth, earth and water. The earth is forever constant, as is Wang Lung's loyalty to it. In all the cycles that his life goes through, Wang Lung's first and foremost allegiance lies in his lands and no matter how far he has gone, he will always return to it. It was just a really strong theme and the title The Good Earth is really fitting!Water on the other hand, changes constantly and with it, Wang Lung's life changes too. The two biggest life-changing events that happened; Wang Lung's family having to leave their land to go begging in the south and Wang Lung's new found interest in Lotus that led to him taking on a second wife; seemed to have been brought about by water. In one instance, the lack of water and in the other, the over-abundance of it. I really liked how these two elements are woven into the story.

Overall, I think this book is a really good book and offered me a lot to think about and reflect on. I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in anything to do with Chinese culture. I'm glad that Dioni told me about the her Asian Book Group and invited me to join in reading and writing about the book.

In her post about this book, Dioni threw about some questions that I'll attempt to answer so as to give a more complete review of the book.

What do you think about the characters? Do you have strong feelings for them?
As I mentioned before, I liked the characters. Actually, to rephrase that, I liked the characterisations in the book. Wang Lung I detested, though I did find some of his qualities to be very admirable. For example, how he never turned his back on his land, because he thoroughly understood that the land is what got him the successful, good life that he had. Too bad he did not view O-Lan in the same way, because she also did so much to get him to where he was. In fact, with the two main characters and the two main elements, I would liken O-Lan to the earth and Wang Lung to water. O-Lan was unchanging, always there and always dependable. Wang Lung on the other hand, would bend and flow according to the situation, sometimes he was a good guy and sometimes a bad guy.

Which scene was the most memorable for you?
When I think of The Good Earth, I always think about Wang Lung's marriage day. I'm not sure why, I think because it really captures life for Wang Lung and his father so well. I especially think about the big deal they make over having tea in the mornings. I always think about that whenever I make a cup of tea for myself. I love Chinese tea :). When I'm at home, I used to sit and drink Chinese tea with my family and eat nuts or sunflower seeds around the breakfast table. So for me, Chinese tea is a very family-ish thing and I can't imagine not ever having access to it freely, unlike Wang Lung and his father.

How do you feel about the white American woman writing about China?
I actually didn't think very much about this until I saw this question. Now, reflecting on the book again, I can see that it could have been a very different book if it was written by a Chinese man. In terms of the man-woman point of view, I think this book does offer a more sympathetic view towards the women. (Or is that just because I'm a woman, so I feel more for the woman??) It's hard to say, but somehow I read a tiny bit of disapproval coming from the author about how Wang Lung treated O-Lan. (Or is that just me??) And at the same time, the women are also shown in quite a heroic light. Regarding the non-Chinese aspect, I think Pearl S. Buck did a really great job capturing the Chinese mentality. She really does know about what it is like to be Chinese, but she has written it in such a subtle way that it really is apparent that she has a deep understanding of it. Not just someone that knows the facts and lists them out to show that they have knowledge of it. However, I think a Chinese author would have focused on different things. Its hard to explain, but I'll try anyway. For example, it comes across very strongly in the book that Wang Lung places so much importance in land. I think a Chinese author would not have had this so strongly as a theme, because the fact that Wang Lung would want more land would seem so obvious and natural to the Chinese author. Another example is the care that Wang Lung takes to 'save face'. 'Saving face' is another really Chinese-y concept that in the hands of a Chinese author, I imagine those situations would have been told in a different way. More of a 'don't even need to tell about it because that's what every Chinese would do' kind of way, as opposed to a 'this is what Wang Lung is doing and it is because he wants to save face'.

I'm not sure if I explained that in a good way...but I hope you get what I mean!

What do you think about the role of women in The Good Earth?
In the Western world, it reads as really appalling. (And is another topic in the book that came to mind when trying to answer the previous question) Daughters are so unwanted in China, even the parents use the word slave to refer to their daughters. It is quite sad and I'm so glad that my dad, as in love as he is with China, did not adopt this same way of thinking! He always tells us how he prefers having all daughters and no sons. :) It is very much a traditional thing though, daughters are married off to other families and from then on, the other family 'owns' them so to speak. So if you were to have a daughter and invest in your daughter, your investment is only repaid until she gets married and then all that care and training and money that you put into her would benefit some other family. Sounds utilitarian but I get how it would hurt in the old days when you might never see your daughter again after her marriage and instead of your daughter looking after you in old age, she is now bound to look after some other family.

I did like that the women characters in The Good Earth were very strong though. O-Lan is just the most amazing, strong woman heroine. Suffering in silence but without her, all the good things wouldn't have come about in that way. The other women are also depicted as very strong. They know their life sucks and they will always be seen as slaves or whores or property but they still persevere and find their own way of life (though still within the confines of society). I liked the character of Cuckoo and Lotus. They are so crafty and wily and had Wang Lung bent over backwards to achieve what they wanted.

Film Photography with my Nikon F60

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:04:00 +0000

I spent the last 2 weekends taking 35mm film photos on my 10 year old Nikon F60. Here's a photo of it that Chen-Po took with his Nikon D60:

Here's one of me using my F60:

After years of using a digital camera and having the convenience of viewing the photos right after, it was really odd to take film photos and not have any idea what the photo would look like. I found that everytime after taking a photo, I would look at the back of the camera. It was such an automatic reflex action! And unlike having big SD cards to hold hundreds of photos, I only had 24 chances to take photos. Sometimes on a digital camera, that's how many photos I take of a single thing, just because I can. With only 24 shots to work with, there was that added stress of trying to find something interesting enough to waste a shot on.

Film photography definitely isn't cheap these days. My camera batteries had finally run out so I had to get 2 new lithium batteries, this cost me about $35. The film was about $20 for 3 packs of 24. We got one roll developed this weekend and it cost about $27.

It was also quite suspenseful waiting for the final product. I was using my new found knowledge of apertures and shutter speeds and so was using the manual modes more. I was certain that all the photos would turn out blurry or over/under exposed or just plain black. So I was really happy when they came back looking pretty alright!

Here's a few of my favourites:

There was a protest gathering in front of the State Library championing Same Sex Marriage and this was just newly chalked onto the ground.

The Food and Wine Festival was in Melbourne that weekend. I really liked the graininess of this picture.

This is the entrance into Block Arcade on Lt Collins St. It was quite a shady area so I'm pleased this didn't turn out blurry after all.

Australian patriotism in the Block Arcade. This flag was spinning slowly around. If I was more confident of my ability to hold the heavy camera extremely still, I would have liked to leave the shutter open for longer and see what kind of effect the spinning flag would have given me.

I absolutely love the architecture of Block Arcade. I think its the prettiest arcade in Melbourne, better even than Royal Arcade.

This is one of the corridors on the First Floor of GPO. Another one of my architectural favourites in Melbourne. I was only confident enough to take a 'daylight' version of this. Chen-Po had the luxury to experiment with his D60 and came up with this:

This is my favourite photo of the lot. Thanks to the handy banisters, I was able to rest my camera in quite a still position while leaving the shutter open for long to get that ghost trail effect. It's a tiny bit overexposed at the top area I think but overall I still love it. I especially like how there's a few people that are just completely still in the midst of the moving crowds.

We had lunch that day at Cookie, my favourite restaurant in Melbourne. I've turned this into a sepia one, I thought it fit the setting and the graininess of the film.

A rooster right in the middle of the alley. This somehow caught my eye just because of its sheer size.

I really like the blurring effect that's at the end of this alley. I think it gives it that canvas-y look.

Film photography is a bit too pricey to do often and at the moment I'd only ever use it for bright day where I can get lots of light. However, there's something quaint and exciting about it. And somewhat more precious, knowing that I can't just take a million shots and hope that one turns out okay.

Waiting, by Ha Jin

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:49:00 +0000

Lin Kong is a doctor at an army hospital and for 18 years, he returns to his village every summer to ask his wife Shuyu for a divorce so that he can marry his girlfriend Manna, who works as a nurse at the same hospital.

On the 18th year, he is finally able to divorce his wife and marries Manna. However all those years of waiting has changed Manna a great deal and he realises he does not love her after all and is now stuck in an unhappy second marriage.

The character Lin Kong really annoyed me through the book. He just wouldn't commit to anything. When he's with Manna, he assures her that he will get divorced. When he's with Shuyu, he doesn't really seem like he wants to get divorced. Basically I think he's a very cowardly kind of guy who seems unable to love anyone. He never loved Shuyu, he didn't really love Manna and he didn't really think or care for his daughter either. I think he didn't want to hurt Shuyu or Manna, but by doing so, he caused them both to suffer through 18 years of just waiting around.

Well I guess that was the main point of the book anyway, that the characters spent 18 years waiting and what happened to them in those 18 years. So if Lin Kong wasn't like that, then there would have been no waiting and no story to tell.

I didn't really like Manna either and a lot of the times, I sort of felt like she had it coming to her. She had a crush on Lin Kong and decided to pursue him anyway knowing that he was married and that it would be difficult for him to get a divorce. I didn't really get the feeling that she loved him all that much but it was more of a situation where since she had chosen him, she was going to stick with him and try to get married to him no matter what.

The book is set during the reign of Chairman Mao and the culture of the times is well woven into the story and plays a big factor in why things happen the way they happened. I liked that aspect of it as I always find it interesting to learn about culture, especially Chinese culture. These are told through the militant rules that Lin Kong and Manna have to observe serving in an army hospital, the way the hospital staff discuss and borrow from Lin Kong's library of books on Western ideologies and the never changing Chinese traditions, outlook and habits of the villagers in Lin Kong's village. Through these, I could imagine a China that is very much trying to modernise itself but not quite finding the right balance yet between the old and the new.

At the end of the day, I don't really know how I feel about this book. I think the characters were believable, even if they were not likeable. I felt like hitting Lin Kong upside the head many times and just yelling at him "Just do something!". If the characters weren't believable, I wouldn't have cared either way. I did like reading about the culture, lifestyle and changes that China was undergoing in that time period. For example one of the reasons Lin Kong was dreadfully embarrassed by Shuyu was because she had bound feet and that made her very antiquated in that time when all of China was modernising. On the other hand, I just recently read The Good Earth where the main character Wang Lung is very disappointed because his wife doesn't have bound feet.

So overall, I would say Waiting does a good job telling its story, it is a good book and it definitely got me thinking and learning. I think if I was around living that kind of life at that time, I would have been able to sympathize with the characters a whole lot more. As it is, I just keep wanting Lin Kong to get more balls and Manna to look for someone else so she would stop her whining.

New Resolution: Learn To Swim

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:34:00 +0000

Okay, I admit it: I can't swim. Never could. Oh, the shame!

But not anymore, I've decided along with all my other life changing resolutions this year, I'm going to learn how to swim.

For years I've been pretty embarrassed about not being able to swim and bearing with the taunts from my sisters about how I can't swim properly. But this year, I thought "I can't swim, I know I can't swim, I should just admit it, stop being embarrassed because that's not going to make me any more able to swim and just learn how to swim properly." Thanks to Sae as well because hearing how she's been swimming regularly at her club somewhat inspired me to want to do that too. Lately, I've been skipping and running more as well and discovering the limitations of my joints, especially my right knee and ankle that went through fairly bad injuries last year. I don't want to injure myself further but I want to be able to increase my cardio as well. Swimming was really the only thing I could think of that would get me exercising without over-exhausting my joints.

When I was little, my parents sent me to swimming classes. I'm guessing I must have been 4 years old because it was in State which is near our house and we only moved there when I was about 4 years old. It was called Atlantis and these days instead of swimming pools, there's a huge building that looks like a Chinese style gravestone except that its white.

I don't really remember anything about these lessons but I remember getting my head pushed in and held down by the instructor (I don't even remember the instructor, but it must have been the instructor) in order to teach me how to breathe. I remember struggling a bit to come up because I didn't actually inhale enough air. (Its possible that I wasn't listening to what the lesson was actually about or what I was supposed to be doing...) But of course I couldn't because of the instructor's hand on my head. And I remember swallowing a whole lot of water and water going up my nose. Well, those classes didn't last very long at all.

Of course, I didn't drown and nothing bad happened to me at all I'm sure. I do remember that I had asthma at around the same time as most kids do and had to go through a lot of X-rays and doctor visits and what not. And somehow I think in my brain, I fused asthma and swimming together.

I love being in the pool and playing around but the moment I reach an area where I know my feet can't touch the ground or my head is under the water without me having gulped big lungfuls of air in preparation, I start to tense up. The moment I swallow a bit of pool water, the same thing happens and I just feeling out of breathe and gasping for air. I know of course that I won't drown and I don't actually think I feel scared or anything but somehow that's just what my body does.

Well, in my effort to get over it, I've started taking private swimming lessons at Melbourne City Baths. Its going really well and I've learnt how to do the freestyle stroke. I've also gained quite a lot of confidence in being in the water and breathing. From now on, it'll just be a matter of practice and practice and persevering through it and trying to change my frame of mind about being underwater. I'm glad I've decided to go for lessons because now I know for sure I'm learning the proper techniques while getting over this psychological state of mind.

I'm quite excited about working through it and hopefully soon, swimming will just be as natural to me as walking. And maybe I can go swimming with Sae as well when I go home.

8 Mar 2010: Labour Day at Melbourne Zoo

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:37:00 +0000

I absolutely love going to the zoo. Chen-Po on the other hand delights in not agreeing to go with me. So we haven't been to the zoo for years, but finally, he relented and agreed to a trip on Labour Day holiday. I think secretly, he wanted to see the baby elephant Mali as much as I did. ;)

After the freak hail storm that hit Melbourne on Saturday, we weren't going to risk going anywhere without an umbrella. And it was good that we brought one, because it started raining quite a fair bit. Which was awesome for driving away the crowds! So we only had to deal with the big crowds of kids at the start of our trip and when we were queueing up to see Mali.

We brought a long our Nikon D60 camera to take photos. Chen-Po's been teaching me how to use it as a proper DSLR, not just as a big point-and-shoot camera. And so our trip yesterday was also a chance for me to practice. I always thought our camera was really fancy and could do everything, but now that I've learnt how to actually use it, I'm starting to see all its limitations. So now, I've joined Chen-Po in hankering after a new DSLR. Photography is expensive!

Well, here's some of my photos:

For more photos, check out my Picasa site.

My favourites were Mali, the meerkats and bestest of all were the red pandas! I absolutely love red pandas, they are super cute and beautiful.

Well, I had a really lovely day at the zoo, hope you all had a wonderful Labour Day holiday too!

Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:34:00 +0000

This is the first ever Haruki Murakami book I've read and what really got to me what how he managed to turn something so mundane and repetitive like running into something so interesting to read about. And what really struck me was how normal he is. I think I tend to elevate artists and authors for some reason and so it was really insightful to read that Haruki Murakami goes through the same kind of thoughts and experiences that I do when running.

I read a comment on a book review site where the reader was disappointed by how normal Haruki Murakami is. He had expected someone weird and abnormal judging by the books that Haruki Murakami writes. I'm the opposite, I love that he is just so normal and yet he can come up with such great creative works. It showed me that you don't have to come from some kind of tragic past, struggling and starving and being hit by all kinds of shit luck and getting dragged through hell and a sewer to be able to create something good. You can be a normal person that has a normal good life and still be able to come up with fantastical worlds, characters and stories. That to me is the most inspiring thing about this book.

And the fact that at the age of 60, he can still a run a marathon! Every time I go out for a run and think about stopping before my goal, I tell myself, "You want to be able to run when you're 60, don't you?? Well if you can't handle this now, you won't be able to handle it when you're 60!" or "Haruki Murakami runs a marathon at 60! I'm 27 and I can't even run 15km?? How pathetic!"

Health Check

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:27:00 +0000

I got a free health check today courtesy of my company signing up for the Victorian Government's WorkHealth Check initiative. I got a blood pressure test, a cholesterol test, a waist measurement test and a blood glucose test. I also had to answer a questionnaire about my lifestyle, for example how much I drink or exercise or how much fruits and vegies I eat.

I think I'm a fairly healthy person and I have upped my exercise levels by heaps so I was hoping for pretty good results. So I was a little disappointed with the outcome. :( Turns out my blood pressure is a tiny bit high. The recommended levels as adviced by the Victorian Government is 120/80. Mine was coming up at 127/89. I know this is fairly variable though, a couple of days ago I had it tested at 123/90 and about a month ago it was 105/78. Either way, I'd like to keep it nice and low on average.

I was quite pleased with my cholesterol level, the guideline is 5.5 or less denotes normal cholesterol levels, mine was 2.74. However, my HDL cholesterol which is the good stuff is meant to be more than 1 and mine was only at 0.9. I'll have to stop trying to avoid those daily fish oil supplements and focus on eating more avocados and nuts.

My blood glucose level was pretty low at 3.5, with 6.5 being the upper limit of Normal. But I think that is not accurate as I hadn't eaten for about 3 hours and was starting to feel hungry. If I had gone in there just after a chocolate snack, it probably would have shown a pretty high reading.

My waist was bordering on the upper limit of Normal, which makes me even more determined to exercise more. Though right now, I'm making the usual excuses like "She measured over my jeans, 2 singlets and a vest!" and "She measured my waist too low, my hip bones pretty big!" I know all that is bullshit and I need to get it down though. Well, I've been wanting to get it down and now it looks like maybe I need to get it down.

One interesting fact I learnt was that being Asian makes me more susceptible to diabetes. I scored a 6 on my diabetes risk score and that just puts me on Medium Risk (6-14). The nurse told me that I got an automatic 2 points for being an Asian female. If I was an Asian male, I would have gotten 3 points right away.

All in all, I'm glad I got this health check, it's definitely inspired me to take better care about what I eat and how much I exercise because I want to get a good score! So if you have an opportunity to get a free Health Check, you should definitely go for it. This particular program is offered to companies completely free by the Victorian Government so if you work in Victoria, ask your company to set this up so you can get your free Health Check!

Race Matters

noreply@blogger.com (eeleng) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:13:00 +0000

As a Malaysian Chinese living in Australia, the topic of race is always hugely interesting to me. Ten years ago, when I was about to come to Australia to study and actually still to this day, people from the older generation keep telling me to take care in Australia because gweilos are racist against Chinese. Which in ten years, I still have not experienced a drop of racism. Or maybe I'm extremely ignorant...blur as they would say in Malaysia...Not to say that there's no racism here, because I'm sure there is and then, there's the extremely interesting issue of the emasculation of Chinese men in Western culture. Here's an interesting blog about Asians in Western society, specifically Asian Americans. Still I find the "gweilos are racist" advice to be so ironic.

All through growing up in Malaysia, we were taught in school that Malaysia is a multicultural place with many races and religions and we live in perfect harmony and unity. Sounds very lovely, doesn't it? And me being innocent and naive, I came to Australia with that opinion too. I was quite high and mighty about it even. "Hah, these gweilos don't know a thing when it comes to living in a multicultural society! Look, they're all gawking at fire crackers and lion dances as if they've never seen them before." And that was really my extent of knowledge into multiculturalism and racism. I thought us Malaysians were better at being multicultural because we know lots of the customs, traditions and languages of other races, whereas the average Caucasian Australians speak only one language and don't know much about other cultures.

I don't think knowing all that is a bad thing, in fact I do feel proud that I can speak English, Bahasa Melayu, Hokkien, snippets of Mandarin and even less snippets of Cantonese. (Actually, I consider that to be pretty bad when I'm at home trying to remember how to order food in Cantonese, but its seems impressive here in Australia) However, it's taken a journey to a whole different continent away from Malaysia for me to realise its not about what you know or tolerate about other races or religions, but how you respect them.

I've seen a lot more respect for other cultures here in Australia than I have back home in peaceful multicultural Malaysia. In Malaysia, I see a lot of grudging tolerance. Its not nice, but I can see why people feel like that. Starting from the way we're questioned about race and religion in school to entering into adulthood with the government policies that segregate according to race, everything seems to me to be about separating Malaysians, not uniting us. It seems like most people in Malaysia are first and foremost Malay or Chinese or Indian, and then secondly they're Malaysian.

I hate to admit, but I have the same kind of mentality too. When watching anything about Malaysia in the world arena, I'm a true Malaysian. I'll cheer any Malaysian athlete on in any sport regardless of race, gender or religion. And I can get all fired up when any non-Malaysian says anything negative about Malaysia. But first and foremost I want to be identified as a Chinese, specifically a Chinese Malaysian.

Many years ago, I was with a couple of Australian friends and when one learned that I came from Malaysia, he remarked "Oh, so you're Malay." And I said "No, I'm Chinese. I'm a Malaysian, but I'm Chinese. My other Australian friend said to him, "Whoa, you can't say you're a Malay to just any Malaysian, man! Malaysians get max pissed off when you just assume they're Malay."

That got to me, because it was somewhat true. At that moment, I was quite fired up because this person didn't seem to know that just cos you're a Malaysian doesn't mean you're Malay. I felt that they should know what race I was. But then why should they? After all, we call people from Vietnam Vietnamese, people from Thailand are Thai, Irish come from Ireland, Italians from Italy, New Zealanders from New Zealand but yet, I'm a Chinese from Malaysia.

I think this kind of mentality is unhealthy but how do you fix it? Its so deeply ingrained since we were all young. Even though none of the government policies in Malaysia really affect me on a day-to-day basis, just the fact that race segregation policies exist is enough to sow negative seeds. Actually, if the policies are removed, would it fix things? I'm not sure, it might but it would take a long, long time to change the mentality of the people.

I love Malaysia and will always consider myself a Malaysian. But sometimes, I'm don't feel too proud of being Malaysian. And I definitely don't feel proud of my own racist mentality either, no matter how much I try to tell myself that I don't have any.