yes, seeing that it is only 1 day to the new year, the ever-present and daunting task of writing a new year’s resolution is at hand yet again. why daunting, you ask. well, as i am no longer a student struggling with academia and am finally of age, i guess it’s time to actually fulfill my resolutions instead of just writing them for the kick of making a new list. so lo and behold, my uber-practical and functional NYR for the first year of a new decade:

STOP:

1. staring agape at the tv (apparently i do this a lot. but what can i say, it’s a hereditary problem)
2. talking so much
3. raising my voice at people who ask stupid questions repeatedly even after you’ve answered them
4. forgetting what the other party is saying mid-conversation and thus becoming starry-eyed
5. eating so much
6. spending so much money
7. saying mean things about people which i don’t mean
8. being so confrontational and opinionated
9. laughing so loudly at inappropriate moments
10. ____________________________________ (HIMITSU)

1. being more punctual
2. being less messy
3. being more patient
4. sleeping before 12 every night
5. working
6. (and thus being able to) save money in a proper bank account
7. reading more classic english literature
8. an expenditure recording book
9. being more hard-wroking and meticulous
10. giving myself the benefit of doubt

hopefully i can accomplish everything i set out to be on this list, even the sketchy big picture numbers like “being less messy”, because let’s face it, big picture resolutions never get fulfilled simply because the item in question is too ambitious, too ingrained within our psyche to change and/or impossible to solve because there is no way of coming up with a working plan to counter it. but most of all i wish to become a better and nicer person, and become more independent.

btw i’ll be moving come 2010. a new blog for the new year!

the good:

1. woke up before 12
2. i ate duck rice for lunch :D yummy yum
3. i exercised!! for once in eons. went jogging
4. saw perfect blue by satoshi kon. it was…very disturbing, but in a way that made you think i guess
5. this awesome time lapse video, very inspiring/cool!

the bad:

1. am still jobless/internshipless
2. whole body aching
3. have to carry new school books for bro from his school tmr -_-
4. i did something silly
5. potentially even stupid beyond repair

argh. why do i always to rubbish things. someone needs to smack me in the face. like, right now.

daybreakers looks like a pretty exciting new film. for once it’s a non-twilight-esque vampire romance movie. it’s interesting because in the premise the tables are turned – humans are the minority in a world inhabited by vampires. blood supply runs out, vampires make a new blood substitute that mutates everyone… yadda yadda yadda check it out:

eggcite excite!! i love a good hack-and-slash. hehe. and since it’s primarily an action movie it’s great for scaredy cats like me cos the scare meter’ll be low.

aaaaand there are 2 robert downey jr movies coming out soon!! sherlock holmes and iron man 2. :D that plus daybreakers make me very berry tres bien merry happy haha. can’t wait!! date me guys to watch when they come out! haha

anyway i was thinking of checking out SAM tomorrow instead of vegetating in front of the computer doing nothing (at this rate i’m going blind), but i checked out the current exhibitions online and all of them seemed so shingz. not like i’m turning my nose up at local talent, but i wanna see some famous artists! not asian art 24/7. or maybe i’ve missed the season where they brought in the touring collections, bleh. oh well i shall leave that plan until next week then.

my plan today to do update my scrapbook, clean and reorganise my room, go downstairs to jog off the fats acquired, look for a job online… failed. computers and technology is going to be my downfall. :( i’m half-way a slug already.

in other news i went to watch avatar yesterday. the plot was slightly formulaic but the cgi was too good to be true! possibly one of the best movie’s i’ve seen so far. then at night ate takoyaki and noodles, and chilled out at clarke quay with pamster. i think they should put ladders on the ledge of the bridge there for unatheletic people like me. oh well better rest now cos next week is gonna be busy

sigh and life is full of regrets and irreversible decisions. sometimes when you wanna change something, you gotta go back all the way to the beginning and start from the top down. when faced with a decision with equal pros and cons you just have to go with your gut feeling. and with that said i knew i shouldn’t have chosen chimchar at the start. darn it

to avoid stuffing myself (figuratively, of course) i’m gonna watch one movie a day to widen my perspective on… stuff. okay i don’t really know why i should watch a movie a day, but i do know i love watching movies! you know, so as to pass time and procrastinate because i don’t want to study for lnat become more cultured. and because you can’t really become more cultured if you watch rubbish films (like that frankenstein-which-looked-like-corsola-with-stiches-in-his-eyeballs movie), i’ve gone lengths to read many “top 10 films to see before you die” lists so that i can single out nice movies to enjoy. and i came up with a list (it’s there on the left-hand side i just updated it) which i can hopefully complete.

hmm however i do think movies are kind of like substitutes for books, because even though the former basically consist of all the main elements of literature; from the mechanics of plot, climax, turning point, to the more technical/craftsmanship-based aspects of theme, metaphor, symbol, paradox (and my personal favourite, chekhov’s gun), movies are fundamentally a director’s vision of a story, or idea. When you read literature, as a reader, you’re expected to do all the imagining, thinking and inferencing based on the words you read. The author may carefully craft his diction to invoke a certain emotion or reaction, but the degree or accuracy of the type of feeling invoked varies to the individual, and may or may not adhere to the author’s original intention. Conversely, in a movie, the director or producer does all the imagining for you – the cinematography, dialouge, pacing and etcetera are all combined to create a visual spectacle developed to manipulate you into thinking or feeling a certain way. you might think “manipulate” may be too strong a word, but if you think about it carefully, books tend to make you think more than movies because there’s so much room for imagination and speculation, whereas for movies everything’s in front of you like a smooth-running 8 course dinner – you can’t choose the individual components but wait for the chef to serve you, whereas books are more like a la carte menus where you can pick and choose.

anyway, where was i! oh right, i watched the bucket list today, starring morgan freeman and jack nicholson, a movie about how 2 men nearing the expiry dates of their lives befriend each other and make a list of things to do before they die, and set about completing it. what makes the movie great is the fact that, instead of focusing on the to-do list, the director chooses to zoom-in primarily on the chemistry between the two men. and i also loved the ending! made me teary-eyed :’) but in a good way of course.

after i watched it i felt inspired to think about my own bucket list, but i could only list materialistic or very gimmicky things, like “eat premium caviar and drink vodka for dinner in Russia”, “go horse-riding through the english countryside”, “kiss the man i love” and “run around the beach at the part where the sand meets the waves with my big, white, long-haired dog and then fall tiredly onto a pile of cushions by the shade of a palm tree while male servants feed me peeled grapes” (okay, that last one i made up for comedic effect, but anyone’ll agree that that’s something to include on their lists :D). maybe as i grow older i’d think of more selfless and big-picture things to do, heh.

hmm what’s on your bucket list? maybe it’ll be the first step onto making you appreciate life more! i’ve decided to come up with one to be put into action once i save up enough money, buy my parents a house, see my kids get married and then retire. hopefully! because life never does as well as it’s planned… fortunately or unfortunately.

what’s on your bucket list?