Long, long time ago...

... there was a little girl who is tiny and chubby, cute as a button, and extremely lovable by all...

I'm not sure what triggered me to think back to the childhood (note : I'm still all that, except being 'tiny and chubby'). Don't tell me it's the age thingy, coz I'm still in occassional self-denial about that.


Anyway, this is one of my favourite photo... which at that time, I believe I was still one of the youngest in the family when most of my older cousins had to put up and/or give in to me. And according to my mother, a little tyrannic as well... haha.

So, have you already guessed which is me?? ;p

Come Back To Me - David Cook

*the original music video is blocked for embedding, so have to make do with this*

To the cinema : Angels & Demons

The "Illuminati Diamond"

Finally found the time to watch the movie. I was very excited when I first heard that Angels & Demons is going to be made into a movie. After reading this and The Da Vinci Code, I actually much preferred the former, maybe because the storyline of Da Vinci Code is much more predictable than Angels & Demons.

However, after watching the movie, I can more or less understand the less than average ratings in the reviews for it. According to the husband who had never read the book, he said it was a "good thriller". For me, however, I don't find it as exciting as The Da Vinci Code movie. There seemed to be something missing in the "thriller" department for this movie, and I just can't figure out what it was. Or maybe it was because I already know the ending to it? Or most likely it was because the disadvantage of movie is the limited time they have to bring out the whole story to the audience, and thus, just only skimmed through the main points of the plot, instead of having much more details and interesting explanations in the novel itself. For example, like the thing with the antimatter, if I didn't read the book, I'm sure to get lost in the explanation from the movie, since I'm not a scientist either.

Now I know why people sometimes say not to watch a movie who is produced from a good novel coz they will usually end up to be disappointing.

AAAARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! So what if you are all male, botak, with ang gongs (tattoos) on your arm, and talk louder than the rest of us??!!!! Does it give you a right to cut the queue when we, the poor females have been standing in line for the past 10 minutes??!!! I have the damn right to glare at you... You *beep* *beep* *beeeeeeeeeep*!!!!!!

Huat ah!

The next time you happen to go to Din Tai Fung for a meal, do take a closer look at the pictures in the menu. Those dishes with spring onions as garnish, almost all of them have two green spring onion rings strategically positioned to resemble the number 8. No, they don't look accidental at all. In fact, they looked totally photoshop-ed.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, it was the husband who noticed it. I was only thinking about the food. Ha.

Another year added on

Yes, people... it's that time of the year, and yes, I'm officially in my 30s. No, sir... not going to 30, or 30 only... it's 30s from now on.

And some things just happened everyday, insignificantly... some small little things, that you didn't realised until you looked back, that somehow, are actually reminders that you are getting older...

- when filling online forms for year of birth, you have to start scrolling down to find the year you are born in

- when forms categorised the age group... one moment you are in the group age 26-30, the next moment, you are ticking the group age 31-35

- when much more time is spent on debating whether a certain kind of food/tidbit/drink/dessert is going to give you some kind of age-related disease rather than gobbling it down right away

- when you start to look out for any signs of grey hair while combing in front of the mirror

- when you find yourself spending more time, at a much closer distance from the mirror to check for wrinkles, instead of worrying about pimple outbreak

- when the thought of going to Orchard Road during the weekend actually gives you a headache rather than a sense of excitement and anticipation

- when staying out late every weekend doesn't seem so appealing anymore (you think that going home earlier actually means more time to rest)

- when you have to fight hard to keep yourself awake when the clock reads 2:00 a.m.

- when your iPod keeps playing the same songs for the past year, and you have to rely on your young, little sister to keep you updated on new songs

- when mothers with young kids start to give a look that seems to say "should i ask my ah girl to call her jie jie or auntie?", or worse, the kid straight-away calls you auntie without any prompting from the parent

But then again, like I was talking to Chelly that day, it wasn't so bad being 31. As people will say, age is just a number, what matters is how you look at life and live it. As the Chinese says, 人老心不老 (young at heart). Or maybe I can change to 人老"歆"不老 in another couple of years time. Haha.

CATS (musical)

For the first time, after watching a couple of different musicals, I had to admit that I was at a total lost for the first part of CATS. I didn't read the story of CATS before I went and so, had to try to follow as the music and mood changed. And during the break, Qing went to buy the programme and from there, we suddenly realised that there was not much of a storyline to the musical, but just introductions to the different types of cats in the group.

I guessed I'm not used to watching a show without a proper storyline to follow. But then again, CATS showed me another side of musicals, in which the actors had to have excellent dancing skills (coz they are dancing about half the time), as well as beautiful voices to make the whole thing work. It's definitely not easy having to jump and leap across the stage gracefully, while maintaining a steady singing voice which also, at the same time, portrayed the needed emotions. No wonder all the actors have such good bodies to wear the tight-fitting cats costumes.

Something else that was a little surprising was that the actors had quite a lot of interactions with the audience. The musical started with loud music and blinking lights, and suddenly there was a "cat" preening itself right beside you. And another act which they were reciting a poem (which I'm completely lost), another "cat" will again appear in the midst of the audience. And the scene when the flirtatious Rum Tum Tugger got off the stage, grabbed a lady from the first row and started dancing with her. There were also "cats" running loose during the break which got everyone all excited and cameras started flashing around the theatre. And, nope, yours truly never brought a camera coz I didn't think that it was allowed. Sigh.

I had to admit that CATS was not really what I expected and compared to The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables , and will not rank top of my list of favourite musicals. I'm more a "follow the story" kind of person, guessing what will happen next and what the ending will be. But for CATS, I think those who are dancers or have a passion in dancing will be able to appreciate it more. However, I was still very impressed with the singing, you know those kind that you literally felt your goosebumps rising together with the very first word of the song.