Another World

After I got into all the Korean and (sort of) Japanese music, I didn't really listen to anything else except for the occasionally English song. I was so warped into the Korean Entertainment world, i would even watch all these Korean variety shows and such. It was almost like an addiction.

I don't know what made me leave the Korean entertainment world... maybe it was because DBSK disbanded. I know I GOT INTO all the Korean stuff BECAUSE OF DBSK, so I guess once they disappeared, my interest for the Korean world slowly faded. What I really liked about Korean music, and I guess I still appreciate it, is the fact that most singers can actually sing and they can dance too, at the same time!

Before Korean stuff, I listened to mainly mainstream English songs and Cantonese songs. I was never addicted to English entertainment... probably because it's always been around me. Cantonese songs were good... but... a lot of the singers weren't all that great and I can't think of an idol Cantonese singer who can actually sing and dance. Most of the people I can name are oldies, for example, AARON KWOK. LMFAO. Sherry thinks he's oily... wtf?!

SO. I guess when I first listened to Korean music, I was really impressed, like, "Wow. These people can really sing and dance." So I did appreciate them for their talent. And then I realized all the Korean girls are really pretty and they're all so skinny and pale and they have the most perfect noses. LOL.

I think I started watching 娱乐百分百 because of Rainie. I've always sort of followed her music. So once she appeared on that variety show and I watched Dancing King teach her how to dance and it was just absolutely HILARIOUS. Ever since then, I started watching 娱乐百分百. I love the two host, 小猪 and 小鬼. They're so funny! I'd love to just have them in my life and make me laugh everyday. The variety show talks about Taiwan entertainment and it helps artists promote songs and albums and movies and such so when guests come onto the show, I get to know who they are and if I like them, I'll search them up, listen to their music, watch their movies. My mom says I have 三分热度 and I can see what she means by that. Nothing for me is forever. I can say that I love to dance and I would love to dance forever but for me, forever ends. I can bored of things. I'm always searching for change and better things.

I don't know if that means I'm someone who's just seeks perfection and strives for improvement OR if it means that I'm just a 分心 kind of person where I'm just really greedy and I want more and more. I can see it BOTH ways as a good and bad thing. I mean to have the courage to switch careers and find something more suitable for me is a good thing. But to always be switching jobs because I'm bored isn't a great thing... that means I'll never actually ever be GREAT at something. I'll just be good at everything, I'll get a taste of everything but I'll never excel at ONE thing. If I see this as a bad thing about myself, I don't know if I can actually change this trait. I mean, when I'm bored of something, I seriously don't give a shit about it and even when I FORCE myself to like it, my heart is still empty... I don't feel it. I can tell myself how much I love it but deep inside I know I don't. And no matter how much I try to love it, I can't bring myself to dedicate 100% of myself to it. When I stop liking something, I don't get a sense of reminisce. I don't miss it. I don't regret it. I just completely forget it about and I don't care about it anymore.

Maybe all this change just means that I'm still searching for the right thing. That's possible right??? It just means I'm trying on all the different sizes and styles before I find what I actually like, right? And after all this testing is done, I will find the right outfit for me.

How did I get to talking about this? LOL

So as I was saying about Taiwanese entertainment stuff... It's absolutely great. I love it. Alan Luo is absolutely amazing. I love him to death. I should do one of those TOP 10 HOTTEST GUYS list every year and I can see how it changes every year. Actually, it probably changes every month for me, lol.

When I talk about Alan Luo, I have to mention JOLIN TSAI. WHY DOES EVERYONE LOVE HER SO MUCH?! And WHYYYYY do people call her the Dancing Queen of ASIA?! Does she deserve such a title? If there has to be a dancing queen of Asia, the award definitely goes to BoA. FO SHO. I don't know why I don't like her all that much. I like her fast songs, they're pretty good. I don't think she can sing slow songs very well. And her dancing isn't bad, I just don't think she's the DANCING QUEEN of ASIA. You know... that's a big title. LOL. I think what bothers me is that she has no personality. I know she's a singer/dancer so her job title doesn't entail "have a personality" but I think singers/dancers = entertainers and therefore entertainers must have some kind of personality. When I watch interviews of her, she's so BORING! And maybe it's a language barrier, and I don't understand everything she's saying but she comes across as bitchy. Like if people ask her, "Would you ever date Alan Luo?" She'd be like, "I've answered that question like 300 times. The answer is no." And she says it in such a oh-em-gee-I-know-everyone-wants-to-date-me kind of way.

Before I didn't really know who she was... I only knew her to be the rumored ex-girlfriend of Jay Chou. At that time, I saw a picture of her and I was like, "Oh she's pretty. And when they stand beside each other, they do look good together." BUT NOW. I THINK HE'S TOO GOOD FOR HER!!!!!

The other Taiwanese female that bothers me is Barbie Hsu. SHE'S EVERYWHERE! I like her younger sister more. Even though her younger sister throws herself at every guy, we all know it's all fun and games. Barbie just comes across as really bitchy. I can't stand entertainers who think they're all that and act all like, "Yo. I'm THE hottest thing here so please step out of my way."

Those two females are so popular in Taiwan but I don't see what's so great about them. I really like Rainie Yang. She's also really big in Taiwan too but she's so endearing and she's so nice to all her fans. I can't stand her dramas because she always plays this absolutely annoying "cute" female. Don't believe me? Watch any of her dramas. I think Devil Beside You is the only drama of hers that I really enjoyed but that's because she acts like a normal person in that drama, lol and not some uneducated stupid girl who talks to hairdryers *rolls eyes*. I LOVE HER SONGS. ALL HER SONGS. I LOVE THEM ALL!!!!!

This is all I have to rant today about Taiwan singers. I'm starting my TOP 10 HOTTEST GUYS list. I don't know if I'll finish today but hopefully I will. I can't wait to share them with you!

I am in so much pain right now.

I spent 6 hours at the dentist office today. I have to go back on Wednesday to do some crown lengthening. I'm in such a crappy mood right now.

Sigh.

霹雳MIT Review

I finished watching 霹雳MIT, it's a 2008 Taiwanese drama.

Ever since I watched Bump Off Lover, I've been dying to find a substitute for it. Bump Off Lover is also a Taiwan drama, I think it aired in 2006 and it was only 14 episodes. I absolutely love it. It is so different from the typical lovey-dovey dramas, it is a suspense/mystery kind of series. Wikipedia considers it a "thriller" but I beg to differ, it's dark and a little scary at times but not exactly a "thriller" nothing in it makes you scream. So anyways. That drama is SO good that I had to find another suspense/mystery drama so since I sort of have a bit of time over this summer, I decided to wikipedia some dramas to watch.

I'm really into the Taiwan entertainment stuff now. So first I started watching Dancing King teach Rainie Yang how to dance on Youtube and it was just an EXCERPT of a show. So I googled what the show is called and it's called 娱乐百分百(100% Entertainment) so then I started watching the variety show and I totally fell in love with 小猪 and 小鬼. They're so cute and funny. No not funny, HILARIOUS. THEY MAKE ME LAUGHHH SO HARD. And one of the episodes I watched guest starred 飛輪海(Fahrenheit) and I started to really like Aaron. I never really paid attention to that band before. I also thought of them as the stupid Taiwan band in which none of the members could sing, dance or act and everyone in Taiwan who is a fan of them is completely blind because none of the members are good looking either. In other words, they were just a band who had NOTHING to offer. I mean, Japanese has a lot of those like pretty boy groups who can't sing or dance but they're good looking and they have personality, but 飛輪海 had nothing! I just always wondered why people liked them so much. So NOW that I have watched a variety show and they can kind of show their personality, I guess they're sort of funny. Sort of. Not really. I still think they can't sing or dance. OH MY GOSH. They performed songs off their newest album and they were all offtune half the time and they weren't even HARMONIZED during the chorus. At the end I don't know where the applause was coming from?! LIKE... WHO'S CLAPPING?! AND WHY?! IT WAS SO BAD!!! The song was good, they just couldn't sing it because when I heard the album version after the music technician cleans up their tones and voices, the song does sound pretty good. When they had their solos, they sounded much better. I think maybe they can sing... they just can't sing together. Honestly, when they sing together it sounds like one of those kindergarden choirs where the teacher tries to put a performance together and the kids are all singing at different times and at different volumes. Geez.

In terms of looks, I guess to me, now they look better and more mature and not so anime-like. I think Calvin and Wuzun are the two guys in the group where I can actually see their face. I only know what half of what Aaron's and Jiro's faces look like because their hair drapes over their head and face. But I can tell they're good looking because if you're ugly, hair isn't going to cover it. How do I know this? Danson Tang. I'm sorry, but that guy is so weird looking to me!!! He has so many fans though! So yeah. Anyways, the guys look decent to me now, not bad. I can NOW see why they have fans. LOL.

So WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL THIS?! Point is, I watched 飛輪海 on 娱乐百分百 and Aaron caught my attention so I wikipedia-ed him and I realized that his newest suspense drama is 霹雳MIT so I decided to watch it with VERY high hopes. The short summary that I read really caught my attention so I was literally like, "Okay. I'm going to watch all 16 episodes right now STRAIGHT no sleep!"

So the first episode starts and I was beyond confused. Why? Because they don't give you any sort of background information, you're just thrown into a plot. And it's not like thrown into a crime scene, a very suspenseful sort of plot where you're very attentive "into" everything, trying to figure out what's going on. You're basically just randomly thrown into the plot with nothing, really boring. And you're sort of forced to put pieces together yourself along the way. I can probably tell you that the only reason why people would watch this from beginning to the end is for Aaron Yan and Guigui. Non-fans would probably just go, "Yo. Wtf?! So retarded *turns on another drama*"

So the story starts off with Aaron on campus. I STILL don't know if he plays a university or a high school student. I'm guessing he's a university student just because I think at ONE POINT his friend mentioned that he was 22. So...

But anyways, before I say anything else. Let me tell you what I've learned from the drama:

Mastermind builds a maze. 007 and
Lucifer need to know what numbers
to step on or it will explode.

1. University students do not need to study at all. They can be A+ students and never have to carry a book, nevermind read one.
2. You can access student records from any computer on campus, you do not need administrative passwords or any sort of server database.
3. People dying and getting kidnapped on campus ON A REGULAR BASIS does not make headline news... EVER or make it news-worthy.
4. Through the phone, you can tell if the people on the other end is swimming in deep or shallow water just by listening to the water sounds.
5. On the entire university campus, there’s like 2 professors and a principal, literally.
6. When you hear your name being called in a creepy voice repetitively in the washroom, don’t run out. Just plop yourself on the floor and cover your ears and cry. Oh, and call the hottest guy in the school to come save you.
7. A picture of a skull from clipart posted on the bulletin board in daylight is enough to scare the living shit out of university girls.
8. Anyone hit in the head is automatically knocked unconscious, regardless of power, location, or weapon used.
9. There are no caretakers or police on campus. Evidence or blood or STRAINS OF HAIR will be found at the scene of the crime after several days even if the area hasn’t been blocked off.
10. There is no need to test any of the hair, blood or evidence found at the crime scene. You can just automatically assume it belongs either to the victim or the suspect. It usually belongs to the person who fits the story you've formulated better.
11. You can be running at the same speed behind someone, but the moment they turn a corner, they have the ability to completely disappear even if the area is completely empty.
12. When trying to guess someone’s username or password, just call the genius guy out. He’ll get it right on the first try, there is no need to hire a hacker or perform any sort of hack.
13. When entering into dark rooms, don’t turn on the lights, use a flashlight instead so your chances of getting hit by an object (#8) will increase.
14. University students are allowed to be detained by teachers at midnight for interrogation. This is not considered kidnapping or a violation of rights.
15. People, who are afraid of water and have never learned how to swim, can suddenly jump into the water and swim to save someone in the time of crisis.
16. University buildings are open 24/7 for students to run around and kill each other.
17. Students have enough money to buy bombs, high-tech surveillance cameras, chemicals.
18. Students have enough time on their hands to build complex contraptions and mazes and "games" to torture their hostages/victims.
19. 5 year old kids will come back 15 years later for revenge because they were teased.
20. When people burn documents or evidence to try and hide the truth, they will always walk away before the object is completely in ashes so that the person spying on them and go and put out the fire and rescue what is left of it. Usually what is left of it is the most important bit of the document/evidence. The fire will never burn the most important bits.
21. Video cameras can be installed anywhere and programmed to be watched on any computer at any time with a click of the enter key.
22. You can bid for pizza and cookies on an auction site.
23. More than half the buildings on campus are just empty rooms that look like warehouses. Perfect for hiding hostages and building bombs.
24. Students don’t get fat from eating 5 bowls of noodles at midnight pretty much every night.In the most hopeless situation, just believe in love. It will help you find the right key to unlock the lock on the door.

It explodes because Lucifer is stupid.

So as you can see already. Nothing in the drama is believable and obviously I KNOW movies and dramas aren't supposed to be realistic and all-true-can-totally-happen. However, it has to be BELIEVABLE and I think this aspect is often forgotten in idol dramas. It's almost like they write whatever they want and if there are loopholes in the plot they just ignore it or they choose some really lame excuse to just fill in the gap.

This drama I thought had potential to be really good but it seemed really low budget. I mean, the cast was so small, it was like they couldn't even hire enough people to play as other professors or students. And setting was so repetitive throughout the drama.

Why did I think it has potential? The idea of a serial mastermind at a university has never been really explored in Taiwan dramas. A team of students put together to catch this mastermind is absolutely brilliant I think. And I like how the group of students are "blacklist" students which means that they fail academically and that doesn't really mean much here in North American universities but in Asian countries, they have rankings and so if you're at the bottom of the list, it's well-known, it's not something you can hide.

So what's the problem Steph? Well, nothing seems realistic. I agree that having a serial killer in the school isn't realistic to begin with but it feels possible to me. Like... it's not IMPOSSIBLE to have a serial mastermind at a university. Maybe it would be hard to have one at UT because it's so big and there's no campus feel, but I think Chinese universities have a much smaller campus... well, at least the one in the drama is. I almost thought it was a high school O_o. So I think the idea of this serial killer can totally work and having a group of students to go after them can totally work too... but... you would have to keep it believable. How?

霹雳MIT work all night to crack the case.

For starters. POLICE and FBI or some kind of higher authority need to be involved. We're talking about a serial killer hurting students! This isn't just school matter anymore. Second of all, students on blacklist or not, should study and do homework or at least ATTEND the damn classes. Obviously, I'm not asking for the director to film the characters sitting at desks and doing their homework for 5 minutes. I'm just asking for a BRIEF scene where I can see them attending classes, sort of like a scenes starts with the student walking OUT of a classroom. You know? Or a scene starts with the student being frustrated with homework and slams his textbook shut and walks out of his dorm to whatever they have to do. YOU KNOW?! LIKE SHOWWWW THE AUDIENCE that the student is a STUDENT. Can you believe that in the ENTIRE drama, in all 16 episodes, not ONCE did these students hold a frigging pencil or attend a single class. There was this ONE line in the entire movie where a teacher was like, "Okay. That's it. You head onto class right now." If it weren't for that, I think I would've just assumed that students at that university don't have classes to attend. I mean, the WHOLE 16 episodes, the director didn't waste a second to show the audience that these are STUDENTS and TEACHERS and they're in a school environment.

TIME. I think the time issue throughout the drama really bothered me. It's morning, then night, then afternoon and in one episode they solve ONE case. Too fast. That's like watching 16 CSI episodes in a row. AND WE ALL KNOW HOW RIDICULOUSLY FAKE CSI IS!!! So yeah, they should've at least slowed down the pace of the entire drama, I know they were going for the each episode, new case, new game sort of thing. But... it was just too fast for me I thought. As mentioned above, I really disliked the frequent group meetings at night. I mean, that's so unbelievable... students have to sleep! No?! It's like everyday they meet at the middle of the night to come up with some brilliant plan to counter the mastermind. So basically these students don't study and don't sleep. Their life is pretty much dedicated to finding this mastermind.

Okay, let me start from the beginning now so that you can all understand better.

So the drama focuses on this group of students who are "blacklist" students, which means they fail academically. There is 4 of them and they're led by a teacher named Cherry. So they call her Miss Cherry or Cherry老师. These 4 students all differ in personality and character development. One thing I'm pleased with is the character development throughout the drama and the diversity of the characters. The 4 protagonists:

1. Zhan Shi De; aka. 007 - Aaron Yan

From left to right: 747, 007, Lucifer, 187

He's the genius in the group. His dad is some really famous detective. He is supposed to follow his father's footsteps and also become a brilliant detective but he has some disease... Meniere's disease. Something to do with a disease where your hearing progressively decreases and you get migraines and you faint easily. Funny thing is that Aaron who plays this role is also diagnose with this disease. Crazy eh? He was diagnose a year later after he filmed this drama. Okay so anyways, because this dude has this disease, he's kicked out of this great academy of learning how to become a detective and his father sends him to his university to study. He's the really smart one. Really good looking one. And he's usually the one who solves all the cases.

2. Huang Hui Hong; aka. 747 - Xiao Gui/Huang Hong Sheng/Alien Huang

He's the kind of student one in the group. He's the hero that kind of rushes into everything without thinking and just kinds of ruins the entire plan the group made. He’s really good at running so his leg is called Golden Leg or something like that. LOL. That’s his specialty in the group... running.

3. Qian Fu Hao; aka. 187 – Lu Ting Wei

He’s supposed to be the “playboy” in the group, which means that every girl in the school just falls in love with him the moment they see him and he can make them do anything. I like this concept. LOL. And also has this “network” which is made up of all the girls (I think hot girls) in the school. So if anything happens in the school and he needs to know, for instance, if anyone has seen a guy with a purple baseball cap walking around the campus, he just texts his network of girls and within seconds anyone who has seen a guy with a purple baseball cap would send him a picture text and the location. See? Kind of amazing, don’t you think? I actually really like the actor who plays this part. He is good looking and he totally fits the character. Originally, the part was given to some other dude, who isn’t even good looking. And about a month into filming, he was arrested for sexual harassment... I think that’s what he was arrested for. And so the part was given to Lu Ting Wei instead, which I’m so grateful for.

4. Li Xiao Xing; aka. Tian Mo Xing – Gui Gui

So why doesn’t she have a code name? Well, apparently the codes were given by Miss Cherry to help her remember the numbers on her social insurance card or something like that. And since all the numbers were given out, she doesn’t have any more numbers to given and therefore, her name is Tian Mo Xing which translates to Lucifer. She’s the only girl in this 霹雳MIT group. *rolls eyes* OF COURSE a girl is needed in the group, or else how would the typical love triangle form? So she’s the love interest of 747 and 007. I’m just going to use code names to describe these people because it’s much easier. 187 doesn’t like her even though he’s a womanizer because she’s not hot enough for him. But everyone still cares for her even though she’s completely useless. Oh, well her skill is following her instincts and reading horoscopes and zodiacs and fortune cookies -_________-. What a useful skill. Well, it does sometime serve a useful purpose in the drama and I think... they could’ve really made her into a really plot-breaking character because of her mystic skill but sadly they kept her character really shallow.

So those are the main protagonists.

Le Ke Ying, Miss Cherry, and Teacher Angel

Now for the antagonists:

1. Teacher Angel

Although her name sounds nice, she’s a total bitch. In the drama, she plays the teacher but often times, she acts more like the principal. She just goes around ordering people what to do and she can tell Miss Cherry what to do. So I get this feeling that she’s of higher authority. She looks up to smart students and students who have parents who can help their school expand. She thinks Miss Cherry is stupid and 霹雳MIT is completely useless. I just sort of wished that she didn’t think this way for the ENTIRE frigging drama because it’s so tiring. I mean... when are you going to wake up and see that 霹雳MIT has done so much to save your damn ass.

2. The Principal

I don’t know if he’s really considered an antagonist since he doesn’t really do much. He’s the father of Miss Cherry. See. This is how I see it. If TEACHER ANGEL can boss Miss Cherry around, who’s the PRINCIPAL’S daughter, then obviously she’s of higher authority. He hangs around Teacher Angel more. They have some kind of affair going on that I never really cared about only to find out that their affair plays a big role in driving the plot forward. I only see him as an antagonist because he’s a catalyst to all the killings. I will explain how later. But he’s not bad in the way of interfering with 霹雳MIT nor does he directly CAUSE any of these incidents.

3. Lu Ke Ying

THE BAD GUY. In the beginning, he’s portrayed as this innocent boy who bullied by everyone. He’s the son of Teacher Angel and so obviously she favors him and if he does anything wrong, she’ll protect him. What I don’t understand is how the students have the guts to pick on a TEACHER’S son... that makes no sense. If anything, you should suck up to him and be his best friend! Students are so stupid.

OKAY. SO NOW DOWN TO THE REAL PLOT.

The school has this bad guy, we’ll just call him the Mastermind, who tries to screw up the school and make bad things happen. What do you mean by bad things? So what he does is he tries to find weak students or students who have a immense amount of hate inside of them and he brings out that hate. By doing so, he helps the students find ways of expressing their hate and taking revenge of the horrible things that has happened to them. So there are 16 events that happen, and obviously I’m not going to go through them because some of them are really stupid and LAME.

So Mastermind has a CD that he passes to the person who he wants to play the game with. So let’s say, I’m ranked second place on the school ranking and I know the girl who ranked first cheated to get first place. I have this immense hate towards her. Mastermind knows that I hate her (I don’t know how) and he gives me a CD and he shows me how to play the game so that I can get back at her for cheating. You know? So I might use candle wax to write something scary in the girl’s show stall and time it SO PERFECTLY that the first ranked girl walks, uses the shower stall and when she turns on the tap, instead of water, red water comes out, in which looks like blood, and the scary writing shows up and scares the shit out of her. Make sense? And I follow her everywhere to get her all paranoid. LOL. And I eventually poison her. LOL.

While all this is happening, the 霹雳MIT group tries to help the first ranking girl by finding out who is doing all this stuff to her and WHY. They eventually catch me and I confess to them by saying, “I DIDN’T WANT TO DO ALL THIS! MASTERMIND MADE ME!”

And 霹雳MIT response, “Do you also have CD?”

I nod.

“Where is it?”

“In my room.”

霹雳MIT rushes to my room to find the CD gone. Instead they find a puzzle piece.

Get it?

So all 16 episodes is really just something bad happens, 霹雳MIT tries to find out who Mastermind is targeting. They will catch the person who Mastermind uses to hurt other people. They will find a puzzle piece and never get the actual CD. All the puzzle pieces put together some sort of picture that’s supposed to explain why Mastermind is doing all of this. What is his ultimate goal?

So near the end of the series, I think episode 14, you find that Lucifer is involved in Mastermind’s plans. She is apparently his twin O________o. Of course, we don’t figure all this out to the end, but here’s the full explanation.

Both Lucifer and Lu Ke Ying are separated at birth. Teacher Angel is their mother and her affair with the Principal makes him the biological father of the children. I’m still UNSURE whether or not he is aware of it the entire time or if he finds out the same time the audience finds out, you know? Either way, I don’t think it changes much. So both Lucifer and Lu Ke Ying eventually find out that they are siblings and so they get together to get back at their parents. Actually, I should reword that. They’re not getting back at their parents, they want to see what matters more to their parents, them or the school itself. So they target these “weak” students and basically just cause trouble in the school. Kidnapping, fighting, I think people do get killed too and so all this stuff happens and Teacher Angel has to protect the school’s image and her son. What I don’t get is what exactly are they protecting their school from? The director never adds the public in or the press. There are no press conferences of the principal giving the public some kind of 交代 of what happened. Teacher Angel only mentions other international schools wanting to join with them to expand their school internationally. But that’s about it, as far as I’m aware, the public doesn’t even know what’s happening in the school.

So Lu Ke Ying is the mastermind behind everything. Lucifer helps out but near the end she wants him to give up the game and he refuses. The final scene, Lu Ke Ying kidnaps Teacher Angel, the principal and Lucifer and he ties them all to chairs and puts them at a dinner table. And he goes, “I’m so glad that we can finally sit together and have a full family dinner. Tonight, we will all be truthful to each other because there are no lies in a family.” PFFT. OKAY?! WHAT family fantasy do you live in? Seriously, family members lie to each other ALL the time and usually the lies are made to keep the family together. I guess, since their family is all split up, they have nothing to lose right? So I guess it doesn’t hurt for them to be honest with each other.

So Lu Ke Ying brings them together and he’s like, “So why did you abandon my twin sister?”

And the mom is like, “Because I only had enough milk to feed one of you. You were the weak one, so I kept you and I gave her away to my best friend. I knew she would be taken care of.”

And he’s like, “ARE THESE MORE LIES?! BECAUSE I CAN’T STAND ANYMORE LIES!”

And the mom is like, “That is the truth. If you don’t believe me there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Lu Ke Ying believes her. And somehow 007 is also caught in this dinner table. I don’t know why, he doesn’t exactly fit the family. I don’t think he should’ve been there. That’s such bad directing/script-writing. Maybe they wanted to portray that no matter what, there family can never be a complete whole on its own, there always has to be something/someone in the middle obstructing the circle. However, I feel that the final climax scene should only have the 4 family members because throughout the WHOLE drama, that’s what Lu Ke Ying really wants. He should be granted that final wish. And I think it would be much more symbolic to just have the 4 of them without 007 there. So anyways, with 007 there, he says to Lucifer, “It’s not that she doesn’t love you now. She does. But because she gave you up, she doesn’t acknowledge you as her daughter now as a punishment for herself.” I think that’s a good justification as to why Teacher Angel is so cold to her but I think even if she were to punish herself, she shouldn’t punish her daughter. It would’ve been more believable if some mother-daughter love was shown throughout the film but there is none whatsoever, so I didn’t buy the “to punish herself” excuse.

So after the truth comes out, Lu Ke Ying eats a cherry which has poison in it and he tries to kill himself. He faints and the entire 霹雳MIT crew find them and saves the day. The ending just show Lucifer and 007 together being all lovey dovey and Miss Cherry as the principal of the school. And in the very final scene we hear a voiceover, “You think it’s gameover? The game just started.”

I like the ending but... that only leads me to think of 2 things.

1. We have a new mastermind?

2. Lu Ke Ying was one of the Mastermind’s targets? And the REAL MASTERMIND hasn’t been caught yet?

I’m not sure which one it is. It might be because my Mandarin sucks and I might missed out on some of the details throughout the drama so I might not have understood everything. But overall, I’m pretty sure I caught everything because I didn’t fast forward anything. And if there was a word I didn’t understand, I would pause the drama and like look up the word to be sure.

I didn’t appreciate the 007 and Lucifer love line. They are cute together but Lucifer is just so dunce. I hate dramas where the girl is always like, “OH MY GOSH. I’m so stupid. I can’t do anything. Why do you like me?” *rolls eyes* BECAUSE HE’S STUPID TOO! Like really, WHY do you like her??? WHY?! She can’t do anything! Why do you love her? She ALMOST killed you! She has nothing to offer in the relationship! She just screams and cries. GAWD. SO ANNOYING. She does have her good moments when she’s taking care of him. I can see how much she truly loves him but Lucifer needs to grow up. I like the she acknowledges the fact that she’s stupid, lol. Now the second step would be to TRY to not be stupid. I would probably like Lucifer a lot more if she developed to be a stronger female character. I’m not expecting her to be a genius like him at the end or be able to keep herself completely out of trouble but I do expect her to be stronger and smarter... in some ways. You know? I also didn’t really want her to be involved in the whole Mastermind thing. It is definitely a twist, but a stupid one I thought. I wouldn’t mind if she is one of the people that the Mastermind decides to play with and make her do bad things. In fact, I think that would be a great way to show her growth and development. The drama could have really benefited from that. But to have Lucifer INVOLVED in the Mastermind’s plans to make everyone miserable... that’s ridiculous. And the whole time, she’s dedicated to catching the Mastermind? I don’t quite understand that. And the drama isn’t clear as to WHEN she found out that Lu Ke Ying is Mastermind. Was it from the very beginning at episode 1? Or did she only find out near the end?

The more I discuss about the drama, the more loopholes I see. Okay. Point of that entire upper paragraph is... Lucifer and 007 = no. ORRRRRR Lucifer needs to demonstrate character improvement to PROVE TO THE AUDIENCE that she deserves a guy like 007.

Miss Cherry didn’t really do much in the drama. At one point, Teacher Angel succeeds in disbanding the group and she sends Miss Cherry off to Africa to teach the children there O________o WTF?! YEAH. I KNOW. WTF?!

A lot of random stuff happens. I think what’s really important in a drama series is keeping to the plotline and development. Since dramas give scriptwriters an opportunity to really build on plot, characters and themes, it is easy to drift away from the main points and just add in random events to... I don’t know... liven up the plot. It’s hard to have “everything happens for a reason” theory applied to dramas because it’s so easy to stray from the backbone of the story.

I don’t like how Lu Ke Ying is revealed as the mastermind. They should’ve made it more dramatic and more unpredictable. I mean this ENTIRE drama is about 霹雳MIT hunting for this guy. In episode 15, they pretty much just give away the bad guy without much drumroll and so when the climax came... it is so boring.

The ideas are good. I think if I could remake a drama series, I would remake this one with all my improvements in it. LOL. It would be a much better watch. It would be different but the main concept of a bunch of students catching a mastermind would be there. I think 747 needed a bigger role in the series. Most of the time they just had him hopelessly in love with Lucifer. *rolls eyes*

Miss Cherry needs to be more useful too. Throughout the whole drama she’s just on an auction site buying stuff or she would be arguing with Teacher Angel. COME UP WITH SOME THEORIES. GO RUN WITH THE STUDENTS. Don’t just sit in your office the whole day and let the students run around doing all the investigating.

I don't know why but this picture says a thousand words. Their expressions totally show their
characters in the drama.

Overall out of 10, I would probably give this drama a 6/10. It wasn’t very satisfying. I was looking for something suspenseful and exciting but I got lame and well... more lame. I think the drama has really good ideas and the scriptwriter just didn’t have enough time to build on all those ideas. I know idol dramas are never really realistic, the most impossible thing happens and that’s why we LIKE watching them... because we can see the impossible happen, we can appreciate the fantasy world that’s built by the actors and the directors. However, when the fantasy world is broken by superficial thoughts, ideas and immature concepts... the fantasy world is broken and the audience is just watching a series of events that makes no sense. And we’re all left asking the question WHY?!

WHY does 007 like Lucifer? Why does Lu Ke Ying want to kill himself at the end? Why does the principal not favor his daughter over his love affair? If Lu Ke Ying wanted to know if his mother cared about him or not, why didn’t would he hurt other students if he, too, is looking for love? Why is he involved in other events if he’s the mastermind? Is it to throw off 霹雳MIT members? Why does Lucifer help Lu Ke Ying? Because she wants to know why her mother threw her away. But why stop helping then? Why back off? And the MAIN WHY QUESTION. WHY does Teacher Angel keep all this from her son? I mean, it’s not THAT big of a deal. He’s in UNIVERSITY FOR GOODNESS SAKES! He has the right to know that he has a twin! None of this makes any sense.

So I am very disappointed in this series. There were some really sweet scenes in the drama of 007 and Lucifer. Those are good. I like some of the scenes when 187 uses his network of girls to get information, lol.

This doesn’t compare to Bump Off Lover. Although Bump Off Lover is shorter, it is much more satisfying. This is just another typical, badly scripted idol drama.

其实。。。

我不想当医生。

我终于够勇敢说出来。我真的不想读怎么多，那让后出来只可以做医生。

当然，做医生没有什么不好。但是，心理中我还有另外一个非常大，非常浓的梦想。

我觉得做医生，虽然很难，但是很多人都会支持我，会鼓励我。别人会觉得我是一个努力和有新的女生。

我真的梦，没有人会同意。如果我悬着走哪个路，我知道是一个非常长和迷暗的路。我很怕我要自己走。

现在。。。我还没确定做什么。。。我不知道应该走哪一个路是对的。

天啊。。。帮我！

The Karate Kid Review

I watched THE KARATE KID. I've never watched any of the previous renditions of it, so I had no idea what to expect. When the movie first started, I had no idea what direction the movie was going to take. It wasn't until the scene where Mr. Han approaches Master Li about how it is wrong to teach students Kung Fu to hurt others. And of course Master Li goes, "You can't just walk in here and tell me what to do and expect me to let you just walk out of here without a fight." I rolled my eyes at the overly used scene. Master Li continues, "Either you fight or the kid fights." It doesn't make sense to have Mr. Han, a retired-Kung-Fu-Master-now-maintenance man, fight Master Li's students and it surely doesn't make any sense for Xiao Dre, who can barely stand on his own two feet, to be battling highly trained students.

So Mr. Han goes, "The kid will fight at the tournament," as he signals the poster plastered on a wall of the studio.

And another cheesy threat follows by Master Li, "And if the kid doesn't show up. I will be sure to give both you and the kid a lot of pain." PUAHAHAHA. That's hilarious. WTF?!

So then the movie gains a sense of direction and everything starts to make sense. Mr. Han starts training this kid, who doesn't even know how to hang up his jacket, how to focus, be still, and all this boring crap on "life". I find it far-fetched when Mr. Han says, "Kung Fu is in everything around us. It's in everything we do. It's in how we live our lives." LIKE. SERIOUSLY?! And then he goes to show how the MOTION of taking OFF and putting ON a jacket can be used as a Kung Fu move. WTF?!?! It's cheesy but it fits the movie... I guess Jackie Chan can pull off an incredibly scene.

Jaden Smith is not a bad actor at all for his age. The casting seemed pretty decent. I like the Chinese bully. I don't like his character but I thought the actor, who plays it, does a really good job at making me hate him. Xiao Dre's love interest... didn't really work for me. Why pick a girl taller than him? WHY?! And besides, I thought they could've picked a more pretty and cute girl in China. She wasn't bad but something about her doesn't shout, "Hey. I'm playing a violin. I'm so pretty that I can catch you attention right away. Come over and hit on me." LOL.

There were some pretty impressive scenes of Xiao Dre training. In the middle of the movie, there's a scene where Mr. Han is all depressed about his dead wife and kid. They died in a car accident years ago and I'm guessing it changed him forever. Xiao Dre comforts him and teaches him how to "get up and move on". Lame. Very lame. Jackie Chan did an amazing job with the scene, Jaden Smith proved to be mature enough to handle a scene like that... but the way it was written into the script is so ridiculous. Why does Mr. Han need to have a downfall? To show that he's human? Or is it to give Xiao Dre and opportunity to help him and so it demonstrates a symbiotic teacher-student relationship? I don't buy it. Too far-fetched. Too random. Too cliche.

The ending is very cliche as well. Of course, Xiao Dre wins the competition and the Chinese bully has so much respect for him that he was take the award away from the judge and personally hand it over toe Xiao Dre as if to say, "You won fair and square. I have so much respect for you. I will never bully you again." And then all of Master Li's students go and bow to Mr. Han. WTF?! If I were Master Li, I'd go and hack all their heads off for disrespecting me and for not giving me "face" in front of so many people. But I guess... they wanted this to be a family movie so good HAS TO triumph over evil and save the day.

There's this really good scene near the end, where Xiao Dre gets injured and Mr. Han takes him backstage and tells him that he should just be proud for making it to the finals and he should just forfeit now before he gets even more injured. Xiao Dre INSISTS that he needs to go back out there and finish the battle. And Mr. Han asks, "Give me a good reason why you have to go back out there. Why must you go back out?" And Xiao Dre goes, "Because I'm still scared. After today, when I leave here, I don't want to be scared anymore." He's referring to being bullied by kids. And by winning this competition, he would no longer be afraid of them since he's proven to them and himself that he's capable of standing up for himself. Another really cheesy scene but very smoothly executed by Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. Those two, surprisingly, have amazing chemistry. But then again, I think Jackie Chan has the ability to create chemistry between any kid he has to act with. I'm not sure how he does it... but it works. I think he makes a good dorky fatherly figure. I think he doesn't seem like the type who can pull off a fatherly character but actually can...

Overall, I would watch the movie again. Cheesy but... it makes you feel good at the end of the movie... like any Jackie Chan movie. I don't know why I love Jackie Chan movies so much, probably because of all his Chinglish humor that's incorporated into the script.

Monga Movie Review

So I just finished watching Monga. I've been dying to see it after I saw the cast promoting it on Kang Xi Lai Le. It took me forever to find a copy of it because it's NOT EVEN ON YOUKU or TUDOU, which are the two Chinese sites which have everything.

The problem with this movie was that I needed to find the English subs with this because they speak Taiwanese throughout the whole video with A LOT of slang so I didn't understand a thing. I got the Mandarin parts... thank goodness but they don't speak Mandarin all that much, most of it is in Taiwanese.

I thought the movie started off pretty good. It caught my attention and it kept me watching until the end. I expected to find "great" meaning in this movie because of how the director spoke of it on Kang Xi Lai Le, but I didn't really find a strong message. There was a RELATIVELY strong theme of brotherhood and betrayal in the movie but I felt that it wasn't all that heavily developed. They had a lot of scenes that were presented only to show how much training effort they put into the "martial" aspects of the movie.

The plot is quite simple. There's a loner who has no friends and is recruited into the gang and there he finds brotherhood and loyalty. They also do this blood thing, where they cut their fingers and they drip the blood into a blood of water and they have to drink it or something, lol. So it's like... OFFICAL that they're brothers. The head of these brothers, his name is Dragon, so Dragon's dad is like the Big Brother of all the gangs in the Monga area, like no one messes with him, lol. Mosquito is the name of the loner guy who got recruited. Monk is like Dragon's really good friend and they're super tight. There's a guy named Monkey and another dude... I forget his name but it's probably something ridiculous as well. So Monk finds out that Dragon's dad once ordered someone to chop off his dad's arm so that he could be the BIG BROTHER. And every time Dragon does something wrong, Monk always gets punished for it.

So then eventually, Monk gets invited by this other gang to kill Dragon's dad so that they could expand their gang business into Mainland China. Dragon's dad's against expanding into China, he wants to keep Monga in Taiwan only. So then Monk kills the Big Brother. And obviously, now that the Big Brother is gone, havoc spreads like wildfire. And the 5 brothers plan to go to the Philippines until the insanity dies down. Oh and NONE of the brothers know that Monk is the one who kills Dragon's dad.

And Mosquito, who is so loyal to the gang, wants to seek revenge and kill the person who kill Dragon's dad.

And basically that's it. Mosquito eventually finds out that Monk is behind all this. And I think the sequence goes like this in the final scene:

-Mosquito is stabbed in the leg with a knife from a fight and he's limping around with it, trying to chase Monk

-Monk hides and sees Mosquito coming after him and he shoots him

-Just as Mosquito is about to die, he reaches out his arms to Monk

-Monk THINKS he wants to like hug him or something

-As Monk bends down, Mosquito takes the knife out of his leg and stabs Monk with it

-Dragon comes out of nowhere and slashes Monk with a knife

-Both Monk and Mosquito die at the scene

-The random fifth dude who I don't remember the name and Dragon drag Mosquito's body away

-THE END

LOL.

I expected Monk and Mosquito to really bond throughout the movie, and I sort of felt a bit of it at the beginning but then it faded it away as the director focused his attention to build the plot.

I thought this movie could've been really good, like excellent. There were so many ideas that weren't developed and so many themes and motives that the director could have built on but instead he slightly covered a range of concepts. I sort of wish Dragon played a bigger role in the group. After his father died, he completely fell apart and didn't even want to seek revenge. I'm not saying he's not allowed to be sad and cry after his father died, but like... DUDE. YOU'RE A GANGSTER!!! FEEL SOME ANGER!!!

The casting was not bad. They were all pretty hot except for Monkey and.. OH YEAH I remember the fifth guy's name, it's Dog Boy, lol. So yeah... those 2 are ugly but the other 3 are amazingly hot.

I thought Ethan Ruan, the guy who played Monk, could've played Dragon's role a lot better. Those two should've switched roles.

This is Ethan Ruan who plays Dragon. I think he's a really good actor but then again, he's been in the industry for a while now so I guess it's a given. Like I mentioned earlier, I thought that he should've played Dragon in the movie. I think he would've been able to carry the role a lot better and also uphold the movie.

Apparently he's Tiffany Xu's boyfriend. I think Tiffany is absolutely gorgeous. Her acting is still kind of meh... but she's pretty. She's a mix, I'm not sure a mix of what though. I think she's Italian and Taiwanese? On Kang Xi Lai Le, the host sort of asked him if they were going out and he's like, "I'm dating right now?" And the host was like, "Well, there are picture of you kissing her... it was very obvious. You guys didn't even try to hide it." And he's like, "Oh... hahaha. *drops topic*" So I guess they haven't officially announced it yet. Even though i find him good looking, I still think she's too pretty for him, lol.

This is Mark Chao. I find him so HOT. That's why I have picture of him throughout his entry, lol. He plays Mosquito. I think he's an amazing actor for a newbie. I haven't really seen a new side of him though. His first acting job was a policeman who is very passionate about his job and is really loyal and follows all the rules. In this character, he also plays a very righteous and passionate person... I don't know. In terms of acting, I haven't seen another side of him, but who cares. He's hot.

I thought he was perfect to the cast, one thing I would change is his age in the movie. He was supposed to be a 17 year old, this guy doesn't look 17 at all. Why didn't they just make him like 20 or something and he's in university? Do people in university not get picked on?

When I was watching Kang Xi Lai Le, the director tells us how popular he is in Taiwan. I agree he's goodlooking, but I don't think he fits the role all too much besides the fact that his mom is white in the movie and his father is Taiwanese so... they need a mixed looking kid. But why the white mom in the first place? And his acting is horrendous. LOL. I didn't buy his "big brother" of the gang character. In the movie, he looks like a big wuss who can't stand up for himself without the help of his other 4 friends. His father in the movie is completely different from him. Tough. Strong. No one gets in his way. Too bad his son isn't half of what he is.

The movie, overall, is a good watch. I might watch it again just for the eye candy but the plot itself is lacking in many ways. I didn't really appreciate the love line that the director squished in for Mosquito. Just because he's a loner doesn't mean he needs to find love in the movie to define his newfound character. I thought his discovery of brotherhood and friendship would suffice as his character development. And there wasn't even chemistry between them... blah. I swear, I'm not biased here.

I like the voiceover at the beginning of the movie but not the end. So at the end of the movie when Monk bends down to give Mosquito a hug and is unexpectedly stabbed, it was supposed to be a huge revelation of plot and character on both Mosquito and Monk's part. The voiceover that explains why that happened is supposed to be the grande closure of the entire film. I thought the voiceover said too much, either remove the voiceover all together or say less. Basically the voiceover says something along the lines of, "Monk, you bent down to hug me because you thought I was going to hug you. In that moment, you chose to trust me. Therefore, you didn't join the gang for the sake of being a gangster. You joined it for the same reason as I did, for brotherhood. For friendship." Although it was touching, but I felt that the audience should've been given a chance to make that connection themselves instead of having A CHARACTER in the film explain it. I think the voiceover really took away the thunder of that final scene. They should've just left the scene as it is or maybe if they were really afraid that the audience wouldn't understand Monk's character, they could've added, "Monk, 你更我一样。我们做的一切都是为了兄弟。" That would've been nice. I don't think they needed to say all the "you bend down to hug me... blah blah blah." LIKE. LET THE AUDIENCE MAKE THAT CONNECTION! The scene is so nicely executed, why ruin it with all this logic? I think to say, "Monk, I know you didn't join the gang for the sake of being a gangster," that would've been really good. That's like putting complete faith in the audience to understand why Monk did what he did.

There is a short father-son thing going on between Mosquito and the leader of this other triad. I wanted them to explore that theme more and less on his love with a prostitute. The film apparently exceeded Avatar in box office success during the first week it was released in Taiwan. I thought the film had so much potential to be so much greater, but because of it's lacking plotline and themes, the mere genuine backbone of the movie was hidden. Therefore, to me, it's just another one of those gangster movies that try to portray deeper meaning than there actually is.

Slow Me Down

It's been a while since I've posted a blog entry. I don't know why I keep on telling myself to post something up but every time I sit down at the computer, I lose the motivation to do so.

So let's start off with Thursday. I actually don't quite remember what happened on Thursday... It was a day after exams and I think I just sat at home and watched videos and caught up with dramas. I -think- that's what I did anyways, I can't imagine what else I could've done that day.

On Friday. I went to WONDERLAND. It was CRAZY fun. Of course, I was a chicken throughout the day, but my friends practically almost dragged me on every ride. I'm so grateful they did it lol. Because even though during each ride, I felt, LITERALLY FELT, like I was heading towards death, I still found it so exhilarating at the end of every ride!!! Well, except for bumper cars and like... the Merry-Go-Round. LOL. I chickened out at the Behemoth. I knew that my Wonderland experience would not be complete without it but the MOMENT I saw how steep the roller coaster is, I just backed out. My friends did try really hard to get me on it, but I stood my ground. They told me that after I left, they rode it FOUR more times. I've got such gutsy friends. I felt kind of bad because the whole time I was pretty much like, "How long is the ride? Is it scary? Which is scarier? Do I feel that "feeling" in my stomach?" And everyone actually answered all my questions and tried to convince me to go on the all the rides. I know for sure without them, I probably wouldn't have gone on anything. It was my second time there, the first time, I went when I was 5 or something and I swore never to go back again. So THIS time I really wanted to make the most out of it because I don't know when will be the next time I go back. I don't visit Wonderland often and it's not a place I would WANT to visit often. I think to have fun at Wonderland you have to go with the right people because if you go with people who are too scared to go on rides and you, yourself, are too chicken to go on the rides as well, then you've just wasted all that money to just ENTER Wonderland and walk around and do nothing.

The food in Wonderland is so shitty expensive. A foot long hot dog is like 8 bucks, 3 of us actually split that hot dog, partially because it was expensive and also because we weren't all that hungry. When you go on all those rides, your stomach doesn't know how to feel hungry... lol. The ENTIRE day, I had a little bit of rice in the morning, 1/3 of a hot dog and at the end of the day I wasn't all that hungry after ALL that walking and running around and screaming. I also tried FUNNEL CAKE!!! It was 10 bucks, and we split it with the 4 of us. It was pretty good. If I went by myself, I'd definitely spend 10 bucks on it. I wouldn't find it a waste of money, I think the only wasteful part of getting a funnel cake for $10 is the fact that I wouldn't be able to finish it. It's not THAT big but it's the kind of stuff that's only REALLY good for the first 5 bites and then it's just gross.

Friday was a really good day for me. I had so much fun. 10 hours at Wonderland. TEN HOURS!!!

In the morning, I bussed down to Wonderland by Viva to Major Mac and then taking the 4 bus to the front of the amusement park. And the problem with me is that I assume that if I go there one way, I EXPECT to come back the same way. Little did I know that at 8PM most of the buses at Jane and Major Mac weren't running anymore! So I had to figure out some crazy route to get back to Yonge Street before ALL the buses around the area stop running.

I met up with a friend later that night as well and we talked at Mcdonalds. I shouldn't have gotten myself Frutopia and fries, I'm already on a diet so all that exercising I did during the day would've all gone to waste if I just started shoving junk food into my body again. But she needed comfort food. I don't know, when I'm sad, junk food = comfort food. LOL.

OH. I REMEMBER WHAT I DID THURSDAY. I went to the doctor and apparently... he found out why I have that gurgling noise in my throat. It's because I'm suffering from acid reflux... LOL. Strange eh? I have acid reflex. I asked the doctor, "Is it NORMAL for a female at the age of TWENTY to be experiencing heart burn?" And he's like, "Well... stress changes everything."

On Saturday I had a family dinner to attend, only to find that 1/2 my cousins didn't show up so I was bored shitless. Hmm... is it weird... to be attracted to your cousin's son? LOL. My cousin is older than me and her son is one year older than me and honestly, he's so hot. LOL. I know it's incestuous but I'm just wondering if this happens to people. See the thing is, research has suggested that the only reason siblings (likely of opposite sex) do not show an attraction towards each other is because they grew up together. When you grow up with someone, for some reason, you lose that sense of attraction. BUT. If two siblings were raised in different environments and then brought together without knowing that they're siblings, they would likely find each other very attractive because they share similar DNA and pheromes. My cousin's son, I technically should call him my nephew but I refuse to call him that because:

1. He has to call me aunt then. And that makes me sound old.

2. He's OLDER than me. Aunt's should not be younger than their nephews... that's so weird.

3. He's hot. OKAY?!

So ever since we were kids, I would just call him my cousin and I've always seen him as my cousin and I don't give him any pocket money on New Years or anything neither does he expect any from me. LOL. Ugh. Why am I even talking about this? This is so gross.

Anyways. Tomorrow I have to go to the doctor's again and then I have volunteering... I sort of made plans with a friend to go to the OSC but I don't know if I want to go now. I'm kind of lazy. I'll think about it and text her tonight I guess.

What else is new? Oh. School. What am I going to do? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?! Okay. I figured out my problem I think. My problem is that I'm in too much of a rush to finish school. I refuse to slow down and assess my situation. Every time I fail, I say to myself, "I didn't study hard enough. Study harder next time." And that's the end of it. I charge towards the finish line, not really caring about all the rocks and obstacles in between. I thought I would be completely fine falling down, getting hurt, scrapes and bruises and all as long as I make it to the finish line. It doesn't matter how I get there, as long as I get there. But I never really thought, what if because of all these cuts and bruises, I don't make it to the finish line. What if it's better to stop running and to just walk for a minute or two and start pacing myself again? What if it's actually better to stop charging at the finish line and look at the path I'm running on and SEE who my other competitors are, and SEE what they're doing, and LOOK at where I am in the race? I think everything has happened so fast and I feel like if I don't stop and think now, before I know it, I'll be standing on stage to get my Bachelors degree but I won't have the marks to pursue further education.

So right now. I'm giving myself a second chance. I have a week to prepare myself for the second chance that I'm giving myself. I've taken the time to slow down and think about why I'm not studying hard enough and why I can't concentrate.

This week has been so crazy. I've made plans for this entire week and the next. This is the perfect time to put my plan to the test =D *fingers cross* I hope it works.

My thoughts on G20:

There's no real cause anymore, just riots and idiots downtown making a mess and then asking the government to clean it up using our tax dollars. Geniuses.

I have reached a dead end.

There are no more emergency exits, no more u-turns, no more helicopter rescues. I've used up all my lifelines, my health meter is beeping red and I can no longer call a friend. I have reached a dead end. What am I going to do? How am I going to pull this one off? How am I going to write this to have a happy ending?

It's now or never. No more second chances. No more redos. This is it. I have reached the very dead end. I mean the absolute dead end. If I can't find a way out soon, I'm going die. Well, maybe not die but everything will end pretty tragically. Tragically. Yes, tragically, a word that I don't use often but in this case it is very appropriate.

I don't have a plan! I don't have a backup plan! I don't have anything to work with right now. I'm just going to charge forward and wing it??? That's never worked out all that well for me but I don't know what else I can do right now. And I have no one to turn to right now because it's my own battle, it's a fight that I have to win myself. I have a feeling if I can get through this, it's going to solve a lot of other problems. But what if I can't solve it? What does it mean? What if I don't get through this? Am I seriously out of the game for good?

I've been having such bad dreams lately, seriously. Not nightmares but bad dreams, just yesterday I had a dream that someone was out to kill my brother and I. The setting was at our old house not our new one. Somehow we got chased up to my bedroom and my brother and I were trapped inside and I was trying to hold the door shut as the killer was banging it open. I told my brother to help me push against it so I can start pushing stuff to the door to you know... put weight on our side so the killer can't open the door so easily. But my brother was SO UNRELIABLE!!! He kept on slacking off, like one point he just walked away from the door and the killer almost opened it and I had to run to like slam the door shut! Okay, I can't describe it but I can still see it in my head very clearly. Point is, I was so upset at that point because 1. We were probably going to die and 2. When we were both FIGHTING for our lives, my brother still could not be someone I can trust and lean on.

I don't think I over-analyze my dreams, in fact, I think it's my dreams that help me realize a lot of my unconscious thoughts. It's not that my brother and I don't like each other but lately, not really lately, a while now, after he's got a new girlfriend I can feel him drifting away from everyone in the family. Back then, he was ALREADY in a rebellious stage where spending time with family was not exactly something on his to-do list. And now it's EVEN WORST. Does this happen to everyone who gets into a relationship? The moment you find a girl/boyfriend, you immediately forget about everyone else and all you care about is the other person? He/she is the ONLY thing on your mind? Is that the way it really is????? Because if that's the case, I hope I don't fall in love. Geez. I hate how his entire world just revolves around her and no one else matters. There are OTHER people in your life who still take care of you, feed you, and watch over you, you absolutely have no right to just be such a jerk to everyone but your ONE girlfriend, WHO PROBABLY still can't do shit for you except say the useless words "I love you". Why is it that once people find a partner, they can just throw away everything? Like in movies, people go, "Let's just leave EVERYTHING BEHIND AND RUN AWAY." Isn't that so selfish? Yes you love this person and yes this person loves you, but so do the other 10 people you were planning to leave behind. Besides, usually the person you fall in love with is someone you've just known in recent years, whereas your family and your friends, you've known them for so much longer. You've had so much more history with all the people you're planning to leave behind. Those people were THERE FOR YOU when your freaking girl/boyfriend wasn't! So how do people prioritize all this?

Of course, I'm saying this based on absolutely no experience. I hope I don't become a hypocrite and end up running off with my boyfriend and marrying him in some small island. I can't see that happening just because I love my parents too much to just leave them for anyone but I can't seem to understand the other side right now. Or maybe unconsciously I'm just cranky that I don't have a boyfriend I'm just being sour grapes at the moment.

Ugh. How did I get so sidetracked?! Back to the point. I have to save myself right now.

Emo much?

I haven't been called emo in ages. So there's this guy in my biochemistry class who reminds me of Mark, the way he looks, talks, and his freakishly weird hands. LOL. AND THE WAY HE HOLDS A PENCIL TOO! It's kind of strange how much he resembles Mark and his name is MARK TOO!!! And the stuff he says is just so, "OMG I CAN TOTALLY SEE MARK SAYING THAT!"

Oh before I begin, no I can't imagine the ACTUAL Mark saying this stuff. Just this though. So anyways, this Mark guy called me emo after I said, "Life sucks." And I realized, well not JUST realized, but sort of realize realized that I say that line to everyone and in ANY circumstances. It's like a horrible catchphrase? I hate it. I don't know why I say that. Actually I say, "I'm tired" a lot too. My mom hates hearing it because she's tired too and she doesn't complain and here I am, sitting on my ass, STUDYING, and I'm complaining about being "tired". And she's always like, "You don't know the meaning of being tired. That line is not yours to say." That's kind of harsh, I mean, I KNOW what it freaking means to be tired but I'm obviously PROBABLY not as tired as other children who are slaving away in factories for like 20 hours a day.

ANYWAYZ. So this Mark dude tells me I'm emo, and I was kind of offended because I'm -not- emo, okay?! And so I was like, "I'm not emo." lol. What else could I say?! And he's like, "Life sucks is a big statement." And in my head all I could think about was, "Seriously?! I say this to ALL my friends and they all agree with me life sucks." But obviously I didn't want to start a fight with this guy and he's nice too and he keeps me awake in class so he and I need to be on friendly terms so I just said, "I'm not emo. I don't think anyone's called me that before." And he laughed. So. I guess everything's okay? But that has brought to my attention that I should stop saying that line because I can see how it shows such a negative perspective of me, LOL.

I also told him that he reminds me of a friend of mine also named Mark and the FIRST thing he asks is, "Is he good looking?" Ugh. So shallow. I would think, "Oh, is he nice?" would be the first thing to ask. I don't know... that's what I usually ask when people tell me I remind them of someone. Or I ask them, "In what way I resemble them?" Not like, "Oh, is she hot?!" Geez. But anyways, this guy is so smart, he got 90% on our last midterm when everyone totally failed.

I think he likes this girl named Harriet. They've apparently known each other for a long time and I think she's got like gorg skin and she's nice so I can see why but I'm not going to play matchmaker any time soon. He should do his own little thing but I can't see them together just because I can see the girl thinking she's too good for him, lol.

Hmm... I think the only thing he doesn't remind me so much of Mark is the fact that... actually there are several things.

1. He's not that tall.

2. He's polite. LOL. Not saying Mark isn't polite, but he's like... maybe we're still in the phase of getting to know each other still, so it's too early to show our true evilness.

3. He's Cantonese and he can speak it.

We TVB rant together! I have a new TVB buddy! I can sort of tell he likes Linda Chung but because I said I didn't like her, he was like, "Yeah... I like Tavia more too..." But I think if he said, "WHAT?! I like LINDA!!!" I wouldn't know how to respond because I can't justify my dislike towards her. So I'm glad he agreed or pretended to anyway. And he's *SORTA* into Kpop, okay, not really. But I can rant to him about Kpop stuff and he knows enough to sort of *girltalk* about it with me. HAHA. Yeah, our group of friends sort of made him our gay friend. I'm sure he's not gay, but I've always wanted a gay friend so I guess this will have to do for now.

Raymond Lam Let's Get Wet Concert Review

I've been meaning to write a review for the concert but I never got a chance to since I've been crazy busy! I figured, if I don't do it now, I'll never get it done. And besides, I'm sleeping too much these days, it's a bad habit to get into if I'm heading into crunch time next week.

So I never really watch HK concerts only because I've labelled them as boring and pointless. To be honest, I haven't watched a lot of Hong Kong concerts but the few that I've watched include Joey Yung and Twins, lol. And they were such a waste of my time. I always thought concerts weren't just the artists singing their songs, the artists were supposed to PERFORM their songs and make a -show- for the audience. Seriously, the Joey Yung concert I watched was so boring. She just ran around the stage singing her songs and banging her head to the music and flipping her hair to the water that poured out from the ceiling during the "high" of her concert. I like a lot of her songs so I did go in with high expectations and I was very disappointed. LOL.

So I was reluctant to watch Raymond's Let's Get Wet concert just because it was another Hong Kong concert... this time I DON'T know a lot of his songs so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to connect with the concert but I was so wrong. I totally loved his concert!!!

He first started the concert with a face-paced song, which I think is smart because you have to build the exciting atmosphere, you don't want people to like relaxed and sleepy during your first song. I remember Joey started her concert with My Pride, I love that song but I remember just kind of swaying to the music at the beginning but I wasn't *excited*.

I liked that he tried to dance in his concerts, like choreographed dancing, not head-throwing-running-around-the-stage dancing. His dancing was kind of awkward, but I do appreciate the effort.

After the first song, he followed with a couple slower paced songs. I didn't know all the songs he sang, but I LOVED THEM ALL!!! I really like his voice. I'm probably over-rating him but I find him to be in the better group of TVB actors turned singers.

Vincy Chan was one of the guest performers at the concert. Apparently they're from the same label. I haven't heard of her before but she and him sing good duets.

After Vincy, guess who else came?! WONG CHO LAM! I think it was really smart of Raymond to invite him as a guest singer. Wong Cho Lam works the audience so effortlessly and he was so funny. The only problem I can see with Raymond inviting Cho Lam is that Cho Lam makes Raymond look like such an amateur singer. I didn’t realize that Raymond wasn’t THAT great of a singer until I watched the two of sing a duet. Wong Cho Lam just sings without straining but I kind of find Raymond struggling a little. They also fit Nong Fu in with WCL, they’re like these Hong Kong rappers, I actually really like them too. I youtubed them and I found a couple of their songs that I liked and downloaded. Apparently, Edison Chen “founded” them. Whatever that means. LOL. I still think Edison is so stupid. It’s not because of the whole scandal, even BEFORE that, I think he’s so talentless. I don’t think he can rap at all or dance. But this is a whole other rant.

After Wong Cho Lam leaves, Raymond sings a combination of slow and fast paced songs, more slow ones though. I find that Raymond likes to sing slow songs more because he feels like he has more control of his voice but I find that when he sings fast songs, he doesn’t come across as “trying so hard”. He’s great with both, but seeing as this is a concert, I sort of wished he sang more fast songs.

I also figured that he didn’t have a lot of his own songs, he has like what? 2 CDS? So he sang some renditions and I think he did a great job with those songs. He totally turned the songs into his vocal range and his singing style so it wasn’t a carbon copy of the original.

Before intermission, he sang, “Finding you in loving memories”, I’m not sure if you guys know the song but it’s like part of the soundtrack for the TVB series Drive of Life. IT WAS SO AMAZING‼! LOL. I love the song and hearing him sing it live was even better!

After intermission, he started off with a fast song again. Very smart. LOL because I was starting to get tired of the slow songs. I’m not sure what the first fast song was but it led into a song called Tonight. I really like it, I think I’ll download that song sometime soon, the only strange part of the song was this random guy’s voice that goes, “Uh uh, go Raymond, uh uh.” *speechless* The song is good though. He’s not much of a dancer, he’s kind of stiff, they should’ve gotten the backup dancers to kind of jiggle like he does so he wouldn’t look so bad and it would look more like the dance was SUPPOSED to be like that. LOL. But still... he tried. KUDOS for that.

Afterwards he sang a series of slow songs... I didn’t know a lot of them. LOL. HE SHOULD’VE SANG MORE FAST SONGS‼! But I guess, by the middle of the concert, he had to do one of those go-around-and-shake-hands thing so I suppose it was easier for him to sing a slow song and go around to shake hands than a fast song?

Then he had another guest singer, Ah Sa from Twins. I don’t think she’s a bad singer, not phenomenal but she has gotten better over the years. They sang an English song together... I’m not quite sure why... But their English was good so I guess the producers wanted diversity in the songs? Ah Sa made a joke about how she became a guest singer because Linda Chung couldn’t make it, his rumoured girlfriend. After their duet, Raymond walked around the stage with her as she sang a song by herself which I found really weird. Like, why didn’t Raymond go off stage to like take a break or change his costume?

Raymond sang a few more slow songs until LAUGHING GOR CAME ON STAGE! Michael Tse is his name I think. I LOVE THE DUDE. I didn’t know he sings though... They sang a duet together, it was so jokes because it was a Twins song. Their dance battle was also kind of cheesy. I even though Michael was the better dancer between the two. Seriously, Raymond needs more dance classes. But Raymond was clearly the better singer.

After Michael left the stage, Raymond had the “wet” part of his concert, where “rain” started to fall from the ceiling. He sang a Jay Chou song... I think that was the worst song he sang at the concert. It wasn’t bad, but I personally don’t know anyone that can pull of a Jay Chou song. Then he sang the song “Let’s Get Wet” and I thought it was going to be a fast song, I mean, doesn’t it just sound like a fast song?! But it was a slow song. So basically it was “raining” and he was singing this slow song, and these half naked dancers like “dance” in the water and like... yeah. Actually, the dancers were fully dressed, the half naked girls were just girls who had to act all sexy in the water... I think that’s what they were doing anyways.

After the “rain”, Raymond goes in to change and he comes back with a beanie. I guess that’s smart. He’s probably cold from all that water, and he looks good with his hat. LOL. And he sings like 2 more slow songs. And THE END.

He ended the concert with “Ai Bu Gou” which is like... one of his most famous songs from the TVB series Moonlight Resonance. I don’t think that song will ever get old. He’s like a hit song for him.

I think he did a pretty good job, I don’t know how many concerts he’s had but if this is his first, then it was pretty good since he’s known as an ACTOR not a singer. Am I right on that? The only thing that I wasn’t a big fan of was his clothes? I thought he could’ve been more innovative with the clothes and his random “Yo” throughout the concert, LOL. Cute. He’s cute no matter what he does but still‼!

The concert was good. I would watch it again and again. I downloaded a lot of his songs just because of this concert. Wong Cho Lam has got to be the highlight of the show. I'm sort of glad Linda Chung didn't come just because I don't like the pairing... lol. And I just don't like her in general. I don't know why. I remember when I watched her in the pageant, she totally won me over and I wanted her to win so badly. But I guess, now that she's a celebrity, I don't find her that great of an actress or a singer. I don't know.

I wish I could go to one of his concerts.