In the mood for love and Christmas

As I was reminded this afternoon, Christmas is only about 40 days away. After all the pre-Christmas preparations I have done at work and all the hype with the media, I’ve been in a festive mood since last week. Even though the hotel hasn’t officially kicked off with Christmas decorations yet, I have already made decorations out of recyclable materials and hung them all around my department. They are so pretty!!! *gushes* Okay okay, enough self-praise.

At home, I have been blasting Josh Groban Christmas carols. Ah, so nice. I don’t normally listen to him but he’s got fantastic Christmas carols from his Noel album (I first heard them in Nic’s aeroplane car while he was driving me home one night). His versions make Christmas feel very grand, and not cheesy like some other versions of Christmas carols. I really love traditional Christmas carols and quite dislike modern Christmas songs – unless it’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” or “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (I’m a big fan of Love Actually – yeah, who would have thought cranky little Cheryl would like such a soppy romance movie?)

It’s strange that I embrace Christmas now. When I was in my teens, I used to detest Christmas. Maybe the fault lay with the unstable raging hormones, but I used to do nasty things to try to ruin Christmas for people. When people played Christmas carols, I would blast Metallica to block out the merrymaking and wallow in misery. Looking back, I was such a Grinch!

But I’ve grown up now. I’ve embraced my faith and the story behind Christmas. I’ve found Jesus. I’ve learnt to be a better person. I’ve learnt to love and to accept love. Most importantly I’m no longer an awkward pimply teenager who had an attitude problem and issues with everyone (now just a few people), hahaha…

Come on, people, gimme some Christmas loving!

Review of Up in 3D

As mentioned previously, the boyfriend has been bugging me to watch Up with him. I’ve been shrugging it off due to disinterest, but because of our deal, I accompanied him to watch the movie yesterday night.

I have never caught a movie in 3D before and was caught a bit offguard when Cathay employees handed out these eyeglasses to us. The eyeglasses were too large for me and they kept falling off my face and that really annoyed me. Other than that, I was excited to experience firsthand watching the movie in 3D.

  
(Spoilers ahead)

The movie itself was based on a simple plot. Old man going on an extreme adventure to fulfill his dreams (and his late wife’s). It was difficult to fathom how an old man who depended heavily on a walking stick could ‘carry’ his house on his back and walk a long distance upon a rocky ground. I know it’s a cartoon – but I can’t get over this.

My colleagues were telling me how touching the story was and yadda yadda. Alright, yes, the fact that the old guy would go so far to fulfill the biggest dreams of his wife was touching. Well I can concede and agree that their life story was really sweet and romantic…. (Although I also can’t get over how the old foggy would make his weak wife climb up a steep hill)

But the fact is – the old guy is dumb. Why? Because he made an assumption and went too far ahead with it and almost got himself and others killed in the process. He assumed that his wife’s childhood ambition would stretch till her after-life, even though he had many opportunities to look into her adventure book and find out if she had changed her to-do list. Well, he found out eventually that she did. Her adult adventure was to spend her life with him – which she fulfilled.

As for the childhood hero who turned into a raging madman – I can only conclude this: Don’t over-idolise your heroes; they may not be who you think they are!

You will probably have thought I’m a hater by now. The reality is, I think Up is an interesting movie which I feel teaches realistic values through its unrealistic story. I did love the funny scenes – the naivety of Dog, the jovialness of Russell, the squeaky voice of Alpha the scary dog, and the colourful bird called Kevin.

Watching Up in 3D was in itself an adventure for me. The movie wasn’t too shabby, but I still prefer Dreamworks Animation!

The Movie Plan

When I first told Jonathan that I wanted to catch Bruno, he gave me a look – like I was absolutely insane for wanting to do so. Then when he kept trying to persuade me to watch Up with him, I returned the look – ‘cos the idea of watching the ‘cartoon’ sounded absolutely ridiculous to me.

At first we both refused to budge. Then I came up with a plan – he would pay for my ticket to watch Up with him (‘cos I wouldn’t pay to watch it), I would pay for his ticket to watch Bruno with me (‘cos he wouldn’t pay to watch it), and we would each pay for our own tickets to watch The Proposal (‘cos we both wanted to watch it).

When Jonathan first heard The Plan, he argued that if we ended up watching  only Up and The Proposal then he would end up having to pay for most of the tickets. I countered that if we watched only two movies then I would pay for tickets for one movie. But to seal the deal, I told him that it was either we watched all the three movies or none at all (we had kept trying to persuade each other to just catch the movie we wanted to watch online). Being the big movie buff he was, he couldn’t resist saying no. So he said yes. Done deal.

It’s rather late now and I want to go to bed – in the next few days (by that, I mean I hope tomorrow) I shall write about Jonathan’s new fitness and diet regime plus our movie outing to catch Bruno… Good night for now!