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!

Online Social Media Platforms aka Educational Tool?

The newspapers today carried reports of Twitter being used as a platform for teaching our youngsters the importance of speaking good English.

Would it work? I don’t think so.

My personal belief is that good spoken (and written) English is a deep-rooted affair which is imbued in our individual person. All this starts from when a person is young – and there is, of course, influence from his/her family and peers to speak good English. If a person grows up in an environment where his/her family and peers pay little heed to speaking good English, he/she will be imbued with the idea that speaking good English is unimportant, and thus there is no need to speak it well as long as his/her family and friends can understand him/her in poor English or any other language he/she speaks.

As such, online social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook will end up serving only as an experiment. The youngsters who have been targeted will only end up as clueless human lab rats.

If our authorities decide to target youngsters with such modern platforms, then how does one reach out to the middle aged folks in society? They too need to be educated – how not to fall into robbery traps, and even how to be courteous to others.

From my personal experiences travelling to work on the MRT, I am convinced that our society needs a lot of improvement on our social behaviour and manners, especially the older folks (whom I do not completely fault due to perhaps their lack of education). The courtesy campaign should be revived and it should always remain. Sticking life-sized Phua Chu Kang stickers around the MRT stations do not help.

I’m wondering: If the usage of online social media platforms is synonymous with youths, then what types of platforms are synonymous with middle aged people? Newspapers and magazines? How else can we reach out to educate older folks?

Any thoughts or ideas? If so, leave a comment. All comments are welcome.

Paper Hearts & Dettol Loving

When Jonathan and I boarded bus 162 on Saturday evening, I met a friend’s JC-aged brother. I waved to him while walking past and sat two seats behind. The boyfriend was on the phone and I was looking out the window when B attracted my attention. He passed me a paper heart which he made – “for you,” he said  – and told me not to unfold it because it “looks nice” the way it was.

The boyfriend was on the phone at the time, but he saw what happened. After he got off the phone and when B alighted, the boyfriend expressed – albeit in few words – that he was annoyed that another guy would pass me a paper heart right in front of him. “Ahh… Jealousy,” I thought to myself. It was cute though.

Remembering a long time back when the boyfriend had folded a ten-dollar paper heart and given it to me – which I ended up using at one time because I was short of cash – I then offered him my old one-dollar note (which Van had refused to let me use at Esteller) to fold into a heart. The boyfriend lapped up the offer. He happily took the dollar note and folded it into a heart and instructed me to put it into my wallet (and it was understood that under no circumstances was I to use it).

Being a girl, I naturally welcomed the attention – from two guys nonetheless! At the expense of sounding conceited, I have to confess that it’s rather flattering having guys tussle over my ‘affections’. (Yes, an actual physical fight between two guys took place because of me once)

… You were probably wondering what “Dettol loving” in the heading meant. It is a different story and has nothing to do with the paper hearts…

You see, because of H1N1, my colleague Matt and I have been taking turns spraying our department with Dettol to sanitize the air. As you can probably tell by now, I’ve been very paranoid and the Dettol smell assures me that the air I breathe in is clean.

My other colleague LL gets a little scared at my zealous attempt at trying to sanitize the entire department. So I threatened her via Facebook just now that I would “spring a Dettol-ish surprise” on her. When she left work, I carried out my threat. I stuck the following up on her already-crowded wall.

Then I left a note on her computer monitor…

I can’t wait to see the look on her face tomorrow.

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!