ludicrously speaking

I enjoyed the show. I wouldn’t say it was entertaining cause a lot of time was spent detailing all the history and artifacts. Most of my friends told me it was too heavy and rather far-fetched for their liking - an inevitable problem when you try to show and tell evidence compared to letting someone read it and convince themselves, leaving words to their own interpretations.

But that being said, I wouldn’t compare the movie to the book, it would be like comparing Britney Spears to Mozart. Both enjoyable but vastly different in context!

The book was an experience savoured at my own time. I vividly recalled the adrenaline rush I got one chapter after another, how I let my imaginations run wild building scenes and characters till alas the story concluded. The movie on the other hand was easy to watch as it felt like a recollection of sorts, retold with sights and sounds. A documentary of my memory, if you will.

Purely for hardcore fans, it made me wanna read the book all over again. Well…almost.

My handphone beeps. My iPod is drained. The Powerbook needs energy and so does my dying Exilim. Depleted red bars are all i see.

There’s a problem. 

So many USB cables, so little USB ports. What happens to the mouse and the external hardrives when it’s all taken? Don’t they need an outlet too?

Damn. Why do they choose to die on me all at once?

Little girl: I want five birds. My brother is going away on a journey. I want to bring him good fortune.

Big Hairy Man with Turban: I’m sorry. You only have enough for one bird.

Little girl: KNN. Here, take my American Express! Give me my five fucking birds and I’ll take your puny, hairy birdie too you miserable son of a bitch!

There was this boy waiting for the train to come at the furthest end of the station. He kept jumping about shooting hoops in the air thinking he had Michael Jordan’s flair. He was real fat and all that jumping made his bermudas slid to exposed his unsightly butt-crack. What an ass (in all sense of the word).

There was this other boy who came into the shop to buy a pair of Tretorns. He had green eye-lenses and wore his running shoes with jeans behaving all hoity-toity. He claimed to be a student at a private university but could barely speak eloquently. He swiped his sub-card and left all satisfied. May i add that he’s everything I dread to be.

Enjoy and live with your own inadequacy, happiness comes with a dab of delusion. For you and for me.

So Taylor won. I’m happy with the results although I much prefer Elliot to win, unfortunately he wasn’t part of the final choices. I only caught Taylor in action recently having missed most of the elimination rounds, that guy’s got stage presence. His sometimes freaky spasm and weird behaviour on stage became quite endearing after a while ( I used to be quite turned off at the sight of an old man trying to dance on stage). Granted he’s got solid vocals and a charismatic personality to boot, I guess that pretty much sums up all the characteristics of the past winners.

Last night, the producers pulled all stops and catapulted the result show finale into such stratosphere I was literally seeing stars! Mary J Blige, Meatloaf, Toni Braxton (I couldn’t make out a single word she sang) and of course, the biggest surprise of the evening… PRINCE! I like Prince. He’s eccentric and somewhat obiang (look at what he’s still wearing) but his showmanship unparalleled to this day. You can even catch a glimpse of resident Baywatch hunk Mr David Hasselhoff shedding his manly macho tears when they crowned the winner. So farnie! I think the Americans are so involved in this show they even planted drama within the audience to spice things up. Oh ya, I wonder why Ben Stiller is sitting with Heather Locklear in the crowd…hmm, they item meh? Eeee…

I must have caught it for at least 3 times as Starworld and Channel 5 was subsequently showing it. During the local network breaks, I saw the trailer for the auditions of our idol campaign. I wondered what our finale would be like. Here’s an idea:

The two finalist “flying fox” onto the stage of the Indoor Stadium. Must be one Chinese and one Malay to be politically correct. The rest of the top 12 will be on stage to sing the opening song with them. Germit opens the show and welcomes the first guest of the evening, the biggest most popular star on 5 to sing a duet with both the finalist…himself! The camera goes to the audience and you see Huang Wenyon, Edmund Chern and Terence Ciao stroking their thick luscious hair and winks (advertisement in disguise). Taufreak makes an appearance and sings his mega blockbuster hit, I Dream. Halfway through his song, he is upstage by Stefanie Sunny who appears from the back singing the National Day anthem, One Heart One Voice. Amidst the crazed cheering fans, you see Mavis Hit and Kit Chant boo-ing their successor and heavily bitching about how more talented they are. After a commerical break, the lights dim. Out comes Joey Tay, cha cha-ing in her rainbow skirt and throwing handful of slimming pills into the crowd. One hits Jasintha and she gobbles it up. Nearing the end, Wei Nian (the Superstar winner) held by Kelli (Superstar runner-up and official Wei Nian stage-assistant) comes on stage and sings a English song appropriate for the event. His performance earns a resounding standing ovation and as the camera pans the stadium you see Julian Heehee struggling to emote.

Glam…no?

This was taken along with the 海带拳 videos during the third day of our trip. Feeling very adventurous, we decided to record some of the highlights and introduce some places we ventured. Enjoy! Have fun laughing at our silly antics!

PC 2: He’s a very stiff 海带. His 海带 is like dat one.

We woke up to a pouring storm but the tour agent came to fetch us anyways. Not fully revved-up to go in the damping situation, we hoped onto the van without much enthusiasm and apologized to the people on the van for holding them up. Mid-way our driver received a call about bad sea conditions and our morning tour ended there and then. We went back and had ourselves very satisfying Subway sandwiches, played cards and Sudoku (yes, this trip has been a mind-taxing one thanks to the addiction) and basically stone out for the day. We’ll do it tomorrow hopefully if it stops raining.

We aren’t upset really.

We had a blast yesterday at James Bond island (Phang Nga Bay) meandering through these crevices-like caves on our canoes and got an eyeful of these magnificent natural landscapes that forms a little sanctuary in the middle of nowhere. There were good food accompanied by the friendly crew that kept us in high spirits. And true to the core of our “beachy” nature, we had fun poking fun of distinctive characters onboard and continued laughing all the way till dinner. Yes, evil are we.

Jayson “Barefoot” Ong

Two days back while I was happily posting my first entry on the trip at that internet café, an unfortunate…ok, it’s a sibei suey incident occurred. Initially thinking there was a “no-shoe” policy because we saw shoes placed outside the café, when we were exiting the café I realized I was missing one of my slippers. Some stupid kid mistook my cheapie $1+ black slippers for his black Havaianas and left with one of it…leaving me one of his slippers 2 size smaller. I had to walk around the whole day with unmatched flip flops. KNN.

I got myself another cheap black pair that very night to put me out of my misery.

Yesterday we had some time on a beach to soak in the fresh waters to cool off before we ended our day tour. We left in respective canoes, me not realizing I left my new flip flops on the comfortable white-sand beach. Once again, I was “floored” by my own negligence and amazed at my dizziness. I think I must have been badly hit by the sotong disease due to close proximity! Helpch me! AAaaaah…

Third day and it’s still raining. Our trip to Phi Phi island this morning got cancelled and it remains uncertain whether we’ll ever leave the main shores of Phuket as the dense heavy cloud looms above us.

We had a mind-blowing massage yesterday. We paid a humble price for a worthy rejuvenating experience. I had a Herbal Steam Sauna that came in a well-equipped private room with bathing facilities. They must have had eucalyptus or peppermint in the reinvigorating steam for I was tingling with freshness covered in sweat. The massage that followed was to die for as well, my masseur left no inch of my body untouched (gasp!) and gave me some really good nudging here and there. I dozed in and out of sleep through out the 2hr set. I left with the guys eventually all lightened up and rearing to go…for food la.

The shopping here in general is ok. Nothing to shout about, nothing you can’t find in Bangkok. Accommodation came in the form of a large clean  room that cost a mere 500baht. The nightlife is an all-round sleaze fest, dancing on poles seemed like their daily recreation on the island…I suppose you have to find some means of exercising when working the graveyard shift. So far we’ve been taking it slow, all’s good.

At an internet café with the guys hiding from the drizzle as we opted to visit the different beaches today hoping the weather will clear up as the day progresses. Wish us luck. Oh! The sun is out!!! Bye!

I’m in the airport… i have just one bag and an upbeat spirit to bring on the plane. I’m so glad we’re flying Jetstar and not the other that requires us to use the Budget Terminal. I like how people in here move with no haste like they know exactly where they are going,well… except for the few scatter-brains who are dashing to catch their flight. I was one of them as well. Haha.

Anyways, PC 2 & 3 are late. I checked myself in and requested the counter staff to secure their seats next to mine. I called them using the toll-free public phone to inform them of my intention to chillout in here first. The last i heard. they are still in Paya Lebar… hmm, they still need to transfer train at Tanah Merah and take the skytrain to T1 to check in. I hope i see them on the plane eventually! Muahaha…

Before i left home, i was downloading the past two episodes of LOST on 5. Unfortunately it was 98.7% completed when i left, so close yet so far. I abandoned plan to put that in my iPod video although that would have been fun to watch during the trip. On the bright side, i have couple episodes of The Simpsons and South Park to watch.. oh, and that campy film Scary Movie 4 to switch my brain off to.

So here i am still waiting for the two sotongs to arrive, people watching while putting up this post. Think i’ll go sit down somewhere or go use the toilet instead of hogging this booth. More when i’m there, laters!