If you care, I've added and deleted some links on the side menu. Did you really need a link to Google?

Thought not.

Just finished Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. I'm not really interested in novels about Australia per se, but I did like Carey's earlier Oscar and Lucinda. No harm in giving Michelle's recommendation a go anyhow. :)

The first-person narration from Edward "Ned" Kelly's point of view using run-on sentences with the awkward grammar lends the novel a realistic, even almost lyrical quality. Even so, you wonder if Kelly ever had certain words in his vocabulary.

Still, historical accuracy is probably not the point here. Carey's Kelly is meant to be human and mythical. Human, in the sense that he is an ordinary, decent male driven by abject poverty, injustice and circumstance to break the law. Mythical, in that he represented the secret hopes and real frustrations of Australia's settlers in the late 1800s. Ultimately Kelly is cast as a tragic figure. Big, strong but not smart nor especially courageous. A child-man struggling to do the right thing.

A Salon review of the book.

An excerpt from the novel.

T'ang Quartet with Noriko Ogawa concert on Hari Raya Eve (that was on Monday). My first time in the Esplanade's impressive Concert Hall and I was wowed by the acoustics. (Then again after the amount we spent on those dang durians...) Every note crisp, and as the music ebbs you can literally hear the deafening silence creep into your ears.

Another reason to wish I had had the luxury of a musical upbringing, so I can write better sentences than "I thought the concert was excellent," which, well, it was.

The Tang Quartet ooze coolness and sophistication as well. They even organise music appreciation classes for little kids. When they're not flying all over the world and winning accolades most of the year, they're fulfilling their roles here as Quartet-in-Residence at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in NUS.

Watched Mandala by In Source Theatre on Friday (thanks to Amanda - you ROCK! :D). This was... well... dance theatre is probably the best way to put it. there were a total of three performers. One in the centre drawing a mandala with rice using a cup attached to a pole and martial arts/Indonesian dance-like movements. The other two danced and played around her, interacting mostly with each other but sometimes with the middle person.

In terms of skill, they were all a little raw but I don't mind really -- the company's only 2 years old after all. What I minded most was the cliched content. The performance depicts modern urban life as banal and dehumanising, with death being the only salvation and salvation being linked with (surprise surprise) rebirth in/return to a benign Mother Nature.

I suppose this is true to some extent, but I've never liked wholly benign representations of Nature (simply because I think they're plain false). Furthermore to deny the little unplanned spaces in between clockwork events illustrates some kind of humanistic blindness. A rather one-dimensional performance, for all In Source's sturm und drang.

They have really good PR though. Very polished publicity materials. Just look at their website.

Problem: Booster boxes of L5R cost a lot.

Solution: Get 'em off eBay.

Problem: Boxes are in US, and shipping costs a bomb.

Solution: Ask someone to bring it back for me.

Problem: Need to pay the seller in time so he can send the box and the person can bring it back.

Aggravating factor 1: Turkey Day is this week.

Aggravating factor 2: Parents will throw a fit if they knew i.e. credit card not a good idea.

Solution:

...

Darn. Or I could just not buy a box.

Watched Action Theatre's production of Iron yesterday. Karen Tan was excellent in the lead role of Fay. Emma Yong and Remesh Panicker gave good performances and daughter Josie and prison guard George respectively. Sheila, unfortunately suffered from Selena Ho's flat intonation.

While it felt a bit strange to hear everyone put on British accents, it wasn't bad (except in Selena Ho's case). The script doesn't disappoint either, keeping the audience guessing what Fay's motives are throughout the performance. The revelation at the end isn't what the usual scandal-numbed audience (myself included, I'm slightly ashamed to admit) expects, and is all the better for that. A little more tragic, a little more believable, is this woman who suffers for her emotions.

Imho, the George character is the most fascinating aspect of the play. Being the sole male is part of the reason, but he's also the least dysfunctional character. Or do his academic, emotionless musings on human nature hint at a far more serious dysfunction, compared to the women in the play?

Am a good way through Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. The writing's a bit old and I keep coming across obscure words that keep my dictionary dust-free for now. The novel itself has been described as chiefly one of ideas. Quite an apt description in this case. If anyone wants a primer on the dominant intellectual conflicts raging in Europe before World War I, while enjoying light satire and leisurely storytelling, this would be your novel. Your bildungsroman in fact.

Ahh... the sweet taste of vindication. Again.

Media Crossroads: Let market decide outcome, says Minister

The Minister's comments mirror earlier Govt responses to last week's debate about whether the Northeast Line (NEL) should be run by SMRT. Expected, and probably the best thing to do. Adopt a hands-off approach, without favouring either side.

But the comments come a day after it's revealed that SM Lee thinks there should be only one media operator in either industry. Must people wait for SM Lee to say something before they open their eyes and mouths?

A Tsui Hark Retrospective. How cool is that? The man's kind of dropped off the HK movie industry radar but he truly is HK's equivalent of Spielberg when it comes to imagination and vision. True, his most recent efforts have done poorly, especially Legend of Zu (2001). But hey, people forgave Spielberg for AI, right?

Tsui Hark reinvented the swordsman genre, successfully fused eroticism and fantasy without making it look like cheap porn and breathed new life into martial arts movies (while redefining an iconic character at the same time!). Actors like Jet Lee, probably even director John Woo too, owe their present success to him.

Man, he made some great films. Too bad the Retrospective happened half a world away and two years ago. I wish we could have one like that here in Singapore. :(

Watching Return to the 36th Chamber was great fun. People these days associate kungfu comedy with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, but before them Gordon Liu Jiahui was already combining excellent comic timing with martial arts prowess. Man, they just don't make kungfu movies like that anymore. :/

Where in Singapore can I find a copy of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin?

A recent, comprehensive writeup on Murakami Haruki, from The Guardian.

Marathon Man

Haruki Murakami got up at four o'clock every morning to work on his latest novel. Five hours later he would rise from the keyboard, put on his running kit, and set out for a lengthy jog through the leafy streets and parks of Aoyama, a chic Tokyo suburb. After that, an hour or two would be devoted to visiting record stores, where he would browse through the second-hand jazz sections, looking for rare vinyl LPs. Then there would be time for a swim and a game of squash. In the evening, before turning in at nine o'clock, he would return to his desk and spend a few hours translating the work of American authors into Japanese....

I wish I could do that. Could I? Live a live like that?

Y'know, I really liked The Matrix.

Matrix: Reloaded was too long, took itself far too seriously, and went for obvious crowd pleasers (Trinity should've died).

I had hoped Matrix: Revolutions would be better. Sadly, I was wrong. At least Reloaded had impressive action scenes and memorable characters. Revolutions doesn't even have that thin veneer of coolness.

Am re-reading Murakami Haruki's Norwegian Wood. I'm not in the habit of re-reading books, mostly because I used to think that my time would be better spent reading more books or reading the materials I needed for work or school.

Even though time has scoured much of the feelings and memories associated with that first reading, vague shadows and half-familiar shapes remain and the mind picks up quickly on those markers. Yet I am also not quite the same person who read this book years before. Like Cratylus's river the experience is unique, a fusion of individual experience (including previous readings!) and ink-on-paper.

That experience is strong when it comes to Murakami's works. I can't quite explain it but there's a kind of wistful, surreal and deeply personal quality to his work. The best thing to do, as always, is to savour the novels. Like an intellectual kind of wine. Can't rush it.

An interview with Murakami Haruki by Salon.com

Went to see one of the movies in the 19th Singapore French Film Festival. Specifically, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise), based on the novel of the same name by Dai Sijie. The movie doesn't deal with the Cultural Revolution beyond using it as a setting anyway (don't know if the novel does this), so don't fall into the same trap I did :)

Although set during the Cultural Revolution period, the movie is probably best seen as a coming-of-age tale for all three young protagonists. In that respect it's not too bad. The movie is let down by quite a few things.

Certain scenes looked contrived. The dental operation is probably the most obvious, with the Rube Goldberg-esque jury-rigged dental drill and an overall treatment lacking in any sensitivity.

The leads were competent, but there was little chemistry among them. At the best of times the relationship felt too cool for them to be good friends, even towards the end (btw, I would have picked male actors that can be easily differentiated from each other without using clothing -- half the time I couldn't figure out which actor was doing what).

As for the chauvinism, I admit that I may have been a little oversensitive. Allow me to say at least that to me the movie seemed to depict the mountain villagers with few redeeming qualities, while attributing all praise to the Western liberal tradition exemplified here by.... of course, Balzac and the French literary giants. Perhaps I am giving too much attention to these quotes though, because you could make a case for them being ironic rather than serving a pedagogical function.

Still, it was interesting to listen to a Chinese (ok, Chinese-French in this case) film where Beijing pronunciation doesn't dominate, and the ending sequence is imaginative and poignant. Breathtaking mountain scenery is always a plus as well.

The long and the short of it is that there is no instrumental reason to get an education, to study in your courses, or to pick a concentration and lose yourself in it. It won�t get you anything you won�t get anyway or get some other way. So forget everything you ever thought about all these instrumental reasons for getting an education. The reason for getting an education is that it is better to be educated than not to be.

Bought an officially licensed release of Infernal Affairs (Wu Jian Dao). For an non-pirated VCD copy, I expected better quality. The content still looks as if it was recorded in a cinema, just with a better camera and without people in the audience talking or getting up halfway. You'd think they would have used the master copies or something. Eh -- at least I only paid $8. Less than the cost of a movie ticket on the weekends.

The movie is certainly above average. Moreover, compared to most of the stuff that the Hong Kong film industry tends to churn out, it's damned good. The plot has been done to death but the packaging this time is special. Storytelling over guns and explosions, and director Andrew Lau doesn't let the movie get bogged down in sentimentality or moralising.

Events move along at a fast clip when they're supposed to, and fadeouts between scenes complement the interim periods that slow things down before they pick up again. The subdued and nuanced script is well carried by the actors -- kudos especially to Anthony Wong and Tony Leung. No complaints there, and I expected as much from the vets that make up most of the cast.

Bright, high contrast shots bring out the contrast between the dark-suited characters and their surroundings (more ironic, moral imagery). Speaking of which, I really like that much attention was paid to the costuming. For instance sharp, dapper suits for Andy Lau's suave, ambitious young gun. Strict, no-nonsense business suits for Anthony Wong's hard-nosed inspector. Tony Leung's unkempt, slept-in leather jacket and shirt fits his desperate outcast role. Black never looked this good, not even in The Matrix.

The major flaws, imho, were the poor characterisation of the women and the rushed ending. Sammi Cheng's character comes across as too airheaded to be a novelist, but maybe that explains her sudden switch at the end. (The book subplot is also horribly cliched btw). Kelly Hu's psychologist character remains largely unexplored. The ending (including the nice but really unnecessary twist) seems tacked on to make audiences happy -- maybe the ones who wanted it were hedging their bets just in case they couldn't make the sequels. But it kind of steals the thunder from the third film.

Overall, a very good film but one gets the sense that it's more of a prologue. Kind of like what A New Hope was to the original Star Wars trilogy.

For another balanced review, have a look here, courtesy of www.lovehkfilm.com.

Govt open to single operator for rail systems

Ah, the sweet taste of vindication.

A Newsweek article that raise serious questions about the implementation of US reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

The $87 Billion Money Pit

Public Policy Implementation. No one ever appreciates how complicated and frustrating it is until it comes, bites you on the behind, and poisons you with a slow-acting venom that paralyses all your extremities.

Let's see how long a flagging US economy can throw money at the problem. What I want to know is, with Dubya's tax cuts where's all this money gonna come from?

Kuriyama Chiaki is disturbingly cute as psycho schoolgirl bodyguard Go Go Yubari in Kill Bill: Vol 1. Only 19 and already famous in Japan, mostly for her role in Fukasaku Kinji's blood-and-gore fest Battle Royale (which I should catch sometime). Luckily for her admirers she's much more amiable in real life, and cho kawaiiiiiiiii too! ^_^

Interview with the actress about her role in Kill Bill

A fansite in English, by a clearly... umm... determined fan."

From about a year ago, on 26th Oct 2002:

A whole bunch of us from the UofC went to hear Neil Gaiman himself read from his latest book for children -- Coraline -- in a school here as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

It was, of course, great to see him in person. He hadn't shaved in a while, and dressed in leather jacket, black jeans and boots he looked more like an aging rocker than a bestselling author.

Listening to him read wasn't incredibly exciting, but he put lots of effort into it and I did enjoy the reading. A British accent, after being surrounded by various American voices day in and day out, sounded so refreshing. His wasn't too pronounced, and he did pull off some ok Eastern European and Scottish accents.

Coraline may be billed as a children's book and is written in a style befitting one. However the imagery in true Gaiman fashion become quite macabre and scary at times -- almost in opposition to the simplistic sttyle of writing he adopts here. I probably wouldn't read it to an 8 year-old unless I wanted to give him nightmares, but a 14 year-old would probably not have the patience for the children's book style. Nonetheless it is a very good book, considering that it's difficult to fit his usual style of writing and subject matter into something fit for the consumption of your average kid. Or maybe children these days are more desensitised to these things�

I got to shake his hand. Bought a paperback copy of American Gods and a hardback copy of Coraline, both of which he autographed in a kids-go-first session. I wish I had my first copy of American Gods with me, the one I took on the road trip in June, so I could show him the battered spine, torn cover and dog-eared pages. Mr Gaiman, this book went with me on a road trip to Yellowstone -- Shadow's journey within my tiny journey wwithin my larger journey here from halfway across the world. To me I see it as symbol of my time here. I know this means nothing to you of course but I just wanted to say that to you. But that copy is sitting on top of some books on a shelf in Singapore.

Who could have known?

So I now have a pristine copy of American Gods on my bed right now. Perhaps I will reread it sometime.