Aged

I realised that I seem to be on a different mental frequency of my peers.

Maybe its due to my complicated emotions different perceptions that people dont seem to be able to understand me.

I knew I was different that day when I read that stupid article by this columnist for a certain Chinese entertainment magazine. To translate it, it went “If I were 18 this year, my subject of fantasy would not be Wu Bai, but would be Zai Zai.” I was 18 when I red that article and pretty much in love with dear Wu Bai, so can I not get offended?! It seems to me that there are many people out there who share the sentiments of that columnist and with their broad generalisations slam oddballs like me. Or rather, they think Im weird.

I think my problem is that somewhere along my growth, I stagnated. And after that, I most immediately aged a couple of decades.

To a certain XX,

My life stagnated after we parted. I didnt know what to do without you even though you were never actually by me. I felt that during my 4 years of sec sch life and 2 years of jc life, I had just shut myself emotionally from the outside world, no thanks to you. Not really the physical you, but the memory of you that really haunts me.

At the end of last year, I decided to push memories of you out of my life, a move friends say should have been done long long ago. I really dont know why I procrastinated doing this. Maybe Im just self-degrading?

Well, half a year past with you successfully behind me, yet I seemed to have aged a good decade during this half a year or so. My attitudes towards love and life; friends and family have also changed. My emphasis towards various values has also shifted.

I know its not your fault. Its really all mine. Yes, Im that sad.

Im that pathetic.

Emo Day

Ive just awaken from a 3-hr nap and my specs are missing. I cant see what Im writing and my eyes re so near the keyboard that Im like breathing in dust. No one is ard to help me look for my specs. Shd I call my sis and ask if she had seen them? Or shd I just remain blind? I dont know...

I dont know... is how Ive been feeling these couple of days, being in a web of dilemma. I want to do something yet also want to do another thing; I dont seem to know what I want or what I dont want; I just dont know...

Arts camp proved one thing that Ive been dreading to realise: Im weaker than I thought. Injuries amassed: aches in my shoulder joints, back, upper arm muscles, thigh muscles, knee joints, calf muscles and ankles, a cut on a finger, a blue back on my hand aft someone stepped on it and not to mention all the symptoms I experienced from pms, nauseous, cramps, loss of appetite, blah...

I hate being weak. But can I help it if my constitution is weaker than others?

Not only my constitution is weak, I also suffer from a fragile emotive make up. I think too much. I let my thoughts run wild and not keep a rein on it. I often find myself mixed up between reality and fiction. Television affects me badly, a good movie affects me worse, and the last two movies I watched were emotively-charged critically-acclaimed ones, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Japanese Story.

I need to relax my emotions badly, but I cant seem to decide how to do it.

Torn is exactly how I feel. How can one feel happy when one has a grandmother undergoing series of operations? But how can one feel upset when one just welcomed the birth of a cousin?

Refer to my past entry on the excerpt of Harry Potter on the roller coaster of emotions. I cant help wishing that Im not a female and not a female Pisces in that matter. But then again, only a female Pisces can handle this whole load of emotions. If I were Ron Weasley, I wld have burst the moment I had emotions.

new blogskin

Ive removed everything except for the blog...

Any comments can be directed to my email account. Friends can msg me. I might bring back the tagboard if I change the blogskin the next time, but in the meantime, I will stick with this.

I wonder if there is anyone out in the www, other than my dear friends, reading my blog. Any soul can somehow find my blog appearing in some search engine for some search. And it seems that Im the only one who is using the moniker jal4eva as my blog was the only result that showed up when I typed that in Yahoo! search engine.

jal4eva. Ive used that since primary school like thats 7-8 years liao... Wow... I think Im the last living person who stuck to one and only one email account for that amount of time so much so that 85% of it is spam nowadays. Haiz...

I like Yahoo! If you are sick of your lousy hotmail account, turn to Yahoo!, it can only change your life for the better.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Its a Tuesday night; its a ulu movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; its into its second week of run; its one whole hour before the movie started that I went to buy the tickets, you would think Ive no problem getting decent seats for the show, dont you? Then you are so very wrong! I got front row seats! Like, wow... So, Singaporeans do like this sort of films, so overflowing with emotions.

Okay, to give credit to the show, it did garner excellent reviews. A certain critic with i-weekly said that that was the best film she had watched this year. The film was written by this fantastic screenwriter Charlie Kaufman who also wrote other excellent films like Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. Charlie Kaufman’s pieces characteristically feature characters with complex emotions and Eternal Sunshine was no exception.

But what struck me most of the film was that Jim Carrey is really an actor. Id always thought that he was merely a comedienne and nothing more, although I do admit that he is somewhat cute when he grins, in Eternal Sunshine, Jim Carrey was Joel. After watching Eternal Sunshine, I dont think I can ever see Jim Carrey as himself again. He just so convincingly transformed himself into Joel!

I think Im in love with Jim Carrey. Or maybe Im in love with Jim Carrey’s vivid portrayal of Joel. Or maybe, Im just in love with the magic that comes out of Charlie Kaufman. Just like I fell in love with Nicholas Cage after Adaptation.

I like men over-brimming with emotions yet too shy to show them out directly, and these are the main similarities of Charlie Kaufman’s male protagonists. From past television shows and movies from America to the Far East, this category of men are most likely to stay loyal to the One he loves and would put in their whole heart into a relationship. A current example would be that Cao Pi (Zihuan) from that 9pm channel U show.

Back to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, cant go on digressing about men if I want to properly introduce this film, can I? Basic plot of the story, Joel (Jim Carrey) meets Clementine (Kate Winslet) and they clicked at their first meeting, then the story goes back to the day before when Joel returns home to execute a memory erasing of Clementine, then probes back to Joel finding out that Clementine had erased Joel from her memory. From there, the story goes backwards in time and we learn of Joel and Clementine breaking up, them quarrelling, them falling deeply in love, them first meeting each other through the process of Joel erasing his memory.

I wonder where on earth Charlie Kaufman got the idea of such an interesting narration of events from end to beginning. He did it with such good effect that my feelings for the characters linger on even after the show end.

An example, Joel’s meeting with Clementine in the opening of the show. Clementine asked Joel if she knew him. “No, I dont think so” was his reply. Then she introduced herself as Clementine and asked him not to make fun of her name. He gave her a blank stare and asked why anyone would make fun of her name. “(Its that song) Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine” she sang. “I never heard of it” was his reply.

This scene didnt evoke any emotion from me when I watched it, but after watching another scene, memories from this scene pricked my heart as it ached for both characters.

That was the scene when Joel first met Clementine. Their real first meeting. She introduced herself as Clementine and asked him not to make fun of her name. Joel went like, “(Its that song) Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine”. She laughed. That probably made him fell in love with her. I dont know.

In Eternal Sunshine, people have their memories erased so that they can carry on with life and not be burdened by past sad memories.

When I wanted to forget someone by pushing him out of my mind, I found that the harder I try to get him out of my mind the more stubbornly he stayed there, then I tried to forget him by coming to terms with it and it worked, Im a lot happier now.

As Joel tried to erase Clementine out of his head, he found himself wanting more and more to keep memories of her alive that forced the procedure to get more complicated. But the ending of the film echoes my personal experience to a certain degree, they are a lot happier after they finally come to terms with each other.

Memory erasing, is it ethical?

In a scene from Fruitsbasket, a Japanese manga with an anime version, two characters Hatori and Kasa had such a turbulent relationship that Kasa was on the verge of breaking down. Hatori erased her memory of him so that she could carry on with life happily. She did just that after her memory was erased, but Hatori kept his memory of her intact along with all the pain. Ayame, Hatori’s best friend once remarked to him, “I want to see you hundreds of time happier than Kasa.”

In another scene from the same source, Momiji’s mother, for similar reasons had him erased from her memory and continued her life seemingly normal, but Momiji had to endure the stigma of his mother treating him like an almost stranger.

Personally, I thought that it wasnt fair for Hatori and Momiji to suffer emotionally in silence when the latter’s mother and Kasa could carry on with life happily. I dont know why, but I just dont find it fair.

But in Joel and Clementine’s case, maybe it was better for them to start anew literally. Maybe it was due to Charlie Kaufman’s wonderful script that made me think so. I dont know.

Go watch the film and share with me your thoughts.

Judgment at Nuremburg

D-Day special: Judgment at Nuremburg at 11pm on Central ytd

Aft watching that, I started thinking about the basis for the trials of war crime. What exactly amounts to a war crime? Are they against the law? The trials for war crime charges the defendants as acts against humanity. But in another perspective, some of those war crimes were carried out as executions, ie legal and dignified, of people who were seen to be ought to be put to death during the war era. As it was acted out according to law, the defendants actually hadnt broken any law and shdnt be found guilty of anything.

Hitler came to power through democratic means. He became his party’s leader, then through elections, his party emerged as the largest ruling party, it was only after that then Hitler slowly through the passing of bills and amendments to the constitution – all agreed and signed in favour by the legislation – that he cld become a dictator. The defendants were not guilty for crimes, but shd be guilty for the toleration of the decadence of their constitution.

However, if this were so, then wldnt there be more Germans guilty? The Germans who voted for Hitler; those who put Hitler into power; those who readily allowed Hitler to pass his Enabling Act. Not only are the Germans guilty, other countries who saw the rise of power of Hitler but did not intervene to put an end to it shd also be guilty. Russia who signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler shd be guilty, Britain who had an appeasement policy towards Hitler allowed him to become bolder in his demands shd also be guilty; America, France, and other European nations all had a part to play.

In the show, the judge finally found the defendants to be guilty of their charges and sentenced them to life imprisonment. But as the Cold War and the Berlin blockade prevailed, America was desperate in finding an ally with Germany, most of those prisoned war criminals were freed not long aft. It is interesting to note that to the vast Germans, these war criminals were heralded by them, they did not see them as guilty, thus the Americans by freeing them gained the popularity of the masses.

At this point in the show, I became extremely disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Americans. Personally, I dont think that the war leaders shd be found guilty of committing those acts against humanity, but if the Americans were to find them guilty, then they shd jolly well let them serve their sentence and not act accordingly with times.

Personally, I think that in circumstance were right and wrong cannot be quantified, the war leaders in order to preserve their dignity, shd commit suicide. In Japan, aft the war ended, throngs of Japanese war leaders committed suicide as they thought it was a great shame to be tried. Likewise, as defeat loomed near, Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler all committed suicide. Goering committed suicide just before he was tried for his war crimes.

Such committing suicide not only cries out “innocent!”, but also allows one to leave the world with one last shred of dignity. They wld die not as war criminals or defeated foes, but as great leaders.

Faye Wong World Tour 2004 Concert

Faye Wong World Tour 2004 Concert

I wouldnt say it was an amazing experience, but it was indeed an interesting one. Wangfei’s vocals were well worth the ticket price. She had about 6 costume changes, but unfortunately most of her costumes were rather simple. Simple yet elegant though.

The only thing that spoiled the concert was that I was not in a very good mood.

It isnt that Im in a bad mood, but my emotions seemed to have run way out of hand lately. Everything around me is affecting my emotions. Television, radio, shopping, reading, writing, etc. Can someone help me to stop my thoughts from running wild? Please...

At first I thought that this mood swing was merely pms, but it escalated into I dont know what. Unlike normal mood swings, I dont feel of ups and downs, I feel of down and downer. And unlike pms mood swings which lasts only a couple of days, this has been going on for a couple of weeks liao. I think I might need help.

My mind is so jumbled up that I dont even know what Im thinking about. I want to talk about the tv shows Im watching, I want to talk about the songs Wangfei sang ytd, I want to talk about my new handphone and how to download mp3 songs, I want to talk about the weird dreams Im having, i want to talk about I dont know where to start.

Id really wanted to enjoy myself at Wangfei’s concert ytd. Really. I tried to block everything else that came to my mind. But they seemed to have came back to haunt me doubly after that.

Tsk...