18 October 2005 7:59 p.m. evidently someone in her school thought so too, because it went missing a week after she brought it to school in order to print out some documents. things were hectic in her office because the school was preparing for some award ceremony and she lost sight of it in the rush. all this happened last month. today, she was in class during a study period and some students wanted to play some mp3s. being the kind teacher that she is, she let them use her laptop to do so. following this, she was back in her office when a group of boys (the famous five, [TFF]) from that class came looking for her to tell her that they had seen her missing flash drive - it had been plugged into her laptop by one of their classmates in order to play some mp3s! according to them, the boy had claimed that it was a second-hand flash drive, but they also said that products sold at pc fairs aren't readily found elsewhere, because they're collectors' items-like. i don't know, it was the only one left and i snagged it. she had the kid summoned to her office where she having proven nothing, mum asked to take a look at the item, and he claimed that he had left it in class; so she sent him up to get it. TFF made their entrance and asked her how it went and she told them. "teacher, he kept it in his pocket la! we saw him wan!" i must state that my mother must have managed to keep her temper under pretty good control, and sent her agents to escort him back downstairs. i assume they then stood guard outside the room to make sure no one got in or out without their say. she asked the lying bugger for the flash drive and he showed her an ordinary store-bought one twice the size of the stolen item. that was when she she told him what his classmates had told her and that if he told anymore lies she'd cut his pee pee off and throw it to the dogs. okay, she didn't, but he finally pulled the flash drive out of his pocket and handed it to her. and she even let him save his songs to another medium before booting him out. TFF made yet another visit to tell her that when they went to look for him, he had been asking his other classmates "who had told wan?" the result is that he is now being investigated for other thefts (digital camera, camera club's camera [!], teacher's handphone [?!] and random electronic items). mum also regrets that the school is (was?) lenient with what they consider unintelligent students - the idea being "they're not going to amount to much anyway, so we'll just let them spend the day in school because at least they're not getting into trouble elsewhere". and talk about digging his own grave - the fella sent mum a text-message asking her why she'd reported him to the discipline teacher when he'd already returned it and apologised to her. hello??? i hate kids. forwarding stories isn't usually my thing, but this was just too amazing to pass up (reader discretion is advised!). imagine writing about a movie where the information is all culled from translated websites. i bet someone who knows better than i do is laughing at my ignorance and errors. however, that is all i had to work with. it's a movie version of a manga, of that i'm sure, and it was filmed in august 2004. Eiji Yoshikawa is a 15 year old boy who moves to another town from Kishiwada after his father, as the Daiku-gata, falls off the top of a Danjiri float (actually, a danjiri is a float, so...) during the Danjiri festival (Danjiri Matsuri), an event in which Eiji himself took part. yeah, i know, why move towns when your old man fell about 20 feet off something moving at about 40kph, right? the japanese seem really big on a fresh start in the manga i've read. at his new school, he is recruited into the unsanctioned school marching band (?!) by Nanao Kanno, also 15. she is the driving force behind the band, and also its very able conductor. according to her peers, she is a musical genius and can play any instrument she wants. naturally, her father owns a music store. yeah, i know, it's unbelievable to us proletarians, but it's based on a comic, c'mon. she decides he can play the bass drum and they become friends. the audience is privileged to view cool marching band sequences, jazzy-type sounding bits of brilliance amidst (slightly awkward) scenes of teen angst, touching scenes of teen love and seething rebellion against the establishment, i.e. the school's musical director - Mr. Hosoi, who resents Nanao's authority and wants to take over Nanao's position as the conductor for the school band, and actually gets his way by threatening to remove them from the marching band competition. naturally, they cleverly turn the tables on the villain and "stick it to the man" which i understand to be a very important accomplishment for young people. i'm kidding. irate and humiliated, Mr. Hosoi manages to officially oust Nanao from her post, and the original band members go their own way. Eiji spends his days dissolutely, running his morning paper run to pay off his father's gambling debts, worrying and caring for his invalid mother while finding time to argue with his father. one day, in yet another twist (which fortunately do not occur as often as in the visually exhausting Tae Guk Gi, see review), the headmaster tells Eiji and his friends that Nanao has decided to study jazz in New York. why Nanao doesn't tell them personally is also beyond me, but bear with me. before she leaves, though, Nanao introduces Eiji to 3 ruffians, who have formed a band formerly known as BGT (Big Genta Trio?), who have renamed themselves the Beat Kids. and they need a drummer, so hurray, Eiji finds his true calling. they play really cute j-rock type music and decide they want to take part in the school's annual academic/cultural festival, winding up against Mr Hosoi once more. the Beat Kids are played by an actual band called Hungry Days (both websites are in japanese), who were chosen from auditions by the producers. they are all 19 years old and make me feel like a pedophile for fancying the second guitarist (Tanaka Kouhei), his mullet not withstanding. i mean, he'll grow out of it and crop his hair and then everyone will want a piece of the hottie, but i'll always know that i saw him first.
individuality
this is the flash drive i bought for mum at the last pc fair (actual size!). it isn't cherry/strawberry-flavoured, but isn't it desirable? don't its curves draw you in? doesn't the hue speak to you of untold possibilities and dreams coming true?smote him in twain with her sword of righteous fury asked him where he got it, and he said he bought it from a computer shop. so she asked him how much it cost, which made him sweat and contradict himself, saying he didn't know because his dad bought it for him.
well
02 October 2005 12:19 p.m.
Beat Kids
organic quackery
if you look at it for 30 seconds, your rheumatism will disappear.
maybe: a melodrama
if this was a movie, the viewer would see a split-screen shot of the two characters tossing and turning, alone in their darkened bedrooms.
maybe one of them will clamp a pillow over his head to keep the memories out. maybe a light will be snapped on and she will read in order to calm herself. maybe they're sleepless for the same reason. maybe they fought too often. maybe they didn't fight fairly enough. maybe they should have counted to 10 before saying anything.
tomorrow, before anyone else is awake, she will drop his things off at his house. they will be strangers to each other once more.
29 September 2005 9:52 a.m.fuckin' retards
when i went to redeem tickets for Beat Kids screening at 2.25 p.m., 6 hours earlier (yes!!! i was there at 1 p.m.!!!), i was told that they had all been given out. so i settled on BWP (at 7.15 p.m.) instead. the only seats remaining were those in the first row from the screen, and some on the side, also one or two rows from the screen.
however, at the screening itself, the prime seats, those very ones that had been denied to me 6 hours earlier by virtue of my not lining up at 10 a.m. when the mall opened, were... empty.
i have to say that the audience was very mature about it, they didn't move from their original seats. well, except those who were in the front, but you can't blame them.
so the lesson is this - if you go and get free tickets just because "they're free wat" and just because "i was in the mall, i got nothing to do that time (at 1 p.m.)" or "eh, Beat Kids no more tickets oredi" with nothing but the vaguest intention to show up, YOU ARE A FUCKIN' RETARD.
just because something is free doesn't mean you get to disrespect it, and then complain later about how expensive/lousy/lousy and expensive movies are these days. there must have been only 20 people in a hall meant for 100. don't tell me the rest buggered off and got caught in a traffic jam. serves them right if they did too, fuckin' retards.
well, there is another reason for writing, and not just to hear the efficient click-clacking of the keys on the keyboard.
if you see a kid with Down Syndrome crying because he misses his family who are a few thousand kilometres away, IT'S NOT FUNNY. don't giggle at his comical appearance just because "it's cute". don't titter when he kisses his father goodbye because "omg it's a retarded kid kissing his father goodbye it's so FUNNY omgwtfbbqlol".
these are the same people who, upon viewing any scene from the Titanic movie, will either tsk sympathetically or shed silent tears into their soaking wet tissues (and leave them in the hall after the movie for the cleaners to find. you go, you).
maybe it's a bad analogy, but tell me,
- between potentially losing your family forever when they're all you've ever had,
- and potentially losing the best fuck you've ever had forever even though it only happened because you were both trapped on a ship, i.e. in a contained environment wherein pressures are naturally more immediate,
which is sadder?
there is no right answer because both are tear-jerkers and that is what a film maker does. he is the man behnd the lens and he manipulates audiences to a certain degree, and when he wants you to cry and empathise with the character, you'd better do it, bitch.
so, the question remains - why did people laugh when a character is crying? either the movie had descended to farcical levels and the acting was pathetic, or maybe they were insensitive baboons.
and the ignorance card shouldn't even be played here, because even though the movie did not suggest in any way "here is a disabled kid crying. you must empathise" you are supposed to understand that crying is crying, and not respond with "omgwtfbbqlol retarted kids look so funneee when they cry!"
29 September 2005 9:44 a.m.Beautiful, Wonderful, Perfect
this entry is here even though i never planned to write it because you can't find any other information on the movie elsewhere. yes, please read the rest of my blog. sometimes i post pictures too!
i went to watch Beautiful, Wonderful, Perfect last night. it was not, as i'd feared, a sappy story of forbidden love between the classes. instead, it was about a boy, Tong, who has Down's Syndrome, and his friend Luk Kaew. in the movie, they hide away from some bullies (the kid is disabled, do you have to ask why?) in the lower luggage compartment of a bus that eventually leaves the station for Chiang Mai, way up north.
from Khao Suk - "Khao Suk is a national park in the south of the country where a flourishing wildlife ecosystem remains."
i can't find Khao Suk on any maps. either i got it wrong or it's a tiny little place.
so anyway, they manage to find lodging with a monk at his temple. they also meet another kid with Down's Syndrome, but who is more mischievous than Tong, who has been brought up properly by his loving parents.
after several singalong scenes of how hard work and companionship are what everyone needs in life, the bad guys make their suspicious entrance, appearing to employ techniques last used by the baddies in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. it was hysterical watching a black guy screaming in thai. i bet he's an english teacher in real life.
naturally, the histrionics give way to a more malevolent, heart-wrenching sort of evil, which sees them, and about 20 other kids forced to peddle goods on the beach of Pattaya (!). that's in the south of thailand, i'd like to add.
in the meantime, their parents are doing their best to find them - Tong's father takes a more direct approach and asks around while Luk Kaew's places missing persons ads in the newspaper.
i have to add here that Tong's mother had to stay home because she had been grounded. well, okay, she had to take care of the 3 other children, with another one on the way. Luk Kaew's parents, specifically her father, are devoted supporters of the anti-retarded child cause. he also refuses to have anything to do with Tong's father because the man is a simple sort.
so it's like that - how a disabled child makes his way through harsh reality and we have to overcome our prejudices against those who are different and/or less privileged than we are, and also to spare a thought for the kids you see in the street pestering you to buy their crappy goods.
27 September 2005 7:30 p.m.tuesday tantrums
how long does a hard-boiled egg last without refrigeration?
or maybe i should write about how, upon driving past the science faculty on monday morning, i was greeted with the sight of hundreds of sullen-looking undergrads dressed in black and carrying a black banner that read "Vote for..." and the rest of the words were obscured. i'd be sullen too if i had to stand in the sun at 10 a.m. (one of the hottest times of the day) dressed in black.
"omg student demo, awesome! they never had one when i was an undergrad!"
i also noticed some police-y looking types standing across the road from the students.
"someone got arrested? yessss."
i couldn't just go to the lab without finding out exactly what was going on. i parked nearby and walked back to where the crowd was. as i did so, a record-breaking number of motorbikes roared past, their exhaust systems deafeningly aggressive. i know it's been a while since i was a pedestrian, but such a reception just brings tears to one's eyes. the motorbikes had yellow pennants things flapping in the breeze.
strangely enough, the people riding the motorbikes weren't oily-haired guy types who wolf whistled at anything female. instead, they were portly looking, malay female types, the ones you most often see tsking at other malay girls who don't cover every square inch of their bodies. they rode by, proud and stately, expressions set for what must be a long hard fight for whatever cause they believed in. it pretty much offset their comical appearance. it was their billowing baju kurung and giant tudungs (the usual ones come down to the chest, while the longer ones, the waist (and beyond!!!)), you see.
(i'm not targetting them specifically, it's just... sometimes things happen)
i snagged a guy who was filming the events to ask some question. after mistaking one another for the press, i was told that, the sullen looking kids in black and the sullen looking covered-up girls were supporters of opposing student bodies, and they were there for the announcement of candidates for the campus elections on thursday.
why didn't we have such entertainment when i was an undergrad?
23 September 2005 7:36 p.m.shit hits fan!
when i gave my number to the Wowie girl, who was/is in KL, i transposed the 8 and the 9, and she wound up talking to a total stranger.
i'm very sorry i didn't get to bring you Sungei Wang, where you can find lots of cheap, ugly clothes.
i hope you got to see the city in all its flooded glory though.
