Meh. Bloody hell.

Still in post-"Kingdom of Heaven" happiness. And what do I find? Parts of the script that've been left out of the cinema cut.

Mr Ridley Scott, these had better be in the director's cut. Especially scenes like the following:


INT. A LITTLE ROOM IN THE HOUSE.
In a dreamlike sequence Balian, standing naked in a copper bowl, is bathed with sea-sponges by the girls [the women of the house].

INT. GODFREY'S BEDROOM. LATER.
Balian is sleeping on silks, in a breeze, in the shadow of window-lattice. He wakes, feels the fabric. He sees: a bowl of rosewater. He drinks it uncertainly, and then tries to eat the petals. Servant-girls flee, giggling.


The latter, I think we saw the ending part in the movie, where the servant girls were running away. But the eating the rose petals bit, no. How adorable. Maybe the cute little thing had never seen roses before. :P

But still. Jaysus Christ, if you're going to rate it NC-16, why not just let us se the nudity, damn it?! I mean, hey, I'm sure the guys would be quite happy to see more of Eva Green in that bedroom scene, and some gratuituous Orlando Bloom nudity wouldn't hurt. :P Yes, Gerri is a strange girl; there's no way I'd want to see a naked person right in front of me, but when a person's in character and on a screen, I have no objections. Especially when said person has obviously taken some time to shape up and does look very fetching. Heehee.

Speaking of which, Gerri wants muscles too. Gerri wants back muscles like what Jessica Biel had when she was in "Blade Trinity"; damn, they were well-defined.

Just wait till I find a picture of that shirtless Orlando Bloom scene in Kingdom of Heaven.. the one where he's out on the field with a bowl of water. Surprised the water didn't all evaporate already.

My pervy thoughts are just running along ahead of me and dragging me along for the ride, it seems. I mean, in that second missing scene, Balian's sleeping in Godfrey's bed! Very bad slashy thoughts. Heehee. :P

I should spend less time reading slash on the Internet, I think.

Oh, and look, how lovely; just found a piccie of Orlando Bloom's family with him at the premiere of Kingdom of Heaven. His sister's very pretty. And hey, the girl who posted it may be right; looks like it might be the very first picture of Colin Stone that we've ever seen. Colin Stone, for those not in the know, is Orlando Bloom's real father; it's a real soap opera of a family drama there, so shan't go into it. Go find out on your own if you're interested.

Have also found the song which was used in the original trailer; 'tis called "Hope", composed by Jonathan Elias and sung by Alanis Morisette, and can be found on a CD called "The Prayer Cycle", but sadly, for some strange reason, it's not included on the Kingdom of Heaven OST. Dang. Well, I've downloaded it anyway. :D

Argh, I want the "Kingdom of Heaven" soundtrack now. Shall have to update wishlist. But for now, shall go back to reading bits of random trivia. :D

Went to watch Kingdom of Heaven yesterday with Ivan, and it was really good. Also, it's the first Ridley Scott film in which Hans Zimmer isn't the man behind the score, so I really wanted to see what the music would be like. Wasn't disappointed, though; there's a lovely main theme which I just can't get out of my head, which has a strong backing of drums and is sometimes overlaid with some strange wind or string instrument which I can't identify, or a children's choir.

Music's by Harry Gregson-Williams though, which some video game fanatics may or may not recognise as the man who wrote the score for "Metal Gear Solid 2 : Sons of Liberty" and "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater". Ivan said that some parts of the score sounded a lot like Metal Gear 2 to him; I concur on that. :P

Despite how great the film is, Ivan and I both realised after we watched it that there isn't a lot of publicity for it in Singapore, so to make up for that, I'll tell you now:

GO WATCH

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!!!

I think that should be loud enough. :P

It's the same old "pre-modern history" kind of movie, set in the late 1100s between the second and third Crusades, if I'm not wrong, in a period when everyone (well, everyone with a religion, that is) seemed always anxious to earn merit in the eyes of their god; which really just makes you wonder anew if it just might have been that they thought that you could buy your way into Heaven. Was an interesting focus for me, looking almost solely at the city of Jerusalem, since before, when I was younger, all the stories that I used to read about knights and all that, "King Arthur" and "Ivanhoe" and all that sort of stuff; they never mentioned small cities on their own, only the whole of England. Although to be fair, King Arthur, in his story, wasn't really crusading; he just went off to look for the Holy Grail while his dream city was being built and only came back about... oh, I forget how many bloody years later. :P And for those of you who don't know (shame on thy heathen soul), that ideal city that Arthur wanted to built was Camelot; Arthur envisioned a city where every man would be equal before God, where justice would prevail and peace would reign always-- Camelot was supposed to be the embodiment of everything good in the world, so to speak.

Camelot was also the place where the Round Table was to be housed. The Round Table was the name of an order of King Arthur's knights; the best in the realm. The Table was also a round one because at a round table, there is no head, and so in accordance with the values of Camelot, every man is equal, even Arthur himself, to all the other men seated with him at that table. There were fifty seats at the table, and it was said by Merlin, who presented the Round Table to Arthur, that when the seat directly opposite Arthur's at the table- the Seat Perilous- was filled, then the table would be full, and when that happened, the order would fall.

I did realise however, years after I read that book, that if Camelot had truly fulfilled its purpose, then knighthood itself would have become needless and worthless. Counterproductive, in a way, hm?

Just like how I thought bombarding the city was quite pointless; while in the cinema, when they were two seconds into bombing Jerusalem, it suddenly struck me: What do you want a city for if it's going to be gone by the time you take it?

But getting back to the topic at hand, "Kingdom of Heaven" was a good show, albeit that during the first hour or so it starts to seem like it should be renamed "Ridley Scott's 'A Series of Extremely Fortunate Events'", given how quickly protagonist, Balian, moves up the social ladder. From a blacksmith with no kin left in the world, he suddenly gains a father (and there were plenty of snickers in the theatre when Godfrey said "Balian.. I'm your father." He said it in a very clipped, matter-of-fact tone, but that didn't really help matters either; especially since a "Star Wars Episode Three" trailer had been shown just before the film).

And his father happens to be a knight and the Baron of Ibelin. Immediately racks up his social standing quite considerably, of course. Oh, but then he gets made his father's squire; and this is a spoiler coz poor old dad doesn't last very long in the film (pity really; I love Liam Neeson's acting) and so Balian gets made a knight and the next Baron of Ibelin in a big hurry because he's all the kin that Godfrey has left in the world.

So he goes to Ibelin, gains the favour of his new people by helping them find water and irrigating their land; then he gains the favour of the royal household (just the King of Jerusalem and his sister, really) because the King thought highly of his father and not surprisingly after meeting Balian, thinks well of him too. And his sister, Sibylla (the King's sister, not Balian's), also takes an instant liking to this guy and is really friendly with him because she finds him an upright man and really, she just hates her husband and wants to roll with someone else whom she actually likes in the hay but you're not supposed to know that.

Also, Ivan pointed out that it's strange how a blacksmith turns out to be a master strategist in orchestrating the defense of Jerusalem, but then again, I suppose we're to believe that by the time Balian was defender of Jerusalem, some years had already passed. Which would have been in keeping with the history; the film starts in 1184, but Jerusalem fell in 1187.

So wow, it looks like everyone just loves this guy; don't everyone rush to adore him all at once now, you just might actually prove that he's capable of being smothered. But of course, there're the bad guys in power in films like these, and here they come in the guise of Reynald de Chatillon (pronounced: Rei-nald de Sha-ti-YON) and Guy de Lusignan (pronounced: gh-EE de Loo-si-NYON). I forget exactly who the former was meant to be, but Guy de Lusignan was Sybilla's husband.

I'll leave the rest to you to find out for yourself, since going on any further would spoil stuff in the story, but while it was a good film, most of the characters which feature in the film are historical characters which are heavily fictionalised.

Balian of Ibelin, while in actual fact, was the defender of Jerusalem and the man who surrendered it, was definitely not a blacksmith. Apparently, the Ibelin family were notoriously ambitious, and Balian actually married King Baldwin IV's (the leper King) stepmother; upon accomplishing this, the Ibelin family also proceeded to attempt to marry King Baldwin's sister, Sibylla, and his step-sister, Isabella, into the family as well. Said attempts didn't succeed, for reasons too long and complicated to list and explain here, though.

Oh, and King Baldwin IV? Now I realise why I loved the King's voice so much in the film, even though we never see his face; and even when we do, it is a terribly scarred one at that. King Baldwin IV was played by Edward Norton. Who really does have a lovely voice. And is a "beautiful boy" indeed. :)

And the strange thing in this movie is that for the first one hour or so, there's no actual dialogue. Just a lot of sage advice which everyone seems to be really keen at heaping upon Balian and awkward silences and rhetorical questions. This may be true only for Singapore though, since when I watched the initial trailer released on the net, I took note of a lot of scenes which I didn't see in the film yesterday, so there may have been a lot of scenes cut in Singapore. Damn.

But, in line with all the sage advice and quoteworthy quotes that I heard in the film, here're a few of them which I particularly loved:


"Holiness is in right action. And courage, on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves."

-Hospitaller


On burning the bodies of the fallen knights to prevent disease from spreading in the city, against the Bishop's protest that if a body is burnt, its soul cannot be given rest until Judgment Day:

"God will understand. If he does not, then he is not God. And we need not worry."

-Balian


“A man may move himself. A King may move a man. A father may claim a son. And then the man begins his own game. When you answer to God you cannot say ‘I was told it was thus’, or that virtue ‘was not the fashion of my times’. Remember."

-King Baldwin IV


And my favourite, the Knight's Oath, which, really is a very basic one, because there're a LOT of Knightly Virtues which a knight is supposed to possess. Compare the list that I'm about to present you with, with the quote from the movie later below.

Being Beautiful in Spirit, Charity, Good Cheer, Chivalry, Courage, Courtesy, Determination, Selflessness, Endurance, Faithfulness, Forgiveness, Friendliness, Happiness, Helpfulness, Honour, Hopefulness, Humility, Justice, Kindness, Loyalty, Mercy, Morality, Nobility, Obediency, Patience, Perseverance, Prudence, Sincerity, Sympathy, Tenderness, Truthfulness, and Wisdom.

"Be Without Fear In The Face Of Your Enemies
Be Brave And Upright That God May Love Thee
Speak The Truth Always, Even If It Leads To Your Death
Safeguard The Helpless And Do No Wrong
That Is Your Oath."

Even if it's really simplified, it still carries the same values; and it's a beautiful oath, anyway. :)

The day before yesterday, Steven was making plans and inviting people to join in a DotA LAN gaming session after the exams had *all* officially ended; on the 6th of May, that is.

So... yesterday, we (actually, just Ivan and me, coz I think all the other guys had played the game before) learned that LAN gaming is quite fun. Sorta. (That's just me. Ivan seemed like he was enjoying the whole thing.)

I sorta grasped the basics, but was never able to make any significant contribution to whichever team I was playing on, except maybe destroying a couple or so of the opposing team's towers every now and then, and in the second game that I played, while following one band of little footsoldier troops (which drew fire while I attacked the higher-ranking enemy footsoldiers and the enemy's towers) I suddenly found myself near the other team's base, so I just merrily went ahead and started destroying the base's buildings. The footsoldiers did the same, of course. The game programmes them to automatically engage/ take down any enemy unit that they see.

So in the end, I found it enjoyable, yes, but it's probably the sort of thing that really becomes fun when you've actually got the hang of it. And I don't think that it's the sort of thing that I could get hooked on, thankfully. Steven and the rest of the guys have been raving about it for ages, and I don't think it'd do to add more things onto my obsession list. :P

Ended up staying at home today instead of going to school like I'd planned; I woke up at about 9 and thought about going, but then wondered if anyone was in clubroom. I passed my key to Steven on Saturday night, you see; I could've called to see if anyone was around, but in the end, just got lazy and decided to stay home to do my reading instead. Anyway, it was bloody hot outside. -_-

Sometime in the evening, my youngest sister came downstairs and switched on the TV to watch the 2004 Teen Choice Awards that Channel 5 was airing. And for the first time ever, I saw what some of the artists whom I'd only heard of look like. Just goes to show how out of the loop I am with pop culture these days.

Jojo is one of them; I recognise her name from one of my middle sister's playlists, and when I saw her on the show, I was kinda startled. Her face looked 18, her height made her look 16 (heehee), and her voice sounded um.. 24.

And, also, I saw what Jesse McCartney looks like for the very first time.

I love his song, "Beautiful Soul", but I'd never even seen a picture of him before, so when I did see what he looked like earlier.. well, whoa.


Jesse McCartney. Damn cute. :D :P 

And he's 18. God, I feel old. :P He looks scarily like Aaron Carter from certain angles and in some lights, though. And not surprisingly, the first time I heard "Beautiful Soul", I even thought it was Aaron Carter.

Also, on Friday night, while I was in school, I just had to watch "Smallville" on the campus TV network, coz the night before, while I was on the bus on the way home the night before, I saw an ad for "Smallville" and Jensen Ackles featured prominently in it! O.O

Heehee.

I read somewhere late last year that he was going to be included in "Smallville's" latest season, but paid no attention to it since I don't watch "Smallville" anyway, but when I saw that ad, I suddenly remembered!

Anyway, gratuituous picture for people to ogle:


Jensen Ackles! Woot. XD 

Damn good-looking. When I showed Sheena a picture of him in a scene from "Dark Angel", that scene in which he's lying on his stomach on his bed, unclothed from the waist-up, she said, "Not bad, ah.." and quickly followed with, "Oh my God, look at those biceps!!"

Hahaha...

Just finished watching another lovely ep of "Everwood", but that's not really the point of this post.

Right about now, I'm convinced that bug spray was invented by someone with a sense of humour as sick as mine, for people with a sense of humour as sick as mine. And hers, of course. Or it could be a "he" too. I'm just saying "she", coz.. well. Bugs. And most girls. They don't really go in the same sentence. I believe I don't have to spell it out for you.

In my family, there's my parents, myself, and my two younger sisters; usually the people who deal with household pest problems are my mum and me, coz my two sisters won't go anywhere them. One because she's frightened of the way that they scurry around, and the other because she's convinced that she's fastidiously clean and has an OCD involving dirt, and hence, cannot touch anything as filthy as a roach.

My dad used to kill the roaches around the house, until he got really busy with work and really, we were supposed to be old enough to handle such stuff, anyway; so, now, he doesn't do it anymore.

Which leaves my mum and I as the lone defenders of the cleanliness and pest-proof integrity of our abode.

We usually never had bug spray around the house, so what my mum and I would do, was roll up a stack of newspaper, and then WHAP!

Roaches, 0; house inhabitants, 1.

But recently, we bought a can of insecticide when we were having a problem with mosquitoes a few months ago (turned out to be a blocked drain just outside our house that was spawning them); now that the mozzies are gone, there's still more than enough bug spray to go around, and I'm liberally dispensing it to the roaches. And at the same time, discovering what gleeful fun it can be to watch a roach scuttle about and bump into everything and basically just get hopelessly turned around.

And it doesn't help its case that every dark nook it tries to squeeze into to get away, I'll usually hear a brief scuffle before it scurries back out again, and I get to hit with another dose of spray. The scuffle just means it ran into a lizard. Although after a while it gets a little scary just how many lizards there are hiding in your kitchen.

Oh well. It'll probably run about for a while more before it flips onto its back and squirms in its death throes. And I'll just sweep it up tomorrow morning and throw it out. Forgot to mention that one other good thing about bug spray is that clean-up is much easier; no need to wipe up squashed roach bits off the floor. :P

So, all in all, hurrah for the extremely morbid fun that comes in an aerosol can. :D

Don't know why, but I woke up this morning and just lay around in bed, and suddenly just happened to think about how things in Uni seem to have turned out so different from how I thought they'd be.

I wanted to be a Psychology major, but I'm now a Sociology major instead, with an English Studies minor (although that's still quite debatable at the moment).

I wanted to get into a career involving criminology, but here I am, this semester, having just taken a module (Sociology of Deviance) which has all but convinced me what a lot of bollocks criminology can be, being about 75% dependent on defining criminals by biological characteristics or life experiences.

And I wonder anew at just how subversive disciplines in the liberal arts are and could be, if we were just given more credit, especially in places like Singapore.

My Literature lecturer put it to us last semester that people downplay the importance of liberal arts disciplines because they don't want to see the injustices and contradictions and inconsistencies of our society cut open and bared for their eyes to see; it's easier to just believe that the world isn't perfect and get on with life, telling yourself that there isn't really anything that you can do about it.

And Lloyd, my tutor for Deviance this semester, posed this question in one of the tutorials:

"On the news, when you see those people ask experts for their professional opinion on things like natural disasters and stuff... When it comes to social problems, have you ever seen them ask a sociologist's opinion?.. For that matter, have you ever seen a sociologist being asked for his opinion on anything?"

And Dr Gana indirectly gave us the answer in a later lecture:

"The sociology of crime and deviance engages social structure, unlike the individualistic approach that psychiatrists and psychologists take; when you look at the individual for the cause of the problem, you effectively depoliticise the problem."

The problems that we find in society are just too large, too broad. The problems are embedded in society itself. To some extent, sometimes the problems are our society. But what can we do about that? Surely even sociologists realise that reforming an entire society is no joke, and is not something that can easily be done.

For example, we say that capitalist society is essentially criminogenic. We can't do anything about that; are you going to suggest that we dismantle capitalist society altogether?

So this is the fate of liberal arts students, then: we are equipped with the tools of our trade, which, when they will make the greatest difference, we cannot use; we are given the words to say, which people will either not listen to, or will listen to, but in the latter case, their own hands will be bound, anyway.


And to get back to what I started with originally, it's both funny and somewhat expected, how life never really works out as you plan it. I wonder how many people there are in this world who've had their lives play out exactly as they've planned it. Then again, there could be a lot of them, especially the people who live in more isolated societies.

I never thought that I'd get this involved in Uni life, never thought that archery would ever be something like second nature, never thought that my life could be so full, and I certainly never thought that I'd have someone to share it with.

So even when we're socialised to the ideal of constantly striving for more, I shall indulge my deviancy and say that I'm quite happy with my life as it is.

Listening to Rebecca's "In My Dreams", on the CD that Ivan compiled for me for our three-month anniversary; it probably might not surprise some of you reading this, but what else would the self-proclaimed Techno Prince give his Techno Princess but a compilation of love-themed techno songs? :)

Thank you, dear, and happy slightly-belated anniversary. :)





And in the softest of stage whispers... I never thought I'd find someone like you.

Sociology of Deviance paper earlier today. Well, technically, it was yesterday, since it's already past 2 am in the morning.

Must be the single best paper of all this semester, just as I thought it'd be. I completely screwed up my Anthropology paper coz I had no idea how to answer the questions and there were *FAR* too many readings to read and remember; my English Language paper was only so-so (though it could've been a lot worse if Ivan hadn't given me an EL1101E crash course the night before), and Philosophy was the same. And during the paper, I discovered what my problem with Philosophy readings is: I can read and absorb and process the deep, somewhat-orderly ramblings of those philosophers, but at some point in the reading, I will invariably lose my concentration somewhere, for no apparent reason, and will then have to backtrack at least two or three lines to where I last recall understanding what I was reading.

What happened with Sociology of Deviance was a real morale booster.

I was actually going to leave the house at about 9 am, but then the computer caught my eye, and I thought, "What the heck; why don't I just listen to the recording of my last Deviance lecture? Might help..."

And later in the afternoon, the compulsory question of the paper turned out to be what Dr Gana had said and talked about in the last ten minutes of that lecture. Word for word, it was what he'd said. I am one DAMN lucky girl.

And for the optional question, out of the four that were given, I chose the one which asked about relating the theory of anomie in Singapore's context. Too good to pass up, man. Although, yeah, probably almost *everyone* might do that question. Anomie Theory is one of the easiest things to learn and remember in the whole course, after all.

And while I was writing out the answer for that question, I suddenly had this brilliant spark of genius; well, partly inspired by the Robert Merton reading that I'd just completed in the bus on the way to school, but it was a really inspired thought, anyway:

... our contact with the West has succeeded in making the cultural goals of the American Dream applicable in our society, and furthermore, our Asian values advocate hard work as a means to achieve success. However, both sets of value systems do not state exactly what "success" is, and exactly how much is enough.

Sounds good, yeah? :P Well, at least, I think so. :P

Feeling bored and not wanting to study anymore; I've already finished four of my five papers by now, but my last paper's on the second-last day of the exams. Don't really feel like studying for it, firstly because I've been studying almost non-stop for the past week or so, preparing for the last four papers, and secondly because the fifth of May (the date of my last paper) seems so far away right now.

Of course, the second statement isn't really true; it's only nine days. So really, I should stop slacking. But I just don't wanna study anymore... :(

Wanted to make a desktop wallpaper of Zhao Yun from "Dynasty Warriors 4" sometime ago, but put that off because of lack of time and lack of pictures which I can use. Want to make a desktop wallpaper of Raiden from "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of LIberty" now, but again, lack of time and pictures.

Downloaded the NAC Golden Point Award application form just now, think I'll print it out tomorrow morning, and if I don't have time to write something new, maybe I'll just submit one of my older works instead.

Sigh. I wish my exams were really over.