Songs I wish to hear on 9 Oct, though I know the possibilities of some of them below are very low:

1. 戀愛盲 2. 三千年開花 3. 找我 4. 新聞女郎 5. 零比零
6. 九九九 7. 不愛就不愛 8. 重新做人 9. PG家長指引
10. 瀛寰搜奇 11. 性情中人 12. 錯先生
13. 流離夜雨...雨中花 14. 好朋友 15. 呼吸 16. 某月某夜
17. 零時十一分 18. 不願一個人 19. 501 20. 步步高

My gut feelings told me that he would sing....
One song of Danny Chan, or maybe a song of Ho CC... just my guess.

September is the dullest month - may God (not that I believe in his existence) take away this month from now on. I could detect the smell of autumn a few weeks ago. It was so pungent that I couldn't avoid breathing in the sad air. Nostrils are like ears, and unlike eyes, always open and exposed for invasion. Not that the air is sickening, but memorial, like the smell of your mother's pillowcase and the clothes one just gets back from laundry. It reminds people of events, in the past, with a certain sense of nostalgia in it. No wonder there are people covering their nose and mouth with their bare hands in streets.

I will be heading off to Korea in October. Probably, this would be the last academic trip in years. So going with someone I know would be a credit and it could put a supposedly wonderful end to my whole study plan these two years. I couldn't stop asking myself What's next? The future, my future, precisely speaking, becomes more elusive and yet daunting. Mid-age crisis, I would say. Doubts just accumulate, as debts. We all have detbs, don't we? It's just the matter of whether we have more doubts than doubts, or vice versa.

I started rethinking my academic goal these two days. I was stunned to discover (one can't lie to oneself) that I am bored with it, to the extent that I am rather fed up. Yes, I'm writing something interesting, yet how profound could it be? Or shall I ask Is it rightly written? Not yet, not soon. Would I be able to survive like this until the day I retire, let's say 60?

Going to class alone, and leaving the campus also alone. At home, sitting in front of the computer, either surfing on the meaningless websites, or writing my thesis. I finally submit myself to the whole theory on how machines alienate people in their everyday life. If lucky, there would be one movie night and two volleyball evenings per week (provided that the games are enjoyable and the film is not crap). Or I will be browsing websites of famous universities overseas to check out what departments and programmes they are offering, dreaming as if I would one day step my foot on their campus.

All these things happen in a cycle. Everything in life is just a cylce, very Buddhist. This is why my life becomes duller and duller. With all the things I need to write in my head, there's a chaos, a mess. My life is chaotically dull, and I become moodless, which I find is also a special mood at the same time. So now, I can establish moodless=moody. Whatever crap theory it might be.

Too lazy to go to a computer shop to buy a writing pad so that I can write my blog in Chinese. Yes, I am lazier to learn how to type my mother language. I bought a horrible aroma oil from Franc Franc, yet, I am too lazy to get a new one, which smells better. Laziness comes from moodlessness, which in turn comes from alienation. So many thoughts on my future, but so little things have happened to signal me.

Classics suck!!!

One mystery always on my mind: I really don't understand why people praise Hitchcock and Shakespeare like god. I've read and watched their works. I think they're tremendously tedious and the pace is far too slow. I grow up in a world where speed and efficiency count most. Such stuff, for me, is already not of my concern and interest. Same for other 'gods', including my forever hates, Jane Austen, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift and many others.

Vertigo sucks. This is what I find on http://www.imdb.com:

There is nothing more to say. For me this is the best Hitchcock. I loved Psycho, Rear Window, North by Northwest, but this one tops them all. The story is so great and I almost can't say anything about it without spoiling it a little (What's so great about the film? The story could be told in 50 mins, but the director spent 123 mins to tell it). A couple of things I can say are that John Ferguson (James Stewart) is afraid of heights due a thing happened a while ago. He is asked to spy on the wife of an old friend of him. John once was a detective so he knows how to do that. The wife, played by Kim Novak, is acting a little strange lately so it must be in her benefit. Of course he falls in love and this is only where the story starts. (Injured and impotent policemen has always been a theme, even now. So what's so special about it? Falling in love with the subject is definitely a cliche) You will never be bored. (Sorry, I've been bored since the beginning) The acting from Stewart is good as always and Novak is great. Hitchcock does a great job with his directing, but that is something we all knew before watching the film.(disagree) There are some nice camera-tricks which I liked very much. The score by Bernard Herrmann also does a great job supporting the whole atmosphere of the film. This is one of the best Hitchcock's and you just have to see it. 10/10. (I give 1/10)

If it's not because of the course work, I would not even waste my time on this. Now, you wanna know my taste. This is what I call wit and wisedom:

Haruki Murakami: "The first time I did a book signing was in Princetown. Fifteen people came. It was [the] most peaceful hour of my life. I spent the time trying to remember all the train stations in Tokyo".

The British can always handle a light-hearted but warm romance very well. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually, and this one, Imagine Me and You.

I first saw the trailer of this film back in February, in Alberquerque, New Mexico. I was the only person in the threatre waiting for Capote (or Good Night and Good Luck) to begin. The massive hollowness of the theatre and my personal hollowness (as usual) just made me feel much deeper for the film as it normally would.

I finally got a chance to see it tonight and I like it a lot. It's not just a film about love at the first sight. The beauty of the lesbian romance is the portrayal of how a person follows her heart to leave her husband and be with a woman. Nobody gets hurt in the end, and nobody wins. Just that someone falls in love and someone falls out of it.

It's sweet, funny and romantic. That's what I asked for. Everything in a British romance just appears too romantic in the film - the florist, the sky, the walls, the shops, the interior of a home and the exterior of the city. Yet, when you actually get there, it's not exactly how they appear on screen. Very strange.

I don't have a love life now, but I do have a 'like' life. I am still looking for my le flash.

The name of the film comes from The Turtle's Happy Together. Ironically, Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together is about a gay couple being unhappy together. Lesbian romance is always more romantic than gay ones. Sigh, gay men are just too melanholic because they always think about "imagine me and me".

Me and you and you and me
No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy together

I think I am going to be real busy up to the end of the month:

1. A Cock and Bull Story
2. Naked World (Documentary)
3. Sketches of Frank Gehry (Documentary)
4. Elizabeth I (HBO film)
5. Fabulous: the story of queer cinema (Documentary)
6. Kicking and Screaming
7. The Joy of Life (Documentary)

Shit, there is still no news from anything I am hoping for. 小產 again?

It's always fun to hang out with these ppl (including ah dam, ah ta, charles, andy, kevin, carol, maggie tb, ah ha). We always meet at different sorts of tables (drinking table, GM table and food table), we just say a lot of bullshit. But it's really fun. For many times, I have laughed into tears and could not stop. Those were the happy days. Even now when I am bored (usually in the bus), I will recall what we have talked and laughed about. We have our secret language and codes. Shit, I miss GM.

What's wrong with this little crazy cunt? Can't she just leave me alone? I think I should go to "DA SIU YAN". I'm gonna fight back this time. Too much tolerance for this piece of shit. She's really pushing her luck.

This is the latest email of her. She is just FUCKING INSANE!!!!!

Dear B, your new nickname/ do you like it? not mean you're low-B :) i think u have many things to do. e.g. write some poems / know more people / travel / movies to me, you seem forget something ....... 1. a clear target 2. a real dream to work for 3. try to do more to contribute yourself to the society 4. stop listening too many pop songs ~~ 5. never think too high of yourself. it's a common mistake. i can understand. but you should be mature & wise. appreciate others and learn from them. never think " i'm quite handsome / clever / attractive" etc. other people will think you're a naive / low-B one. so always keep in mind that " what can i do to express my real talent? " " do i speak something useful/ inspiring to others? " i just hope you will grow up and never be silly.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	3.6
Mind:	4.8
Body:	5.3
Spirit:	2
Friends/Family:	2.7
Love:	0
Finance:	1.8
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

I guess the total score one can get in each category is 10.

Rate your own life at http://www.monkeyquiz.com/life/rate_my_life.html

The Lake House - Can time be really on time?

Adaptation is such a painful experience, and watching an adapted film is even more torturous. il mare is one of my all-time-favourites. The romance and the 'romantic' lies on the plot - how could two people falling in love with two years apart, without interacting with each other. It's a rather spiritual mode of yearning. It's all about romance in the modernity - all about alienation and most importantly - the possibility of allowing oneself to indulge into such an 'untouchable romance'. We all love the ones we could not get. Isn't this film saying exactly the same thing? Just that it talks about two people from two different temporalities.

The American adaptation sucks. It ruins the original mood and affect. The 'untouchability' is ruined and rewritten. Both films have a very nice 'lake house', of different achitectural and structural meanings. The Korean one is really built on the shore, serving as an end of a long walkway extension. The house has a name of its own - 'il mare', meaning 'the sea'. What is there is the sea is the horizon, which you can see, but never touch it. When you think you reach the horizon, it's not there, but you see another line ahead of you as another new horizon.

The American house is more pro-father. It has a tree planted in the middle. The father is the centre of the family, forever there, influencing the residents (his son). This is nothing special, but too obvious. "Are you crazy? That is a glass house. You have no privacy", one character says in the film. Yet, it's a glass house. You can see the view from within, but never touch it as well because you are separated by the glass. Also, who is there to watch you anyway? The privacy is laid out so clearly without any concealment. The only regret is that there's no spectators, very lonely.

The Korean one has more long shots. It is the setting and the art direction that shape the mood of the film. The American one just has too many close-ups (not to mention the sparkless acting and interaction between characters). Kate and Alex (Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves) just talk too much to each other. They are visitors of instant chatroom who occasionally sending each other massive emails rather than people really living their lives with two years apart. The romance is technologized and globalized. The human touch is not more to be found.

The story is quite drastically rewritten upon adaptation. There are too many unnecessary and annoying characters. You see the film and you know who I am pinpointing. The most 'mysterious' is the ending, which according to the time theory, they would not have been able to meet. Kate is crying at the mailbox, hoping Alex can get her mail, thus escaping from her death. It is Feb 14 2006 in Alex's time and Feb 14 2008 in Kate's time. If t stands for Alex's temporal signifer, then Kate's is always t+2. So why could Kate, after crying, stand up, turn around and meet Alex? It does not make sense.

Kate knows Alex in 2006, so t+2 = 2006. In other words t = 2004. They would only meet when t = 2006 (t+2 = 2008). Temporally speaking the plot is flawless. Yet, Kate can appear in 2006 and 2008 at the same time because she is always two years ahead. The privilege of a person living in the present is the existence of him/herself in the past. However, one should question why Alex can trepass the preset t and t+2 notion to appear all of a sudden in 2008 in the end.......

United 93 -- A+

Oh, my god. When was the last time I felt there's a film that deserved an A+? May god know. The terrrorists who hijacked the plane sought help from God perhaps as many times as I do now. United 93 is a shocking, stunning and delicate film - all the merits should go to the scriptwriter and director, who happen to be the same person, Peter Greengrass (Bourne Supremacy).

Oliver Stone's World Trade Centre is also coming out in Hong Kong. When two films are done on the same materials, comparison seems inevitable. Yet, merely judging from the trailer of Stone's and United 93 (as a film - I know it's unfair yet I am pretty sure). United 93 would win many upper hands for a number of reasons.

The film is not about heroism and Americanism, which I believe are what Stone's film want to portray. United 93, as the name suggests, is a story about an airplane while World Trade Centre is not a story about the buildings (or twin towers), but about two policemen volunteering to rescue the people trapped in the building after the disaster happened. There is only one character in 93 - the plane and that's why all the passengers, crew members and even the pilots have no names. No one can remember what they are called (At least I don't).

(to be continued)

A relaxing Sunday morning - all about memories

What a rare thing to do on a Sunday morning. Having slept for just 2-3 hrs, I went to South beach with Adrian. There wasn't much sunshine (there wasn't much money in my wallet either), but just lying on the beach in the tolerable heat, reading "8 por" magazines is in fact quite a fun thing to do. He brought the latest issue of Men's Uno. I flipped it over. Gosh.

There was Mr. S. 3 whole pages on him. Youth and talent count most in our society. The article said he just got the blah blah blah award in the States for his composing flare. Wow. Brilliant. One day, I wanted the reporters to call me and have an interview of me. I dreamed on. Back to Mr. S, 這人已經升了上我的神檯, 我想我一世也會供奉他, 崇拜他. I am an athiest, but I'm always attracted. The seduction and lure of youth and talent is a very dangerous deception, one on the outside, the other inside. Song of the moment: Janice's 愛才. (last nite in M Bar, I thought about the question: should I be happy that a person 想識我, or 賞識我?)

Flipping a few more pages, I saw my ex-colleague in St Joe. God, what's wrong? I can't stand the way education as commercialized as such. It's ok to commercialize the school, but the teachers? Come on! Teachers are never good fashion models. Even if they wear Martin Margiela topdown, they only look like twats from the wanna-bes in American Next Top Model (male version). Everybody has their own goal. So long as they don't get into my way, I am fine with it (though I'll grumble on). There's an ad of Joseph Li, with the narcisstic photos of himself, about how his courses are scheduled in the coming school term. There are words: "Joseph Li and his PhD team". Fuck all those PhD. I would not want to work for such a shallow guy if I have a PhD. Knowledge is noble, but selling it by 'claiming' that you have it is cheap, very cheap.

It's Alfred's birthday today. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Alfred (from Ah B), Happy Birthday to you.