Hey, another weekend nearly over. But we’ve had a nice time the past few days. Friday was a regular day where I got tons and tons of great things done – fever pitch. I like days like that. I left around 6:45 or so, and before I left I requested Tuesday off work. Cool. Got home, chilled out, and in the evening Naoko and I watched a really good movie – Me Not Stupid, a Singapore movie by Jack Neo, Singapore’s best (or most famous? – at least locally he seems to be) director and actor. A genuinely very funny film. So we are lucky, having seen two hilarious films in one week. Saturday morning we woke up to feel a strong, frigid wind blowing through the house. Went around closing windows, and back for a few more winks. I wonder if this was one of those spooky things that was a sign that the Pope had passed on from this world, but looking at the news on the Internet it seemed like he was still hanging on. Zen let us sleep until 8:00 or so, so we woke up feeling quite good. We got out of the door at 9:15 and took the bus downtown. Naoko got out at Orchard for work, Zen and I went on to Doby Ghaut and got out into the MRT system. By that time it was raining pretty hard. Rode on to Bugis. Asked some local charity-seeking school children where the exit to Raffles Hospital was, and one girl pointed us one way. Went over there, discovered that she was totally wrong. Never ask a Singapoaren for directions – I don’t think that they intentionally give people the wrong directions for the fun of it (I’ve seen that before), it’s just that they have no clue about their surrounginds. Went in, picked up our little jars for our stool samples and such, then went on to Arab Street with Zen. Very nice – walked along and around and saw the nice Sultan Mosque, and lots of textile shops, discovered a very nice Turkish cafe that I want to come back to, eventually found a lace to eat – was searching for a prata place, and it seemed like they were making prata there, but in the end they only had murtabak, no prata, so that’s what Zen and I munched on instead. Cool. Went off to Seibu and the local Forus-like mall, which is a glassed-in neighbourhood of sorts, very cool. Asked around if anyone was selling skateboarding shoes – of courses nobody is, although some people thought that some shops had some (wrong) – and comic books. Seems like the Sin City set will set me back $100 if I buy it all. Sure it will be good, but why so expensive – it’s black and white!!! Oh well. In the store Zen told me “Papa, I went poo poo in my pants.” He had this near-crying look on his face, so I believed him! Recently he’s pooed in his pants a few times for some reason. I picked him up and carried him off to the toilets, getting lost once, and then into a stall. We got his pants off and discovered… nothing. Nothing except poo smell. Good he hasn’t pooed yet, I thought, only farted, so I put him on the toilet. Nothing. So I dressed him and got ready to leave. Then there I saw, on the floor, a little turd. It must have been his – he pooed in his pants, and it fell through his leg-hole somehow when we got in the stall!! Good thing that didn’t happen when I was carrying him through the mall! So we cleaned it up and went along. I checked out a CD shop to what they sell the new Nick Cave set for, but they weren’t carrying it. They did, however, have a 5 CD set of Kenny G CDs, representing 8 studio albums, for $29. Wow, what a deal!! Took the train, went on to Clementi, it was raining really hard, so we took a cab. Nice. Got home, Zen was hungry so I gave him some rice, and then he was sleepy. Cool. He slept for 3 hours, and I did some work editing a new DVD – February 2004 to October 2004. Nice. Naoko came back after 5:00, so Zen and I went out to pick up some groceries. Got back, let Zen watch some Totoro, then along came Xavier and Sunwoo with their friend Nicole, all 6 or 7 years old. They played play-doh for a while, watched Shinkansen and Thomas, then they went home. Zen got a bath, and then went to sleepy. Naoko and I watched another Jack Neo movie – Home Run, based on the Iranian film “Children of Heaven,” it was OK but not as good as “Me Not Stupid,” although the sets were cool and the little girl actress was sweet. Went to sleep at 1:30. Sunday Zen woke us up early and we were sleepy sleepy sleepy… Then Xavier and Sun-Woo came again to play with Zen. Ouch!! Lived through that, and then got the DVD project done, and went for a nice noon swim. It was cloudy, the pool not so full, a lovely swim.
DVD review – Me Not Stupid: A very funny film about three kids who are down on their luck as they have been relegated to EM3, for dimwits and underachievers, and they and their parents suffer the social stigma attached. In this way it is a close companion piece to “Money No Enough,” which charts the fall and rise of three Singaoreans from-very-different-social-spheres, although the kids really have less to do with their parents’ falls in fortune (but do help in their recoveries). In many ways this is the better film, because the kids are more appealing, the parents are also better characters than the “Money No Enough” caricatures,” and Jack Neo shows himself to be a very clever screenplay writer. Many subtle barbs to social mores in Singapore, such as when he shows that a guy who went to shunned ITE (nicknamed “It’s The End”) to learn how to be a hairdresser can actually be very successful in life. Also reverse prejudice of foreign talent, language study, and the general disregard of kids who are stronger in artistic subjects than the so-called “academic” fields. Interestingly, the two poor kids learn how to shine, while the rich kid’s son, who is genuinely stupid, is not redeemed – he’ll be fine anyway, since his dad is rich, is the message here. He also gets the funniest lines, including a surreal speech about his mom’s shit, and also a freaky “know you inside and out” speech he makes to his teacher, mixing up his words, that could be taken as some sort of reverse pedophilia thing.
DVD review – Home Run: When I heard that Jack Neo had remade the gorgeous “Children of Heaven” film and set it in Singapore, my first thought was “how will a tale of a dirt-poor family be done in prosperous Singapore.” Of course a statement like that is naive, because there are plenty of struggling families here too, unfortunately. But the film is set in 1965, when Singapore had just split from Malaysia, and the kamphong where the film is set certainly could be in Malaysia. Nice shots, cool old village, lots of good Mandarin (barely any English in this one), great scenery. Old lifestyles. More “friendship” stuff in this film, compared to “Me No Stupid” or “Money No Enough,” rather than the origional, and it is funny seeing so very many of the characters from those two films, set in the ’90s, turn up in this period piece playing totally different characters. Good stylistic things – brother and sister writing and whispering to each other while parents argue, trying to keep a low profile and avoid attention or ire. Dancing teacher and kicking shoes, good kids punished by bad luck, dried pork again, punishment # 73, scoring an own goal is disqualified “because it’s my ball and I make the rules” nonsense, poor kids get smart while priviledged kids get lazy is a subtle message among many not-so-subtle messages. Zhou Huajian (Emil Chou) has a cameo as a riot cop getting beat up, but it’s one of those blink-and-you-missed-it sorta thing. Pretty OK film overall, but ultimately doesn’t really come close to the original.
Book review – Shogun: I finally finished reading Shogun by James Clavell about 3 months after starting it. Okay – to me, a good book needs to be strong in three things: plot, characters, and writing style. For Shogun the style was quite all right, the characters weren’t bad, but the plot was where it lost a lot of points. In this way it isn’t as good as a lot of popular books that I have read recently – “Da Vinci Code” had terrible style, not bad characters, but the plot was fantastic. For the Harry Potter books a bit better – okay style, pretty good characters, fantastic plotting. “The Day After Tomorrow” (not the movie but the totally unrelated book by Allan Folsom) had excellent writing style, good characters, and excellent plot. Mario Puzo’s gamblers tale “Fools Die” had great style, excellent characters, but unfortunately the plot was weak (nonexistent, actually). After hearing so many people recommend Shogun, I was very curious, because I will read nearly anything that deals with Japan in a serious way, but this one disappointed me. Barely anything happened in the whole book, and just as war was about to break out the book ended. Considering the terrain that Shogun covers, I think it would have been much better as a 400- or 500-page book. Going on for 1100 pages makes it a bit unbearable. In this way it is kind of like the Dune books, which are mostly very long and uneventful (actually, they are also terribly weak on style). The education of the Anjin was interesting, and this falls under character development. Some of the Japanese characters were interesting, as was the Portuguese pilot Rodrigues (he was terribly under-represented after the first 300 pages) and some of the priests. But outside of one daring escape and two assassination attempts, not much happened in this book. If you compare Shogun as a historical novel to other really great historical novels, 1100 pages of Shogun represent about 300 pages of War and Peace. I though that there should be some sort of sequel to Shogun, so we find out what happens to Toranaga, Buntaro, Blackthorn, and the others. But nothing. I want to read King Rat, because not only is it set in Singapore, but also because it is based on Clavell’s real experience. Shogun, which is obviously the result of a lot of research, has a few points that were quite bad and reflect badly on the writer. First of all, it is utterly impossible that a foreigner could have been made a samurai in any way, shape, or form. I seriously doubt that it has ever happened in the years between Japan’s first contact with Europeans (or, for that matter, Asian foreigners – Korean, Chinese, and other cultures that the Japanese learned from over the 2,500 year history of Japan) that a non-Japanese has been named samurai, particularly a high-ranking samurai like hatamoto. I asked Naoko about it and she was doubtful, but we’ll ask around a bit to people who know a bit about Japanese history. I also found a few small points – language was one, and another was a mention of Buddhist and Shinto nuns. Buddhism has nuns, but Shintoism? Sorry, never heard of it, neither has Naoko.