Watching out for the Watchmen

The top movie on my 'Must See Movies of 2009' is opening in 2 weeks time. After so much controversy and production hiccups, I'm glad DC finally gave the thumbs up to Zack Snyder to direct the screen version of the much-acclaimed comic that was first published in 1986. In my opinion, he did a fabulous job with 300, capturing that dark, enigmatic feel of the Spartans from Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name, and I'm confident he's capable of doing the same with Watchmen.

Check out the trailer below which almost made me soil my pants. My fanboy palms are sweating in anticipation. So exciting!!




The 12-issue comic series found crtical acclaim as it came during a time when American comics industry was facing an all time low since the 1950s anti-comics movement. Not only did it shatter all comic book superhero stereotypes, it was a political and social commentary touching on the uncertianties of the 1980s. Revisiting the plot now serves as a poignant and stark reminder of how things could have been and also how volatile things are in this crazy, callous world.

Read up on the Watchmen here before catching the movie so it doesn't spin you in circles.

I await with bated breath.

The world will look up and shout 'Save us!' And I'll whisper 'No.'

~ Rorschach

A-roi krub!

I've always been a sucker for Thai food. But it's hard to find really good, authentic Thai food in Singapore (we usually go to Ying Thai Palace at Purvis Street but they are quite pricey). The crap they serve at places like Baan Thai are what I term the 骗红毛 kind of fare you'd usually find littered around the island. They serve you that oily, red, just-spicy-and-not-much-else tom yum soup and they don't even have chicken feet salad on their menu.

Just yesterday, I had a sudden craving for tom yum soup. Too lazy to go out there and find a good one, we rummaged the fridge and realised that we had this tom yum kung soup package that we'd bought eons ago but never got around to cooking it. It came with all the necessary herbs, spices and sauces required to make ourselves a nice, steaming pot of that mouth-watering, sour and savoury broth. And we could add whatever we wanted! Lovely!

I prepared some prawns (the scrawny kind although the recipe on the pack called for king prawns), squid, some chicken and a whole lot of straw mushrooms. It was so convenient - just boil some water, throw in the mushrooms with Packet #1, bring to a boil, add Packet #2 and the rest of the ingredients, bring to boil again and add Packets #3, #4 and #5 before turning off the fire. That's it!

We were drooling by the time it was done as the fragance was overwhelming while the soup came to a boil. Slurp!

*Sorry, no pic of the final product since we were famished by the time the soup was done!*

Spritual surfing

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1

Faith is a peculiar thing. Just when you think you have it, it eludes you and starts whether or not God is indeed there. The Bible tells us He is always there, however our sin separates us. How then do we not sin? Is it even possible while we live in a fallen and sinful society, surrounded by secularity each day? The Bible tells us it is possible; ‘I can do all things through Him who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13). But in order to truly believe in that, we need to have faith.

Hence my dilemna. I seem to be caught in a vicious cycle. Every Sunday after a good praise and worship session or a good sermon, I feel ready to take on the world after being touched by the Holy Spirit. Somewhere along the way, just when I thought everything is going to be great, things just don't seem to go my way. So my faith gets zapped and begin to wonder if God is there. This feeling of hopelessness sometimes even carries into Sunday when we go to church, so while everyone is worshipping the Lord, I’m wondering about what is going on in my life and what God can do FOR ME. From there, my logic takes over and I begin to take things into my own hands, which of course ends up

Evertime I pray, God tells me to trust Him more. How do I trust Him if I don’t have faith? Faith comes from the Word of God, so the Bible says. But again, if I can’t even bring myself to sing a song of praise, how do I open up the Word of God to focus on what God is saying?

It’s a sucky feeling to have to go through this cycle over and over again. Each time I think I’m up there, I find myself down below again. Day in, day out I ride the tides of wavering faith.

I reckon what I’m going through now seems akin to surfing. You see a great wave, you think you can handle it so you swim out and take it on. Halfway through you get wiped out and you ask God ‘Where were You when I needed You?’ Then God picks you up and sends you out there. You get complacent and the whole cycle repeats itself. Bummer.

Maybe one day I’ll have enough material to write a book. It’ll be entitled ‘Spritual Surfing: Riding the Tides of Wavering Faith’ and go on to become a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. I’ll be filthy rich from royalties, get complacent and find myself back here again.

The Lunar-cy of the Lunar New Year

It has begun. As much as I hate festivities and all the hoopla that comes with it, there is no escaping the insanity of the Lunar New Year since we are, after all, Chinese. It started a couple of weeks back with the purchase of a CNY-ish plant which I don't even know the name of, putting up obiang looking 福 paper cut-out decorative thingies (must be inverted, no less), getting crushed in the markets and, the part I hate most, spring cleaning.

Our refrigerator is filled to the brim with stuff since the Chinese are a superstitious lot (i.e. my mum-in-law) and believe that the house should be chock full of food as we pass into the New Year. And that is not even taking into the account the junk food we have sitting outside the refrigerator.

Is it just me getting old? Or is it just my overall nonchalance with life that I just can't seem to be bothered with such things anymore? Given the choice, I would just pass the holidays quietly without any visitations or parties whatsoever. But I suppose my family wouldn't have any of that.

As I am typing this, Penny and Vel are off with the MIL to the markets in search of the perfect fishballs for our steamboat tomorrow. I'm like, whatever.

恭喜发财，身体健康.

Tortured

I've done threading on my eyebrows before, it's part and parcel of my beauty regime. It hurts like mad - no amount of military training can prepare you for such an intense pain and I used to wonder why women still insist on torturing themselves this way - but it's way more effective and prodcutive than plucking with a pair of tweezers.

Penny decided to take a trip to Rimpy's, our usual Indian eyebrow threading parlour at Clementi Central, to do her eyebrows. She ended up threading her whole face and came out even more satisfied than usual. As if that were not enough, she glances at my face and decides that I needed one too. I thought, shouldn't be that bad and it's been a while since I had my last threading anyway.

When my turn came, I lay down on the chair as usual and the auntie proceeded to do my eyebrows. It was a totally different sensation altogether when she moved on to my face. To describe the pain as excrutiating is a severe understatement - I had half the mind to jump out of the seat and yelp. All I could do was grit my teeth and grunt, twitching a little once in a while.

It was the longest 5 minutes of my life, but my face seemed a little brighter after the whole procedure. Or so Penny claims. Same same, but different.

Relieved! So *%^# painful!

I love shopping

Yes I really, really do. Maybe it's one of the many occupational hazards of being a marketeer - having to prowl the retail level to keep myself updated, steal ideas, etc. I just enjoy looking at stuff and studying every little detail on the packaging (for processed items like food) or analysing the stitches on a certain shirt or figuring out how another weird kitchen contraption works. But being a typical guy, the way we shop tends to differ from the way the opposite sex does it.

Our DNAs are programmed in such a way that we can walk away from something we don't need and we purchase only when we have to. And when we finally do, we have a pretty clear idea of what we want. Just like a few months back when I bought my ultra cool pair of boots from Primevera, I chanced upon some vintage inspired T-shirts at F.O.S. by Junk Food Clothing. Apparently, celebrtities in Hollywood are lapping them up and it is the 'happening' thing to wear now. It is available on the Junk Food website and over here in Singapore they are available at NewUrbanMale as well as other funky shops at Far East Plaza and Heeren. They are, in my honest opinion, quite ridiculously priced given the quality of the fabric and also because I never believe in paying more than $20 for a T-shirt.

So imagine my glee when I found out that the they were going for only $19.90 a piece at F.O.S.!! I was quite peeved that the female selection was way wider than the males (and they came with much more reasonable sizes too!), but at such a bargain I couldn't complain.

I ended up with only four pieces that came in a Medium - one cool, green with a Green Lantern logo; another green one with an old 80s Atari-esque Pacman accompanied by power pellets and ghosts; a brown one with a M.A.S.H logo (the old 70s sitcom) and another brown one with the Community Chest livery from the Monopoly game.

Who cares if they are fakes? I don't! Who can tell if they are factory rejects? I certainly can't!

Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine

There's nothing like a good fanboy movie to put a grin on my face. Along with Terminator: Salvation and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, another movie that has got my fanboy palms sweating is X-men Origins: Wolverine, slated for release in May.

While poseurs all around the world lapped up the X-men trilogy on the big screen, I wasn't particularly pleased as I felt the movies couldn't do much justice to each of the characters as individuals. Unlike the Spiderman movies which worked well chronicling the life of Peter Parker as he became Spiderman, the X-men franchise works better on print due to its ensemble of characters which can never be fully fleshed out and explored with 120 minutes of screen time. The Dark Phoenix saga was one whole mini series by itself, but it was barely covered in X-men 3: The Last Stand.

Which is why I was pretty excited when news of the Wolverine movie broke. I'm not particularly pleased that Hugh Jackman was chosen to play Wolverine (I would have preferred the more feral-looking Dougray Scott, who passed on the opportunity to participate in the first X-men movie due to film committments on Mission Impossible 2), but I must say he has done a pretty fine job munching on cigars, cocking that eyebrow and going on berseker barrages. He reprises his role as Wolverine, which is a prequel to the X-men movies set 17 years before the events of the first Xmen movie, exploring how he got involved in the Weapon X program (that gave him his adamantium-laced skeleton), why he's always hell bent on ripping Sabretooth's head off, and hopefully his obessession with Harleys, etc.

**TRIVIA NOTE: Wolverine's mutant healing factor slows his aging process drastically, which explains why he looks the same 17 years before and after.**

Far more exciting than Logan's flashback is the fact that this movie also introduces a whole host of other mutants from the X-men universe - the suave card flicking, pole fighting Gambit; the fat bouncy dude known simply as Blob; my favourite wise-cracking, cancer-ridden ninja-commando Deadpool; a younger Storm whom Logan is supposed to meet as a pickpocket in Cairo (according to the comics, but not sure how it'll be portrayed in the movie) and a younger Cyclops (dunno what he's doing here - they never met according to the comic book storyline).

The trailer looks REALLY exciting. I await with bated breath!!