Lessons

Let me teach all of you something I just recently learned.

For those of you who believe in karma, this will help you burn all your past karma.

For those of you who don't believe in karma, this will help you release all the feelings you've had towards people in the past or in the present.

But keep in mind that you need to mean all these things.

Step 1
Write this down (or in my case, for convenience, type it out)

I seek forgiveness:
1. From , for .
2.
3.
And so on. Trust me this will be a very very very long list. I'm already up to 64 things, and this is only for the past few days. Be very specific in what you're asking for. And it's okay to repeat the same person's name many times, with different reasons for asking for forgiveness.

Step 2
Once again, write this down (or in my case, for convenience, type it out)

I forgive:
1. , for .
2.
3.
And so on. You must include actions by those people whom you were offended by before but shrugged off. It's important because this will make you sure of the excess baggage you're trying to remove from yourself. Once again, be specific.

Now, you are ready to forgive and be forgiven. You should feel better about yourself after you've done this because you've come to terms with yourself and others, even though they don't know it. But you've already planted the seed of thought, that is, to be forgiven by them, and they will forgive you through their actions. It's the Law of Attraction at work.

And even if you don't believe in this, at least you've let your feelings out onto something solid which you can see clearly. You can see clearly where you stand and where others stand for you. This is a great step in forgiving others and forgiving yourself.

Accomplishment

Yes! Finally done with Business Law assignment! Yay~

That feeling of accomplishment was quickly followed by a need to go home and sleep, therefore missing Business Law tutorial along the way. xD

I wanna thank a few people who helped in the completion of this assignment, for without them this assignment would have been left in my hands, and everyone knows how badly I can screw up. :)

Chin Yean - You were awesome at editing and compiling the Introduction, Body, and Conclusion of the assignment. It was awesome work.

Soon Teck - You were awesome at finding the journals from libraries and online resources and starting the whole assignment. It was awesome research.

Jia Hao - You were awesome at coming up with the two general questions which we eventually broke down further into three or four questions, and also at sporadically checking in on the progress of the assignment. It was awesome hearing from you every three or four days.

I-Jiao - You were awesome at staying out of our way and laying low until the day of submission itself. It was awesome nonparticipation.

and mostly thanks to:

Anna - You were awesome at reminding me about what to do, where to go, how to do, when to do, who to see, and helping me with the drafts of the interview questions and answers, and taking charge when things started getting haywire. It was just simply absolutely awesome.

Dr Roy - You were awesome at being the selected consumer for our interview, giving us answers that were simple to understand and remember and easy to write down, and being patient with our haphazardness. It was awesome respondent work.

and I would NOT like to thank:

The Lecturer - You were awesome at finding an impossible task. Let's hope you don't stop there and decide that this is too much of trouble for your future students. I assure you, they deserve to be punished as much as we did.

The Lawyer - You were simply awesome at not being found and contacted. You have awesome dependence issues.

Wow, a bloody Oscar speech. Well this assignment really got me worried for many weeks okay, despite all the avoiding and sleeping on which I managed to do with the work.

It's over. Let's hope we get an A. Gambateh.

Inhumanity

I don't understand humans. I understand their carnivorous needs. I get that they like eating meat. I myself don't mind being a vegetarian, but I don't live in a conducive enough environment.

BUT what I don't understand is their evil exploitation of animals so the humans can get the best out of the animals.

I just read an email about how ducks are treated so get enhanced livers to make succulent foie gras. I think its despicable. The ducks are force fed so that their livers will become enlarged, leading to a "tastier" dish of foie gras. The ducks are literally held by their beaks and fed food through a metal pipe non stop. Non fucking stop. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE.

Can't they just rear these ducks and geese in a nice farm with a lot of land and ponds? Can't they let the animals roam free on the land? And then when you want to eat them, kill em la. You don't have to lock these poor animals up and torture them?

Why do humans treat animals like they mean nothing? We ARE NOT SUPERIOR, in contrast to what humans believe. One natural disaster is all it takes to destroy all our lives at one go. Just because we are better built, physically and mentally, we think that we are SUPERIOR to animals? We are not superior, and they are not inferior. We are just made different from them. We, like them, are unique in our own way.

We do not have the right to exploit the animal kingdom for our benefit.

Just last week I saw a snake, a huge ass snake, trying to cross the road to get the jungle opposite its own which was being torn down for *surprise, surprise* housing projects.

I live in Bukit Antarabangsa. More than a year ago, a big landslide caused damage to property, lives and great inconvenience to the residents. Since the incident in December 2008, they have not even finished properly sorting out the place. And they've already started building homes at the foot of the hill?! What happened to the loss of consumer confidence in the exclusive hillside housing area after the landslide? What happened to the refusal of banks to provide loans on houses in Bukit Antarabangsa? What happened to people being scared to live in such an area?

Boy, humans sure are resilient, I can tell you that.

Change

I've come a long way. I really have. And that's something to be proud of. But:

When I look back at how I was when I left high school, I can't compare myself now with then. I was so different back then. Fresh out of school, naive, no idea what lies in store for me.

Now it's been a meager two years and I have changed so much. Maybe the term "changed" wouldn't do me justice. I've learned a lot I guess.

It's hard to believe that the people whom I used to have daily conversations with, those whom I used to depend on to get me out of boredom, are strangers to me now. I actually have to force a conversation between us. It's hard to believe.

I thought time was supposed to have healing properties. The separation we had should have been enough to grant us topics of conversation. Instead we are left in awkward moments where it's obvious we no longer have anything in common.

What is it about me that has changed so much? I don't know.

Firehouse

Thank you Ellana for recommending Fireman (I really mean Fireproof) to me. It was a nice movie :D:D

Firehydrant is about a man named Caleb who's a total jerk to his wife. He demands respect, which she refuses to give unless he shows her some, which he doesn't. So yeah the wife files for divorce and Caleb tries to save their marriage through a 40-day experiment called The Love Dare.

What Caleb does isn't out-of-this-world, fun-TAS-tick stuff that leaves you in awe. No, in The Love Dare, he just does simple stuff that (for unromantic people like me) would seem like nothing. But the effect of the little actions is worth it, because as all cliched movies go, there is a happy ending. Go figure.

You need to watch it to appreciate the little things in life you do that matters to others. And also to know that marriage is hard fucking work.

And faith can also help pull you in the right direction because, really, who are we if we don't have a little faith in something?

Firestation is an awesome movie :D

Freedom

Most of the time I look at other people and compare myself to them. When I do this I end up becoming depressed. Why? Because I compare what's good about their life that I wish was mine. This longing to have the life others have was stupid. People have been telling me that for years, but I never saw that logic.

See, I was brought up to compare myself to others. There was always a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. There was always something wrong with people and there was always something right about them. Living in conditions like these I ended up looking at the world objectively, with a specific way of living that I knew I didn't and never would have.

This feeling was excess baggage for me, someone once told me. I was carrying all this with me that it shows up in the form of insecurities and, sad to say, a certain degree of fake. I was never truly myself; I played different characters depending on where and with whom I was. This isn't to say that I lost my identity, no. This story isn't as far fetched as that.

I became an insecure, indecisive, faker who was void of a backbone. I couldn't defend my own beliefs, because I had none. I couldn't make decisions on simple matters, because everything seemed to have a flaw in them. I was afraid to make a decision because I felt that I might have been wrong and worse, judged by others.

So basically, I never really appreciated the value of what I had in front of me. Friends, things, situations, chances, etc. There always seemed to be a better option which I did not have.

By posting this tonight, I am setting myself free. It will not be easy. Nineteen years of self deprecation is not an easy habit to get rid of. But I will try.

And I do appreciate everything that I have. For the fortunes that favour me, for the friends who accept me, and for the opportunities I have that others don't.

And at the risk of sounding absolutely cliche, I have this to say: I am me.

How awesome is Alexander The Greatest? lol.

Un-awesome. He can't be awesome because he's The Greatest. Sudhan is and always will be the awesome one. :D

What do you want to know? Ask and you shall receive.

Do you think Shimi is awesome?

Yeahhhh~~~soo very the awesomeee!

What do you want to know? Ask and you shall receive.

a llama or a camel?

llama, definitely. way cooler

What do you want to know? Ask and you shall receive.

Got any grapes?

Er no :|

What do you want to know? Ask and you shall receive.

Note to Mom.

I wonder what it means if your mother cries out of disappointment on Mother's Day.

Could it be because of the extensive absence of her daughter from the household?

Could it be because she can't visit her own mother without having to visit her brother who lives nearby who demands to be visited? And since he demands it, her husband refuses to visit.

Could it be because when she didn't want to visit her mother for the reasons stated above she was patronized by her husband, who shouted at her for ditching her mother on mother's day just because he (the husband) didn't want to visit her brother.

A person who has too many loyalties will fall apart one day.

As a mother, a wife, a daughter, you tend to lose touch with reality because you feel you need to be there for your child, your husband, or your mother. Too many loyalties.

It's easy for me to say, I know. I am not a mother and even when I do become a parent I will not know the feelings a mother has. BUT I know one thing:

(a) If you want to bloody do something, your child, husband, and mother have no right to tell you not to.

(b) If you want to to bloody visit your brother because you don't want him to be upset, so be it. No one has the right to tell you not to. They can only say that your decision to visit your brother shouldn't be a prerequisite to visit your brother. And you shouldn't get upset by their words. Because it is your life and your decision. And it's not like you visit often anyway. They stay in bloody Shah Alam anyway.

(c) NO ONE has the right to tell you how you should behave. Neither your children, your husband, nor your mother or brothers. If you think you should let your daughter carry on with her life, your mother shouldn't tell you that you are wrong. Because she did not bring your daughter up. YOU did.

Live for you. Not your children, husband, or parents. I, as your son, will not tell you how to run your life because I know you know better or you know what you want.

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Epiphany

It's funny what you can learn from a movie as dumb as Old Dogs. I watched it for the Movie Review today and it sucked. I mean, cliche after cliche, lameness after lameness, all got me bored after the first twenty minutes. Yes, it only took that long to become a cliche. What do you call a cliched cliche? Anything with John Travolta and Robin Williams I suppose (anyone watched Wild Hogs?).

However! The lameness, the cliche, the expected plot all notwithstanding, I HAD to come up with something to say about the movie because it was a Movie Review. Duh.

I'm surprised with the shit I came up with actually.
"I learned something about love from the two kids. Even though they found out about their father after seven years, they still wanted to be with him and spend time with him. They knew that their father wasn't the ideal dad because he was old, inexperienced, and didn't know how to bond with them. This did not stop them from loving him all the same. Lots of other kids would have tried to stay away from their long-lost dads but these kids, at such young ages, loved their dad. That was unconditional love. And that is the kind of love we need to have for the people we're close to. They may hurt us at times, they may bitch you with their PMS, they may accidentally say things that offend you, but you gotta love them for who they are, not for what they do."

I was applauded for this. :) :) :)

So yes, it struck me that no matter how bad a movie, you can somehow, in some way, extract some kind of message from it. Because nothing is created without a reason. So yes, this is my message for the day.

Go forth and love unconditionally!

Updates

I finally decided to continue blogging. I have no idea why.

Maybe I have too much drama suppressed in my mind.

Maybe I need to find something to busy myself with besides slumber.

Or maybe my browser's finally giving in to me by connecting to blogger.com.

I have no idea. I just know that I need to update my nearly-dead space.

Update No 1
I'm financially secure. Yays!
Last Thursday I signed the agreement with PTPTN and I shall be getting my loan in 21 days. How awesome is that? All my worries are finally OVER. I repeat, OVER.
Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Here's:

Update No 2
My final's start next Friday! Precious minutes pass as I type all this in the text area. I should know better than to waste time like this. But like I said, I need to blog.

Update No 3
Oh hell. I thought I had alot to say. Now I'm not so sure any more. Oh well, till later folks.

"Aint no sunshine, gonna take this rain away"- Hope by The Submarines

Oscar Night

Wooohoooo! It wasn't much of a surprise to see Sandra Bullock go up there and claim her award, but it was sure nice to see her get it. :)



Poor ol' James Cameron though. He must be realllyyyy mad. I mean, ten years in the making and just three Oscars? The other six had to go to none other than his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow's low-budget, underrated, and under-grossing movie The Hurt Locker.

Kathryn Bigelow with her two awards for Best Director and Best Picture for The Hurt Locker.

I think the Academy is just out to drown expectations. Lol, it's actually a very interesting theory, why Avatar didn't win. But that'll just have to wait for another post. :)

Oscar expectations!

Okay here are the nominees I think will win at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards.

Best Picture:
Avatar, no contest. Ok there's The Hurt Locker and Inglorious Basterds but I think it'll be Avatar.



Best Actor:
Jeff Bridges
I dunno. I haven't seen the movie. Something just tells me that he's gonna win. :P



Best Actress:
Sandra Bullock
For sure, it's gonna be her. Meryl Streep aint gonna win again. Sandra Bullock was awesome in The Blind Side. Though she's acted the same type of character in other movies (Miss Congeniality being one of them) she just might win. I'm actually surprised that Meryl Streep was nominated and not Amy Adams. Both of them were equally good.



Best Supporting Actor:
No idea, because I watched none of the movies except The Lovely Bones. But Stanley Tucci has a fat chance of winning. I'm thinking Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds. He's got the highest rating in IMDb.com's poll.



Best Supporting Actress:
Mo'nique seems to be the favourite on the IMDb.com poll. Maybe she'll win. :) OH I loved her in Soul Plane!



Best Director:
Oh it's a tie between James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, and Quentin Tarantino. Personally, I don't think the academy is going to let James go home with an Oscar this year. Kathryn might get it. But then, the academy has never been fans of the war on Iraq, but then AGAIN this movie has been nominated for as many Oscars as Avatar sooo... I'm going with Kathryn Bigelow. :)




Now since I don't really care about the rest...We'll skip right to very last, that is:

Best Animated Picture:
I HATE to say this, but looks like Up's a shoe in for winner. Fuckin boring movie with no solid storyline. NO bold font for Up cos it's teh suck. :P



So there we go. My predictions. I hope I'm wrong about Up :)

The Accused

Man, movies can really change your life. The Accused changed my perception on rape, not that I had earlier formed any opinion on it. I knew rape was wrong but I didn't get it. Probably because I was a guy? I don't know, but I just didn't get it. Just a few days before I watched this movie, I was talking to Shu and Ellana about rape and I asked them if it was painful (I didn't mean to imply that they had any prior experience) and they looked at me as if I was stupid. I just didn't get it.

But when Sarah Tobias ran out of The Mill at the beginning of the movie, she screamed a scream I will never ever forget in my life. The moment I heard that scream, I knew that this movie was gonna be one I'd always remember.

Rape is not good. Lol, sounds like I've found some new age concept, doesn't it? Well it's true, nonetheless. I don't understand how guys can find it hot. Seriously, I did not get a hard-on seeing her being forced onto a pinball machine and having her clothes tore off her, and her mouth covered and hands bound to the sides of the machine. It wasn't pleasant. What more, her scream. Her suffering. Knowing that there was nothing she could do, yet trying to find a way to escape. All she could think of was "No".

Rapists should be raped. That's all I can say. They need to know how others felt and were affected as a result of their horny-ness. If I'm a judge, I'd sentence them to a lifetime of prison and a monthly ass-fuck as a reminder. Seriously, they need that. They didn't even feel sorry for Sarah, you know. They claimed she was a slut for dancing and flirting in the pub. Hey, everyone flirts in the pub/ club. That's no reason for them to get raped. Asswipes.

All rapists should get fucked, in the ass. That's my law.

The list of most disturbing movies has been updated:

1. Boy's Don't Cry
2. The Accused

Road to the Oscars

Yeppers, I'm all pepped up for the Oscars.

This year they've increased the number of Best Picture nominations to ten movies. That's good news because now there's more movies that have a chance. The bad news is that Up is one of the nominees. WTF.

I'm now on an Oscar '10 nominees movie hunt. I've hunted down the nominated movies and am trying to watch 'em before Sunday, March 7th! Aint my life just full of excitement? Aaaaa~~

I'll update on each movie that I've watched when I'm done with 'em, and when I have time.

The sad part is I might not be able to catch it live on tv. Damn classes. Argh! I'm soooo not gonna read about the winners in the papers or online. I'm gonna watch it first, no matter what I have to do.

Behold

...and the Lifetime Heavyweight Champion goes to:

Erin Brockovich!

Erin Brockovich is like the strongest woman I know, besides Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives. But since Lynette is breakable, she comes after Erin.

Erin is an uneducated single mother of three. She was dumped by her two ex-husbands and was left with two daughters and one son. Everyday she struggles to find a job that will pay the bills but because she never had any education after high school, nobody wants to hire her. On top of that, she met in an accident and got herself in seventeen thousand dollars worth of debt from hospital bills which she couldn't get from the guy who hit her (a doctor) because the court favoured the doctor. Okay they court ruled in his favour because she called the doctor and asshole for pretending that she was the one who faked the accident. Shitty isn't it?

Despite all this, Erin stands strong and holds her ground. She's not one who would cry because she was cheated. She'd stand up and fuck you up. :) In fact, the only time I saw her cry in the movie was when she missed hearing her nine month old daughter speak her first word, which was "ball". Aint that cute? The daughter I mean.

Anyway, Erin is also very smart. It's sad that she didn't go to school because if she did, she'd had been like woah. She's also very compassionate. When she investigated the PG&E case where they cheated the residents of Hinkley, she showed sympathy when the plaintiffs cried and told their stories. It showed how much difference that made when high profile lawyers took over the case and spoke to the plaintiffs too professionally and asked them to refrain from talking about emotional stuff as that wouldn't help them in court. So, they didn't talk to the lawyers. I mean come on! These people underwent surgery after surgery, chemo after chemo, had their uteruses and breasts removed because they were cheated into drinking contaminated water. Everything about it was emotional to them. Tsk tsk, lawyers suck.

But I digress...

Erin had a way with people. She was polite and good mannered when she was treated fairly. She hated being lied to and being ignored. She believed that people shouldn't judge her based on her appearance because she wore what she thought she looked nice in and as long as she had "one ass instead of two", she said she'd wear what she liked. She's a no-nonsense woman.

PLUS she was played by Julia Roberts, with utmost perfection! Mwah, mucho mucho good, it was. She definitely deserved an Oscar for that. Go Julia! :D

My favourite lines from Erin Brockovich:

Ed Masry: What makes you think you can just walk in there and take whatever you want?
Erin Brockovich: They're called boobs, Ed.

(when Erin and Ed managed to get 634 plaintiff's signatures)
Kurt Potter: Wha... how did you do this?
Erin Brockovich: Well, um, seeing as how I have no brains or legal expertise, and Ed here was losing all faith in the system, am I right?
Ed Masry: Oh, yeah, completely. No faith, no faith...
Erin Brockovich: I just went out there and performed sexual favors. Six hundred and thirty-four blow jobs in five days... I'm really quite tired.

[at the meeting with the PG & E lawyers]
Ms. Sanchez: Let's be honest here. $20 million dollars is more money then these people have ever dreamed of.
Erin Brockovich: Oh see, now that pisses me off. First of all, since the demur we have more than 400 plaintiffs and... let's be honest, we all know there are more out there. They may not be the most sophisticated people but they do know how to divide and $20 million isn't *shit* when you split it between them. Second of all, these people don't dream about being rich. They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool without worrying that they'll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of *twenty*. Like Rosa Diaz, a client of ours. Or have their spine deteriorate, like Stan Blume, *another* client of ours. So before you come back here with another lame ass offer, I want you to think real hard about what your spine is worth, Mr. Walker. Or what you might expect someone to pay you for your uterus, Ms. Sanchez. Then you take out your calculator and you multiply that number by a hundred. Anything less than that is a waste of our time.
[Ms. Sanchez picks up a glass of water]
Erin Brockovich: By the way, we had that water brought in specially for you folks. Came from a well in Hinkley.
Ms. Sanchez: I think this meeting is over.
Ed Masry: Damn right it is.

Donna Jensen: You're a lawyer?
Erin Brockovich: NO, no... I hate lawyers. I only work for them.

(when she got a threatening phone call by a guy calling her Erin Pat-te Brockovich)
Erin Brockovich: Hey Scott, Tell me something. Does PG&E pay you to cover their ass, or do you just do it out of the kindness of your heart?
Scott: I don't know what you're talking about...
Erin Brockovich: The Fuck you don't! Nobody calls me Pat-te, That heavy-breathing sicko that called the other night, Could have only found out about me from you... People are dying, Scott, you've got document after document here telling you why, and you haven't said one word. I wanna know... How the hell you sleep at night!
Scott: [guilty stare]

And...my most favourtie part of the whole entire movie...

Theresa Dallavale: No offence, but we just need to go through some of the holes in your research.
Erin Brockovich: I'm sorry, Theresa is it? There are no holes in my research.
Theresa Dallavale: Erin, you don't even have some of the plaintiff's numbers.
Erin Brockovich: Whose number do you need?
Theresa Dallavale: Everybody's. This is a big case, we're gonna have to be able to contact every one of the plaintiffs.
Erin Brockovich: I said whose number do you need?
Theresa Dallavale: You don't know 634 plaintiff's numbers by heart.
(Erin looks at her, challengingly)
Theresa Dallavale: Annabelle Daniels.
Erin Brockovich: Annabelle Daniels: 714-454-9346. 10 years old, 11 in May. Lived on the plume since birth. Wanted to be a synchronized swimmer so she spent every minute she could in the PG&E pool. She had a tumor in her brain stem detected last November, an operation on Thanksgiving, shrunk it with radiation after that. Her parents are Ted & Rita. Ted's got Crohn's disease, Rita has chronic headaches, and nausea, and underwent a hysterectomy last fall. Ted grew up in Hinkley. His brother Robbie, and his wife May and their five children: Robbie Jr, Martha, Ed, Rose & Peter *also* lived on the plume. Their number is 454-9554. You want their diseases?
Theresa Dallavale: Okay, look, I think we got off on the wrong foot here...
Erin Brockovich: That's all you got, lady. Two wrong feet in fucking ugly shoes.

8 Mile

I sat at my computer the whole afternoon watching this movie. I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago, after finding out that the late Brittany Murphy starred in it AND that it won an Oscar!

When the movie first came out, I was reluctant to watch it, simply because I thought that rapper couldn't act and it would somewhat like Mariah Carey's attempt at Glitter (which I did not watch as well). Well, I was right. He can't act. But the movie was awesome!

I am now currently addicted to the Lose Yourself. Argh, the things an Oscar winning song can do to me. I can't get rid of Carly Simon's Let The River Run out of my head as well. Hey, that song is awesome too, okay. It won like, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and I forgot what else.

But nothing can explain how Melanie Griffith was nominated for Best Actress in Working Girl. The bland blonde sucked. I posted this query on Yahoo! Answers and I was told that I had to compare her acting in Working Girl to the other movies produced in that year. Boy, did 1988 dish out awful films or what? Because Melanie Griffith sucked in it!

Anyway, back to the epiphany I had after watching 8 Mile. It totally changed my perspective on rap. I still believe rap is for people who have a knack for beats, and can't sing to save their life. I still believe that rappers are made up of assholes who had a hard life and resorted to gang fights, guns, and swearing to get through high school. This would make Celine Dion sound like a high school princess with the perfect grade point average. Go figure.

But rap is interesting! You need to be able to think swiftly and quickly to get the right words. Eminem is unique in that sense. I like what he raps about. He's full of life and meaning, as opposed to crappers like Kanye West who're just full of it.