Success Stories
Once in a while you are bound to meet an old friend whom you have not met nor contacted for some time and you sit down to have a nice chat perhaps about the good and maybe the not-so-good old times. Slowly the conversation will move on to recent times and the future and this fellow goes on and on lamenting about his success (and look down on you in the process!) and you realize that this is someone whom you will never contact again in your entire life.
I met someone who I have not seen for quite some time and within 5 minutes after the how-are-you and what-you-doing shit, he goes on and on about his huge plan to acquire wealth and how he is going to afford his future toys like Porsche and BMW. His plan? To venture into the China market to bring in stuff to sell and trade. I was polite enough not to point out that that is something that already a lot of people are doing and also that he has achieved nothing yet because he is some years my senior.
I do realise that he is perhaps giving me some advice or educating me. However, a piece of advice if expressed wrongly, looked more like boasting and blowing his own trumpet and the main thing here is - he has achieved nothing yet and even goes on to say how other industries and ideas are not going to work and he is ahead of everybody.
He believes firmly in the motto 'Dare to Dream' and encourages that I do the same as well. I do believe in dreaming as well. Way back when I was in Secondary school, I was always picked by the teachers in my class when I was sleeping or not concentrating. "Oei! Dreaming ar?!!" the teacher would scream at me. See, I was already a certified dreamer by the school long time ago.
I have nothing against confidence but an overdose of that equals to
arrogance. I wished him good luck on his impending success and joked that hopefully he will still remember me should he succeed in getting his 'toys'. Perhaps in a few years time, he will be the one to tell me "See, I told you so".I remembered reading somewhere some rich buggers saying that 'money is but an idea or a concept'. I do have many ideas and concepts though many people tend to dismiss it as crap and nonsense but I am nowhere getting rich. Perhaps the correct way to rephrase it is 'money is ANYTHING but an idea or a concept. Maybe I should jump on the bandwagon and venture into the China market as well since everyone says that it is a goldmine there. I already have an idea of what I am going to do. I will walk round the street and sell 'bing tang hu lu'. I figured that if every citizen buys one from me, I will be a millionaire in no time. I also figured that I will take around 6000 years before I finished walking the whole of China. The conquer of China is not too far away. Plus I heard that the ratio of a man to a woman is 1:4 over there. It seems that the chances of me getting a wife there is higher. Or a mistress. Or even two.
The Cock Soldier
One fine day in my company line..
I was addressing this mini squad who wanted to go and report sick.
"IC! What's the strength of the report sick personnel?" I asked.
The IC, who has the blurrest face in the entire universe, turned round and replied:" Erm..Sergeant, I am afraid the strength is not very strong and in fact quite weak as we are all going to report sick."
I would have killed him if I have a live round and a rifle in my hands. He is a very lucky man.
Lust.Caution
I went to catch Lee An's latest movie - Lust. Caution starred by Tony Leung, Lee Hom and Tang Wei (a rising star in Mainland China) over the weekend. Despite the many controversies surrounding the cut scenes of the movie, I would say that this movie is still worth my weekend ticket price.
The setting of the movie is in 1940s Shanghai, where the Japanese has just taken over China in the Japanese Occupation. Tong Leung (Yee) plays a powerful political figure in the Japanese backed-Chinese Government as the post of Intelligence Chief. His main role is to eliminate rebels who are looking to overthrow the Japanese empire. Lee Hom (Kuang) stars in the role of a charismatic student drama club chairman of a school. He is patriotic to his country and could not bear to see his country fall into the hands of the Japanese. By chance, he meets Tang Wei (Wong Jia Zhi) and shares with her his plan to assassinate Yee.
Wong is to take up the role of Mrs Mak to get close to Yee's wife. She is to help to find out the daily habits and routines of Yee to faciliate Kuang's gang to find a chance to assassinate Yee. By twist of fate, Yee was seduced by the charm and beauty of Wong and Kuang decided to use Wong as a bait to assassinate Yee.
Tony Leung was as usual, charming in his portray as Yee in this movie. However, fans may expect more from this acting veteran. The way he walks, acts or talks seemed to be a carbon copy from his character in one of his previous movie, 2046. The character of Kuang doesn't really fit Lee Hom at all. A patriotic student with an accent in his Mandarin hardly goes hand in hand. The way he spoke Mandarin in the movie is as good as me trying to speak French. One scene of the movie with Lee Hom leading his crew of rebels dancing and singing patriotic China songs down the street had the audiences in the theatre in stitches. His expressions need a lot more honing and in some scenes, his face is like that of a dead fish.
It was Tang Wei who really impresses me the most. Her character, in my opinion, is the hardest to act. Her portraying of the character of an ordinary student who was thrown into the turmoils of the chaotic world and get swept up in a dangerous game of emotion intrigue with Yee was a delight to watch. China does really have a stream of very talented young actors and actresses.
Many local critics had condemned this movie, saying that the cut version undermined the artistic value of the movie and one extremist in one newspaper column even urges Singaporeans to boycott this movie and piles pressure on the local movie industry to release an uncut (R21) version of Lust.Caution.
I was fairly disappointed when I learnt that 9 minutes of the movie had been cut to bring down the rating to cater a bigger crowd. However, after watching the movie, I would say that it has not lost its essence due to the cut and it scores a high 8/10 on my list. The main reason was because it was Lee An who cut the footage himself, not the Board of Censorship. Surely Lee An would not have cut something that would kill the plot or the essential emotions of the characters in his movie?
In other words, this lust can still be proceeded, with or without caution.
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"I look into the eyes of my fellow politicans in the Government and I see one thing only - Fear." Yee told Wong, which perhaps sums up the fear and stress he faces everyday in his job.
"The reason why this restaurant has got so little people is because the food they serve is awful. But that's the reason why I like it here. I can talk less discreetly here because there are not many people around." Yee to Wong in a suggestive mood.
"You could have had me 3 years ago. Why didn't you?" Wong said to Kuang. A simple sentence but yet contains her love and admiration for Kuang. It was perhaps of this that Wong decided to take up the dangerous assignment of acting as a spy beside Yee.
