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She’s Out Of My League – Humourous, Charming, Cute, Ordinary and Honest.

She’s Out Of My League – Humourous, Charming, Cute, Ordinary and Honest.

Yikes, another cheesy, hollywood-formulated romcom (romance+comedy) eh?

She's Out Of My League

Pretty girl, a 10/10 there on your left (Alice Eve), falls for geek, a 5 there if you’re able to find him in the pic (Jay Baruchel), while getting over her ex-pilot and successful boyfriend (which you’re probably wondering how he looks like~) — like who’d ever wanna dump a boyfriend who’s a pilot?

Quite a great classic, love story.. not!

But it’s refreshingly entertaining nonetheless, though it could do without some scenes, like the balls-shaving moments~

Um, refreshing because both leads didn’t really have to try too hard to impose themselves on the screen, like Something About Mary or Valentine’s Day, and both leads added the charming factor to this flick.

Okay to the plot now, and without even stepping into the theatres you’d probably already knew how it’s going to end — girl sees boy, finds him interesting, gets to know him, gets over her ex, then ex comes back, girl and boy cools off, then both realises they’re meant for each other, a departing plane gets grounded, and they both kiss in the middle of the waiting area of the airport.

Not exactly pure adrenaline stuffs, nor a script that’s worthy to be called a classic, but then again, it’s not exactly your usual hollywood rebound-guy comedy either.

Okay, unless you count the upsized masculine jokes as Hollywood, then it’s your hollywood comedy, but the inviting direction from an Englishman, Jim Field Smith, in his debut Hollywood feature film, shines plenty of light on the subtle impressions from the leads, who had to work with very little crumbs of a plot to chew on.

The supporting casts were a mixture of over the top and underdeveloped characters, with nothing else but to support the plot and egg the leads on, where a guy finds himself being almost the rebound guy, and the girl finding herself that.. oh wait, nothing much changed on the girl’s part except that the guy made her into a better person.

It is essentially a movie about him believing stoutly that she is of his league, and it’s certainly not original but it’s one that most, including yours truly, can relate to — that thought at the back of your head where you’re not good enough for your partner or that you’re worried that someone with better credentials than you might stroll into their life.

You know, that low self-esteem displacement of not being good enough for someone else, when in fact the only reason anyone is perfect for each other is when they accept that they are?

Perfection is when you accept things for what they are.

Talking of which, when Alice Eve opens up to Jay Baruchel for the ending, saying how he’s ‘perfect’ for her, it wasn’t quite the emotional ride you’d hope for in a romcom, where instead everything here seemed hurried with a quick-fix ending in place.

So how much would I rate the movie?

Nah, I guess I’ll stray away from ratings, and instead I’ll utilise tags to ‘rate’ the movie in question.

Like these: Schoolboy-Humour, Charming, Cute, B-grade, Honest.

The ‘I wish I could tell the future’ post.

The ‘I wish I could tell the future’ post.

As my 2 cats slept nonchalantly on the mat that I initially laid for myself, I couldn’t bare to chase them away from their slumber — even if they were just a pair of adorable cats on a mat, becuase these creatures are more than just friends.

I wonder what I’ll be going through if age catches up to them, and everybody knows that domesticated cats don’t live a long as humans do, though those that do probably look more like a cow than a cat.

It’s true.

baa baa cat

Told you.

Anyway, who knows how long cats are able to live, especially with that 9 lives of theirs.

But we humans have just one chance to live our lives, and this, truly, makes everything worth living for.

Making friends, chasing dreams, and living life as much as we can, is all that we can really do right?

Or do we mull and gloss over our problems, spend time worrying and tax ourselves calculating incessantly?

What if you knew tomorrow isn’t ever gonna come and you had only one thing left to do?

Of course, all these I’m merely hypothetically suggesting, but what if?

Would you recluse in regret or live vindicated knowing that there’s nothing else that needs to be done, because you’ve done all that you can?

No, I can’t tell the future nor read minds, but I know that if there’s something I wish to do, somewhere I hope to be, or someone I yearn to spend time with then I’d do it, go there, or let them know.

Or at least try to, before considering alternatives.

Life is short, noone needs reminding but somehow everyone seems to forget that it is, and we procrastinate and let things be hoping it’ll get better tomorrow.

But why leave till tomorrow what you can get done today?

And are you pretty sure that tomorrow’s going to be a better day?

Well for your sake, I hope so too, and that you’ll never stop dreaming, never stop hoping and never stop trying.

Try. Hope. Work at it.

Who knows, instead of predicting the future, you could probably write it yourself.

Your destiny — Be careful of what you think.

Be careful of what you think.

Your thoughts become words.

Be thoughtful of what you say.

Your words become your actions.

Be selective of what you do.

Your actions become your habits.

Be wary of what becomes habitual.

Your habits become your character.

Be concerned of your traits.

Your traits become your destiny.

And it all points towards the beginning.. our thoughts.

So how willing are we to change the way we think?

The overdue world cup post.

The overdue world cup post.

Is $90 too much to be paying for entertainment, especially for an event that’s held once every 4 years, 31 days long and, if you really bothered to count it up, 5,760 minutes of the beautiful game.

That’s about 1.56 cents per minute, costs less than your per minute billing, and certainly affordable right?

Well apparently not if you’re among the masses that thinks Singtel+Starhub are overcharging their customers this time round and persistently calling out for a boycott of their package.

And I’m one of them, though not as vocal nor aggressive though.

I simply wasn’t that interested in catching the games live (think: no Ronaldo (the Brazilian), no Zidane, no Nedved, no Owen..) and the price tag certainly made my decision easier.

In any case, I think the Pareto (80/20) rule is at work here, where they (licensed operators) probably think that instead of serving 80 people and earn, say $100, why not serve 20 people and still earn that same amount — at the same time using less resource, thus having the ability to ‘up’ the quality of their service.

When you serve a smaller quantity, and charge them a premium, you’re able to focus your service and maintain quality at the same time.

Something which I’ve been trying, but failed, to pass onto my colleagues at the office, who are determined to serve everyone, everytime.

Well you just can’t please everyone, everytime right?

At least not with the resources that we have at hand.

Anyway, this is a post about the World Cup, and, for the records, I am extremely excited, but just not fancied yet, about it.

Yes, it’s about the World Cup 2010, held somewhere at the tip of the African continent, and I think there’s still a misconception that South Africa is somewhere on the level of the third world countries of the same continent, but the country is actually well developed, in a way.

I used to order my tees from the South African tee outfit, Springleap — they were really good looking tees too!

Just an example of how South Africans are quite resourceful these days, other than the fact that they didn’t charge me for global shipping since they didn’t really knew how much it’d cost them then!

That’s why Aliens gave them a visit and got stranded and ostracised, to capture the technology there.

And it’s this technology that has enabled me to catch the World Cup 2010 for free!

I’m not really obliged to be listing any of these free ‘resources’ within this blog, so contact me if you need some heads up, but you’d already knew that Googling ‘World Cup 2010 Live Free’ could probably help you in your quest.

Probably.

So $90 saved for me, or rather one which could have been used to pay off my LTA bike fine, but unfortunately (depending on how you look at it~) was siphoned towards a new pair of..

Adidas Predator Powerswerve FG

… Adidas Predator Power Swerve FG cleats.

My curent Adipure has served me well, and I was absolutely looking forward to a new pair of Adipure II cleants, but the PowerSweve FG was simply too delicious to be resisted.

And I get tempted easily — it’s Adidas after all — but it was all worth it.

Beautiful, clean, sleek and thoroughly comfortable, and when I told a friend about it, he quipped, as he usually does.

(Him) “Wah, World Cup start already so must watch at home and put on these boots is it?”

(Me) -.-”

Nevertheless, some things are just worth paying for, but $90 to view the World Cup isn’t one of them.

Btw, is it just me or does Nike seem to have held some sort of mass discounted cleats sale and almost 90% of the players are donning these Orange-Grey cleats, making them look cheap along the way???

Oh, Lionel Messi dons the Adizero. Powerful stuffs.

The Tank Rush

The Tank Rush

Any avid RTS gamer would be familiar with the term ‘Tank Rush’, where it’s the most basic of ploys employed by novice to intermediate players, and to a certain extent the ‘experts’ as well, to quickly overwhelm the opposition very early in the game.

A tank rush will aim to end the competition within the first ten minutes of the game — where beginners are the most susceptible to this tactic, of which they’ll soon learn to adopt it against their next challengers — and if you survive the early onslaught, then chances are that you’ll go on to win the game.

Well it felt like it was a tank rush at work today, but it was no game and I even almost gave a customer the hair-dryer treatment had he stayed any longer and demanded any further.

Because sometimes emotions get the better of us, like how I vented the day’s tension out on my little Sister when I sms-ed her that she’s got to start ‘acting like a responsible adult if she wants to be treated as one’.

In retrospect, all she did was to tell me that she’s afraid of letting Mum and Dad know that she’s sleeping over at her friend’s, because they’ll scold her.

BECAUSE THEY’LL SCOLD HER AND SHE’S TRYING TO AVOID GETTING SCOLDED!

Ahhh, the power of a child trying to earn her parent’s acceptance can be underestimated it seems.

Well sometimes you have to face the music and take it on the chin, girl.

But don’t take too much on the chin or you’ll end up looking like this:

chubby Mar

My chin’s swollen already. (Actually that pic is manipulated using a colleague’s iPhone app.)

And so I was, bombarded left, right and center with an endless stream of calls, fussy walk-in customers, overdue artwork preps as well as the sourcing for a new designer, chaotic seems mild a word for how the day went.

I’d secretly wish that the telephone was never invented, but that’ll mean that I won’t be able to receive Belle’s calls and that’s just disastrous! Not that we talk much these days — and I wonder why.

But did I mention that my company will be expanding to a new location as well? I guessed I didn’t.

Indeed, and that’s why chaotic is too mild a word for it all, but I’ll dive under the crest and ride the troughs of this pandemic wave of workload and just go with the flow.

Just like surviving a tank rush in an RTS game, rise through the chaos and you’ll give yourself a chance at winning.

But you don’t have to be like me and stay at work and reach home at 2am because you’re racing against a tank rush.

Me, I’m just work obssessed like that, but the real reason I had to continue working till the wee hours as my colleague wasn’t feeling well and she had to leave early, which meant that nearly all turrets were aimed my way today.

BUT, as it turned out, working till past 1am today had it’s rewards, as a different kind of tank rush appeared right before my eyes.

As I rode out of the office carpark, I notice that there was this impressive, huge rumbling noise and as I was about to leave the vicinity, a Cisco officer halted me, but he really didn’t have to.

A near endless line of army tanks, rovers, trucks, lorries artilleries marched in front of me, and all these at 1am plus!

I’d imagine a nearby HDB dweller wondering what all the ruckus was all about, and probably curse at the noise, as how 90% of Singaporeans tend to whenever they’re interrupted in their sleep.

Anyway, so there I was, on my bike, with my helmet on, ready to ride home but obstructed by a long line of army vehicles, that glistened under the moonlight as they roared by.

Was this a glimpse of the National Day parade?

Or is this something to do with a certain YOG event being held at the Jalan Besar Stadium, which is just a few blocks away from my office?

I really wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, it was a tank rush that I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing all over again.

And in a sweet way, it reminded me of my BMT (Basic Military Training) days.

It’s really late now, I should get some sleep right?

I somehow sense another tank rush tomorrow.. hais…

Photoshop or real? (Guatemala’s Sinkhole)

Photoshop or real? (Guatemala’s Sinkhole)

Last I checked the calendar, or my phone’s visible date, it’s not 2012 yet, and yet this real photo, yes it’s a really really real photo, brings back visions of that apocalyptic movie ‘2012’.

Guatemala Sinkhole

I can’t remember where I happened to chance upon this haunting image, but I couldn’t resist keeping a mental note of it here, and at the same time, it strangely reminds me of how fortunate I am to be born and raised in this ‘pay and pay’ country.

And no I’m not complaining — that’s why I mention in gratitude that I’m fortunate.

The sinkhole appeared after a torrential rain in Guatemala, and, I hope it don’t sound any blasphemous, that it’s as if God decided to start poking holes into the earth.

In any case, it’s a natural disaster, it happens and there’s really not much you can do to anticipate this, not even months of planning or careful preparations, because when shit happens, it happens.

In a strange way, that’s how life goes about don’t it?

That no matter how much plans you planned, and how much details you’ve poured into your work, shit happens (for all the pessimists out there) or perhaps something beautiful (instead for all the optimists in here) crops up, and, like curveballs, you meander and rechart your route in the river of life all over again.

It’s tiring, it’s taxing and it’s discombobulating but hey, nobody said it’s going to be easy.

But the most important thing is that life goes on, as it shouldn’t stagnate just because you woke to find a sinkhole in the middle of your life, and I hope you find the strength and courage to face up to whatever sinkholes that may come your way.

And as imposible as it may sound to fill it back up to its brims again, try, otherwise walk around it and who knows, you might discover yourself walking by new routes that you’ve never thought existed.

Life goes on, and especially to the affected and effected residents in the context of this eeriely haunting sinkhole, it’s time to rebuild.

Ye, life goes on.

What happens when you superimpose Sol and Zaitun together?

What happens when you superimpose Sol and Zaitun together?

Mini Sol & Zaitun
Direct from the baby making factory of Sol & Eton..

And “..please welcome baby Afro..” was the message Sol sent to wake me up in the wee hours of the morning.

Anyways, congrats to the two of you, the baby looks healthy, beautiful and a little bit red — but that’s all good!

Then “..next level up is to be a grandpa..” was his reply, presumeably drained from all the anxiety of anticipating the birth of a new life from the hospital room, when I sms-ed my celebrations.

OK Sol, time to put away the Gamerhood in you, because Fatherhood just arrived.

And, above all, love him (or is it her???) with everything that you have!

So cute…