Please be warned that this review also contains spoilers.

Just looking at the title of this film kind of makes you shudder for a bit. But then 90 minutes later you’ll probably find yourself walking away with a scowl on your face, an unsatisfied hunger that the title first imposed you with. Apparently this film has already been done back in 1951 which may explain why its 2008 counterpart seemed to lack so much.

General synopsis: An alien ventures onto planet earth bringing a message of doom for mankind. Mankind has weakened the planet and need to be erased before the damage is irreversible. One woman and her son, determined to fight against this prophecy, try to convince him to change his mind; that mankind have the potential to change and restore planet earth.

Actually, if I had never known that this movie had already been filmed before, I would’ve said it was a fair idea to address the environmental issue [of climate change], although the impending problem at the moment does appear to be the financial crisis. Unfortunately even so, the film does poorly to address any sort of environmental issue that needs responding to. In fact the movie is so ambiguous you can probably interpret the storyline in any way you want to. And with post-modernism kicking in, you just can’t resist reading the film in a multitude of ways.

It’s good to see Keanu Reeves come back onto the movie scene, though aging now, as the alien “Klaatu” (clearly a dodgy name thought up in the 50’s). Reeves’ character enters from a giant sphere that lands on the earth. The sphere was rather well-designed, its surface a swirling mass of blue and black; sort of resembling clouds or even the waves in the ocean. It was a rather mesmerizing colour that invoked both fear and wonder.

The film did well to jump into near-climax action in the second (after a strange but later-explained opening scene). Planet earth gets threatened by massive destruction from the afore-mentioned sphere which was feared to collide with the earth in mere minutes. Not such a bad moment although the pace was quite short-lived. Reeves reveals himself when he emerges from a cocoon, naked and bald. In fact, one cannot help but be reminded of a similar moment in “The Matrix”; a shamefully re-used concept with the same actor, not smart.

Reeves plays a fairly appealing mellow character; lacking emotion in that “terminator” sort of way. However such a role doesn’t seem suited for him. He was full of action back in the days of “Speed” and during the “Matrix” trilogy he only hid his emotions rather than be void of them entirely. I would’ve wished his character had done more on the action side, his character was just too passive, while all the action was spread over to the military and police.

The heroine for the film was Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly, along with her son Jacob, played by the son of WIll Smith, Jaden. I’m not too familiar with Connelly’s acting style but as for young Smith, he did well to portray the typical black child with both parents dead and ending up with a foster mother. The kid acts well to play out the character that keeps his cool throughout all the pre-apocalyptic events that take place.

Apart from these three we have the giant robot “Gort” which in the 2008 version, resembles a black Ironman; again thumbs down for the resemblance. Later Gort dissolves away into millions of black locust-type insects that can decompose metal and any non “natural” material. So mankind would simply be destroyed by a plague of locusts. The film did well again earlier to mention that similar spheres mentioned above were acting as “arks” to preserve non-human wildlife. Unfortunately it did bad to refer to the “plague of locusts” as the impending “flood”. Still, small recognition for the attempt at Biblical allusion. Further along, after Gort breaks down into the swarm of locusts and breaks free from the underground base, military personnel focus fire everything at the black cloud mass, again mirroring a similar moment from “The Matrix: Revolutions” when the Sentinels break through into the dock. Too many “stolen” scenes from other films, which is truly shameful.

The plot barely made any sense at the very end. Klaatu makes a move to stop the destruction of mankind when he sees Jacob finally acting nice to his foster mum (for not apparent reason, mind you). And that seems to serve as the evidence that mankind can change and fix up the environment. Hardly any logic involved there and therefore an unjustified ending. The climax comes in the form of Klaatu trudging through a blizzard of locusts and laying his hands on the sphere he emerged out of, causing the locusts to “die” and fall to the ground like flakes of snow. This moment actually legitimately paralleled the opening scene of the film which didn’t have any meaning but similarly portrayed an actual blizzard, etc.

As I’ve said before, the film can be interpreted in so many ways. The origins of Klaatu are so blurred that for me as a Christian, it is actually possible to read Reeves’ character as Christ coming down to warn mankind of impending destruction but later pulling back to allow more time to “repent”. This is just how ambiguous the film actually is. I won’t go further into other readings because there are way too many.

Interesting thing in the film was the scene where Reeves meets up with an old Chinese man (apparently another alien in human form) and they begin conversing in Mandarin. Reeves demonstrated a rather strange knowledge of Chinese in that he handled the language well, although over-emphasising some syllables by using the English consonants. Still it was interesting to watch Reeves speak Chinese, if indeed that is worth 90 minutes.

A short film, and one that hardly leaves as big an impact as the title originally did. A huge mistake to actually work off the 1951 classic version and definitely poorly done in terms of modern standards. Effects would’ve been better if they hadn’t already been used in other films. Bottom line:do not watch it. You might get an interesting message out of it, if any, but definitely not worth putting up with the lame storyline.

Starting the morning at 5am; woke up because I was unable to sleep, which is not a good thing considering I only went to bed at 2am; giving me a mere 3-hour sleep in the last two days. Anyway I got up at 8am to have a light breakfast and left the house to get out to Parramatta. Charlie invited us all to his place to watch the fireworks and do a bunch of various things throughout the day.

I got there at 10am, the time appointed by Charlie; the day was beginning to grow hot at this point. Yitian came soon after followed by Tim, Joseph, Matthew and Fred. Eric dropped out at the last minute for some reason or another and so in the morning it was just us 7. We went off to a Net Cafe just for one hour at $3, although I do highly doubt much can be done in an hour. We spent 45 minutes playing DotA since it’s been a while since we’ve all played together. I’m no longer going to make commentaries on the match but I guess it was good to have everyone playing against each other again. We spent the last 10 minutes trying to start a game of Castle Fight but that didn’t go far so we let that go.

After that it was about 11:40am so we went up to Greater Union to pick up our tickets to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still” with Keanu Reeves, that Charlie has ordered online. I didn’t see the point of ordering online because I never thought that any movie is ever going to be sold out, especially when it’s not the first screening. A lesson to be learned next year, this year. I’ll write my review after this maybe but bottom line is: “Crap movie, don’t bother considering watching it, unless you really love Keanu Reeves”.

Jack Ding met up with us for the movie and Matthew decided to take Eric’s place to watch the movie. Charlie had booked too many tickets and Matt had already seen it with Kelvin in Hong Kong. He agreed to pay half the price of the ticket. Is it right to ask Eric for $7 because he cancelled at such late notice?

Went for lunch at about 2pm and here’s something that was very strange. I’m not sure whether to call it fortune or not. Anyway I ordered take away Udon at some Japanese noodle shop because they didn’t have any ramen =.=” and also a small bottle of Sprite. But when it came to paying I gave her $20 in two $10 notes. She handed me back one of the $10 notes and then also gave me $7.50 change. So essentially I had paid $2.50 only. Yet, isn’t that just the price of the Sprite? She had clearly forgotten to charge me the $9.20 for my Udon. In fact, I don’t think she even charged the other woman who she was serving; and I kind of saw a puzzled look on the customer’s face when she didn’t pay I think. So yeah, very strange moment then; wasn’t exactly guilt-free myself but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to say: “No, sorry you’ve made a mistake…”

After lunch Charlie tried to take us over to the local high school to use their basketball courts. They call this “trespassing” nowadays; which therefore means I can’t do the same with Penno High, oh well. Bad luck was that the gates to the school were locked so no trespassing. Instead Charlie’ back up plan was to take us to the primary school where they had smaller courts. That school had those kiddie fences which you can easily walk over so we just used those courts, only half because another group of people were already there.

We played for a while but because it was extremely hot by this time in the afternoon, it was just too tiring to so we decided to give it up like about 40 minutes later. Went back to Charlie’s apartment and set up the Cube to play Melee, ie. set up the Nintendo GameCube to play Super Smash Bros. Melee. Again no need to go into detail for any of this.

But later on some of us got bored so we started playing Mahjong. Bah I really need to buy a set T.T” We actually spent a lot of time playing Mahjong throughout the night. Kelvin showed up at about 5pm with his new highly acclaimed uber thick black-rimmed glasses *cough* fob *cough*, along with a few other accessories he bought in Hong Kong. Personally I shall be going to Hong Kong in February, not the best time to go but my mum wanted to go then and I guess I wanted to follow just for buying stuff yeah. Not exactly going to be a good two weeks because we don’t really any place to stay and the obvious fact that everyone is back from HK, so I’m just there to pick up the pieces.

I’m getting better at Mahjong, being self-taught is somewhat rewarding at times. I can usually make about 5 farn with decent hands, otherwise I don’t even bother finishing. But hey, there’s still a lot of experience that I need. Sharon! Mebbe this is where you can come in >.<” ah the heat is getting to me, typing deliriously.

Anyway, we had dinner around 6pm: fish fillets, crumbled chicken sticks, sushi and good salad. Charlie provided ample diner for all of us which was great of him. The sushi in particular belongs to the sushi shop like opposite his parents’ coffee shop in Westfield. Dinner was great albeit the weird topic of conversation which was me and my love story for this period of time. Had a pretty bad night because of all the pressure those sooks gave me but fair enough I deserved it.

But it did sort of make me realise that our group aren’t very “in-tune” with women (now that most of us are over 18, the term “women” seems more applicable than “girls”). It’s like everyone seems everyone has trouble relating to women in that they don’t have close friends who are chicks. I mean for example, thinking back to the time when I invited Grace to RICE Rally, first response from the group: “Oooh Jason, is she your girlfriend?” Totally absurd hypothesis to raise considering the lack of evidence to support it. It wasn’t sound judgement. Ah well I guess it’s their time to properly grow. I’m not looking down at them but the fact that they still make such ridiculous comments just makes them seem slightly immature; as if every girl you talk to automatically becomes your girlfriend.

As night began to come full circle, we started playing more of Melee as well as Soul Calibre II (or however it’s spelt). We played like team matches against each other and I remember my beautiful soloing of a 5-man team; managed to take down 5 fighters in a row, which was very scary and obviously my only moment to shine in the night. Everyone else had similar sprees. Some of us went back to Mahjong and others to poker. We wanted to actually do something fun and interesting. But when Tim suggested “dares” we know things can get a bit messy. And yet even when being nice, we ended up with rather lame ideas. We were playing penalty poker where you can use your chips to make someone else do push-ups. Would’ve liked to have increased the number of push-ups per chip, it was at 2 chips for 1 push-up, kid of lame and un-manly haha!

We ended up making Kelvin do most of the push-ups, also because he was hasty enough to lose all of his chips first, that’s gambling I guess. We were trying to find like some other interesting challenges to impose on losers but I guess we didn’t manage to come up with any strange ideas. But that’s okay, the objective was to have fun rather than humiliate someone else.

The night went on for a very long time. And at 12am we went up to the rooftop of Charlie’s apartment. We spent a fair 20 minutes up there, including a rather lame and loud countdown where we all just screamed off the top of a Parramatta apartment building to whoever was actually listening. Of course we were off, and sort of by like a minute but oh well. We could actually see the fireworks on the Harbour Bridge from so far away, but unfortunately I’d have to say that I was largely unimpressed by it; wasn’t anything special and frankly I would’ve rather watched it on TV than trying to in real person like 20 Km away. Actually if you think about it, if we could actually hear the fireworks from the Harbour Bridge then scientifically the explosions should take 60 seconds to reach us. Sound travels at 330 m/s so 3 seconds for 1 Km and we’re about 20 Km away. I think I heard faint rumbles in the background but meh, whatever. The show seemed to last a mere 15 minutes. I thought it was meant to be better this year, and frankly I didn’t even see much of it. Well, I guess fireworks wasn’t a strong start to the new year for me anyway.

We went back down once the fireworks died down and proceeded to more gaming and such. Fred, Joseph and Jack left soon after because they weren’t going to stay the night, leaving us with 6 people plus Charlie. Kind of hard to fit everyone within an apartment so that’s why some of us didn’t sleep. Nick passed off with a mere 5 minutes of sleep around 6:30am because “he was bored”. I gave in to 2 x 30 minute sleeping periods, which weren’t too comfortable but oh well. Everyone else slept at 5am till 9am, all over the floor, the couches, even Yitian decided to sleep under the table.

On that note about sleeping; last time we did a sleepover of the sort, it was me, Tim, Kelvin and Jono at Chris’ house and in fact none of slept at all, not a bit. Well Chris did but the four of us played Mario Kart 64 the whole night; that was good memories. Man we were so wasted the next morning. But  thinking back then I was fine. And yet come Friday morning and I was hit with a terrible fever which screwed me over the entire day. it’s Saturday now, and I’m glad I’m getting better, but like Friday was so horrible for me. I never thought I’d ever get sick but then I suppose if I abused my body in such as a way then I suppose any illness is imminent. Had a think about it and realized that I only had 3 hours of sleep over the last 3 days, that’s 1 hour a day; definitely not good. It was 2am – 5am on Wednesday morning; was gaming at night and sort of got excited for the day so I woke up early and couldn’t get any more sleep. Didn’t sleep the entire Wednesday night; those 2 x 30 minute periods don’t count as proper sleep. And then went to sleep on Thursday at midnight because it was so hot it was impossible to sleep.

Well that’s one lesson I’ve learned. 3 hours of sleep in 72 hours is asking for trouble. But I’m surprised that I managed to recover fairly quickly today, Saturday. I feel like the fever is only affecting me at about 10% whereas it was hitting me at 70%+ on Friday; just trying to judge how severe it was. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that getting better and maintaining health doesn’t require medication or crap. You can find all your “medical” needs from the food around you. Fruits and vegetables really are good for you. But my mum keeps stressing to me that the most valuable “healing” substance is in fact just plain water. What tends to happen is that as water passes through your system, it picks up all the toxins in your body; the crap that’s making you sick. And thinking of a cell in biology, the water tends to carry waste products out of your body, in the form of urine. Now this might get a bit gross but next time you go to the toilet do check the colour of your urine. The more yellow it is, the more toxins that have been carried out. Now that’s a good thing but this just simply means that your body had a lot of toxins to begin with, which means you need to drink more water. Please don’t get confused with yellow urine as a sign that you’re dehydrated; the technical interpretation is that you have not had enough water to wash out all the toxins in your body. So a healthy 8 glasses of water a day is recommended in order to keep your system clean from these toxins that make you sick. And frankly that’s all I did on Friday, just drank water and I’m feeling heaps better today. So yeah, just a simple note to everyone for future reference.

Breakfast was muffins from another shop in Westfield. Had a few myself even though I was still wasted from the night. We played more Mahjong and GameCube and I left at 11am to do a bit more travelling and potential shopping. But that was our New Year’s celebrations, rather interesting and nostalgic since the last time we all did something together. Ah, but on other notes none of this really matters, New Year’s is just another day; it seems foolish to get bogged down by a day the world calls to be special, a day is a day, it has no special significance. It may be a  symbol that points to something , such as Christmas to Jesus, but that’s all it really is. Let that be a reminder to everyone. I’m really tired at the moment. I’ll see if I can do another blog tonight.

As promised here are some random photos during the night/morning:

Children probably never think about it, but if you saw a giant walking, talking banana in the streets, what would be your reaction? Man I’d be scared s***less if I saw something like that. And forgot just one of them, there are two walking and talking giant bananas; these can already be somewhat horror-movie characters. The innocence in children is somewhat blissful to the point that two giant bananas wearing pyjamas are not the least bit weird to them.

An adult could look deeper into these two characters. Noting that these giant walking and talking bananas wearing pyjamas have arms and legs, one would think it only possible through some sort of mutation. And then considering their names “B1” and “B2” probably suggests they were created in a laboratory by some third party undisclosed in the cartoon, as if there might be a production line of mutated walking and talking bananas wearing pyjamas that have arms and legs. And of course then you have their odd shape. Since when did bananas grow long and straight in a way that almost resembles a…yeah… “that thing”?

Looking closely at their personalities, it’s already strange to note that the bananas are always wearing their pyjamas. Are they pov? No, take a look at the first line of the theme song:

“Bananas in pyjamas are coming down the stairs,”

If the bananas can come down the stairs then it does suggest their own at least a two-story house. So clearly these two bananas aren’t  exactly pov and we can credit their weird habit of always wearing pyjamas as a psychological issue. That’s okay, maybe giant walking and talking bananas with arms and legs have this sort of problem. And in a society like ours maybe we need to learn to accept their problems, although there is the problem that giant walking and talking bananas really do make you go: “Wtf?!”

Let’s take the next line of the song:

“Bananas in pyjamas are coming down in pairs,”

One of my friends once wrote that if Edward and Alphonse from Full Metal Alchemist weren’t brothers, they’d make an ideal gay couple. Taking this case, what would the relationship of the bananas be described as? Maybe production line partners, if they’re mutated by the pair. And then thinking carefully again the genders of the bananas aren’t really specified. If you ignore the actors, “B1” and “B2” don’t really tell you whether they’re male or female, and nor can you tell their gender by their sex organs, if bananas in fact do have any." But on the whole it is possible to say that the bananas are like a couple, whatever their gender may be.

"”Bananas in pyjamas are chasing teddy bears,”

It’s clear the bananas have some sort of “teddy bear fetish”, why else are they chasing them? This isn’t like a dog hunting down a possum or anything, this is mere chasing and as we’ve seen many times the bananas never really do kill the bears, just merely catch them and well you can only guess what happens off-screen if the story did continue off-screen.

And on the topic of teddy bears, let’s turn our focus onto the three bears in the cartoon. We have Amy, Lulu and Morgan, two females and a male. Amy is a white bear, Lulu and black bear and Morgan a sort of Anglo-saxon looking bear. Hmm, rather strange again that you’d have three bears of various ethnic backgrounds to live in the same house. Again one can only guess what the three bears get up to as well.

But one does wonder why the bears never actually try to file a law suit against the bananas for sexual harassment. Like seriously:

“’cos on Tuesdays they all try to catch them unawares!”

The bears are putting up with the same bulls*** every week from the bananas; being “chased” and then harassed. Unfortunately there isn’t much choice than to read “chasing” as a sexual connotation. And with their cul-de-sac named “Cuddles Avenue” there’s more than enough evidence to suggest unethical sexual practices take place in such a weird place. Frankly I wouldn’t want to have neighbours “chasing” me every Tuesday; why do the bears stand up to these shenanigans? Of course maybe the bears want to be chased which makes them just as bad as the bananas having their weird fetish. There’s no need to expand on this I think.

And finally we turn to our last character “Rat in a Hat”. First off again you get the reaction: “WTF?! It’s a giant purple talking rat!" KILL IT!” Which is why we now see giant novelty size mouse traps these days. Obviously again the Rat in a Hat is another product of mutation, both in size and colour. And clearly his hat is not important because it’s just there to make it rhyme. They could’ve always named him the “Rat with a Bat” with obviously that leads to a trigger-happy character which is not suitable for children. But the hat hardly has any significance nonetheless.

The rat as we all remember is a scam artist; running a store with shotty products and also various services that simply cheat the bananas their money (not that they need it since they already have a two-story house). But perhaps the rat is a character which can easily be read because there’s nothing hidden in him, he’s simply a fag.

So there you have it. A cartoon that isn’t exactly the same as it used to be once you put your adult mind into it; and once again there is evidence for the statement “ignorance is bliss’”.

Well I got exactly what I expected haha! Did you think it’d be any more interesting? Well I suppose if I went through my day you might be able to pick out some things that help my “anime plotline” unfold. Woke up at like 9am, thinking it was 10. Had breakfast and then went back to sleep for another hour. I’ve been dead tired these days with a fair amount of stuff happening; remembering that yesterday I had that party at Jia Qi’\s house. Woke up at like 11am and my aunt and cousins had arrived for our Christmas lunch.

Well my cousins are too young to play with me now so they hang out with my bro now; that’s still good I guess. And here’s where my Wii comes in. Of course I didn’t get it for the selfish purpose of entertaining myself. Like I said in my previous blog, I wanted a Wii to increase the party value of the house. So now my cousins had something to do; ie. play Brawl. Otherwise they’ would’ve just mucked around the house. So them playing for an hour or so till lunch was exactly what I had imagined as a consequence of getting a Wii; according to plan for once.

Lunch of course was no different than from any other year. My mum did buy a different brand of Christmas turkey. Yes, always a different brand of turkey each year but like this time it was a massive leg from a massive turkey; it should feed us for another 3-4 days worth of lunch. Apart from that there was the usual leg of ham followed by potatoes and fruit salad, with boiled egg. Do you  really put egg into fruit salad? So lunch was as per usual.

I spent the hours after that working on this blog you’re reading now. Had to move my old blog to a subfolder (reachable from the link at the top of the page) and obviously posting in the introduction blogs and fixing up a few things here and there. My cousins stayed into the afternoon and kept playing Brawl.

I had overlooked the time while I was on the phone for 2.5 hours and by the time I decided to hang up it was already like 5:50pm. So I quickly changed and got my dad to drive me to church for our Christmas dinner plus evening show. I showed up at the designated 6pm, but barely anyone was there. So just hung around until everyone finally came and then we all sat down for dinner. It’s a shame that few of us SMAC members showed up. To do a headcount it was just me, Nat, Sharon, Quentin, Julz, Sean, Sam, the other Jason, Danielle, and William.

We decided to have our table separated from everyone else because well, we’re just not old enough. Sharon somehow argues that being 18 is still young despite everyone else calling me old on my birthday T.T” So am I young or old? At this point I felt different from the way I normally act. I wasn’t exactly happier but I kind of felt more random and outspoken than I normally have been these months. I suspect something about my phone conversation made me become random. Thanks Grace, now I’ve increased my chance to embarrass myself by 500%.

The food was nice, again nearly like the monthly lunches we normally have. There was more dessert like last year and overall I ate more than I normally would which was good. The dinner table was filled with random remarks from Quentin, who was sort of talking about managing his body image; about the “fish ball tofu” he ate today, which is so not a Christmas food item, along with “a piece of scrambled egg”. He was our clown for the night. He even ate pure chocolate (like Freddo Frogs) before and during dinner. The sugar really got to him today.

This year our church had a program of acts organised and I thought tonight was one of the better nights for our church. We had random testimonies from adults which were all interesting stories which was great. The young children sang a few kiddie songs and our star act from our group was by Quentin and Sharon, who performed a couple of songs on acoustic. *Sigh* kind of wanted to learn the guitar for a while now, seeing as I’m completely shit at music, apart from maybe singing and rapping. I do hope next year brings forth opportunities. Anyway poor Sharon was completely nervous before her performance, and fair enough so you should be. But ultimately she sang really well and played really well; and again it just comes down to what you manage to produce rather than ho you feel beforehand. So good stuff Shaz! xD We’re proud of you! I also filmed both performances. I’ll be happy to post them up if you’ll let me Shaz so reply and say ‘yes’ otherwise I respect your privacy…

The rest of the night was filled with more random acts, too numerous to describe because this post is already long at this point. We had like a lucky dip draw sort of thing with everyone. Everyone was issued with a ticket with five digits on it. We were then asked to swap our ticket with someone else. And then they began calling out conditions to choose people for prizes. I swapped mine with Sharon and the results were rather funny. The first set of prizes went to people whose ticket had a last digit that was odd. Sharon’s ticket (which was originally mine) satisfied this condition. Her prize was a bag of chips. And then it became clear that as the game progressed the prizes should be getting better. I won a second-level prize with Sharon’s ticket which was ironic and I won a small razor blade; the ones for cutting cardboard and stuff like that. Why such a dangerous prize? But yeah technically me and Sharon should’ve swapped prizes, but hey, luck of the draw I guess.  Quentin won a weird Christmas ornament thing, it was like some weird Christmas tree decoration, pink, fairly large,and you could screw the large flat base off and sort of put stuff inside of it; weird. He swapped that with Danielle, who won a pack of sponges lolx!

And yeah the night kept moving on with a new act after another. Towards the end some adults came out and recited Psalm 100 in that poetic manner that we used to do in Chinese School. Their first reading was just using variations in their voice. Their second reading (because everyone wanted an “encore” – though the Chinese adults all pronounced it as written in English, which sounded weird) included a variety of actions that matched each line and that was fairly amazing too. The third reading was done as a solo by one of our family friends; mum’s fellow worker back in HK, her husband. He just had to bring up the rap I did back at the Carlingford Village Christmas show 2 weeks back; kind of wish people would drop it because I’d like to be famous for something most tasteful than a Christmas rap written by Colin form Play School T.T” So he recited Psalm 100 in a rap fashion which I’ll have to admit wasn’t half bad, quite decent and had good rhythm haha!

So there are some of the highlights for the night and right now at 11:58pm I find that Christmas this year wasn’t all too bad. Might’ve felt really depressed when Grace had me discussing my problems but I certainly felt today had a positive outcome. Surely not the average Christmas I had expected today to be, despite the similarities. This year was certainly something different and more enjoyable! What a long 12-hour special episode today yielded.

Our group isn’t exactly in touch with theirs but I guess we fit in well nonetheless. From our group, me, Chris, Joseph, Eric and Charlie went. And there were a number of people from other groups too numerous to name. There were more than 20 people who attended I think. Jia Qi offered a number of activities, nothing all too different from what our group would normally do. But Jia Qi does have the bigger house, and is also right opposite James Ruse, which means free access to their grounds for sports ^^.

There’s not much need to describe in detail the stuff we did there. It was a combination of Brawl, SingStar, EyeToy, Poker, Table Tennis, Piano, simple chatting, and various ball games. One thing that might’ve encouraged a few more people to come would have been Jacky with his SingStar emulator (Vanessa I’m more referring to you xD). And it does make sense since there’s already a DDR emulator called StepMania (I have more than 0.5 GB of anime dances :P) so naturally it should be right to assume that SingStar would have it’s own [illegal] counterpart. “UltraStar” if anyone wants to do research into it. I want to set it up but I’ve already come across a few problems so I might leave that till I get a new computer or something. Jacky had every SingStar and more songs all stuffed in that laptop of his; of course that sparks interest in us who are fans of SingStar. More so for me because I have the same opportunity as obtaining that “power”. It’s going to take a few months before I actually match up where Jacky is. He refused to give me everything he had but even if he did there’s no guarantee it would work on my computer T.T”

Food-wise Jia Qi disappointed me. No meat…enough said. But apart from that there was a lot of noodles and pasta and other related dishes. There was probably enough food for everyone and I suppose that is a lot of effort from his mum so still kudos to him for that. There were more than enough drinks to last everyone so that was a plus. I can’t remember doing much other than playing Brawl and SingStar. One memorable moment was when Jacky was already tired from singing and still pushed on with a hard song. His voice totally gave way. He still hit the high note at a cost of fully breaking his voice, it was hilarious. Oh by the way, “UltraStar” supports Japanese songs too if that interests you Vanessa; it’s all a matter of finding it.

The day lasted a long time and we all had the chance to catch up with one another. Ivan and Esther came; it’s been a while since we last saw them but they’ve both grown a fair bit. Esther’s heaps taller now, though still somewhat short. Even Eric is catching up to her haha! But she’s just as shy as ever, which kind of sets the party down a tone.

“Esther play SingStar with us!”
”…Umm, no? That’s okay.”

People eventually began to leave once it hit 3pm but the party was still going. Others preferred to sit and chat, the more mature thing to do after high school haha; especially when you haven’t seen someone for a long time. But overall the party was rather fun because there were so many people there and heaps of space to do whatever. A good start to the holidays!

High school is finally over and I have achieved a more than satisfactory result so the 6th tier will cover my university life and potentially a bit after that. Church has been going up and down for a while but I’ve felt that it’s been getting better for me now. Friends have become more strongly bonded together and we can continue to maintain our friendships as the years progress forward. And as for me personally, a few things have lightened up, being more able to do more useful things. My role/job in the Online Japanese Music Industry has begun to blossom but there’s still a long way to go. And then we also have this blog which you are reading now’; a new chance to wipe the slate and begin writing more tasteful things that might be helpful to more people.

Of course not everything has been uphilll; that would be ignorant. Although now realizing the futility of my family is going to help me understand why I have problems that persist and also guide me in a way to fix them. Just knowing that my parents have been a huge burden for me over the years helps me understand my inner-most fear and warn me whenever I might become a burden for my friends; ie. whenever I might break down from something that triggers a near-suicidal episode. Knowing I have no-one to closely rely on at least let’s me know what I need, and hence what I need to seek. And amongst my heightened depression all these years, my new found knowledge has surely come at a time when I need to find a way to climb out of the hole I’m sinking in.

I like to think of my life as an anime, being a huge fan of it. You have your typical hot-headed main character (me). Funny how my personality somewhat matches what a main character should be like: somewhat short-tempered at times, making mistakes at the worst of moments and nonetheless fighting on to another day. There have been many side characters in my life, but only enough to create a list of side characters in an anime. But that’s okay I guess because I can spend more time seeing how each side character (my friends I guess I could call them) develop as I grow with them.

As for the plotline, well, I’ve had enough good days and bad days to build a variety of episodes; enough extreme and restless situations where it’s just one punch after the other; some of them being hurtful but others being rather exciting yet tiring at the end. And then you have the occasional romantic moment or two though I can say that the previous stage of my life hasn’t experienced much of it, fair enough since the 4th stag of my life nearly turned me upside down with fruitless toils.

But now as I progress to this adulthood age, it’s time to make the storyline progress and let something be done about the complication I’ve had since the beginning. This is why I title this part of my life, the sixth tier, “The Counter Break”. It’s probably time for me to build back from my troubles and break free from suppression. This part of my life should see me trying to gain what I never had in the first place, but wishing I had; the things that my parents never gave me that everybody else has. Feeling down everyday over what I lacked only made me feel more miserable; nothing productive. Perhaps in “The Counter Break” I’ll be able to get back up. Being older means more opportunities and being able to do a few more things that I couldn’t do if I was younger.

But then of course it’s more of a “break or be broken” situation though. There’s no guarantee that I’ll succeed in fighting back. And who knows, I might end up “fading away” like I originally planned to. But if I were to do that know what sort of storyline would that be? But realistically speaking, I can see myself meeting that kind of end although not anytime soon. The future is still too blurry.

So for everyone reading this I hope you don’t view my life with ignorance and pretend that I’m a “normal” person because I so am not. I present my problem and that should let you understand the detrimental effects it has on me; I have yet to fully grasp my problems myself; but don’t anyone ever over-estimate me because I have limits that I prefer not to pushed beyond, I fear what lies beyond them. And let no-one underestimate me either for my fighting burns within me, sometimes more strongly than at other times but nevertheless I still have a fighting chance in this life. Now this makes for a good anime huh? Action, Romance, Spirituality, Death. You couldn’t pack anymore stuff into my life at the moment.