Kitty

When I gave my unconditional love and sharing with Kitty, it was out of goodwill and I expected nothing in return.

Never would I expect that what she would give to me was for me to learn to be more gentle, calm and loving!

Those little surprises.

 

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. – Steve Jobs

My old world ended yesterday, and today shall be a new start to a whole new world.

I remember on the way back from Iran, I transited in Dhaka. I contemplated going out of the airport and stay in Dhaka for a few more days before going back home but went against the idea.

I wanted to keep the best memories as the last. I would not allow new, potentially unpleasant memories to overwrite the best ones. I am protective of this and that’s probably why I don’t visit the same place where I’ve had my best memories twice.

I’ve had the best 27 years of my life. I’ve had my disproportionate share of adventure, travels, love,  happiness, sadness which I think not many around me have gone through this much in probably the whole life in staying this sheltered little island.

Should this be the end now, it shall be the best memories I’ll ever take away, and the best of what people remember of me…and they shall be unreplaceable.

I don’t know…how to continue living this life.

“How did you m…

“How did you manage to spend 65 years together?”

“We were born in a time when if something was broken we will fix it, not throw it away.”

The day I stop travelling will be the day I found myself a home where my heart truly belongs. I’ll be able to speak to the soil whisper to the butterflies and crickets will understand my language.

I’ll be able to drink from the river sleep on the roof and tell stories to village kids.

And I’ll capture everything on film.

On the road

This time around, I leave with a heavy heart.

I’ll never bow down to adversities, no matter how hard they hit me. I am a fighter.

testing my new 60d out! finally have a camera of my own now 😀

Great World

I unexpectedly caught this gem when I went with Nick and Eugene to the cinema one lazy afternoon earlier spent on gorging food and wasting time. It’s been a while that I’ve got some thoughts about local films just because recent catch didn’t have much worthy of writing about.  I haven’t been keeping up with the local entertainment scene lately, save for producing some corporate videos and helping with shoots for my juniors’ FYP short films.

We were a little late 5:20pm when the sparse cinema hall at GV Marina Square finished screening the commercials and opening credits. The film, which opens with a girl in her 20s wanting to return some forgotten pictures from the decades old soon-to-be-shut photo studio to their rightful owners, revolves around the recapping of stories from  a park worker (played by Chew Chor Meng) who went through the Great World amusement park’s heydays. He narrates stories from the glorious times of the amusement park to the girl from when she showed him her collection of photos. There are 5 mini stories set in different eras which make up this piece, with the coming  together of many familiar local celebrities playing the different dialect-sprouting characters in the film.

For most of Singapore’s younger generation, this movie revives a piece of Singapore’s past that has evidently faded with the springing up of shopping malls and commercial spaces. Needless to say, what’s sits on the site of the amusement park is now the Great World City shopping mall.

Photos: Facebook, National Archives

With the film’s elaborate set design and mis-en-scene splashed with vibrant colours, the re-creation of the original amusement park once again shows Director Kelvin Tong’s ability to pull off high value productions with his international experience and reach. Together with cleverly chosen stories that tied in with few milestones of Singapore history (Separation of Singapore from Malaysia and the Japanese Occupation), this film fills the void of historical films Singapore seems to lack.

I guess local filmmakers just have not been able to leverage on the financial prowess of commercial entities to produce big scale productions that somehow assure profits and unless they credit big names familiar to local audiences. Other than the now defunct TCS local dramas back in the 1990s, there has not been any “historical” local films at all in the scene.

Can this be explained by the drop in quality and budget of MediaCorp productions lately that led to talented writers and directors like Kelvin Tong and Han Yew Kwang venturing into film production instead of television? After all there is a history of the intimate relationship between film and television back when the latter was invented, causing the decline in sales of  Hollywood films in the 1940s.

Not wanting to spoil more of the film, the last I heard of this latest offering is that it is fast gaining ground as cinemas will be allocating more slots for keen viewers looking for something different in this traditionally Jack Neo dominated Chinese New Year holiday season. Do catch it if you’re able to.