Prank, Backfired

Oh, 5 days have sneaked by without me posting anything! Here's something that happened on Saturday that I haven't had time to post:

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What does one do after one has been given a nasty, scary shock? Even more so when other people seem to think it a huge joke that one was taken in over a cleverly crafted computer clip that causes one to look very closely thinking that there is some mystery in it before a hideous staring face comes screaming out of nowhere and fills the window, causing one to start away from the computer screen.

Well, one might feel an unexplained anger bubbling up inside and feel a peculiar emptiness about the entire shoulder and back area, almost as if normal feeling was suddenly suspended. One might not know what to do: it would have been easy to start bawling, but certainly not in a room full of people, heaven forbid; it might have been a good idea to turn around and leave, but for the thought of a long, lonely path back, and the presence of the aforesaid feeling of emptiness; it might have been a release to lash out at the innocent yet not so innocent perpetrators of the prank, but for the sheer innocuousness of that seemingly harmless prank. Well, one sits down and fiddles with something, anything, hoping that that feeling of shocked emptiness fades soon so as to enable one to traverse that long, lonely path back to one’s room.

Then when one of the said perpetrators comes flip-flopping cheerily into the room, one needs only to take a look at him to think: “这个人欠打！” and then proceed to assail him with one’s fists, only to land an ineffectual punch that does little more than glance off his meaty shoulder. No further hope of retribution being in sight, can one do anything but gather up one’s belongings to leave?

But then the perpetrator is suddenly aware that all is not so well and comes rushing out. Although one would much rather be left alone one feels mollified at least, at this display of penitence. But then there is this blockage in one’s throat such that one cannot even say: “Leave me alone so that I can go back to my room and cry.” Instead, one tries to convince the repentant perpetrator, albeit somewhat against one’s will, that one is quite alright, only to have a faint pricking in one’s eyes belie one’s words. One contemplates the option of bawling in front of him, but dismisses that idea quickly, even though it would have brought instant relief.

The repentant perpetrator offers himself as a de-stressing punching bag; he offers to walk one back to one’s room; he solemnly swears never to pull such a stunt again and one can but smile at his ernestness – but one is not in the mood to forgive, not just yet, nor accept any of his proffered remedies.

Why? Because there is a clog of emotion that has not yet come out. As one returns to one’s room and sits stoning in front of the table, one decides that one just might feel better if one were to cry, and does so, in wrenching sobs.

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Don't worry, I'm alright now. That was just a reaction to a shock. And although our unnamed perpetrator did seem very remorseful, one source says that he had this screw-up coming for a long time as he had been showing those scary clips to as many unsuspecting victims as he could come across, apparently without too much of an adverse effect. But that's no excuse! He admits himself that a close female friend of his had previously been startled to tears by a similar shocking clip, albeit sent by another, and this should have been warning enough that other females with sensitive psyches would be similarly affected! What's more, that unnamed perpetrator knows and has known for a long time that I do not watch horror or spooky movies because of my tendency to keep replaying scary scenes in my imagination. He should have thought twice. But he did not even think once! 把快乐建在人家的痛苦上!

But I will stop all harsh words here. Our unnamed perpetrator has apologised repeatedly and profusely and has come as close as he can in guaranteeing that there will be 'no next time'. Lets all mark those words.

Dirt, begone

I knew from the moment I moved into my room and saw the nasty dirt-encrusted floor that there would come a day when I couldn't stand the sight and feel of it anymore and would roll up my sleeves and attack it proper with soap and water and a scrubbing brush.

My floor is paved with one of those types of 'stupid' tiles (as opposed to smart tiles which might be able to keep themselves clean, stupid tiles actually are designed to facilitate their getting dirty), textured with fine pattern of cracks running across the surface. Perfect for attracting dirt. And the previous owner wasn't the most hygenic person in the world, so when I inherited the room I was dismayed to see an unsightly dirt-design running over most of the tiles. That I left it untouched till today is a miracle of tolerance in itself, but it really is high time that I scrubbed the floor of my room, something that I have never done before and never hope to do again.

So. I procured a pail of soapy water and attacked the dirt-designs with gusto.

Scrub, scrub, scrub...
Scrub, scrub, scrub...
Scrub, scrub, scrub...

Then I had to sponge off the dirty, soapy water and wipe the floor several more times to remove all traces of soap. I pored over that square of floor for almost an hour.

Ah, what a pleasant change, what a miraculous transformation! My floor revealed its original ivory hue and even gleamed a little under the light of the fluorescent lamp. Gone were the nasty dirt-designs, that eyesore, that abomination! Now as I walk over the floor, I can almost fancy that my feet savour the very touch of those smooth, shining, clean tiles.

The Terminal

Viktor Navorsky finds himself stranded in the International Departure Lounge in the US, an 'unacceptable' who does not fall under any category that the authorities can deal with. His antagonist is a narrow minded airport beaureucrat on the brink of clinching a major promotion, who sees Navorsky as a blemish on the face of his sparkling terminal, but yet cannot arrest him nor deal with him as Navorsky technically has not broken any rules.

Amid mounting efforts of the beaureucrat to get rid of him, Navorsky makes a living, makes friends and makes himself his own snug cubbyhole at 'Gate 67'. His initial anguish turns to patient, drawn-out waiting and his initial bewilderment gives way to his resourcefulness. In the face of harrassment and persecution, he maintains his sense of compassion and his hold on a promise given to his dying father. Faced with the cold indifference of immigration rules, Navorsky comes up with his own way to inject compassion into the system: "goat, meh-eh, goat. The medicine is for his goat, not his father. Goat, father; father, goat: they sound very alike in our language." Incensed official: "You read the immigration form! You know that if the medicine is for animals then no declaration is needed!" (A light of hope dawns in the despairing son's eyes) "Medicine... for goat! Medicine for goat! Medicine for goat!" After the son's outburst of emotion upon being allowed to leave with the precious life-saving medicine, Navorsky dryly remarks to the livid official: "He must love his 'goat' very much." His noble deed spreads through the entire business community in the terminal, and henceforth Navorsky becomes a hero of sorts, an indicator of a defect in the system and a model of how things should be. He becomes a stark contrast to the heartlessness of that official (I forget his name, but then again some names do not have to be remembered)

The Terminal by its very name, symbolises waiting. It's a place to facilitate that very business. But Navorsky's type of waiting is a drawn out process, lasting a period of many months, while he waits for the political scene in his country to clear up, for the day he will be able to walk out of the terminal and fulfill the promise he made to his father, for the time when he can see Amelia walk out of the arrival lounge towards him or on a lesser scale for the man at the fast food restaurant to call the pay phone by which he is waiting to tell him that he gets the job. He shows us by sparkling example exactly how should one go about the business of waiting (by ekking out a living and helping other people in that terminal; by holding on fast to a promise that he is not yet able to fulfill; by sculpting his love into the form of an exquisitely crafted fountain; by maintaining a dogged virgil, not doubting, but releasing his hold on a shattered hope and not taking failure to heart). In everything he does, in his meek and unsophisticated way, he is a sterling example of how one should wait patiently and accept fate humbly and gracefully. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. We see other forms of waiting, and how other people react to the imposition of such a dreary necessity. Amelia is forever tied to her pager, waiting for her lover to meet up with her on a free weekend when he doesn;t have to be with his wife; Gupta waits out his self-imposed exile on alien soil with acceptance tinged with wariness (he's a spy!); Enrique waits with his heart in his mouth while Navorsky woos the girl of his dreams for him; that nameless beaureucrat waits for Navorsky to 'break and barrel out of the doors..... [to] become somebody else's problem' and waits 17 years to take the place of Field Commissioner. Waiting brings out the best in some people and the worst in the vast majority of others. I would probably react adversely if anyone told me to wait.

A touching movie, one to be watched with laughter on your lips and tears in your eyes; one to inspire you and make you feel that you want to be a better person than you have hitherto been.

Chocolate cake

YX's birthday is tomorrow and I have baked a chocolate cake for her. Eggless, due to the dearth of eggs on the market these days, using a recipe sourced from some Italian homepage. And now, a little more than three hours later, my baby is cooling under the fan, snugly wrapped in its aluminium foil. I gaze upon it much with the air of a proud papa looking at junior sound asleep in a hospital bassinet. I find that I cannot stop looking at it; even as I pass it on my way out of the room I stop to gaze lovingly at its reposing form.

The process of baking was moderately satisfactory, with valuable assistance from a HK friend who was thrilled at the idea of baking a cake a offered to lend me a hand. As it turned out, that hand was very welcome, since I had rather too small a sieve (the size of a cup opening) to sieve all 800 grams of dry ingredients and so we took turns at this painstaking task. My oversight, since I hadn't noticed that the recipe called for the sieving of all dry ingredients, and had unfortunately forgotten that this was quite the vital step in the whole process of baking a cake.

So we alternated between tapping the tiny sieve on the side of the bowl, shaking it from side to side, scraping the bottom with a spoon, depending on which fine motor muscles weren't yet tired, all with the hope of making the powder fall through the sieve holes more quickly. I decided that I wouldn't sieve all the sugar -- it was icing sugar anyway and should be really fine. At last we were through.

Meanwhile, I had taken half a brick of butter and was mashing it up with a spoon. I was to add water into it "mix all wet ingredients and add all at once to sieved dry ingredients". But could the butter and water mix properly? I recalled how I substituted the cooking oil for butter and vinegar for lemon juice. Then I started to get worried. The vinegar was supposed to bind the oil and the water together! How could it bind water to solid butter? I melted the butter. The resulting mixture looked fairly reassuring.

Another screw-up came when I was oiling the pan, using a clean tissue to spread the butter over the inside. Unfortunately the base of the pan was one of those high-quality textured types, which kind of tore the oiled tissue when I rubbed it too vigorously. I suddenly noticed that the tiny white fragments spread all over the pan did not really seem like unspread butter, since they seemed to multiply the harder I tried to spread them. Oh crap. I rinsed out the pan and tried again, using my fingers this time.

Sometime tomorrow I'll take out the cooled cake, ice it and take it down to them. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I really shouldn't say anything about the taste until it has been consumed, hopefully with a good deal of satisfaction and Hershey's chocolate sauce.

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UPDATES

The cake has been put to the test, and although everyone was very nice about it, objectively speaking it is a tad on the dry side. Fortunately there was still frosting and chocolate sauce to ease it down, and so it wasn't as unpalatable as a dry cake might have been. I think I must have left it in the oven too long. Maybe next time I could keep the baking time under an hour. (Are some of my readers/ guinea pigs now thinking: There is a next time?!) Actually, even before we started eating it, I kinda had the impression that 'junior' had rather a bit too much 'character' for a chocolate cake: The cake actually repelled the candle that I stuck into it! (CY was like: "Why is that candle rising out of the cake again?") Not quite the indication of a mild and pleasing personality that one would hope to see in a cake.

In response to KY's demand to rate the cake on a scale of one to ten, Loon diplomatically replied: "7". All the rest were equally diplomatic to the point of being politically correct, except my bro: "Oh everyone gives a 7, so I'll say 8 and maybe you could throw in that bottle of chocolate sauce in appreciation of this rating." Sweetest of all was YX: "10, 因为心意最重要。"

Saved some for KN and Hebe, in appreciation of their contribution towards the baking of this cake. Of a certainty some exercise would benefit their jaw muscles, not to mention their salivary glands.

Some times

Some times are suitable for listening to haunting Jewish music, with its plaintive notes of wistful yearning and its quiet prayer for peace in war torn Jerusalem. When the stillness of the night seems to contain a quality that resonates with the understated hope in the lyrics. You think of children standing with faces upraised, looking at the breaking dawn.

Some times are suitable for talking about regret, sadness and bittersweet longing. About confusion, uncertainty and helplessness. When all words of advice have been exhausted and all you can offer is your presence and your sympathetic ear.

Some times are suitable for just reposing in the familiar and comforting presence of friends. Just sitting. Just talking. Just being. Tonight is such a night.

I noted a while ago that the day was becoming rather dim. The clouds had thickened and darkened the sky and together with the tinted windows of the law library gave the world outside a twilight overcast. I anticipated rain. It never came. The storm cluds blew away, the sky lightened the world outside turned normal and bright again. Right now, the clouds are a cerulean blue and the palm leaves are moving gently in the light breeze. The Library on a Saturday is a rather idyllic place despite tall shelves of dull lookign volumes, with enough silence to cocoon you but not make your ears ring and with people studying just beyond the shelves in front of the window seat to provide a little bit of motivation if necessary.

Mild regret

I feel time slipping through my fingers like fine sand.

I feel like I have watched every minute of the day today, and watched them pass me by.

But the readings only grow thicker.

I feel that after immersing myself in my readings, I emerge like Rip van Winkle from his sleep of twenty years and find that half the day has gone by and I have but scraped the bare surface of the material.

Sometimes, like this time, I tell myself that I should take a break. I'll never finish the readings, I think. But later I am again compelled to return to them.

Will anyone hear us lament the passing of the sweet and merry days of our youth in such grinding drudgery? Or do muted sighs fall unheard on unresponsive pages of photocopied text?

In vain

Several hundred children and adults died in Beslan, Russia, killed by souless monsters in the name of some perverted ideology. Oh, the senseless suffering, what a slap in the face of humanity! The world grieves for what was once a patch of paradise, now despoiled in a most brutal and horrifying manner. But tears are shed in vain.

The Bourne Supremacy

After abstaining two weeks from the cinemas, we went to watch an action flick yesterday. The movie sounded quite good from the trailers, and it actually wasn't too bad. However, most of us hadn't expected it to be a continuation of a Part 1 that we hadn't seen. The movie was still basically followable as a show in itself, but not having watched Part 1 gave one the feeling of being somewhat left out in the deep.

Still it was a pretty interesting plot and storyline, and generally fairly well done, with fast paced scenes and unpredictable changes of directions which kept the audience on their toes. Intrigue, special agents and high politics have always had a certain alluring aura of mystery and danger and the producer made pretty good use of these elements to keep the audience hanging on to each detail in the unfolding plot. Also, the notion of having the protagonist seek out his missing past while foiling repeated attempts to take his life added a rather romantic note to the dark intrigue of the movie.

Also, it was quite fun being impressed with the creative ways the protagonist dealt with many situations, using the material on hand and his own ingenuity to turn the situation to his advantage. Such as when he sprung a leak in the gas and set paper in the toaster to burn before leaving a house so that it would explode in the face of his pursuers; or when he grabbed a bottle of alcohol from the supermarket and used it both to treat his bullet wound and to spit into the face of a cop who accosted him.

The filming of the fighting scenes was a little haphazard though, which makes one wonder if the producer actually had any experience in this area at all. The camera was moving almost as much as the characters which made the images blurry such that one couldn't tell whether it was the protagonist or his assailant that was having the upper hand until it was all over. Add that to the fact that the fighting scenes were somewhat protracted and involved mainly some indiscriminate tussling, unlike flashy kung-fu moves one some times sees in the better action movies, I actually got bored during some of the fighting because I couldn't figure out what was happening and couldn't wait for it to end so that at least I would be able to know the outcome.

Not that bad overall, although it is not so good that one would rave over it. An ok movie for a Saturday night out, with enough intellectual and emotional depth to give you something to chew on at the end of it all. Quite unlike say, Catwoman, which was only about some sexy babe in a tight leather outfit, with a cracking whip designed to pander to the more perverted inclinations of some people. Bourne was quite a respectable show, in which death and sacrifice were honoured, and which caused one to recognise how deep a mark suffering would leave on one’s soul. Death, however regrettable, was only to be accepted as one of the vicissitudes of life. Quite unlike say, The House of Flying Daggers, where death was next to nothing since the characters could very well pop alive again, if they found the need to do so.

It’s a show to be appreciated and followed with some interest, although following might be easier if one could have watched Part 1: The Bourne Identity, first.

咋到

I was aghast, then I laughed. What was the point of being disturbed over one person's dissatisifed mumblings? When people use their blog to release stress, nothing can be taken too seriously as anything could have been blogged in a moment's frustration. But it is just pathetic making too much out of anyone's distress when they want to make a martyr out of themselves and glorify their suffering. Sometimes being under the impression that one is suffering passionately can perversely make some people feel good about themselves. How is that possible? you ask me. Well think of the hypochondriacs, the pessimists, the complainers and you will see a sample of people who love to feel that they are suffering. You can try to convert them to a more optimistic outlook, but they will consider your advice inane and worse make sarcastic comments about it. And when they decide to let themselves go, and resign themselves to whatever sorry fate they consider themselves to be in, albeit with much drama and sensation ala a heroine of a romantic tragedy, you can only laugh to express the mixture of disbelief and surprise you feel. You can stare at their blogpost for two minutes taking it all in, then you see the ridiculousness of the whole situation and you start to laugh. And laugh. Then you tell yourself that you had better take two steps back and relegate yourself to the role of a spectator from now on.

In my mind's eye, I see a person with slumped shoulders walking away, shaking his head ever so slightly.