Atonement

Went to see "Atonement". I didn't want to see it at first since I am really not a fan of Keira Knightley and I just can't see the attraction of any "most romantic movie since Titanic" if she is in it. M was all keen on it though as well as my friend ZM so we ended up going for it. The movie actually is really well made. The director made really fantastic use of close up shots that showcase the actor's eyes. There are so much meaning being conveyed in each subtle look. You can practically understand the whole movie without any dialog. The movie soundtrack and cinematography is also gorgeous as well. Besides silly Keira Knightley whom I hate, I really enjoyed all the other casts, especially the 13 year old younger sister did an amazing job as a precocious child with an agenda. For a movie hailed as an "epic romance", there really wasn't too much romance involved as Keira Knightley and her beau spend most of the movie being apart. I didn't feel moved at all by their love story. I feel like I have been misled by all the advertisements trying to grab all the ladies to the theatre..tsk tsk.. (or maybe my heart is just made of ice =P) I won't give away the ending, but really, you can't really consider a romance "epic" if they lived happily ever after eh?

Now that I have seen one of the Oscar movies, I feel obligated to see all the rest of them, so on my list will be "No Country For Old Men", and "There Will Be Blood" and perhaps "Juno" and "Michael Clayton".

On a different note, I downloaded demo for Devil May Cry 4 on xbox yesterday. It is a beautiful slash and hack game with really gorgeous graphics and fluid combo motions. I enjoyed playing it except for the fact the camera angle is horrendous. This is 2007, not 1999, the time of fixed camera angels should be times of the past!!

Play!

I went to Play! A Video Game SYmphony last night at Benaroyal Hall. Play! is a group that is also touring around the country with video game music. I guess they are kind of a rival to Video Game Live. The show actually is alot more formal than Video Game Live. It was held in a proper concert hall with a proper traditional orchestra and the Northwest Boys Choir. They didn't have any fancy light shows, just 3 jumbotrons that showed close up of the musicians along with video game footage. So it was a much more proper concert than VGL. I really enjoyed it because the arrangements was wonderful. The setup that lets you see the musicians up close makes it really interesting because you don't usually think about which instrument produced that chime, or that sequence of melodies when you are listening in the game.

The setlist included the requisite Final Fantasy suites -started with Liberi Fatali and ended with One Winged Angel (quite appropriate :)) . The NW Boys Choir was amazingly good. They sounded just like the soundtrack. they had such good harmony and tone, not to mention they had to stand for the entire concert even though they only had to sing in 4 songs.

There was also the Super Mario and the SOnic the Hedgehog tracks which elicited lots of laughter. But the most exciting thing was they did an arrangement of Battlefield 1942!! DunX5 FTW!!! I was so excited I Had to call Velius before the show to tell him haha. THe funny thing is that although they were playing DunX5, the footage they show is actually from BF2, specifically DaQing Oilfield jet battle. I was like "wait a minute, there are no jets in 1942!!". It brought back good memories :)

There were two surprises during the concert, the first is that Jeremy Soule was there. The conductor presented him after the Oblivion suite. I think the Oblivion suite was the best segment of the show. The orchestra did an amazing job with the music and they showed all the cool footage from the game (ahh reminds me of all the headaches I went through for that game). I am sure Jeremy got mobbed after the show. he got huge applause and screams. The second surprise is that they did a Guild Wars suite near the end which wasn't even on the program. Now that really brought back memories hehe.

Couple other little things:

During the Wow segment, the video they showed was the opening from WarCraft 3 heh!

They did this really modern rock music for Silent Hill 2, with an electric guitar solo which turned out to be a keyboard imitating an electric guitar. Man it sounded really really good.

In the end, it was a really good night and I really enjoyed the concert.

defending the national pride

The Chinese group organized a group trip to the sonics game last night against the ROckets. We were of course rooting for Yao Ming, some secretly, some not so secret. The game was actually really intense, Rockets won by 2 points at the last minute, they were 11 points down still with 5 minutes left. So it was very exciting. Everybody was standing the last 2 minutes of the game. I had a really good time watching the game and dropping hotdog sauce all over myself. :)

After the game, some more excitement happened too: quoting our group leader:

"Several guys robbed the national flag at the very end of Yao Ming's game tonight.
With support of many Chinese friends from here and from mitbbs, one of the robbers was put to jail (at least told by the police) for at least tonight. It will be a very cold night for him.

The good news is the national flag was found right before we left the arena and in good condition. Cheers!
Also, the game is a very exciting one and Houston finally won the game. (That is part of the reason the drunk robber did that stupid thing.)

Thanks everybody's help!
Without your support, we could not hold the guy until police arrived.
This accident gave us strong confidence that when united, our Chinese community has huge power.
Let's keep united.
"

Chinese news report:
http://sports.sohu.com/20080124/n254864476.shtml

trivia

WE were once again the winner of the coveted $1 pitcher yesterday (losing = winning!). We had a whoppin 28 points! although the point spread wasn't that big to be honest, we graded the 3rd place winner which had 40 points. The fantastic news was that there was a Star Trek category!! The awful news is that I couldn't remember what happened at the ending of TNG, the last episode called "All Good Things Must Come TO An End". So we missed the easy question :( but I did get the rest of the category. There was a category on Marques Tuaiasosopo (sp?) and that was too obscure for me to even remember the questions right now.

Bonus round was actually Jeopardy style this time. The questions were the first 10 final jeopardy question on the tv show Jeopardy (without a bunch of Russian secretary questions). and we had to wager 0-2 points. Now being reckless gamblers that we are, we wagered 2 on every question so we will either win spectacularly, or get the $1 pitcher beer so we can't lose either way. :)

Oscar's out

They released the Oscar Nominations this morning. You can see them here: http://oscar.com/nominees/index?pn=index#12_BestScoreNominationCategory

Unfortunately, I can safely say that I have not seen a SINGLE movie that is nominated. This year was pretty much a blank for me as far as movies go. This is going to make watching the ceremony (if it happens that is) not as fun.

Injured

So I went skiing on Saturday with some friends who all went to snowboard. But I am determined to get better at skiing. We went to Snoqualmie pass, which is a small mountain (think Eldora) about an hour away from where I live. The mountain is divided into 3 sections and we were on the west side. They only had ONE green trail and maybe 3 blue ones plus a small bowl. We didn't get there til after noon so we had to get night skiing tickets. Night skiing really isn't that different since the snow reflects so much light. It is kind of interesting to experience though. The snow was actually really good, it was snowing like crazy all day and we had some nice powder in the afternoon. There were 7 inches on the car when we went back to dig it out (all beautiful powder).

I rented my skis at the ticket window but even as I went down the green slope I immediately realized I couldn't control my speed. No matter how big of a V I made, I just charged straight ahead, it was quite scary actually. So that resulted in couple wipeouts, including one that bounced my head around. :( I thought maybe I have lost all the strength I have picked up in Colorado. I went down the trail several more times but it wasn't getting any better. Lastly, we went down a very short blue slope ( it is nothing compare to the green we went down in Vail) and I went into a huge wipe out and twisted my left knee pretty badly. So now I am crippled and have to stay home and take advil :(

I have no idea what happened, I shouldn't be wiping out on the green slopes now! I figure perhaps the skis are somehow weird and I can't get any edge on them or something, cause the boots fitted perfectly. Anyway, that was kind of a disaster over all hahaha. The people I went with are trying to go every weekend this season. I really want to join them as I think that would really improve my skills alot. But at this rate, I would be lucky if I wasn't injured the whole season lol

stop shaking!!

I went to see "Cloverfield" tonight. Ever since I saw the preview I have been fascinated by its apocalypse subject and the style of realism they are going for. I think they are trying to go for a 9/11 type of feel and I think they have succeeded. JJ Abrams sure knows how to build up a scene. I thought the movie was very interesting and probably very close to what real people would do if there was a 30 story tall monster ravaging their city. I wouldn't say it was a great movie though because I dont' think there is anyone that can see it more than once. The handheld camera style is soo incredibly shaky and dizzying, it didn't help that I came in late and had to sit in the 4th row, half way through the movie I was about to throw up so I had to get up and move to the stairs in the upper section and sit there. I am really impressed that the people sitting in the first row didn't do a group retch during the movie (it was a full house).

As for the plot, I am not sure what to think of the main character's actions, are they heroic or idiotic? If someone really close to you, say your parent or your spouse is trapped in a building and bleeding to death next to a giant monster that is going to kill everyone, and knowing that if you go back for them, you probably won't make it, would you go back for them? I know it is easy to be heroic now and say "of course I am going back" but if you were really in the situation, can you do it?

Thirdly, if you plan on going to see the movie, don't go after you just ate because there is a good chance it is all gonna come back up, go an hour earlier so you can sit in the very back rows to prevent motion sickness. I think this reflex that associate dizziness and throwing up is very annoying. I think probably in ancient times, dizziness probably meant you ate something poisonous so it is beneficial to throw it up. But in the modern age, say if you were trapped in a spinning helicopter trying to escape certain death, throwing your guts out really isn't the best thing to do.

It is not a waste of time after all

I saw this interesting news story on Kotaku. A guy on his way home,saw an SUV flip over on the road. He was able to save 2 people inside by applying emergency medical procedures to them. THe funny thing is, he has no medical training whatsoever except he passed the medic certification in American's Army game. According to him, his training in the video game helped him stay calm under pressure and save 2 lives.

I have received no prior medical training and can honestly say that because of the training and presentations within America's Army, I was able to help and possibly save the injured men. As I look back on the events of that day, the training that I received in the America's Army video game keeps coming to mind."
I remember vividly in section four of the game's medic training, during the field medic scenarios, I had to evaluate the situation and place priority on the more critically wounded. In the case of this accident, I evaluated the situation and placed priority on the driver of the car who had missing fingers. I then recalled that in section two of the medic training, I learned about controlled bleeding. I noticed that the wounded man had severe bleeding that he could not control. I used a towel as a dressing and asked the man to hold the towel on his wound and to raise his hand above his head to lessen the blood flow which allowed me to evaluate his other injuries which included a cut on his head.

You know what this means guys, if we ever get trapped in a TV station in a Middle Eastern city, yall know what to do....

New Years Resolutions!

Happy New Year everyone! I am so glad Velius did a recap of our trip so I don't have to muhahahha. Anyway, I had an idea to do a New Years resolutions post but I found out Kung already did one so I guess this isn't a new idea anymore :( oh well here it goes

Moonfleck's 2008 New Years Resolution:

1. Go to the gym at least once a week- ALl my muscles have pretty much atrophied from having a desk job. I noticed this especially during Ski trip since when I came back from all that exercise, I felt much stronger, so my goal is try to keep it up.

2. Read one book a month - I haven't read a good book in quite a long time and my mind probably has atrophied as well so this is gym for my brain.

3. Continue piano lessons - I want to keep taking piano lessons so I don't waste 10 years of playing. lets see if I can find a good teacher tho

4. Learn ONE song on guitar - I kinda stopped learning after my guitar lessons last year so I want to learn one more song this year.

5. Do not lose touch with all the friends I am in touch with - I have gradually lost contact with tons of people i used to know since I got out of school. It might be too daunting a task for me to get them all back but I can try not to lose the ones I still have (especially the Veggies!)

6. Redecorate my room - I am tired of the furniture and layout in my room which I've had since middle school. I want to sell all the furniture and buy new ones. An attempt at interior decorating. I wanted to do this last year but never got around to it cause of laziness. Let's see how I do this year.

7. Learn to cook 3 new dishes - I haven't learned how to cook anything new since school. So I want to learn something interesting and hopefully easy (tea eggs here i come!!)


Ok I think that is it for now. I still have a bunch of other things on my mind but the odds of actually getting them done is pretty slim so better not ruin my chances. :)