i’m drinking water that tastes like it came from the tap. that’s probably because it did come from the tap, but it is embellished with a slice of lemon on the side and has a bendable black straw stuck in it; a futile attempt at embellishment and elevation of status to make the glass of water look more than it really is. momentarily i am fooled into thinking i’m paying my money’s worth, but my tastebuds know their stuff, and now after two sips i am pissed off.
i’m glad that this place didnt choose to bestow upon their water the cringe-inducing moniker of ’sky juice’, but that doesnt change the fact that many other places do, and it doesnt change the fact that we will not be free from this hybrid of liquid called skyjuice - that is apparently one-up from good ol’ water - until the day people decide to stop being phony.
at the end of the day it’s a fucking Ikea glass filled with water that came from the tap, if you know what i mean.
i recently went to watch The Bird House, a local film directed and written by Khoo Eng Yow.
set in Malacca, The Bird House explores a disagreement between two brothers over what is to become of their home, a quaint and small Peranakan-style house that sits on a quiet Malaccan street. the older brother Keat (played by Lee Kiat Lee), who moved to Singapore to work, is now back home in Malacca and is appalled at the indifference and recklessness of his younger brother Hua in maintaining their relic house. Keat strongly believes that their old house, with its beautiful pre-war architecture and antiquated elements, should be prized and treated with respect; hence he wants to turn their old house into an antique shop (yes exactly like those you see along Jonker’s Walk) to preserve its history and novelty.
his brother Hua (played by Loh Bok Lai) on the other hand, a lowly mechanic, is not concerned with old-fashioned ideas of preserving heritage. all he wants to do is take advantage of what he has (ie the heritage house) and turn that into a money-making opportunity. so not only has he already rented out his living room to a stranger who uses the space as a driving school, he also harbours ideas of breaking down the walls in the house so he can rent out rooms for quick cash. his schemes dont end there - after witnessing the financial success of a friend who turned his own heritage house into a swallow-breeding ground to collect valuable birdnests that are highly-priced in the market, Hua is enthralled with the prospect of doing the same with his house.
this is the platform for the movie - two brothers who have different ideas of what to do with one house. but amidst all the dinner table quarrels and petty arguments, sits a quiet and docile old man who seems oblivious to all the animosity going on around him. frail and white-singleted, Keat and Hua’s aging father (played wonderfully by Lim Eng Beng) is a blur thing who seems to accept his fading and obsolete presence, as his two grown-up sons wrestle to become the decision-makers now.
it is obvious to the audience that the old father loves his two sons (perhaps one more than the other) very much and just wants them to be happy. he doesnt give any input or take any sides in the brothers’ argument, but he pleads with them to stop fighting, especially at the dinner table, where families typically get together and put behind all differences. it’s also clear that the brothers arent going to ask their father what HE wants to do with the house anytime soon, even though he’s very much a part of the house.
i like the issue addressed by The Bird House; this whole debate on cultural preservation versus economical development. however, The Bird House takes no side in this matter. instead, it highlights the world’s fixation on making money at the expense of wiping out history and culture, as well as the hypocrisy of heritage-touting preservation advocates. in regards to the latter, one might think this movie’s good guy is big brother Keat, who is very noble in his intent to preserve the heritage house by turning it into an antique shop. but herein lies the hypocrisy - while Keat berates his brother for being greedy enough to turn their home into a birdnest farm, he doesnt realize that his own choice of converting the house into an antique shop to do business isnt very different from his brother’s idea after all. it’s ultimately money-making as well, but hidden behind the valiant guise of heritage conservation.
and isnt this what a lot of preservation programmes are all about? there is all this hoohah about not demolishing old buildings and gazetting historical sites, so much fervor and love for heritage and all; but let’s face it, a lot of the time the reason behind this is to boost tourism figures. at the end of the day, tourists bring in money, and if we can all sound like virtuous pro-preservation heritage cherishers while collecting their US dollars and euros, why the hell not eh.
at one point, two caucasian tourists walk into the house to have a looksee. they spot a traditional mortar and pestle in the kitchen, and so the elderly father eagerly shows them how he uses it to mash food. both tourists ooh and ahh and are thrilled that little malaysian people still use such archaic things in their everyday life! the tourists then take their token photographs with the mortar and pestle. but as they leave, the old man goes back to mashing his food using an electric blender. this goes to show that people need a little bit of progress in today’s world. we cant all be stuck using mortars and pestles when our neighbours are using electric blenders. ladies and gents, development is not a bad thing. also, balance between preservation and progress is not inevitable.
i loved that such a macro debate is captured so beautifully in the microcosm of Keat and Hua’s family. in this big bad world of skyscrapers and million-dollar apartments with views, we dont think about what we had to give up in order to get such things. in fact, when things like Kampung Berembang happen, we go, “aiyah those people are illegal squatters wat”. we dont even spare a thought for the people who used to live on that land and called it home. where will they go? where will they sleep? but we dont care.. all we’re interested in is the hip and happening new club or high-rise condo that will be built on that plot of land. you know, any structure that actually has something to do with ‘actual people’. so it was nice to see this issue addressed by The Bird House, and brought to a more personal and individual level that everyone can relate to.
there is also an underlying theme of irony throughout the whole movie. Keat when returning home from Singapore, brings his father a box of birdnest as a gift, while later we are introduced to Hua’s idea of turning their home into a birdnest farm. Keat tells his brother off for not consulting their sister about demolishing her room’s walls, but he doesnt inform his sister either about his plans of turning her room into a storeroom or something like that in the event that his antique shop materializes. he also constantly makes digs at his brother for ‘knowing nothing about heritage’, but who is the one who left his family behind for money? also, for malaysian chinese, where are your real roots; Malaysia or China?
the idea of turning a house into a birdnest farm where swallows will come in and build nests is perhaps one of the most creative metaphors i’ve seen in malaysian cinema. it was the coolest part of the whole movie, i thought. as for the movie’s aesthetics, nothing short of beautiful; a lot of the time, the scenes looked like they would make some very breathtaking photographs. the opening sequence of stills were simply amazing. the use of some very beautiful piano music was a perfect supplement. oh and the sets and props were all so REAL! i mean, when i was young, the refridgerator in my home was propped up on bricks as well, haha. loved the fact that the house in the movie was so typically Malaccan - air hole in the ceiling and all.
as for pace, yup i’m sorry to disappoint, but The Bird House moves at a painfully slow pace. they are guilty of long static takes as well (surprise surprise), something that unfortunately seems to be fast defining Malaysian indie cinema. but the difference between The Bird House and most of our local indie flicks is that there is actually lot of dialogue in TBH. i’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, because i feel that subtlety is always good when it comes to cinematic messages, but then again a lot of our indie filmmakers tend to get a bit too caught up in the supposed complexity and mysteriousness of their scripts, and that’s when they end up saying too little. so at least TBH managed to keep their audience involved and attentive.
the best part of TBH besides the metaphorical birdnest is most definitely the execution of dialogue. while it was difficult to connect with the characters in the movie (mostly due to bad lighting and lack of close ups), i absolutely loved how naturally they spoke. no fake accents anywhere or apparent memorization. it was all very fluid and lovingly colloquial. props to the actors!
all in all, i would say that this is one of the better written works we’ve seen lately in local cinema. the budget for this film was fairly small, and i’m always amazed at how people with so little money for production can make such good films, compared to those who have a few million dollars behind them but come up with such crappy ass horror shit.
please go and watch The Bird House! it’s worth it. i’m so proud that Malaysia has filmmakers capable of making touching films like these.
The Bird House is showing at GSC International Screens at Mid Valley, 1 Utama and Gurney Plaza Penang. no i dont understand either why our own movies are screened under the international screens.
up till now, i had it all wrong. unknowingly, i have been the prejudiced person all this time, the hypocrite who wants to live out a storybook, but the catch is that it has to be a storybook written by me. one where i know all the plot twists and cliffhangers and who dies at the end. cos there is this sense of smugness that i secretly enjoy when i see what i want to see; i like being able to say, ‘i knew it’. and who doesnt want to make their life perfect - isnt it great how i can go back and edit my life whenever i want? take out whole chapters, put in a period or two, write in a new character.. whatever right, as long as i’m happy.
the other day i was watching an episode of grey’s anatomy with ben. it’s the one where someone drowns and is revived. so predictable lah, i complained to him. as if we didnt know she was going to live again! i hate predictable shows!, i huffed as i stomped around the room. where is the magic? where is the creativity?
someone once asked me if i like surprises. i love surprises, i said, but only if i see them coming. he laughed and we clinked wineglasses. ‘how we met was a surprise, you know’, he pointed out. and i cant disagree; it was a most irregular first-time. ’so, am i an unpleasant or a pleasant surprise?’ one of us asks. ‘time will tell, but i’m beginning to warm up to you’, says the other.
many years ago, there was one day jovann blurted out suddenly : “i’m broke”, and i laughed and laughed like there was no tomorrow. for a while after that, everytime he said “i’m broke”, i would dissolve into a fit of giggles, and sometimes even just imagining jovann saying that would make me laugh. and one time aira told me a grasshopper joke that wasnt even really funny but to this day i still laugh everytime i relay the joke because i remember the unexpected manner in which she told the joke; she just halted the conversation midway and said, “hey so this grasshopper walks into a bar..” and when she executed the punchline, it was just so bloody comically random. a total ‘what the???’ moment, and that’s why i love that joke.
recently i had to live out a book not authored by me. i hated it. but the point of this whole post is that i realize how much i actually loved it. i loved to say i hated it; yet i covertly savoured every moment of the unfamiliarity. so much dramaaaaaaaaa. and of course i thoroughly enjoyed the drama, because i’m a drama queen at heart, but i suppose everyone already knows that.
apart from cutesy cupcakes and dangly earrings, there is little else in this world that i relish more than a good, dirty, delicious dose of procrastination.
as i was telling the love of my life earlier (and before you ask, yes he is still very much the love of my life, contrary to what some of my emo blogposts and angry MSN nicknames may imply), i’d still not managed to untangle myself from the clingy, tenacious webs of yummy procrastination despite having a, yes you guessed it, Economics exam tomorrow. at this point i am wondering, WHY, after almost 13 years of academic participation, have i not learnt the finer points of the art of focus and/or sidetracking-aversion? and more importantly, WHY does it seem as if there is an economics test/quiz/exam to sit for every week or so?
so after talking to my beloved on MSN, which was the first of my Procrastinatory Activities (hereafter known as PA, not to be confused with Personal Assistant, of which i was one for a sad 3 days of my life, gloomily having to fetch coffee and blot make-up and the like, but that is another story for another day), i told myself : self, this is it! it is already 1am, and it is time to start mugging for this looming econs exam you have in about 8 hours!
but then i realized, 8 hours is a lot of time to cover 4 chapters. in fact, it is more than enough time. i dont even need that many hours! okay lah so i can chill for a bit. ooh, Bitcomet says the latest episode of America’s Next Top Model is 100% downloaded! yessssss, 42 solid minutes of one of my favourite TV programmes, and yes i like ANTM, what cannot izzit, at least i’m not one of those hypocrites who go, ‘yerrrrr why you watch ANTM wan!’, but then secretly go home and tune into Channel V every Monday at 8pm sharp to watch catty models steal each other’s food and whimper about how they miss their kids/husband/family back home. by the way, ANTM’s latest season is totally awesome, and this diversion has gotten so long that i forgot what i wanted to say. why the hell am i talking about ANTM again?
and so you’d think that after i had gotten my weekly illegal (torrented mah) dose of Tyra Banks’ infamous ‘X beautiful girls stand before me, but i only have (X-1) photos in my hand!’ and weepy eliminations, i would hit the books in a panic fit because i’d just lost 1 precious hour of study time. but no, what i did instead was indulge in another PA. it is the mother of all PA’s, one you are all familiar with, none other than the great WIKIPEDIA! Wikipedia, i must say, is the greatest invention for information sluts like me, as well as panicky exam-sitting students also like me; but tonight i wasnt wikipediaing Inflation Costs or Theory of Exchange Rate Determination like a good Economics student should, but i was in fact wikipediaing Grey’s Anatomy characters. yes, i WIKIPEDIAed Alex Karev, Derek Sheperd and Mark Sloan. and even Izzie Stevens. this is the utter epitome of Nothing Better To Do. i am shameless. just kill me.
fortunately, after my 52nd Wikipedia stub on fictional but very hunky TV show characters, my superego got the better of me, and i decided that i should start studying NOW. so i took all my books and notes and post-its and dumped it all on the living room coffeetable, because my ’study desk’ in my room has my laptop (by extension, also the Internet, which by a second extension, houses many other PAs of which i cannot afford to associate myself with at the moment) and therefore my ’study desk’ cannot be called my ’study desk’ because no studying can be done upon it. hence it should be called simply, ‘desk’. now you know why Malaysians like to call their desks ’study desks’ or ‘working desks’ instead of just ‘desks’ … it’s because Malaysians are not procrastinatory by nature, and the prefix to their desk actually does fulfil a role. either that or they just wanna make themselves believe that.
digression : is procrastinatory a valid word?
anyway as i was saying.. i dumped all my stuff on the living room coffeetable so i could get to my studying. but unfortunately, guess what was lying on top of aforementioned coffeetable? yes.. what else but the Leading English Daily In Malaysia, The Star. which i havent read yet today. dont pick it up!, my conscience twittered anxiously. study first, read newspaper later! ah, but Kee Thuan Chye has a new column in the Sunday Star!!! must read must read. i figured that if i skipped all the articles on the Machap by-election, i could cover the newspaper in 5 minutes. but noooooooo, there just had to be a three-page feature on Anwar Ibrahim as well as Huzir Sulaiman’s funny column. and of course, my horoscope. and my boyfriend’s horoscope. and all of my best friends’ horoscopes. argh. thank you, The Star, for playing the indispensable role of the evening’s PA #ILostCount as well as a contributor to my failing grade for Econs 203.
sigh.
after i finished reading the newspaper cover to cover (yes i did eventually read all the articles on the freaking Machap freaking by-election and the 49853rd article featuring Tan Boon Heong and Koo Kien Keat) i didnt actually start studying but i spent about 15 minutes trying to find a testpad. i dont know why we call those things testpads, because i have been met with many blank stares when asking for testpads, so if you dont know what i am referring to when i say testpad, what i mean is an a4-sized notebook where you can tear loose sheets of lined paper from. to my defense, this is not actually a PA, searching for a testpad i mean, because i need a testpad to study for my exam. need to write notes and all mah. aiyah actually it’s a PA also lah, because The Search For The Testpad eventually led me back to my ‘study desk’ on which sits my laptop, which is connected to the Internet, which as we know houses many many many many many many many PA’s, one of which is
WORDPRESS.
(for the uninitiated, it is the blogging tool on which i log-on to to blog)
and that is why there is this 1048-word post on the index page of quaintly.net, when the Pinkpau should be busy studying for her Econs exam instead. yes, i did in fact copy and paste this whole post onto Microsoft Word to determine its number of words. Microsoft Word is another PA, did you not know? so is Solitaire, the shortcut icon of which sits beckoningly on my desktop. hmm..
no no no no no no no no no no no. GO AND STUDY.
edit : i have found a new PA!!! and that is searching on Wordpress for blogs i wrote while procrastinating on studying for econs tests and exams. i found four. one, two, three, four. see, i told you i have damn a lot of econs tests/exams.
edit edit : stop reading my blog and go back to whatever it is you are supposed to be doing!
if there is one thing i absolutely cannot stand, it is the loss of opportunity. my most depressed (ok i use this loosely, perhaps ‘gloomiest’ would be a better word) stages in life are always when i want to do something badly, AM SO CLOSE to doing that something, but at the last minute it is snatched out of my hands by some warped and unexpected circumstance. i hate it when that happens. really hate it.
so dont talk to me about the ESUM public speaking competition. i went to watch the semifinals today and was totally shocked at the quality of the speeches at semifinal level. some of them didnt even *have* their speeches prepared, or even understood the meaning of ’straw that broke the camel’s back’. arhghghghghgh see lah, lim su ann. panic summore lah. have low confidence summore lah. pull out of competition summore lah. see who regrets now. bitch. no one to blame but yourself.
@#*%&$*(^*$( okok the end of whining. THE END. next time no more panicking and no more low confidence and no more last minute no-shows.
eh but the public speaking circuit is a small one. saw 3 friends and 2 other familiar faces at the semifinals. gooooo sharmin, caryn, john. hope you three make it to the finals! if i cant be there, i wanna at least live vicariously through you guys :P okay maybe except john. coz his debate team kicked my team’s ass and went on to win the championship trophy and i’m still bitter
damn funny right this face! i love it. coz it’s so ME, muahaha.
a photo from our pool orgy tonight :
i wanna say a big thank you to everyone who took the time to pull me out of my little depressed rut over the past 2 weeks. i totally appreciate it, even if i was too sullen to say so. everything has been so emotionally taxing, i feel like i dont have any life left in me. but i’m okay now. i ate two oranges this morning and for some reason i felt inexplicably better. and i also encountered the coolest cabbie ever this afternoon, who sang songs for me (we belted out Take Me Home Country Road together loudly) and told me to have more sex. haha i liked him sooooo much, not because he told me to have more sex, but because he was just so awesome. he totally knew how to make me feel better. i entered his cab a very sulky girl, and i came out giggling like crazy. he later asked me if i would go watch Mr Bean with him.. hahaha! so funny. i replied, ‘date someone your own age lah uncle!’ and he said, ‘you shaddup, hypocrite’. -__-
and he very perasan wan, says he looks like Jackie Chan. but that’s okay, awesome people can be as perasan as they want. (Jay, for your benefit, perasan means self-absorbed or vain)
as i got out of the car, he said, ‘girl ah dont be be sad okay. remember never to take things too seriously in life. oh and dont forget to have sex. byebye!’
Pinkpau is Su Ann. 19, Malaysia. Hostile when hungry. Sometimes a shapeshifter, always an optimist with a penchant for pessimism and shoe-shopping. More?
Contact at : pinkpau[at]gmail[dot]com
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The point of the pinkness of this site is to annoy the crap out of you. Really. What made you think I was a nice person? More?
