(*Neil Gaiman's characters: The Endless......from left to right...Desire,Despair,Delirium,Dream,Death,Destiny and Destruction)

*Note: They don't normally look so cute...it's just that the artist of this piece, Jill Thompson draws them in a cute manga-ish style....

Ok.....been some weeks since my last post...so I'll try to recap the many events that happened since the last post as best I can.....

Caught Initial D with Felix,Liang Jie,Wenjun,Huiling and Jeremy and Edward......err.....many many weeks ago.....not a bad flick.......well directed and edited by the Alan Mak and Andrew Lau, the directors of the Infernal affairs trilogy....

Honestly I dunno whats the hype about Jay Chou's acting........Anthony Wong said his acting in the movie was very good...coming from an actor of Anthony Wwong's caliber...that's a big compliment....but I saw the flick and he's only great.....at acting as himself...really.... he does a wonderful job acting as himself in Initial D....you know,stiff,kinda lifeless,bored and mumbling........the highlight of the movie was the final scenes with him discovering that his girl friend Anne Suzuki is a free lance prostitute......he's supposed to be so pissed and angry and sad about this big revelation that he managed to squeeze a tiny drop of tear and he's so pissed that he hits the steering wheel with all the strength of a Thai transvestite with a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome....

As for the rest of the cast.....Edison Chen is pretty much how he is in ALL his other films, Shawn Yue has limited screen time so you ain't know whether he's actually good or bad.....Anne Suzuki does what she's supposed to do:Be cute...Chapman To was pretty funny as Jay Chou's friend and Anthony Wong as usual is the best actor in the whole flick...

Its weird.......the best actors in this show are always not the best-looking ones......Edison Chen,Shawn Yue,Jay Chou and Anne Suzuki are easier on the eyes then Anthony wong and Chapman To but it's all style over substance and they can't act for nuts.....guys like Chapman To and Anthony wong ain't got the looks but damn their acting is good........they're very versatile and natural.........I think I'll rate this flick 6.5/10.....the car races are good and the girl is cute as a button so as least I got my money's worth...haha

Couple of weeks back I met one of the top comic writers in the industry, British writer Neil Gaiman,creator of Sandman and living proof that comics are'nt a kid's medium... who came down to Singapore for a 3 day signing at Kinokuniya,Comics mart at Cineleisure and Borders.........I went down to kinokuniya during his signing to catch a glimpse of him but I was too lazy to queue up for his autograph......he was supposed to start signing at 4.30pm...I was there by 4.10pm and already the effing queue was effing long.......I could'nt be bothered to queue up...still... managed to take some pictures of him and see him interact with his fans...

The weird things about his fans is......for a comicbook writer......he has even more female fans then male fans.....wow the percentage of fans were like 60% female and 40% male......and he had some really hardcore female fans.....JC girls who wore sweaters with his name sewed on them......crazy american chicks who dressed up as his creations....one day even wore a crazy hat with a veil(like those kinds in funerals) and you could'nt even see her damn face through the veil........he was friendly and even came back for a second signing session after his talk at the Orchard library at 8.30 pm for the people who did'nt get his autograph in his first session...

Neil Gaiman has written several novels and children's stories..some of which eneded up on the Time's Best Sellers list and he's currently directing his first feature film "Mirromask" with his longtime collaborator...Dave Mckean.......below is a small clip of the film and it's a clip where mechanical Jack-in-the-box maanequins doll up the main character as they sing a haunting version of "close to you" by the Carpenters....it's funny,bizarre,weird,dark( in a Tim Burton-ish way)....yet magical.....perfectly representative of all the work Gaiman does....

http://movies.aol.com/movie_exclusive_mirrormask_movie_clip

Then on 13th July...........I finally got my Diploma in Business studies....3 long years of hard work has finally bore fruit.........I gotta say.....it's weird I became pretty damn hardworking when I was in Poly....which sure as hell wasn't the case when I was primary school and secondary school.......nice to see some of classmates and teachers again..........finally this phase in my life has come to a close....mixed emotions that day....happy.....yet sad....how contradictory...

Yup...one phase has ended, another is beginning....such is life........in less then 2 months I should be going into NS.........have started making the necessary preparations 3-4 weeks ago,from this day........but there are some kinks and issues that I like to work out before I enter NS......so the day after my graduation ceremony, I spent a day thinking and brainstorming about the problems,kinks that I like to see resolved and some corrections I like to make during this waiting period before NS........and I made a list......ended up being a pretty damn long list I gotta say....

The List covered everything that I like to see corrected or worked out before NS..........e.g simple things like Posture and the way I walk, future long-term plans, personality traits,physical stuff like stamina,stregth,endurance,etc.....................it's amazing how many bad habits one can accumulate in a 20 year lifetime.......some simple stuff that have been so ingrained in your eveyday life......

Case in point:Take my posture and the way I walk for instance........when I was in primary school...I used to carry this huge-ass school back filled with books to school everyday.....I never ever forgot to bring a single book for the duration of my primary school life....and I started hunching because of that bag was heavy as hell....it seemed ok back then......flash forward to the present.....I have nowbizarrely incorrect posture and unconsciously I walk with a slouch,shoulders are droopy,back is hunched.....etc...........I can just start walking and suddenly I'll be slouching or hunched and I Don't even notice it.....so I'm taking steps to rectify even simple stuff like that........better I do it myself then the army do it for me.......I try my best everyday to walk completely straight without hunching at all and I walk long distances back home instead of taking buses if I can.............simple stuff like walking straight.........dammit...trying to re-learn shit like that is like a grown man being toilet-trained for the first time again.......frustrating.As. Hell......hahahha

On the physical side of things.....things are going pretty smooth, I maintain a daily fitness and diet regime I follow closely everyday...........wake up at 9.30 and go for a 1 and a half hour jog/run from my house to dairy farm,come out near Salavation Army and jog back toward Bukit Panjang Primary school and straight to Fajar Secondary school, cut out from the back of Cashew Heights and run all the way back home......took me 1 and a half hour the first time I jogged to complete this circuit with a few breaks here and there........currently it takes me about 40 mins without having to take a single break.....and without panting like Darth Vader with a bad case of asthma............ haha

Then somewhere in the day I work on weights,2 sessions a day....different exercises for about an hour per session...then I jump straight to the pull-up bar........started out being unable to pull myself up......frustrating to learn that your arms are weak as a newborn.....but continued doing....err....TRYING to do pull-ups on a daily basis....hahhaha....and now I can do about 5 pull-ups on the pull-up bar in my house...can do a max 7 pull-ups if all the stars align and the Gods are smiling upon me....haha........its finally paying' off....

As for Abs exercises.......started a month ago doing 385 crunches a day(assorted:reverse crunches,standard crunches,wighted crunches).......it started to get easier.....so I recently upped it to 500 standard crunches a day( 5 reptitions of 50+25+25 crunches)........every night before I go to bed at 12.00am...and once every week on a sunday, I'll do 1000 crunches......500 in the early afternoon and 500 at night.......the day I did 1000 crunches for the first time I gotta say I experienced brand new kinds of pain I never felt before...hahaha...from different parts of my body I did'nt knew existed..hahaha.........but I pretty much like doing crunches nowadays.....the first 300 crunches make your abs hurt...the next 200 or 700 don't hurt that much cos your abs are pretty numb by then.......500 crunches a day,4000 crunches a week (inclusive of sunday)...I figure either I'll get me some abs or I'm gonna end up half-paralyzed...hahhaha

Then I Go to the gym at Civil Defence club at Bukit Batok or Chua Chu Kang Sports complex twice a week to use the professional exercise equipment ( their freaking Pull-Up machine that compensates your weight is a freaking God's send for anybody trying to do pull-ups I tell ya!!)......wake up early.......sleep early.....and another day has passed.....time passes fast when You're exercising for hours on end and your body is in constant pain.....haha

I hope each day passes faster then the one before... the long wait to enter NS in September is nuts.....I think all of my secondary school friends have entered(most of them seargents or officers at this point) and only a handful of people from poly I know are still not in NS....so at this point in time I am actually LOOKING FORWARD to just going in and getting it over and done with.....hahaha...never thought I'll say that.....

Meanwhile I'm hoping I can actually rectify and resolve everything stated in my list within the limited time span left before I enter in Sept.........if not completely resolve then at least make considerable corrections to them.........some things take so damn long to correct and the results take such a long time to be evident...but I made peace with the fact that I ain't getting rock-solid biceps within a week orsculpted abs in a couple of weeks......hahaha..if that list takes me months or a year or two to completely resolve...then so be it....I'll have to see it through to the end...

so Last weekend, I was pretty enthused about the prospect of working at a comic shop......$6.50 per hr, work from 10.00am to 9pm.........basically have to mend the cash register every day, do stock taking,check stocks and arrange stocks every once a week.....7 days a week except for public holidays.............told my mum about the job, but she wasn't too thrilled about me taking the job.....said that I have less then 2 months, my brother is always not at home...she would rather me spend more time with my dad and her beofre I enter NS then work 7 days a week at a comicshop.....asked me to make a point to go and have dinner with them,my grand parents everyday that I'm not going out with friends........says she prefer me to take a part time language course instead......master a new language in a mth and a half?......errr.........not very likely mommy....

Nowadays, My Folks behave strangely sometimes......I guess they're gonna be pretty bored for the next 2 years that I spend in NS cos I only can come out during the weekends.....plus my brother comes home pretty late everyday or sometimes not at all...so it'll be just he two of them......no one to bug them anymore for 5 days of the week......hahaha.....

Anyways......Finally Caught Fantastic four the movie on tuesday......but WAIT!!!Don't close your eyes or go into a self-induced coma yet in anticipation of the onslaught of words to come about the film....I'm not gonna do some in-depth review of the movie....I like the Fantastic Four comics...read the first hundred issues of the comic in 4 telephone-book sized trade paperbacks but I ain't that big a fan....

The movie was okay.......good,funny Pop corn flick........it's the kind of comic movie the general public will like......it ain't got no sex,swearing nudity,adult topics...just action and humor.......I'm pretty sure that the general public will prefer it to darker, more mature comic films like Batman and Sin City.......

some parts are different from the comics though.....Dr Doom in the comics was never on the space trip that gave the Fantastic Four their powers.....and he ain't no businessman...he's the absolute ruler of the country of Latveria.......and no...he ain't got no crazy metal mutation......he was classmates with reed richards and Reed told him that his calculations about his experiment was wrong...but Doom's ego would'nt let anybody correct him...so he conducted the experiment and it blew up in his face........left him one tiny scar on his cheek...but because of his ego and vanity....he did'nt want the rest of the world to see his less then perfect face....so he went to tibet and got monks to fashion a suit of armor and a mask for him...but in his over-eagerness to cover his face....he donned the mask before it cooled.......hideously deforming his face......

Also Reed Richards is not as wimpy as he was in the movie, Sue Storm ain't as hot as Jessica Alba......cos she's more of a motherly figure....but the Human torch and the thing were pretty faithful......I though the human touch was great...exactly like he was in the comics.......I think I'll rate the movie like 7/10...

Also Recently My dad bought the movie "A Beautiful Mind".......I heard very good things about the movie but never got around watching it....so I thought I would give it a look........and I gotta say A beautiful Mind is a brilliant movie........The Best movie I never watched.....

It's the true life story of Professor John Nash,who's played by Russell crowe.....and it follows him from his days in Princeton University all the way to his twilight years.....John Nash is a really unique character.....he's so damn smart that he functions on another plane of reality,his mind is constantly working,he sees equations in everything.....but on the other hand..he's a social retard...his interpersonal skills are non-existent, he's awkward,he's stiff....he doesn't have any close friends at all.....besides his room mate and probably his best friend,Charles...

So anyways, for his final paper, he manages to come out with this radical theory of his own that completely goes against the past 150 years of economic theories and works...."The Nash economics" theory...so he gets to write his ticket to any place he wants and he becomes a Professor, who's frequently invited by the United states government to help them solve their problems.........that's when things get weird...

He gets recruited by this man from the US secret service.....because John Nash is such a genius,he can look at numbers and break any code......he's the best living code breaker in the world...and the Seceret service wants him to work for them....the russians recovered plans to build a portable atomic bomb and they have sleeper agents all over the united states....and they communicate to their agents through special codes and encoded messgaes in newspapers,magazines,etc......so John nash's job is to go through every damn printed periodical,every advertisement,every article,every page...to decode any special messages the russians may have left for their sleeper agents....so he becomes very paranoid and starts thinking his life is in danger and his wife's too....

It turns out that everything is a lie.......there's no secret service agent...he wasn't hired by the secret service, the secret place he delivered classified info is fake..........it's all part of his imagination.....John Nash suffers from Schizophrenia......his entire perception of reality is warped, he can't tell what's real and not real...his mind creates imaginary events and people that are so real to him that he actually believes in them......and the worst thing of all, Charles his room mate, his best friend since university.......is just another figment of his imagination...he ain't got no best friend....never had...

This movie is great.......absolutely more scary then anything horror flick or whatever........it's a pretty damn scary thing....when because of a life-long mental illness.....specific events in his life, the most memorable things that ever happened to him, the best friend he ever had who he laughed with,talked with,got drunk with....things that happened in his life that he would never forget......were actually completely imaginary......he made them up,large chunks of his life,people in his life......all fictional...that's the scariest shit that can happen to anyone....if you wake up one day and find out half a chunk of your life is all made up....by yourself...

And his wife (played by Jennifer connelly)stood by him throughout his battle with schizophrenia........she was married to a man who was constantly fearful for their lives,paranoid,distant, unable to even be intimate with her (from this point alone you can tell the guys is nuts....refusing sex with Jennifer Connelly is about the craziest damn thing in the world)......in fact he can't even take care of their baby without unintentionally hurting their baby(e.g leaving their baby in the tub with water still running).......but she still still stood by him, even through his relapses for decades......because schizophrenia is a life-long mental illness that can rarely be cured ...

so decades past and John Nash went back to Princeton, he could'nt be a full-time teacher because of his illness...so they let him be a librarian of sorts....and Princeton uni was where he spend his life to this day......every day he sees the imaginary CIA agent, his best friend charles and his niece( his mind even created background characters and origins for his imaginary characters e.g Charles niece)talking to him,stalking him.....as he walks in the university.....Every day he sees the hallucinations and he tries to ignore them..........and in 1994, at age 66... he finally gets recognition for his theory on economics....and he received a Nobel Prize for his theory on Equilibrium in economics.........and yes he still sees the CIA agent,charles and his niece.......he knows he will continue to see them till the day he dies.....because schizophrenia is really long term( took him 25 years to come to terms that he was schizo in the first place)but he chooses to ignore this delusions and get on with life......

John Nash is 77 this year.......still alive,still based in Princeton University.....it's really amazing such things can happen in real life...but sometimes like they say....life is stranger then fiction....

Check out his biography:

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/nash.htm

Alright that'll be all for now.......my mum is hollering at me from the kitchen to wash all the dishes used for dinner and clear the huge stack of comics on my drawing table......so now I'm just gonna go to my room, try to convince myself that I'm schizo and that my mum is a figment of my imagination.......my dad's real though..unless he hides the remote control of the new plasma tv from me again...den he's gonna be imaginary too.....hahaha