개인의 취향 - personal taste

I just finished watching the most boring Korean series I've seen in a while. The only reason I bought this was because of Lee Min Ho, what else? Or more accurately, because I was so besotted by the character he played in 꽃보다 남자 - Boys Before Flowers (who can resist not liking Goo Joon Pyo???), I kind of expected to be charmed again in his latest series.

In Personal Taste, Lee is Jeon Jin Ho, a super good looking architect running his own firm who pretends to be gay in order to get close to this super unkempt and naive chick Park Gae In. He becomes her flat mate so he can infiltrate into her house which is supposedly the key to winning a key architectural project and is the only way he can save his failing business. And... you guessed it... he falls in love with the chick... and how the story develops from there is unsurprisingly predictable. And this Jeon Jin Ho character is just too uninterestingly perfect; it would have been better if the writer had introduced some quirky flaws into him.

Even with such yummylicious eye candy as Lee Min Ho in it, I had difficulty completing all the 16 episodes. It was with lots of head-nodding-dozing-offs and a sheer unwillingness to waste the money spent on buying the DVDs that I saw through the 4 discs.

you're beautiful

I am currently halfway through the 16-episode Korean series You're Beautiful - 미남이시네요. It's about this girl who steps in to pose as her twin brother to assume his role as a new member of the very popular idol group A.N.JELL when he had to leave the country for a while to correct a botched plastic surgery. Initially disliked by the group leader who's also the lead vocals and composer, she slowly falls in love with him, and subsequently got herself entangled in a love triangle between him and the guitarist. The drummer also harbors a one-sided love for her despite not knowing she's a girl.

I got really motivated to master the guitar and to resume my drum lessons while watching this series. Obviously my favourite characters are the guitarist and drummer. They are so damn cute! And yes they are all members of a band in real life - I love men who can play music. ;p I find the lead singer really ugly though - what's with the heavy eyeliner?!?! and cannot understand why he's supposedly the most popular among the three (in the story).

Below shows a scene in the series where they had their first performance. Tell me how can one not like the cute drummer with the cheeky lopsided grin and bunny teeth?



ps: Now I am inclined to take up Korean language class instead of Japanese as initially planned. :s

dvd addict

Everywhere I went in the last one week, I bought DVDs. It's become quite a routine for me to stock up on them each time I am back in SG. I am in need of some entertainment for after-work nights in Sydney.

BTW, there is a huge Korean drama sale at Poh Kim Video in Kallang Leisure Park. Each box set is priced in the range S$4.50 to S$9.50. Sunshine23 and I couldn't believe it and we bought heaps.

Here's a list of my acquisitions in the past week:

1. 我的野蛮王子 (Prince Hours) - Korean Drama DVD box set - $5.50
2. 黄真伊 (Hwang Jin-I) - Korean Drama DVD box set - $4.50
3. 魔女游戏 (Witch Yoo Hee) - Korean Drama DVD box set - $6.50
4. 我叫金三顺 (My Lovely Sam Soon) - Korean Drama DVD box set - $9.50
5. 太王四神记 (The Legend) - Korean Drama DVD box set - $19
6. 仁顺真美丽 (In-Soon is Pretty) - Korean Drama DVD box set - $44.90
7. 小娘惹 (The Little Nonya) - TCS Drama box set - $49.80
8. 爱上绝食女友 (I'm a Cyborg but that's OK) - Korean movie - $14.95
9. 死神的秘密 (Accuracy of Death) - Japanese movie - $20.60
10. 海角七号 (Cape No. 7) - Taiwanese movie - $21.70
11. 搭错车 (Papa, can you hear me sing?) - Classic 1983 HK movie - $6.50
12. 叶问 (Ip Man - read as eep.mun) - HK movie - $20.50
13. Jay Chou Dragon Rider Music Videos - $29.90
14. 12 莲花 (12 Lotus) - SG Royston Tan film - courtesy of Uncle
15. 秘密男女 (Secret Lovers) - Korean Drama box set - from Sunshine23
16. 食客 (Gourmet) - Korean Drama box set - from Sunshine23
17. 尚道上学去 (Sangdoo let's go to school) - Korean Drama box set - from Sunshine23

Finally, in addition to all the above, I got a year's worth of Bleach episodes from where I stopped watching when I last came back a year ago, courtesy of Mr P.

inspector Rex

I got to watch two episodes of Inspector Rex when I was randomly channel surfing last thursday night. It's a popular Austrian-made police drama series shot in German (with English subtitles here in OZ) about a German Shepherd police dog. According to Wikipedia, the first season was aired in 1994 and a 12th season is being planned, and I only ever heard of this tv series for the first time in my life now!

Strangely enough, a colleague who sits beside me at work watched the same series for the first time too on the same night and was equally impressed as I was by the super clever dog.

Showing at 8.30pm every thursday on the SBS channel, the action is currently in Rome in its 11th season. You really have got to watch it to see for yourself how cute and intelligent Rex is.

I think I will forego my late night shopping from now on to catch Rex in action.

Wes Carr's black and white

I missed the episode on the Final 5 of the Australian Idol because my new apartment doesn't have a TV yet. Apparently Wes (my favourite idol) gave one of his best performances ever. Check out his rendition of Michael Jackson's Black and White below. It's awesome! Wah I'm so in love with him (Wes, not Jacko). *Drools*



If you can't watch the embedded video above, you can go watch it here.

we from the monkey family make great drummers

This is my current favourite tv commercial. I so like his guai lan face.

the golden path

I just finished watching The Golden Path. WTF ending is this??? I cannot accept it. I have been staying up late practically every night and did nothing else the past 2 weeks everyday after work but eat and watch episode after episode of this Mediacorp blockbuster. Now I feel cheated. Bleah.

do u remember ' 紫罗刹 ' ?

I've subscribed to mobtv! The monthly subscription is not SGD6+ as what I heard from the Joanne Peh commercial. I paid SGD29.90/mth cos I needed international access from outside Singapore.

I just watched the 缘之绘 (Taste of Love) episode shown last friday cos I missed it. Have also just downloaded episode 1 of 黄金路 (The Golden Path) that had already ended on Channel 8. Apparently this 30-episode drama is Channel 8's 2007 year end blockbuster. To mark the 25th anniversary since the 1st broadcast of Singapore's local TV drama serials, this drama incorporates some of the best remembered scenes in past serials like 小飞鱼 (The Flying Fish), 三面夏娃 (Pretty Faces), 出人头地 (Finishing Lines) and more. It boasts of a sizzling cast of both veterans like 李南星, 陈丽萍 etc and upstarts like Joanne Peh and Felicia Chin etc. I wonder if it's as good as it claims to be. Shall find out in a while.

I am amazed that I can even watch those super old shows I watched as a child. Remember 最后一个大侠 (The Last Hero, that's where the 紫罗刹 came from in the blog title) and 五脚基 (Five Foot Way)? I can now re-watch them online! How cool is that? So many old shows I wanna watch again!

And I can also catch Singapore local news and current affairs programmes. Oh how can I forget Phua Chu Kang? I can watch Seasons 1 to 5 at my own leisure. All commercial free too.

I think the SGD29.90 is really quite wu hua (well spent; worth it).

turning into a couch potato

I've been watching a lot of Mediacorp programmes, anime, movies and DVDs in the last 2 weeks.

I try to catch as many episodes of Channel 8's 7pm and 9pm shows - '美丽的气味' is a brand new series that just started showing this week (I forgot the name of the previous show I caught a few episodes of) and '缘之绘'. Also the repeat series '有福' on weekends starring Christopher Lee. I even caught an episode of a super old series '卫斯里传奇' starring Li Nanxing, Zoe Tay and a HK actor Tao-something. These crappy Channel 8 serials, I'll definitely miss when I leave for Sydney this Sunday. I think they are very uniquely Singapore. I also saw this crappy TVC with Joanne Peh (have I mentioned before she used to be my junior in my sec sch symphonic band?) in it promoting MobTV at SGD6++ monthly. While switching channels, I also caught bits of Jacky Wu's '我猜' show on Channel U and Fear Factor on Channel 5. The best show I watched on these Mediacorp channels has to be the CNY countdown where a lot of the local celebrities gathered to perform the good old dong dong chiang songs. It takes being away from home for a long while to make me realise that I actually enjoy watching all these. Maybe I should subscribe to MobTV so I can watch them online.

I managed to disrupt tudi's jogging routine and invaded her place for a DVD night. Out of 3 options given: 2046, Chungking Express and Wilde, I picked Wilde because of 2 men - 1 smart and 1 simply droolicious. It's a 1997 movie about a 19th century Irish playwright, novelist and poet Oscar Wilde (played by Stephen Fry) whose life was ruined by his love for golden boy Bosie (played by Jude Law). My favourite quotes by Wilde in the show were 'I find that alcohol, when taken in sufficient amounts, brings out all the effects of drunkenness' and 'In this world, there are only two tragedies, one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it'. This movie is now in my list of favourites.

Also thanks to tudi who passed me a collection of Studio Ghibli short anime films, I've watched 4 out of the 14 films: Grave of Fireflies, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and The Cat Returns. Not sure I've got time to watch the rest too. They are really good. I especially like Spirited Away. Oh and Princess Mononoke was actually released by Miramax in 1999 and had Claire Danes and Billy Bob Thornton amongst many other Hollywood celebrities voicing for the characters. Talking about anime, I finally caught up on Bleach and Naruto. I find the fight between Naruto and Orochimaru too gross, especially the part when Orochimaru vomitted hundreds and thousands of snakes at Naruto. That made my hair stand. Orochimaru should just die cos he looks really disgusting. Tudi also gave me a link to watch a jap romantic comedy anime 'School Rumble' and I'm 2.5 episodes into it. Funny and worth continuing, except it takes a while to stream.

Other DVDs I've watched include Death Note 1 and 2. I heard part 3 will be showing soon and remarked to P that I did not get the chance to watch the first 2 episodes and he bought the DVDs for me. I just googled and found out that the third instalment, 'L, Change the World', about the last 23 days of L's life, will only be released on 21 Feb. I'll have to wait for the DVD and watch it alone in Sydney then. I'm also contemplating getting the manga. I remember flipping through volume 1 just before I got a job based in Sydney. That was when I was crazy over Bleach and thought shinigamis really cool. My favourite shinigami in the Death Note movies is Rem, the white gentle god of death who sacrificed himself to protect the girl his friend loved so as to keep his promise to his good friend. I don't mind having such a guardian angel also, lor.

On the big screen, I caught CJ7 with my bro and Sweeney Todd: the demon barber of fleet street with tudi. CJ7 was better than I'd expected (I went into the cinema not knowing what the whole show was about). It's hilarious with very touching parts that made me tear big time. I find it quite refreshing in that you don't see a lot of Stephen Chow and none of his act-stupid faces. I was blown away by the kid's acting and thought him really cute until I found out subsequently he's actually a she. O.O"

I loved Sweeney Todd too. I read up a bit on it (it's actually based on an old musical from the late 70's) before watching it and am very impressed by Tim Burton - I didn't expect him to do such a good job of it on the big screen. Johnny Depp looks yummier than ever. I just didn't like the bloody parts and had to shut my eyes many times.

Movies I'd like to watch before returning to Sydney are Kungfu Dunk (this is purely because of Jay Chou), Ah Long Pte Ltd (I support local productions! Even though the reviews on the show are really really bad. Btw, I caught 881 on the mini screen in SIA's inflight entertainment and loved it!) and Leap Years (another local production starring Wong Li-Lin, Nadya Hutagalung and Qi Yu Wu) but I doubt I have the time for all of them...

appetite. anime. movies. meteor garden.

[Originally posted on my old moblog site. Republishing here now.]

I haven't had much appetite since that viral infection a couple of weeks ago. Something strange happened to me after that. I... I... I... have been eating a lot of veges since... Notorious for snapping at people who try to educate me on the importance of consuming veges, I actually have cravings for salads these days. I also suddenly developed an immense liking for porridge. So much so that I cooked this vegetarian porridge concoction of carrots, tomatoes, sweet corn, red dates and the red chinese herb thingy called 'Gou Ji Zi'. My colleagues gave me that look of disbelief and disgust: "This combination seems weird and should taste weird too!". But I happened to like the taste so much I've cooked it again for dinner today and lunch tomorrow!

I'm now awaiting Naruto Shipuuden ep42 and Bleach ep155. Bleach is getting boring... I'm also 6 episodes into Beck and 2 episodes into Basilisk. I may continue with Beck but am not that keen on Basilisk cos it's too bloody. But according to my colleague's brother-in-law who is a super otaku, Basilisk is a super good anime not to be missed. Not my type though, too much gore.

Watched I Am Legend. Not at the cinema but on my laptop. I did not have much expectations of the show cos of the negative feedback from my friends who've watched it. And I was quite impressed afterwards. By Will Smith's acting and his body. Oh and I really liked Sam. Cried a bit when Sam died.

I also took advantage of the tuesday movie night here (when a movie ticket costs you AUD9 instead of the normal AUD15.50) and caught Enchanted. It's totally a girly show. Super super girly and kiddy-ish. Fortunately for me, I just had to focus on Patrick Dempsey (the Doctor from Grey's Anatomy).

Oh and Hugh Jackman looks so yummy in Scoop!

My Polish friend gave me a few Jap dramas to pass my lonely nights alone at home. I randomly picked one titled Hana Dori Dango to start with and it turned out to be the Japanese version of Meteor Garden (流星花园)! Story is quite close to the Taiwanese version but the actors suck big time in the Jap version. They are all small boys and girls trying very hard to be cool (except for Nanako - THE Nanako in GTO). Never mind. I shall still endeavour to finish the entire series.