zeekie: take two.

I've started watching Liao Zhai (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio) on tudou.com. Why? Because I saw bits of an episode while having dinner and the male lead was like zomg cute.

Why yes, I can be that shallow.

On the bright side, I am (re)learning a fair bit of Mandarin. Now I just need to find a society that speaks Ancient Scholar Mandarin.

Edited to add: Oh, my god. I'M TURNING INTO MY MOTHER. I just watched the most crap-tastic movie because it stars the same guy from the Liao Zhai story. When I start buying DVDs because of the guy the transformation will be complete.

Picked up Milan Kundera's "Immortality" from the Seng Kang library, and this was in the blurb:

"This is one of those unclassifiable masterpieces that appear every twenty years or so."

It's the "every twenty years or so" part that completely trips me up. Where did this statistic come from? Is it an average? Is it not? Is there some clandestine publishers' agreement to put out an unclassifiable masterpiece every twenty years?

Questions, questions, questions...

Outline for script: check.

40 short films downloaded for eventual website: check.

Part I of getting my visa in order: check.

New bermudas: check.

Waaay too much shopping: check, check, check, check, check.

Now waiting to hear from NYU about who my mentees for the fall are, and working on a sooper sekret project.

If all goes according to plan, I should be back in New York by August 4th, NY time.

There I am, reading Scott Westerfeld's excellent sci-fi book "Extras", when:

Udzir nodded, smiling. "You are very good students, I see. Let me reward your cleverness: We will soon land on an island the Rusties called Singapore."

I believe this is the fifth modern sci-fi book I've read that name-checks Singapore as some mysterious alien homeland. Viva Singapura!

I'm not working at SPH for the summer, and I can't return to the U.S. until first week of August due to a visa snafu, so I'm effectively stranded in Singapore / Anywhere But U.S. for the next two months.

I can foresee myself going stir-crazy, so I've decided my plans for the summer will be:

1) To finish the story I'm working on.

2) To finish a script so I won't have to stress about it in the fall semester.

3) To build a website. I have specific ideas about pages, content, etc; I need to figure out how to actually build it.

4) Compile a database of names for use when I start working at SPH.


I don't think that's too much / little, but I guess we'll see.

Seriously. Why are these shows on Arts Central instead of Ch. 5:

Before Sunset tonight; Battlestar: Galactica on Tuesdays.

I went to see Prince Caspian today. I don't think it's a particularly memorable film (certainly not on the order of LotR), but I wasn't bored or annoyed, so that's a vast improvement over the first installment. Perhaps I wasn't either because Peter doesn't get as much screen-time this go-around; the character still annoys the hell out of me.

In any case, even if the movie had sucked, what happened after would have made it worth the price of admission. Once the credits started rolling, some guy got in front of the screen and started shouting over the end-credits orchestra. I thought at first that he was asking people to stay for a secret scene or something, but nope. Guess what he was doing.

Yep. Proselytizing.

Which, you know, way to go, I guess, and I suppose he must have thought he would have a sympathetic audience, it being C.S. Lewis and all that, but - New York. I'm just saying. Miiiight have picked a better state.