Life According to Ping ...

February 26, 2004

zouk was damn boring..

February 18, 2004

This is yet my another precious
She loves foods that are delicious
But yet she can still be curvaceous
She’s pretty much vivacious
But she can be quite malicious
So please be cautious

She can be quite blur at times
Like stepping on a mine
And thinking it would be fine
Not that I don’t mind
Actually I was only trying to be kind
And hopefully she gets the sign

I wasn’t there when she was attacked by the hive
But I was there when we went to dive
Since then she’s become part of my life
Not that we are inseparable
But she is simply indispensable
That’s ‘cos she’s so lovable

Ping-a-ling
Says who she can’t sing
We use to sit by the window and sing with such feel-ing
After eating
We would be ‘relaxing’
Oh such a life is really a blessing


--
By Rose. (awwwww)

February 15, 2004

de mistake

Dear Prof,

This is with relations to the quiz yesterday. I made the unfortunate mistake of not changing my principal loan amount for the 2nd question and thus all my 6 answers out of 8 were made out of the loan amount being $600,000. I would like to enquire if the grading system is solely on the answer submit or is there someway I can rectify my error made as the quiz holds quite a high percentile of the overall grade.

Regards
Ping

de answer (not much of an answer anyways)

Hi Lee Ping,
The grade given is based on your answer. This is the standard procedure in any assessment.

Rgds,
Benedict Koh


On a different note, my yesterday was surprisingly fine. =)
thks pple for being so nice. esp ugly toe. lol

February 13, 2004

::cold mountain::
::mystic river::
::somethings gotta give::
::last samurai::
::big fish::
::love actually::


the shows i wanna catch.

its bright n sunny.

anyways, it seems strange that im overjoyed abt this phone im using now. nope there is no 65k colors or what so ever. its jus a plain not pretty orange phone. and im happy! i must have been deprive for too long. un-ping here.
another quiz to go tmr. yeah vdae.
whats the hype abt vdae. I cant imagine town on vdae. Couple cuddling flowers, bears & chocolates together.

I have for once decided to play pool on vdae. Afterall, its quite romantic too yah? i mean i rather cuddle the cue anytime man.
okaiis im dull. but i jus don't like roses. i mean i do not see the significance of receiving flowers on the day where every other girl would get them too.

February 07, 2004

Lost In Translation

BY ROGER EBERT
The Japanese phrase mono no aware, is a bittersweet reference to the transience of life. It came to mind as I was watching "Lost in Translation," which is sweet and sad at the same time it is sardonic and funny. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson play two lost souls rattling around a Tokyo hotel in the middle of the night, who fall into conversation about their marriages, their happiness and the meaning of it all.
These conversations can really only be held with strangers. We all need to talk about metaphysics, but those who know us well want details and specifics; strangers allow us to operate more vaguely on a cosmic scale. When the talk occurs between two people who could plausibly have sex together, it gathers a special charge: you can only say "I feel like I've known you for years" to someone you have not known for years. Funny, how your spouse doesn't understand the bittersweet transience of life as well as a stranger encountered in a hotel bar. Especially if drinking is involved.

Murray plays Bob Harris, an American movie star in Japan to make commercials for whiskey. "Do I need to worry about you, Bob?" his wife asks over the phone. "Only if you want to," he says. She sends him urgent faxes about fabric samples. Johansson plays Charlotte, whose husband John is a photographer on assignment in Tokyo. She visits a shrine and then calls a friend in America to say, "I didn't feel anything." Then she blurts out: "I don't know who I married."

She's in her early 20s, Bob's in his 50s. This is the classic set-up for a May-November romance, since in the mathematics of celebrity intergenerational dating you can take five years off the man's age for every million dollars of income. But "Lost in Translation" is too smart and thoughtful to be the kind of movie where they go to bed and we're supposed to accept that as the answer. Sofia Coppola, who wrote and directed, doesn't let them off the hook that easily. They share something as personal as their feelings rather than something as generic as their genitals.

These are two wonderful performances. Bill Murray has never been better. He doesn't play "Bill Murray" or any other conventional idea of a movie star, but invents Bob Harris from the inside out, as a man both happy and sad with his life -- stuck, but resigned to being stuck. Marriage is not easy for him, and his wife's voice over the phone is on autopilot. But he loves his children. They are miracles, he confesses to Charlotte. Not his children specifically, but -- children.

He is very tired, he is doing the commercials for money and hates himself for it, he has a sense of humor and can be funny, but it's a bother. She has been married only a couple of years, but it's clear that her husband thinks she's in the way. Filled with his own importance, flattered that a starlet knows his name, he leaves her behind in the hotel room because -- how does it go? -- he'll be working, and she won't have a good time if she comes along with him.

Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage" was about a couple who met years after their divorce and found themselves "in the middle of the night in a dark house somewhere in the world." That's how Bob and Charlotte seem to me. Most of the time nobody knows where they are, or cares, and their togetherness is all that keeps them both from being lost and alone. They go to karaoke bars and drug parties, pachinko parlors and, again and again, the hotel bar. They wander Tokyo, an alien metropolis to which they lack the key. They don't talk in the long literate sentences of the characters in "Before Sunrise," but in the weary understatements of those who don't have the answers.

Now from all I've said you wouldn't guess the movie is also a comedy, but it is. Basically it's a comedy of manners -- Japan's, and ours. Bob Harris goes everywhere surrounded by a cloud of white-gloved women who bow and thank him for -- allowing himself to be thanked, I guess. Then there's the director of the whiskey commercial, whose movements for some reason reminded me of Cab Calloway performing "Minnie the Moocher." And the hooker sent up to Bob's room, whose approach is melodramatic and archaic; she has obviously not studied the admirable Japanese achievements in porno. And the B-movie starlet (Anna Faris), intoxicated with her own wonderfulness.

In these scenes there are opportunities for Murray to turn up the heat under his comic persona. He doesn't. He always stays in character. He is always Bob Harris, who could be funny, who could be the life of the party, who could do impressions in the karaoke bar and play games with the director of the TV commercial, but doesn't -- because being funny is what he does for a living, and right now he is too tired and sad to do it for free. Except ... a little. That's where you see the fine-tuning of Murray's performance. In a subdued, fond way, he gives us wry faint comic gestures, as if to show what he could do, if he wanted to.

Well, I loved this movie. I loved the way Coppola and her actors negotiated the hazards of romance and comedy, taking what little they needed and depending for the rest on the truth of the characters. I loved the way Bob and Charlotte didn't solve their problems, but felt a little better anyway. I loved the moment near the end when Bob runs after Charlotte and says something in her ear, and we're not allowed to hear it.

We shouldn't be allowed to hear it. It's between them, and by this point in the movie, they've become real enough to deserve their privacy. Maybe he gave her his phone number. Or said he loved her. Or said she was a good person. Or thanked her. Or whispered, "Had we but world enough, and time..." and left her to look up the rest of it.




Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

February 05, 2004

im suppose to be mugging my case now. yet there is this thing within me thats bugging me. im utterly disgusted, ok, maybe the word disappointed in some people who can't manage their lives. just leave your life as the mess you like, don't screw up others also.

back to my extremely hectic lifestyle whine.
like what fui said, 2 finance tests on the same day, i have an additional essay due also, another case the following day, an interview next week, bits of work here and there. oh and tell me about the case that is due in 4 hours time.

So whats up this weekend people?

February 02, 2004

Hair Cut

The sensational 10 minutes, 10 bucks haircut.

I HATE IT

I admit. I was desperate. This is my long-awaited hair cut. Went around looking for a hairdresser with mr rusty today. Don't know where to go. Walked past the 10 bucks store.



sat down.

*snipsnip* *faints*

ping: Can I cut it a little shorter?
cutter: How short you want?
ping: *thinking thinking*
cutter: *taps feet* you want tie anot? if tie cannot cut already.
ping: but now I also can't tie. Oki cut.
cutter: HOW SHORT? one inch? two inch? three inch? kuai dian! (hurry up)
ping: *bites nail* one inch.

*snipsnip*


ping walks around. ping decides to cut it thinner and even shorter. ping went back to the 10 bucks store and *snipsnip*

oh and poor mr rusty's hair suffered the same fate too. =(

I view haircutting as an experience. Definitely this is an experience. *shivers* But I like to be sitted down nicely, hair dresser combing ya hair then asking you, so how would you like to style your hair? Discuss abit bit, make some small talk. Then snip snip.

Never in my life had a hairdresser made me KUAI DIAN at my decision! Gosh! 'cept the cutter la.