ok i finally bought a flat! amos and i have been searching for about 2-3 months, looking at tons of flats every weekend and we found it! we lost a really good house at the beginning of our search. we were unsure and scared. so when we saw this house, we were like yay, it's what we want! and we bought it...

it's a little pricey, hdb flats are transacting at crazy prices these days plus minimum $30k cov. madness. the flat fulfilled our main criteria - which was less than 4 minutes walk to mrt - our new house is 2 minutes away if you walk fasterly, or 3 minutes if you stroll...

another big plus was that it is fully renovated! the seller is an italian and a chef, so the kitchen is damn nice with fancy italian oven, dish dryer (yeah, i was like got such thing???) etc. toilets are standard. the master bedroom has a nice huge wardrobe. i also like what they did with the storeroom. they tore down the original one and built a store room in one of the common rooms.

anyway, we love it! and i can't wait to hunt for furniture and decorate the place. want to host mahjong and texas hold 'em sessions. host wine and cheese parties, lotr marathons etc. haha. fun fun fun. yeah and adopt a new cat!

while browsing some forums on stomp, i came across a stomper who quoted a post from my blog! meh. that was kind of freaky and flattering at the same time. anyway, movie updates:

when harry met sally (8/10) - the original rom com lives up to its reputation. i still can't believe it took me so long to watch this movie. meg is really wonderful in this one and you can see why she's the best at rom coms. billy crystal is also great in this one and the last speech on new year's eve was just so sweet. everyone can probably identify with this show... friends falling in love... a must-watch!

be kind, rewind (8/10) - slightly draggy. but real fun and insightful on the movie industry. people ask me why i think piracy is okay. watch this movie and you'll know why. i'm all for intellectual property but when content and distribution is controlled by a small group of people, it really sucks. small, indie, different films don't get made. nobody distributes their movies. all you get in cinemas are shit ass hollywood cookie cutters. that is why i support piracy, and in return, we buy or import the dvd. sometimes we even donate money through paypal, directly to the moviemakers. people who simply dismiss "piracy" and quote that awful quote that it's stealing, should think twice before they say anything. there is a reason why there's piracy. if the distributors and moviemakers refuse to rethink their methods and want to continue to control the industry, then i say, screw them, let's support the small guys.

the devil's backbone (7.5/10) - a guillermo del toro film that some people say is better than pan's labyrinth. it's about the same. devil's backbone is basically a ghost story done in a more classy manner. there's of course murder, spooks and revenge. what del toro does differently from other spooky film makers is to set his movies amongst a larger social context. the story follows a group of boys at an orphanage who are haunted by a ghost. amidst the scares, there are constant references to war, poverty, death, hunger, money, political and social change etc. that is the differentiating element of del toro's movies. more than a fantasy outlet, it's a source of social realism and commentary. (still prefer the orphanage though... produced by del toro)

flightplan (7/10) - a film with a twist, only it's not so twisty. there are films with good twists and there are films with not so good kinda predictable twists. this film belongs in the latter category. jodie foster is still great to watch. although she seems to keep playing these stressed out mother/hero roles. she's awesome! i loved her in panic room as well. anyway, flightplan is watchable enough. some parts are rather draggy and the story could be a little more twisty (the good type).

sicko (9/10) - wow! one of michael moore's finest. almost as good as bowling for columbine. at some parts, i even thought it surpassed columbine. classic michael moore moments include bringing a group of americans who are suffering from post 9/11 illnesses to guantanamo bay for medical treatment. haha. that was fucking hilarious. anyway, great insight to the american healthcare system. a must-watch!!

just to share about my experiences with the american healthcare system. when i was an exchange student in seattle in 2002, for the 4 months that i was there, i had to buy medical insurance which cost me about S$600. that's fucking expensive! (in singapore, i would chalk up only about $120 worth of medical bills a year!) i developed a really bad cough when i was there due to the cold weather. when i first visited the university healthcare centre, i didn't even get to see a doctor. i only saw a nurse. a freaking nurse. she told me, to get cough medicine from the pharmacy. what the fuck! in singapore, i would be sent back with cough syrup and antibiotics. i coughed nonstop (cause i freaking needed antibiotics!!!) for the next week. i visited the centre again and this time i DEMANDED antibiotics. they took a damn long time to diagnose the problem. at this point, after 3 weeks of coughing i was already wheezing and going into coughing fits. so i finally got my medicine and got well. it sucks. it really sucks.

a knight's tale (6/10) - amos wanted to watch this in tribute to heath. i warned him! i said, it's not brilliant ya know. one of those cheesy b-movies. anyway, watching a knight's tale was fun. it's a silly rom com with guys on horses. i did like paul bettany a lot. that stint with chaucer was silly. anyway, not a must-watch unless you're a heath fan.

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answered, "Sure."

The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his notebook and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the Internet where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 150 -page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1586 sheep."

"That is correct; take one of the sheep." said the shepherd.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car.

Then the shepherd says: " If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"

"OK, why not." answered the young man.

"Clearly, you are a consultant." Said the shepherd.

"That"s correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answers the shepherd. "You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don"t know crap about my business.

Now give me back my dog."

"Really, the spirit world is like pedophilia or necrophilia. I have no experience with it so I am completely unable to take it seriously. It will always seem like a joke.

There are no ghosts.

But if there are, my dad should damn well tell me himself."

- The Lady, Chuck Palahniuk

There’s a reason that education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions.

Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant.

Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.

They’ve got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

They don’t want that, you know what they want?

They want obedient workers, obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now they’re coming for your social security money.

They want your fucking retirement money; they want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you in the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to believe, what to think and what to buy.

The table is tilted folks, the game is rigged.

Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people, white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about…give a fuck about you! They don’t care about you at all, at all, at all.

And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.

That’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans are and will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth, it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

i was at mph funan when i saw joseph prince's destined to reign book. and on the shelf right beneath it was machiavelli's the prince. the irony of it.

i love george carlin. it doesn't matter that he's dead cause we'll all remember him as the greatest. he was truly the best, the funniest, the most insightful. tribute vids on larry king:

pt. 1


pt. 2

i feel utterly depressed by religion. i came across a blog written by a buddhist on how buddhism has been systematically repressed by christianity for centuries. i initially felt that this buddhist was not practicing buddhism in the way it should be - with mindfulness, awareness, loving-kindness. but after reading through many of its entries, i began to feel equally repressed.

as i am an atheist, i belong to a smaller minority than buddhists. the sheer power and wealth that christian churches in singapore now possess is really quite scary. from building mega malls to buying land just makes me shudder. many christians have questioned this too because of the passage where jesus reprimands those that hawk their goods and turn his temple into a marketplace. i think (if they haven't already) that eventually they will make investments in crucial industries such as the media, security, technology, research and science (templeton foundation is one example in the us), and control our lives. will they control our politics as well? ban abortion, stem cell research, teaching of evolution in schools.

if i, who have not faith, no religion and no god feels repressed. what about the buddhists, muslims and hindus. i of course detest all religions. one day, the buddhists or the muslims or the hindus are going to be very very angry and it will be very very ugly. religion is something that is beyond rational. and already, there are many voices and pockets of people who are very pissed with christians in singapore especially those that attend the mega million-dollar churches like city harvest church, fcbc, new creation and lighthouse evangelical. be very very scared. there is no stopping a crazed religious person.