Serendipity

Bleeding Love

I'm in love with this song by Leona Lewis! Lyrics are pretty intense though:

"But I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open ..."

I had never heard of Leona Lewis prior to this. A quick googley revealed that she's the winner of X- Factor, a British talent search programme, ala American Idol. Her mentor was.. ta-daa... Simon Cowell!

Not bad for a 22- year old with powerful vocals. She has since performed with Celine Dion and Take That. And her good looks can't do much harm either, having recently modelled for Harper's Bazaar.

I just hope she continues singing like that... i don't care if she continues making songs like Bleeding Love, so long as she stays sober.

Happy New Year!

The year passed by rather quickly for me... too quickly actually. On the upside, surprisingly, it's been filled with pretty good memories. My only grouse is that I didn't get to go on holiday and I hardly went home last year.

I finally got my digital camera, a gift to myself! So you can expect loads more pictures coming along. It's really quite fun, snapping up beauty. The pic above was captured in a Siamese Temple in PJ. My friend good naturedly brought me there, in the heat. But it was well worth it as the architecture there really reminded me of the temples in Thailand. 

Well, cheers to 2008. Hopefully everyone has gotten off to a good start. I read someone high-up there didn't :) ciao.

ps: am currently trying to link the pic above to my flickr account, but to no avail. Do check it out all the same!

Grateful

I often go about my day complaining about how things don't work out the way I want them to.

Instead I believe I have a lot to be thankful for.

I'm thankful for friends whom i can hang out with.

A roof over my head. A nice one too, that is.

Food that's so easily available where i live.

Parents whom i can call anytime of the day (and apparently, it's vice versa, haha)

C, who listens to my endless stories and complains, and still loves having me as company.

My job, which allows me to have indulgences i never thought i would.

Music, which never fails to brighten my day or get me into a better mood.

Movies, which are a never-ending source of inspriration and entertainment for me.

Books, which have always provided me a sense of imagination.

Blackle

A friend of mine alerted me of blackle, an energy-saving search engine by google. Unlike most conventional pages, blackle's screen is black. While i'm a wee bit skeptical on how much energy it may save, i do think it reminds us on the little things that we can do to save our environment on a daily basis.

quote

"Once you accept that you're not cool, life gets much simpler after that."

happy

Decided i may have sounded like an angry child in my last post. After all, summer's supposed to be a reflection of all things sweet, flowery and of warmth.

I spent a summer in Leeds. And a spring preceeding it. It was a combination of factors- maybe the weather, the sights, the people, the freedom.  It was good. Surreal. And the barbeques at the backyard. Frisbee throwing in Hyde Park. Strawberries with cream. Strolls. Tiny flowers blooming overnight. The hunks. Oh yeah...

... and then some

and while we're on the topic of summer, i've always always found it a tad too pretentious whenever i see a sign that screams SUMMER in Malaysia.

I mean, it's darn hot every day of the 365 days in the year. And what's with bikinis dressing the windows of shops? Fine, i'm a sour grape. But what about flip flops? well what about it? i wear it every day of the year in KL and i've got a beach in Kuantan where I can sunbathe in (well, "I" as in "I" metaphorically) every single month with exception of perhaps the monsoon season.

There. I said it. It's pretentious.

Oh and while i'm in a ranting mood. I hate the song (and the video) "Umbrella". It's so cheap.  hehe

Summer movies

Summer films have been coming out as the weeks roll by, my favourite being Harry Potter V. The rest have, at best, not been breathtaking.

I am looking forward to a film on Gandhi. I've read a couple of reviews on it. The film promises to be a balanced portrayal of the man who strove for India's independance.

Instead of portraying him as a political saint, as in the film "Gandhi" some 25 yrs back or so, we are given a glimps of the man who was also a father. A man who managed to save a nation but not his eldest son, Harilal, who died a drunkard, four months after his father's assasination.

I doubt it'll be shown on our shores. Judging by how Oscar winning the "Queen" was not either. Perhaps both regarded as not commercially successful films in Malaysia. We'll see.

Time

It never fails to irk me when someone i trust or think i like, reacts rudely to me. My initial reaction to this sudden rudeness is, did i provoke such a reaction. Sometimes we are all caught in a situation where we are fired at, and the next person whom we talk to, gets the aftermath of it. But this really is no justification to being rude to anyone.

I could easily make a big fuss and be the drama queen that i sometimes can be when someone is rude to me. But as usual, i will let it slide this time. Perhaps this is the problem with me, "I'll let it slide" everytime. But just 'cos i let it slide doesn't mean i'm a push-over. Trouble is, how do i get that message across?

I read somewhere (and have begun to see the wisdom in this) that timing is everything in life. A time to speak, a time to be silent, a time to fight, a time to let things slide.  If only i could master the art of timing. In the mean time, i guess i'll just have continue stumbling through life as i've done the past 20 over years. But, yes, this timing thing really is something i must look into. More importantly, saying the right thing at the right time.

What's showing?

i was just telling a friend that i love America's Next Top Model. I love the beautiful people and the jet-setting glamarous lifestyle that's so surreal. It's a good watch, though i haven't had much tv for the past few months. Oh, and the bitching and crying. Hmm real life should have more drama like that.

I was reading about Angelina Jolie (i dont know why but she sure fascinates me) and her charity work in newsweek about a week back. She's also starring in an upcoming film on Daniel Pearl, the slain journalist who was on duty in Iraq (was it Iraq? it should be cos that's where all the kidnapping and live-slaying happens). Jolie will take on the role of Marianne Pearl... should be a good watch. Strong women. Fiery personalities. What could be a better combo?

I'm so looking forward to Transformers and Harry Potter. I vaguely remember running to the tv set when i was a kid at 5.30 sharp daily to watch my cartoons on tv3. Smurfs, He-Man, She-Ra, Ewoks, My Little Pony, Transformers (though robots ain't really my thing)... oh man... those were the days. Then it was Rugrats and Daria.

Rugrats attracted me because those crawly kids weren't kids... they were full grown adults trapped in kids. In an innocent way of course. They just used their imagination to basically conquer the world, right in their very own backyard. And their dog was always the knight in shining armour... sigh... aren't all dogs?

Daria on the other hand, had her monotonous ways. She spoke in monotone. She thought... definitely not in monotone. She was probably the plainest looking cartoon character ever drawn (in contrast to her hip sister), but what she lacked in terms of looks, she more than made up for in her thoughts. She was sensitive and kind, though she tried so hard to be cynical on the face of it. In this cynical world of ours, we need more Darias, don't you think so?