My stories!

Week 8 has been another boring week. I didn’t come to school on Friday so I missed storytelling and intro to film lessons. It’s all because of that stupid grape candy! I was feeling alright on Thursday morning but after eating that candy, my throat became dry and I felt slightly feverish. Well, that’s partially true. I don’t think it’s totally the grape candy’s fault because I did get wet in the rain on Thursday. Ok, I’m starting to contradict myself, I better move on.

I think the highlight of this week was life for rent conference even though it was highly boring in the beginning. The star of the show was the highly annoying lady named Bridget. I really couldn’t stand her and the irritating way she spoke. We were already behind time and she took so long to pronounce each word. It’s not as if she has some speech disorder, she was doing it on purpose. What actually made the 3hrs of boredom beneficial was the speech by two of the maids. One of the maids became so emotional that she started crying on stage. I felt it was kind of bad to ask some to come on stage in front of few hundreds of people and talk about how they were tortured. They would want to forget about it and we were reminding them. The conference made me think about a few things. It’s really sad when you think about those construction workers and maids. Their life is so depressing. They wake up in a stranger’s house every morning and they work all day long just for a few hundreds and most of them send that hard earned money to their family. All their dreams must have broken. I feel that everyone should have a right to dream and a right to go after their dream. Nowadays, only the rich get to fulfill their dreams. No one really thinks about these foreign labour workers and their dreams. Don’t you think the world would be a much better place if we all could just follow our dreams. If you don’t have a dream, you don’t have a purpose in life and that results in depression which is very common in Singapore. In Singapore, we are just taught to go with the flow. Do what everyone else is doing and forget your dreams. Then there are those cynical people who say that dreams do not come true. Dreams do come true if you believe in them. Those who give up halfway are the ones who say that dreams don’t come true. I wonder what dreams these foreigner workers have and if they will ever achieve them.

Its really painful to see them sleeping and eating under the void decks. I mean, there are humans too and sometimes we treat them like dirt. Contrary to the common belief that construction workers are weird, some are actually really nice. Many people say that the Indian construction workers like to stare. They are in a totally new country with a very different culture so its very natural for them to stare. So I don’t get why they are creating such a big deal. Of course there are those weird construction workers but we shouldn’t be stereotyping everyone. It’s like stereotyping that each and every Singaporean is “kiasu”. We have to understand that India and Singapore are very different countries.

Speaking about India has reminded of my all time favourite director Mani Ratnam and his new movie which is going to be released. I’m so excited! Sadly not much non-indians know about him or his movies. This man is a geniuous and his movies are awesome. Some ignorant idiots still think in Indians movie we run around trees. That is the most annoying comment. What century are you in when you make such a stupid comment. Indian movies are getting nominated to the Oscars are being screened in various film festivals around the world. People should get their facts straight before they make such stupid comments. Seriously don’t know where they get their lousy facts from. You might be probably thinking why I’m getting so worked up over a small matter but to me this is not a small matter. Making fun of another countries film industry is not funny to me at all and especially when the film industry produces excellent films. I have always been quiet when they make such rude remarks about the Indian film industry but I have had enough already. For long can you just sit and listen to insults on your own film industry. And what is the big deal about Indian movie having music and dancing? Music and dance has always been part of the Indian culture since life imitates art and vice versa. There is music in all for our festivals so it natural to have them in our movies as well. It’s not as if a song just comes out of nowhere, it comes in the correct situation. Music is an integral part of any film and it evokes the mood of the film. I have to admit that there are some crappy Indian films too but isn’t there crappy films in every industry.

Music in indian films are so good that they have stared using them in Hollywood films as well. I bet not many people know this because they still think we run around trees!! Arrgh! Anyway, movies like Spike Lee’s Inside man has a song from a Indian movie playing during the opening credits.
We should start to respect movies from all countries and not make fun of them. These people should get their facts right before they comment on such a wonderful industry. Which produces such classic movies. They don’t even know anything about India and its rich culture. People should not be so ignorant of the world around them. Singaporeans especially are the most ignorant people. Since from young we just rained to memorise our textbooks. We can even express our own thoughts. How sad is that?

I just realized that this is my eighth reflection! Oh my god! This is really freaky! Time is movie damn fast nowadays. This week’s assignment is really cool. We have to write a story based on a photo. I feel that I’m finally doing useful stuff. Stuff which really matters and makes u think unlike crappy algebra in secondary school which is of no use. I have found some great inspiring photos to work on now I have to choose one them to wrte a story. I better get started before I lose my inspiration. After reading my reflection, I hope that no one will give such rude comments about Indian film industry or at least not in front of me anymore!

Dear Reader,

This reflection you are about to read is extremely unpleasant. In this reflection, not only is there no happy ending, no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not many happy things happened this week.
Sounds familiar? Haha. This is how Lemony Snicket’s A series of unfortunate events begins and this is how my reflection for this week will be. Ok, I’m exaggerating! It’s not that bad! My reflection is going to be more boring than unpleasant. So if you are expecting something more interesting, I would suggest that you should go read some else’s refection first. Save mine for the last so that I can bore you to sleep.
Week 7. The week of the dreaded storytelling quiz. Haha. Ok I’m exaggerating again, it wasn’t that bad! It was pretty easy but being a paranoid person, I had to check my paper over and over again before I handed it in. I think I didn’t do very well for the last question. I knew that the character had some sort of disease, some sleeping disorder but I forgot the name so I just wrote about his age, eye and hair colour. The best part was that I spelled slips wrongly! Can u believe that! I spelt it as slipes! I just wasted one mark by spelling such a simple word wrongly.

Anyway, let me move on to other stuff because even I am getting bored with my own reflection. Today’s lecture was all about dialogue. We learnt how bad dialogue can affect a movie and how it affects the audience. This reminded me of a movie which I watched some time back in HBO. Its not a very new movie, I think its from the 80s. The movie was real bad. REAL BAD! I forgot the title of the movie but I know it’s about some extra marital affair. The protagonist’s wife will be having an affair with his best friend. The terrible thing about the movie was the dialogue. They were not bad or anything but it was too much! This movie can be shown during class to show how bad a film can get if there are too much of dialogue. I think the first thirty minutes of the movie will only show the protagonist and his wife having a conversation in a café. How boring is that! To make it even worse, they would be talking about something that happened in the past so we have no clue about what they are talking about. The movie just goes on and on. I felt so bored that I fell asleep.

We also watched a movie today. Sadly, it was a Singaporean film called autograph book. The movie was ok, an average film. Anyway, what can you except from a Singaporean film. Singaporean film makers just try too hard but they never really give good stuff. I think Singapore can never make it big in the arts industry because Singaporeans don’t really give much importance to the arts even though they claim they do.

Moving on, this week was really tiring. I went to vivo city to take some photos for my photography assignment. Vivo city is such a nice place because it feels like you are not in Singapore! It has a very island like feel to it. Singapore is an island too but you don’t get that relaxed, island atmosphere. I managed to take some pictures but
they are not that good because I was falling asleep while taking most of them. Another great thing about Vivo city is that it has Haagen Daaz and they have swings in the shop! So we can eat ice cream sitting on a comfy swing! How cool is that! I also went to candy empire! This place is so awesome that you can spend hours there just looking at all the goodies (this only applies to those with a sweet tooth). I bought something called caramel waffle and they were out of this world! They were so good! Most of the chocolates sold there were imported. My favourite is the honey milk chocolate. It is like a piece of heaven. You should go and try it!

This week’s assignment is really funny! We had to write a dialogue based on our own parents having a conversation and the scenario given makes it even more hilarious. My father doesn’t drink so I have to change the dialogue a bit. My parents would never read out the dialogue and let me record it so I have decided to use Wendy and Pradip to read out my dialogues. I feel the first dialogue I wrote is much better than the first one maybe because the second one is written for my parents. You tend to think twice before writing something especially for your parents. Here is the first dialogue which I wrote:

Wife: Why didn’t you tell me that you would be late? I wasted all my time, cooking for nothing!
Middle aged man: Now you know that I was out with my friends so why did you cook?
Wife: What? Do you even know what you are talking about! You don’t make sense! I don’t want to talk to you. You are drunk!
Middle aged man: I’m not drunk! You are the one who is drunk. Wasting your own time cooking for nobody.
Wife: Just leave me alone. I had enough of your nonsense!
Middle aged man: What? Can’t I have a life? I just went drinking with some of my buddies and you have to make a big fuss about nothing!
Wife: Nothing? You think this is nothing? All my time spent on cooking this seven course meal is for nothing. Can’t u even give me half the importance you give to your friends!
Middle aged man: What more can I give? I give you my salary each month without fail!
Wife: It’s not about the money!!!!
Middle aged man: Are you drunk?
Wife: I cant stand it any longer! I’m leaving!

I have done an average job with the dialogue but Wendy and Pradip have done a good job reading them out. Their voices make my dialogue more interesting. Ok, I better post my dialogues on my blog before I forget!

I don’t think I will ever be able to forget week 6’s story telling lesson. It was the most emotional lesson I ever had in my life. I think it’s good to have such emotional lessons once in a while. Like Dominic said, it’s like a therapy and it’s good for you. Once in a while, you should let out your emotions and think about the past. I felt this was one of the best storytelling lessons. Even though, we did not learn stuff like Greek tragedies and the sequence of stories, I feel that I learnt more through this lesson than any other lesson. Today’s lesson was a lesson about life. We should remember our past and think about people who were part of our life in the past but who are not with us anymore. Today’s lesson made me think about many things. A Lesson which makes you think even after you leave the class is the best sort of lesson.

We were broken into groups and I had Wendy, Yixuan and Dominic in my group. I offered to read Yixuan’s letter to the rest of the group. Her letter was very emotional and Yixuan started crying uncontrollably when I was reading out the letter. Her letter brought back memories of my uncle who is now dead. But my story is not very similar to hers because I was not very close to my uncle. He adored me a lot and always cared about me. What really hurts me is the fact that I never really cared about him like the way he cared about him. He was a very loud person mainly because he is deaf and he always used to shout whenever he asked me a question. I used to be very scared of him as a kid. I was very young and I didn’t know what disease he had. He went to Brazil and when he came back he had some sort of virus. He became slightly blind and deaf. His kidney and liver were affected and his health slowly deteriorated. I didn’t visit him regularly, the only time I saw him was during some family gathering which happened very rarely. His disease became more serious and he was admitted to a hospital. What hurts me even till today is the fact that I only went to visit him once in the hospital although I knew he was dying. Till now, I feel guilty about what I did.

I wanted to write the letter to my uncle instead but I was afraid I would become too emotional. I was also afraid that I wont know what to write in the letter to him. I actually felt like crying when I was reading Yixuan’s letter. Firstly, it reminded me of my uncle, especially the part when she wrote about the part when she went to visit him in the hospital. Secondly, the atmosphere in class was just so sad. I could her Sonia crying from the opposite table and Yixuan was crying just beside me. What an emotional day it was! But I felt this was one of the best lessons I had throughout my school life because we got to express our emotions and feelings which we would never let out on a normal day. I always had a impression that Sonia is a very cheerful girl with no worries. Someone who leads a problem free life because she is always so cheerful and bubbly. She looks like someone who will always look on the bright side of life, I never thought that there must have been a incident which has affected her so badly. I have not read her letter yet but I know that it’s not a very happy one.

Mr. Ryan read out his story which was emotional too. Whenever I see a teacher I don’t really think about their life or what they do outside of school. Sometimes, we students, don’t even think that teachers have a life outside of school. We think that school is their life, that’s what I used to think. Mr. Ryan always came across to me as a person that who leads a very happy life. He’s always so cheerful and happy. I would have never thought that he would have such a tragic past. His letter was very moving and emotional. His letter also reminded me of my literature book, “King of the Castle”. Mr. Ryan said that his father used to give him alot of gifts to compensate for the love he failed to give. This is exactly what Edmund’s father would do in the book. He would give his son expensive gifts because he didn’t know how to show his love to him in other ways. Edmund ends up being cold and evil. He even kills a boy of his age at the end. Luckily, Mr.Ryan has not turned out that way! Or has he? Hahaha just kidding!

After today, I realized something very important. I realised that I should be grateful for what I have. Suddenly, I feel ashamed of my constant complains and nags about how bad and lousy my life is. To be honest, I have nothing much to complain about. I can never imagine going through what some of my classmates have through. Atiqah had written a letter to her ex-boyfriend who died of leukemia. If I was in her case, I don’t think I would have been able to get over it. I see my classmates in a different light after today. Some of them have gone through a lot in life and they have been so strong to move on.

Another thing I learnt today is that you should never judge someone. This had nothing to do with our lesson but I just realized it on my way back home. Whenever we judge someone, we should stop and think about their life. For example, Sonia, I would have never thought that she would have so much of pain in her life. We don’t know what the other person is going through in their life so we have no right to judge someone. Today’s lesson made me think and realize many things about life.

After the emotional letter sharing session, we had our lecture. The lecture was interesting because Mr. Ryan asked a very interesting and philosophical question which again made me think about my life. “Are memories true?” I don’t think most memories are true. Although there are bitter memories, wherever we hear the word “memories” we think of sweet memories, pleasant things which will bring tears to our eyes. Since we have this perception that memories are supposed to be pleasant, we see the incidents which happened through a rose tinted glass. Some how, even the negative incidents will have some positive memories to it. When mr. Ryan asked this question. I started wondering about my memories and if they were true. Come to think of it, I think most of them are not. As time moves on, we mature and maybe things which may have been bitter in the past don’t seem that bad when we grow older. When the memory sits in our mind for some time, we tend to forget some details or we could be unintentionally filtering out the negative stuff because of our perception that memories are supposed to be sweet.

This discussion reminded me of the movie, “Big Fish” by Tim Burton. One of my all time favourite movies. This movie is about a character who exaggerates every single detail in his life. He is not liar, he was just trying to make life seem more interesting. He would tell his exaggerated adventures to his son. I feel that is what we do with memories, we tend to exaggerate the good ones and forget about some of the bad ones.

I think my reflection so far has been very emotional and philosophical so let me move on with the normal stuff like school work and so on. This week has been really stressful! I don’t even want to think about the deadlines and the tests which are very near by. The highlight of this week has to be my studio production workshop because I did something very stupid. I had to do the vision mixer. Being a slow learner, it was very hard for me to understand everything about the vision mixer in a few minutes. I tried my best to understand when Wendy was explaining it to me but I just couldn’t get it inside my head. I ended up screwing up the whole programme. It was really embarrassing. I think my reflection has become too long, I better stop here because I can go on and on about how embarrassed I was during studio pro! Haha

Week 5 has been really stressful for me! My problem started with the photography assignment which was a disaster. I went to botanic gardens, orchard road and cityhalll and took many great photos, spending a lot of time thinking about which exposure mode to set and all. It was raining heavily on Saturday afternoon so I had to wait in botanic gardens for an hour. Finally after taking all my photos, I realized that everything was in auto focus!! I was dead! I really felt like crying when I realized that. It had to be in manual and not in auto focus. I felt so stupid and angry with myself that I had done such a silly mistake. I had just wasted my whole Saturday! To make it worst, I spent my whole Sunday worrying about Saturday. I wasted my Sunday by complaining to my sisters about how I had wasted my Saturday. It wasn’t a really great weekend for me. I took all the photos on Wednesday after school. That was another tiring day!

Story telling lesson was fun this week because we had the chance to watch a short French film and one scene from the movie Taxi driver. I liked the French film, “Brats” a lot. I feel the director had done a great job. The way he portrayed the main character. (I forgot the girl’s name) was terrific. The way he introduced her was very nice. The scene which shows her riding the bike with her flowing skirt was very graceful. The movie ends with a powerful dialogue which makes us wonder about the characters of the movie. One of the character says that he has now bitter memories of that girl. Mr. Ryan was then discussing with the class why the character had said that. It would have been understandable if he had said that he feels guilty when he sees her but he said he had bitter memories when he sees her. I think he feels that way because he gets reminded of all his mean pranks when he sees her. As humans, we always tend to blame other people even when its our fault. Only very few people, accept the fact that it is their fault. Maybe, he’s trying to forget all the mean things he has done to her so when he sees her, he gets reminded of them. This guilt becomes bitterness. Even I tend to do this sometimes. When you feel bad about something and you want to deny the fact that it is fault, you tend to blame it on the other person who is also involved. So, whenever you see that person, you will have a bitter feeling because you feel guilty. The ending of the movie was also touching. The main character was always shown as a girl who leads a peaceful and happy life who likes to ride her bicycle. At the end, they show her in a very sad way. She is not riding her bike anymore and she just walks straight without any expression on her face. I felt the ending left an impact. As audience of the film, we are able to feel for her.

We also saw a scene from Taxi driver which I didn’t enjoy very much. I don’t like films of that sort, those depressing and gloomy movies. I know that as a film student, I should watch all types of film and learn from them but I just don’t like them. The scene which shows him cleaning the blood from the backseat was just so gross! I felt the movie was dull but maybe it will become more interesting as it progresses.

We actually started the lesson by writing a short story with the people who we watched for our people watching assignment. I found it hard to come up with an interesting story which will suit the characters. I hated one character and really like another character. I wanted to come up with the story where both otf them will be sisters but Mr. Ryan said that the story has to be about how they meet. We were given a lot of time to work on our stories but I still couldn’t come up with something impressive. Here is my story:

Bobby and her mother are waiting in the crowded train, hoping to get a seat. Her mother begins to shiver due to the radio waves transmitted by the hand phones which the people were using near her. Bobby tells the other passengers on the train to switch off their hand phones since it was affecting her sick mother. Just when everything was fine, Hui Ling comes along. She sits just in front of Bobby and her mother and starts to curse and yell into her hand phone, at the same she curls her eye lashes with a eye lash curler. Bobby politely goes to her and asks her to switch off her hand phone. Much to Bobby’s chagrin, Hui Ling completely ignores her continues to yell into her hand phone.

Hui Ling is not even bothered by the fact that the radio waves were bothering the old and weak lady. After a while, she switches off her hand phone but she still refuses to give them a seat. She begins to apply lipstick and eyeliner just in front of them. Bobby, being a polite and well-mannered person doesn’t want to pick a fight and continues to stand with her sickly mother. Hui Ling looks at Bobby disgustingly and mutters something in Cantonese under her breath. Bobby’ patience was being tested. She goes forward and slaps Hui Ling.

I really like the ending of my story! Imagine how it will be if that really happens. I think i will be laughing non stop! That weird eye lash curling lady deserves it if she gets a slap because she should learn a lesson about manners. We listened to a few stories after that. Yixuan’s story was about a RI student and a student from a normal . I totally agree that RI students are proud! Sometimes they annoy you to the extent that you want to slap them. Once I went to the Swiss festival in the Swiss embassy for a prize giving ceremony for a writing competition. Even though we were representing our school, we were told not to wear our school uniform. But our proud RI boys wore their uniform with their blazers. They stood together as a group and did not mingle with the rest of us. As usual, they were the ones who won most of the awards. Some of them look at you with disgust, maybe they feel they are better than the rest. I don’t know what is wrong with some of them.

The assignment for the week is to write a letter to someone who you have not talked for a very long time but you shared a good relationship with in the past. When I first saw the assignment title, “Letters to the past” I thought we had to write a letter to someone who lived in the past. Maybe some historic figure like Elvis or someone. It would have been more fun if the assignment was like that. Anyway, I have finally decided to write a letter to my close friend in secondary school whom I have lost touch with. She has also become a different person now. I better get started on my assignment now!