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!