讓子彈飛

Received a call from dad during my weekdays at hostel, recommending the recent blockbuster 讓子彈飛.

I had longed for the opportunity to sneak in theatre, yet the recent preparation for the OSLER exam by a professor-of-my-professors has almost driven me mad (as you may have noticed from the infrequent update of this blog, my apology), finally when a breath came - watching it (illegally) on the Internet at 1am, with a set of congee and fried noodles, umm lovely.

Everyone has been talking about all the hidden (not necessarily meant-to-be) messages within the funky lines by the three amazing Chinese actors, and having been prompted by multiple articles in the papers, indeed I found the film much enjoyable.

For sure as a student in science stream I am so much retarded and deficient in the knowledge of our current social development in our mother nation, and thus underinterpreting the ironic part of the story. But merely taking the film as a recreational consumption, it worths the ticket (my deep apology for the online-movieing). The twisty plot is seemingly-absurd, but this is the nonsense and craziness that catches me a whole lot.

If conversations in Social Network were well-written, then here in 讓子彈飛 it pushes even further. Almost every another lines come a quotable classic, coming from mouths of the oldschool actors 姜文,葛優,周潤發. And indeed, for those who by chance walked pass my room last night, you may hear my laughter when 黃四郎 said to his pathetic follower:

"如果你如果你活着，早晚都會死；如果你死了，你就永遠活着。”

Haha, I call this Pseudo-wisdom.

The Kubler Ross Model

Nothing is better than learning through real life experience.

Kaman and I had a nice Sunday lunch. As we sqeezed in the crowded lift as we got up the other floor for food, a young beauty slipped in last. I must say that, the lift was indeed as packed as canned sadin - we could hardly breathe - and yes, the door didn't close.

After few seconds, an ordinarily-impatient voice shouted from the inner cube: "Hey it's overweighted."

Then ten pairs of eyes (including us) looked at the just-entered slim girl - who was in a state of disbelief, with her eyes blinking, trying to squeeze in further.

Another second passed, door remained wide open. She then pointed to Kaman (who was also quite close to the door), stated, "Hey your bag is too close to the door, step back." As always an obedient student, my friend did so, still nothing happened.

Another impatient voice came, "Madam, the red OVERWEIGHT light is on!"

Everyone else looked at the light, and back to the beauty. She hesitated, but still bargaining for spaces, trying to make herself lighter by tip-toeing back and forth. And of course Newton's physics didn't fail for her, and the red light kept shining bright and hot. (And I am sure there are many other red lights shining on the heads behind me, too.)

Finally, she gave up. Stepped out the lift door, she looked back to all of us with her pair of crystal clear eyes - in it we saw a complex mixture of anger and depression.

As soon as the lift door closed - my friend and I grinned, as we have wittnessed the classical 5 stages of grief in the Kubler Ross Model, all within 30 seconds: Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - (and perhaps yet to the final stage: Acceptance).

We drawed a reasonable conclusion, perhaps for some ladies, overweight is equivalent to death. Haha.

Tron - dazzling aura

I had two breathless weeks after coming back to PWH medicine, suddenly things got so tight that hardly could I stop and write, even after the new year arrived.

Despite the packed schedule, I ain't going to miss the time for friends and leisure, especially when your good old friend was back. Joining the high-schoolmate reunion reminds me of a bitter fact - every one else has entered their working field, while the poor medical student is still fighting for his final (err...maybe not) year of study.

But on a second thought it wasn't that bad at all - $75 for a midnight seat for movie - allow you to point and laugh at your friends who paid a whole $100 for the same seat same film, isn't it cool? =]

In the scarcity of choices (watching too much bed and sex scenes as in Love and other drugs or Norwegian Woods may not be a good idea at the start of a year), the Disney classic Tron took it.

Well, yes as all the ads go, the visual graphic effects are perfect, the blue and golden light shoots all over the screen, which are stunningly cool. But I have a serious problem with that 3D-glasses - a bad eye pain and headache while putting on it. I should say - the current 3D technology is still in infantile stage, but each and every filmmaker just can't wait to incorporate it into their products (despite the minimal additional benefit, if not harm), just to expand their boxoffice.

For those who has experience with the 3D glasses, you should realise that they tend to lessen the brightness at a whole. And, that is the problem. Tron is filmed with a tone of dark background to enhance and emphysize the shooting digital lines; at some seconds, I almost lost the focus to the motion, and what remains were zigzag dazzling visual aura + serious global headache (luckily not unilateral) - secondary atypical migraine.

How I wish I could enjoy the newyear film, but sadly, my headache lasts till the end.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - 1

Wow wow wee waa.

Watching the yearly Potter series has become my routine. For the books, I finished them almost right after they were released, and that makes watching the film mainly for watching the film per se. Instead of the plot, I am in fact more interested to see the actors growing, pretty much like doing my Family Follow Up Project, haha.

Starting from The Order of Phoenix, Harry Potter was no longer a children novel, from bits of good wizards bad wizards it turned into darker theme, this generates at the same time an expanding tension. Ummm, the struggle and frustration in companionship is well built in book; however, even when the film is halved in two pieces (for boxoffice and money), 140min is just way too short for everything to bridge up, scenes are pretty disconnected, making it like flipping slides of snapshots - lacking continuity.

Opinions towards this final episode are diverse, at least, quite a number of my friends saying it is boring, dull, and climax-less blablabla, and most are referring to the mid-part - where Harry, Ron and Hermione are purposelessly wandering here and there in forrests, searching for the Horcruxes with no clues at hand. In fact, though slow the pace is, I personally quite like this layout.

For those who have read the book may agree with me, that in reality, as the characters grow older with their egos sharpened, JK Rowling did put much emphysis on setting the scene for the three young adults to interact, and spent more paragraphs in displaying their complex interactions in between. The fact that Ron left the team was actually portraited in an even more detailed way in chapters, and I would say, despite that the director deliberately stalls the plot, only barely could it make it closer to the gravity in book. But as always, trying is better than nothing, and to be fair, judging by that they need to shrink the whole hundreds pages down to two hours or so, it is not bad at all.

Anyway, as I have said, to me seeing the three young current-billionaires on screen already worths the ticket. Feels like Christmas is never coming if not hearing th deadly Avada Kedavra from the Dark Lord (who somehow has a flattened nose).

P.S. Too bad that we could see the Emma kissing scene only in next year!

Sharing

Skipped a renal bedside teaching in Nethersole Hospital today, just to go back my high school for a sharing session in the morning assembly. Yeh, the opportunistic cost is high (it might be the one and only one bedside teaching on the beloved kidneys in the year...), but there is no regret speaking for the school that have developed and moulded the present James Chow.

The assigned topic is Challenges faced by a university student. This is exactly the kind of topic that stuporizes me when I was young. Luckily it was run in a Q&A manner - a planned one - between my ex-teacher and me, at least not a boring one-man-talk.

Of course when the teacher invited me for the talk three months ago, with no hesitation I agreed. But only after a while, when preparing for the talk, I see a huge big problem - how on hell the life of a final year medical student be representative for university as a whole! Sharing with them my daily routine would for sure portrait a cant-be-more-skewed picture of university life, that's so wrong.

- The last time I went to CU campus was in August, when I only have a spare 1.5 hour between lectures to fixed my broken library card in lightning speed. The time before, was already my year 4 final MB.

- We don't have GPAs, just pass or fail in each and every subject. So fighting for marks are usually not an important issue.

- Yes, I enjoyed my hall life very much eating drinking and chitchating with my buddies, but I am sure our Mrs Ho Hostel is one of the most peaceful, silent (and perhaps in some sense - boring) student hall in Hong Kong. At 3am when students in the-closely-named Ms Ho Tung Hall in the opposite shore are screaming and running down streets for a late night meal, we on the other hand are either sleeping on bed, or sleeping in books.

Sharing on these parts of u-life are definitely deadends, so the teacher and I agreed to explore on another aspect, which my fellow schoolmates might be more interested in - the love story between the ex-president and ex-vice-president of Student Union - and the way they grow from high school to uni, and to now one of them starting to work.

(To be continued...)

The Cove - blood, dolphins and human

It took me quite some time managing to get a ticket for this documentary. I agree, films are put on screen largely based on economical concern - box office driven; but it doesn't make sense to me when this Winner of Oscar Documetary is only played in two and only two cinemas over the entire city - and sad enough - two shows per day in each.

Richard O'Barry was a previous worldclass dolphin trainer specialising in captivity, and probably you have seen him - if you are old enough - on the famous Flipper TV series, where he personally trained 5 dolphins to perform extraordinary actions and gestures, playing into drama. And since then, these intelligent creatures became popular and were loved world wide, dolphin-capturing also raised together as a goldmine industry. As anything that goes commercial, hidden cruelty is here and there. Now, Richard regrets, The Cove was then filmed to reveal to the world, the inhumane business undergoing in Japan, and vividly the way 23000 dolphins got killed in a year.



I try not to think about the political reason behind the documentary, merely listening to the sound of dolphins screaming, and seeing the bloody red cove water, how digusted could I be for the egocentric title Crown of creatures - we called ourselves.

It almost instantly reminded me of the horrible experience in Chimelong Wildlife Theme Park in our growing mothernation.

The so-called wildlife conservation park is no way close to conservation but nature destruction. All that I saw was monkeys being chained on legs, parrots' wings being fractured so that they can't fly (I am amazed by how parents reacted and said to their children: Hey son, see how obedient those parrots are! standing there and let us take photos...son this is how you should behave...), and turtles kept in turbid cloudy waters which I almost thought they were fishes.

Decorating with eduacation and nature protection, in actual fact everything is again the sweet sweet money.

When we call ourselves the human, please, be humane - to those primitive but not necessarily worthless creatures. As Richard says: when you feel it, you know souls are talking to each other.

Just the way you are

When Mr Obama kept talking about change.
I believe there is one thing that's everlasting.

Just The Way You Are - Bruno Mars

Oh, her eyes, her eyes, make the stars look like they're not shining
Her hair, her hair, falls perfectly without her trying
She's so beautiful, and I tell her every day

Yeah, I know, I know, when I compliment her she won't believe me
And it's so, it's so, sad to think that she don't see what I see
But every time she asks me do I look ok, I say

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Because girl you're amazing, just the way you are(yeah)

Her lips, her lips, I could kiss them all day if she let me
Her laugh, her laugh, she hates but I think it's so sexy
She's so beautiful, and I tell her every day

Oh, you know, you know, you know, I'd never ask you to change
If perfect's what you're searching for then just stay the same
So, don't even bother asking if you look ok
You know I'll say

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Because girl you're amazing, just the way you are
The way you are, the way you are
Girl you're amazing, just the way you are

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Cause girl you're amazing, just the way you are. Yeah

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P.S. Happy 4th anniversary!