Jurong Bird Park

Spent the day as a tourist today and went to Jurong Bird Park. See I got this Saturday off and some vouchers from the NDP preview that I attended. One of the vouchers was 50% off to Jurong Bird Park. Since it's quite near to where I am living and it's expiring at the end of this month, I decided to use it. Oh yeah, can I just say that this day has been quite liberating. Last night I was able to sleep without setting the alarm clock. It was really really nice to be able to sleep for as long as I want. Felt really lazy to get out of bed that in the end I finally mustered myself to get up at 10:30 am :P Since I had decided to go there alone, I was just taking my own sweet time of leaving my room, having breakfast, and making my way there. I love freedom!!!

Speaking of Jurong Bird Park, this is only my 2nd time there. I've been to several other Singapore tourist attractions for quite a few times however somehow it took me a long time to go to Jurong Bird Park. The first time was last year, in August as well, when my dear friend, Dewi, was in town. That was like after 8 years of me living in Singapore. Today I realized that there were some parts that we didn't go in last time. I was surprised that there are parts of the park that I don't know about :P It happened to be sunny today in Singapore so it's hot. I'm not liking the heat much but I know I complain as well when it rains all day and it gets cold and there's no sun. I know I am difficult.

Alrighty, if you want to see birds pictures, you can see them here. I love the colours of the birds. Nobody else can do colours as amazing as God. Anyway, these fews are not in the flickr set. Look at this penguin. I watched Happy Feet so when I saw this penguin standing like this looking at an empty wall, I couldn't help feeling if it's drugged :(



:) eKa @ 10:39:00 PM • 0 comments

Vorrei Essere La Persona Che Dice Addio

Ciao peeps. The title of the post is my best attempt to say, "I want to be the person who says goodbye" in Italian. I don't know if it's grammartically right though. Haven't been blogging for a long time. There are reasons for it. I was just really occupied. So what has been happening, let me do this in points. It's been awhile since we do things in points.

1. Last week was tough. Linguistically tough. In more ways than one. On one thing, I failed. I don't like failure but I just couldn't make things work. To my defence, maybe it cannot be done *sigh* On other thing, I think I will pass. I don't think I did to the best of my potential but somehow I just lost the drive. Maybe I studied too much and got so tired about it all. Anyway some things are beyond my power. Still waiting for the results. So that pretty much what occupied the whole of my last week.

2. Went to watch G.I. Joe yesterday. Well I actually found it pretty entertaining for the first half. I thought it was really cool and the guys were great :P However, I kinda lost my attention towards the climax of the movie. The ending was kinda a let down. It's kinda like they quickly wrapped things up since they were running out of time and perhaps money since they blew up so many things that the ending didn't feel as glorious as the build up to it. Maybe like Harry Potter movies, they are banking on sequels, but I feel it's quite unfair. People expect to see a good ending and yet when things are ended quickly without much fanfare, it's really such a disappointment.

3. A news to share. Schmap chose a picture from my Italy trip for their guides. What is Schmap? Well, from wikipedia: Schmap is the publisher of free digital travel guides for destinations throughout Europe and the USA, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. So they shortlisted 3 of my pictures of Rome, Florence, and Venice. So far I got news that one of the picture will be featured in the Rome guide. So if you ever gonna travel to Rome and need direction and stuff, you can download Schmap digital guide into your iphone (which ironically I don't have). The guide has maps, information about the place, and pictures taken by tourists. Well, I suppose it is not a big deal since they chose a lot of pictures from many people, but somehow I feel kinda flattered :P If you are wondering which picture for Rome that they chose, you can see it here.

4. Finished reading Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. It's really a wise book. Next reading will be this Italian book I got in Florence, which I actually forget what the title is. I hope my Italian can help me get through 75% of it. Speaking of Italy, can you believe that since I came back from my trip in June, I haven't gone through and sorted out all the little mementos, like booking print outs, museums tickets, train tickets, and things like that. I guess, I just don't want to put the finality in the whole experience. Somehow going through those things, setting them aside even though it's for safekeeping and documentation of my life, just feels so hard for me. I'm never good at letting go. I have to do it but I am still procrastinating.

My mother just sent me an sms telling me that my cousins' dad passed away. He didn't wake up this morning. There are many ways people die but if I have to remember people I know or people related to the people I know who died, they all died kinda unexpectedly. Not that they died in a bad way. Like my uncle, it seemed like he died in his sleep, so it's pretty peaceful. It just they weren't sick. If I list how some people I know died, it will be because of an accident, heart attack during morning walk / jogging, stroke, and so it's very very unexpected. So I guess what I want to say is, tell the people you care about that you love them. Look at them clearly when you see them, because you really might never gonna see them alive again. Sigh.

I gotta stop guys because if not I'm gonna drag you again in my depression. Take care okay.

:) eKa @ 8:19:00 PM • 0 comments

UP

Went to watch Up today with Vivy. Maybe I'm really just an emotional wreck right now that I actually cried quite a lot during this movie especially during the first part. Was a bit teary eyed again when I was reading about this movie just now, how the people from Disney and Pixar fulfilled a dying girl's wish to watch this movie. The girl died 7 hours after watching the movie. Very very touching and sad.

Anyway Up was good. Watched it in 3D but didn't find the 3D part to be impressive. I wonder if it's because of the cinema though *sigh* Anyway, as I said the movie was good. Watching the trailer I thought one of the main characters, the grandpa is just a grumpy old man, but his background story was very very nice and touching. Cried a lot on this part :P When I was watching the movie, I was thinking how the boy's eyes, Russell, were kinda Asian. After reading about the movie, I found out that he is Asian American! Somehow for me he doesn't appear so, except for the eyes. He is seriously one adorable boy. Grandpa Carl does look grumpy but he is loveable too. I thought the story was nice. Love the animation. I just love all the colours! I also love the music. Very very good movie. Go and watch it peeps.

Oh I have to add that I also like the short animation that accompanied this movie. Partly Cloud is shown before Up and it's also another very nice story. Somehow it's telling me that your task, your call of duty maybe as sucky as hell and yet you do have to do your task because I don't know. You have to? That it is what you are suppose to do. The bird got hurt a lot in his call of duty and his job is not as nice as his friends but at the end of the day he's still doing it because he knows that he has too.

As much as I am trying to find comfort in that, I still cannot really do so. Yesterday I think I may have made someone more depressed than he's already been and he agreed with me that I made him sadder *sigh* Seriously, I wish I can say things will be alright, things will get better, but at this point in time in my life, this particular moment, I can't honestly say that. I'm not seeing the light and I cannot tell anyone that there is a light. Maybe all you have is a tunnel *sigh* I really don't want to do tomorrow :'(

:) eKa @ 8:39:00 PM • 0 comments

Una Notte da Leoni

Went to watch The Hangover yesterday. Una Notte da Leoni is the Italian title for the movie. Saw the trailer of this movie quite a lot when I was in Rome. By the way, everything in Italy is dubbed in Italian! TV shows and even movies in the cinema. It's like way worse than Indonesia. In Indonesia, I started to come to terms watching Spongebob Squarepants in Indonesian. I will go crazy if everything are dubbed in Indonesian. I don't understand why they do it though. I really think my English is not bad because I watched a lot of american movies and tv series growing up. Sesame Street was so helpful. So right now I get so disappointed and frustrated watching dubbed things. It was kinda hard in Italy for me, I had to like concentrate extra hard to follow the conversation. I think after 10 minutes my brain just gave up.

Anyway The Hangover is HILARIOUS!!! I thought I wouldn't enjoy it much because I thought it would be like a real wild guy movie, especially with the theme of bachelor party in Vegas going completely mad. However the wildest part about it was only during the closing credits. The movie was just really really crazily funny. I totally enjoyed it and would totally recommend it!!! I had great fun watching it.

Wanna talk about Bradley Cooper for awhile. He's like totally hot! My God!!! I think I first saw him in Alias. Didn't recall him to be particularly appealing but in his recent movies, he's just totally handsome!!! There's a scene in the movie when the boys were getting ready to go out and he was wearing a black suit. My God!!! He's totally totally handsome!!! I think he kinda had the best part. Him being so playful and yet at the end of the movie, it's revealed that he's actually married and he seemed to be so devoted to his wife and son. I guess all the girls just went "aaawwww". Yeah, I am so superficial to be attracted in physical appearance but well, I can't help it :P So peeps, yes there are a lot of movies to watch but put Una Notte da Leoni in your list! By the way, I don't get why the Italian title is Una Notte da Leoni. I'm particulary confused on why the preposition is 'da' *sigh*

Anyways, not having a good day today. Was telling Vinny, I wish I can just stop. Actually I want the whole world to stop moving. Darn, I have so many things to do. Ciao peeps!

:) eKa @ 8:36:00 PM • 0 comments

NDP Preview 2009

Went to the Singapore National Day Parade preview yesterday with la Gioia, courtesy of LC who didn't want to use the tickets. I kinda had a good experience. Obviously there were some lame parts as all NDP has had however some of the other parts were quite entertaining. I do wonder if it's because I watched it there live so it was more exciting than watching it on TV. I thought some of the things they did were interesting, there were some new things going on, so I think their creative team is really good this year. The most suprising part for me was the fact that they have dancers on striptease poles. Granted that they didn't strip but I thought it was quite daring of them to try this. I also liked it when Electrico perfomed. Local music is not really something which is flourishing here in Singapore. I even wonder if la Gioia knows Electrico before yesterday. Anyway, I thought this year theme song is really really good. It's definitely different from all the songs I have heard in the past. Pictures are here. Many of the pictures turned out not so good actually *sigh*

:) eKa @ 8:31:00 PM • 0 comments

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