Being Commercial

Sometimes when I tell people that I learn Chinese Opera, Nanyin, French etc, they will tend to think that I am a very artsy fartsy person. Or maybe they will think that I pretend to be artsy. That I will appreciate all kinds of arts from painting to sculptures to symphonies.

Truth is, I know nuts about other kinds of art forms.

I can't appreciate paintings especially those abstract types with like a black dot in the center to represent the center of the universe kind of thing. To me a black dot is a black dot. Neither can I appreciate those great symphonies by great composers. The few classicals I like are only Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Liang zhu. The rest all sound the same to me. I will fall asleep.

So if people ask me to visit art galleries or attend classical concerts, most probably i will not be interested. Maybe once in awhile I will go but I will still not understand.

Also, I really don't like to watch artsy films. You know those Art House kind of films. I watched a lot of such films recently due to work but man, I really find them boring. And I don't understand what the story is about. Most of the time there is no story. They are super slow. Like they can film a snail for one minute... Then film a man at the seaside for another minute... then go back to that snail for another minute...

I will be like.. DuH... @.@

I am not saying they are not good. I am only saying that I don't know how to appreciate. It's too deep for me to understand.

That aside, I am overall a very commercial person. I like commercialised stuff. I like you know Hollywood movies. Those very commercial types like Thor, Mr Poppin's Penguins and now I wanna see Avengers etc.

And for songs and music, I like Super Junior, Eminem and of course I like Ekin's songs.

So what's the point of writing so much on this topic? Nothing actually.

As a very commercial person, there is no deep meaning to my blog posts. I just write whatever I think.

And once again.. I must DECLARE that I am not belittling, demeaning, degrading, insulting or criticizing other arts. I am just saying that I don't know how to appreciate just like the majority of the people in the world. So please don't twist my words.

Women

For a long long time I always felt that it's easier to talk to a woman than a man. Regardless of whether I need assistance in a shop or when I call up customer services.

After giving it some thoughts one day, yah I am always think of weird things when I am bored, I suddenly felt that women might not be what they used to be. I used to think that women are soft hearted and give in easily and therefore I like to talk to women more. However after a few incidents I realised that there are lots of bitchy women around. I mean, modern women are bitchy, we have to admit that.

How can I be so blind??? I didn't see this obvious fact when it's all under my nose!

Like my good friend, May Teng, is a typical bitchy secretary. Bitching about everything under the sun. Then I have other friends whom I shall not mention names, who are also like this. They bitch about everything. Nothing pleases them.

Then when I think about my guy friends, they are so much easier going. Ok, easy going is a nice way to put it, the real term should be bo chup. They don't really care so much about other people and other stuff as long as these stuff don't cross their paths.

Sometimes when I call up customer services, I cannot get what I want from a lady officer. But when I called again and talked to a guy officer, I managed to get what I want without much effort put in.

So you see, we are no longer in a world where ladies are demure, innocent and soft hearted. We'd better wake up that idea.

Tomb Sweeping/ Manchurian

What has tomb sweeping got anything to do with Manchurians??

Apparently during last week's tomb sweeping, the hot topic was Manchu. Yes, we have all watched 步步惊心 and we all decided that we shall discuss our views on the show. In the end we ended up discussing about the manchurians. My cousins didn't know much about the manchurians and asked me why they all have weird surnames in the show. So I explained that they are manchurians and their surnames are all very odd and long. Like the emperor's surname is 爱心觉罗.

They were fascinated and asked about the diff between the Hans and the Manchus. Actually our chinese costume, the cheong sum, is a manchurian costume. It's not our Han costume.

So this is how the Han traditional costumes look like:


The Manchurians were also called 旗人 and therefore, their dress is called the 旗服, which will be this:


And then it slowly developed into what we call the 旗袍 today.

Apparently, we, the Han people, have been wearing the Manchurian costumes as our traditional costume ever since.

Ok that is out of the point, the point is my cousins got very interested in the Manchu culture so one of them googled more about their names etc. She found out that some Manchurians changed their surname to sound like the Han people so as not to be despised. Ye happens to be one of the surnames. So she happily thinks that she might be a manchurian. I call her 阿叶那真吟.

On the other hand, the other cousin who is a Huang, like me, insisted that she will be 马尔泰楚云 from now on, adopting the surname of Ma'er tai.

So the other cousin, the Ye one, said that if chu yun marry a man with surname Mah, she can name her son as Er Tai, and hence the full name Ma Er Tai. Then when her son got children, they can convert to Muslim, she will have her grandchildren to be called XXX bte Ma'er tai....

I was like.. lidat also can ah?

Very creative.

Everyone is gone

Recently so many has been going overseas. Too rich and too much time dunno what to do. I envy these people who have both time and money!

May Teng is going to TW soon. Her second home which she didn't really enjoy going. Hahaha. But she still has to go, she is obliged to go. I always find it a waste that she has bought the tickets to TW and yet she cannot help me bring things back and comb my wig. To me it's a wasted trip to TW. So wasted!

So she will be gone next week for one week. She will not be around to rehearse with us. I think she will be lagging behind from the lack of rehearsals. Then again, as long as she doesn't forget her positions in the show, I think she will be fine. I think it's a good try for her, something different. She is always either acting cute or acting fierce. This time let her act virtuous and demure. There isn't alot of chances that she can act demure so it's good la.

After May goes to TW, teacher will be going back to TW too. Then our da sao, zhuying, will also go china for hols. Everyone will be gone!

Yday we went to eat at Yishun coffeeshop with teacher and some other students. We ordered this steamboat, seafood steamboat. Nowadays very hard to find seafood steamboat so we always go Yishun to eat.

We finished one whole platter of seafood and ordered a second platter.

When the food came, we threw in everything into the pot as per normal and let it boil.

After awhile May Teng scooped, then BH scooped. BH suddenly asked my mum,"What is this? Is this a cockroach?"

Everyone froze in the middle of their business to look at the suspicious little thing swimming in BH's ladle.

My mum can't really tell then Jimmy said it's a baby cockroach!

YEWWW...

Gross to the max can???

What is this? Seafood cum insect buffet ah???

Wah lau eah, super mega spoil mood. So we send May to complain. She is so good at this sort of things.

So she went to complain and the waitress came over to see her herself. She still had the cheek to grin! Like it's no big deal! It was a big deal you know!

Bloody hell.

Then she went back and wanted to prepare another platter for us but teacher said to cancel it. Cuz the mood is spoilt and we have no more appetite to eat there. Haiz...

I told May Teng that this time she got chance to get back at the store owner. The previous time we went, that owner kp that we brought our own food. They don't have shabu shabu mah.. so we bring lor.. if they have I can order but they don't have mah.

So May vowed not to go back to that place. Little did we know that this time we went back to that place, we kena a cockroach feast.

SAd, I think we really not going back to that place le lor...

In case you wanna know where it is, it's at blk 630.

We now have to hunt another place for steamboat...