Musings

Our baby girl has been grumbling quite a bit at home. She’s become increasingly assertive, and will become quite vocal if the adults around her aren’t doing things that make sense to her. E.g. if you take a toy away from her, or if you try passing her from one person to the next.

In view of this, I was remarking to Ling just now that I can’t wait for Hannah to grow up quicker. But Ling rejoined that we’d just be trading one set of challenges for another haha.:)

Anyway; here’s a small selection of pictures taken at a family event: the first month baby bash for cousin Ying Jia’s daughter. The event was at Peach Garden @ Novena. Greatest impression of the lunch: the wasabi prawns were marvelous.:)

Outside Revenue House. Parking on Sundays just $1 per entry. Cheap.

With Mommy. Hannah was pretty cranky for a good part of the event.

Auntie Jasmine to the rescue. Thrilled Hannah’s not an iPhone fan.:)

Completely knocked out in the car on the way back.

Just some random sampling of cute and endearing moments with our little girl. Such behaviour of hers might not repeat again.

• When I squat down, open my arms and call Hannah’s name, she would giggly make her clumsy baby walk towards me and hug me.
• She’d let us hold her hand and walk with her.
• When she stood up on her high chair to play, I would give her a displeased look and told her firmly to sit down. It might take her a while but she would eventually ‘guai guai de’ squat down. I would continue to stare at her and say “leg leg” and then she would slowly put her legs down to a sitting position. She might avoid my glare and then afterwards check whether she had gotten my approval by making some eye contact.
• Hannah would shake her bum bum to the beat of songs played to her.
• She would walk over and sit on my laps when I hold out a book to read to her. Sometimes she would look up to me and make eye contact while I was reading to her.
• She would laugh at us when we make funny sounds.
• She would put her little finger to dig my nose and poke through my lips.
• She would sit at the entrance to the kitchen where I prepare her meals and ‘wait’ for mommy to play with her.
• She could understand the meaning of my words even though she could not utter them herself yet. For example, I have asked her to hang her towel back on the rack where she had pulled it off (I didn’t expect her to do it actually) and she understood me and tried in her own messy manner to spread the towel on the rack.
• She would blow me a kiss after I put her down to bed for the night.
• She would open her mouth widely and say ‘ahh’ for ‘amen’ during our bedtime prayer.
• She plays ‘hide and seek’ with me when it is time for bath. She would disappear from my sight and then reappear to check whether I’m still around. Upon seeing me, she would giggle and go back into hiding. :)
• She yaks on her pink diaper cream tube (pretends it to be a mobile phone).

Of course, we had our share of exasperating moments with her too. For instance, she would sometimes cry without apparent reason.

Below is a recent video taken of her trying to get her hands on her wet laundry and her latest play-thing (green cushion). :)

Apologies for the relative dearth of posts! Not much to write about this couple of days (though Ling has an interesting post she’s working on about Hannah), except that I’ve been attending a five day training program on practical counseling. The course is conducted in town, so on mornings where I’m on course I’ve had to squeeze in with the downtown-heading morning peak hour traffic – something I have not done since 2003. Ah, the memories.

The difficulties of getting to and back from the training venue is nothing to the lessons I’m learning though. The instructor is a senior counselor from Fei Yue Community Services, the offshoot agency from the Chinese Christian Mission. The instruction and sharing of cases and experiences with not just young adults, but also the elderly and marital couples has been really illuminating.

One thing’s also becoming slowly apparent too: the challenge level, pressures, and demands made of professional counselors to discharge their roles as listener, befriender, and problem-solver is scarily high. It’s no wonder that there are professional counselors, therapists and psychologists who lose it completely and commit suicide themselves.

New found admiration for a profession I before this training knew so little about. Teaching is easy by comparison!

A couple of months ago I wrote here that Hannah has a thing about car washes. Specifically, whenever we put the car through an automated wash, she’ll be hollering in tears! Evidence here.

Thing is; the car needs a wash every now and then. Of course we could wash our Latio the old and manual way – but nothing beats that sinking feeling of spending a good hour of your life hand-washing your drive, and 30 minutes later when you’re driving out, there’s a flash rain here to ruin all your effort!

So, these days it’s the auto carwash. How do we solve Hannah hollering though? Easy – we put Mommy in the car beside her in the passenger seat. Here’s the outcome of one such exercise last weekend:

The calm before the storm and time for pictures first!

Even Daddy flashes the V sign to encourage our girl.

And here we go. The minute the first water jets sprayed onto the car, Hannah looked about to break into hollers!

Mommy quickly stuffs our girl with the Dory cushion!

Warning… Warning… Baby about to burst!!

Mission Failed.:(

The funniest thing is that we actually have a much easier time having Hannah vaccinated by her PD than with the carwash! But that Ling was beside her in the car did helped… somewhat.

We’ll redo this exercise the next time we have the car washed and report on the next findings soon enough.:)

From Paris with Love (2010) – on rental. Luc Besson, the award winning French film director and producer, is quite a prolific filmmaker. In the last 5 years alone, he’s been credited in an astonishing 18 films already. A lot of his output belong to the action film genre, though within the genre itself there’s been critical hits (e.g. Léon starring Jean Reno and Natalie Portman in her breakout role) and films that got royally panned by reviewers (e.g. Transporter 3).

Interestingly, a couple of his most recent action films have starred big named Hollywood actors. He produced Taken, the action film starring Liam Neeson that I five-starred last year, and this year we’ve got From Paris with Love, a super violent action-heavy starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

I don’t care much for Meyers after the over-acting he did in The Tudors, but Travolta is always fun to watch in roles that see him as a foul-mouth guns-a-blazing criminal/terrorist. Travolta does more of the same in this new film but as a borderline good-guy. He plays Charlie Wax, a super counter-terrorist agent who’s motto revolves around ‘smash enemy into pulp first, don’t bother with questions later’. The American agent’s sole expertise lies in violently eliminating terrorist cells.

Starring Travolta, Meyers and a Ming Vase.

Meyers comes in as Ambassadorial aide James Reese but who really dreams of a job with the CIA. Wax is flown into Paris where he’s met by Reese in a hilarious introduction scene involving Wax with a bunch of skeptical French customs officers. It’s scene after scene of gun battles and explosions thereafter with a wide-eyed Reese gradually waking up to the fact that being a CIA agent might mean he has to readjust his life expectancy.

Unlike Taken though, there’s no pretense of subtlety in this film and even less story to speak of. There are a couple of secondary characters, mostly oriented around Reese’s normal (boring) day job and life, though in the film’s last act, one of these characters reveals himself to be a lot more than originally seemed.

There’s a bit of cute and fun banter between the two mostly to do with Wax’s joy in partaking in extreme violence and Reese recoiling in horror each time, but the two otherwise have little ‘buddy’ chemistry. Moreover, unlike Bryan Mills (Neeson)’s motivation in engaging in violence in Taken, Wax’s only motivator is…er… that he’s just loves his guns and perforating terrorists and bad guys with bullet holes.

The film will explain what’s the role of the Ming vase.

So, as fun as Travolta is to watch while he relishes his role as the gun-happy nut, there’s no understanding to attain of his character. Reese fares a little better on account that one of the story’s major outcomes is centered on the aforementioned secondary character.

Still, it’s a ball of loud, noisy fun for about 92 minutes. Travolta apparently liked his role so much he’s open to do a sequel for this film LOL.

Leap Year (2010) – on rental. The long National Day weekend saw the both of us catching up on a whole ton of films. Five actually, including Salt that I just posted a short review of. We also finished watching two Luc Besson films: District B13: Ultimatum starring Parkour expert David Belle, and From Paris with Love (this action film is anything but a romantic drama), and two bona fide romantic dramas: Remember Me, and Leap Year.

Leap Year is a new romantic comedy starring America’s sweetheart Amy Adams who plays Anna, with Matthew Goode, the lanky British actor who recently played Ozymandias in The Watchmen and plays Declan in this new film.

Anna is in a serious relationship with her well-to-do boyfriend doctor Jeremy (Adam Scott). But when the latter doesn’t propose for her hand in marriage but instead goes on a work trip to Dublin, she takes off after him intending to propose to him instead. How’s that? According to Irish tradition, the man who receives a marriage proposal on a Leap Day must accept it.

Unfortunately, getting to her man to Dublin from Boston is anything but easy: inclement weather puts her on the other side of the Isle, and she has to now somehow find her way across the island to Dublin before Leap Day. So she enlists the help of Declan, the proprietor of a local pub in financial difficulties and who needs the money Anna’s willing to pay.

Anna (Amy Adams) and Declan (Matthew Goode).

The film does have a couple of things going for it. Stylistically, it’s filmed in the same way as Made of Honor. You get gorgeous scenery of Ireland, a locale not often seen these days in modern dramas – beautiful enough again for Ling to add to her ‘must see places in my lifetime’. There’s an absolutely stunning view of the steep cliffs along Ireland’s coast line against the setting sun that’s worth the rental or theater admission ticket.

You also get interactions with the Irish locals, one type of which is when they look at Yankee antics, courtesy of Adams this time, with a mix of disdain and bemusement; and the other type of local customs, accents and cultural idiosyncrasies.

There’s also the two likable leads – Goode who’s naturally English and barely manages faking an Irish accent, and Adams – who’s always a joy to watch. Now that’s an actress I find beautiful compared to the likes of Jolie. The two of them are easy on the eyes, and their inevitable romance and feelings for each other are slowly nurtured in a very unrushed manner through the film’s running length.

She’ll be back. Really.

On the other hand; there are missed opportunities. The film’s title is drawn from the aforementioned Irish tradition, but this cultural practice – if at all true to begin with – has only almost coincidental relation to the story itself. The practice is mentioned throughout the film to create some sense of urgency for Anna in her madcap endeavors to get to Jeremy before Leap Day, but beyond this, you could have easily removed this story element and lose very little in the process.

The second issue lies with the story. There’s little that surprises in this film and who Anna eventually ends up with – Declan or Jeremy – is a foregone conclusion. OK, so romantic dramas of this sort are formulaic, but when you have non-conventional films like 500 Days of Summer, the story outcome in Leap Year feels a little too safe.

And lastly; I like Adams. But man, the things the film makes her do here. You’ll see her vomit, get drenched in stormy weather, and roll in mud. The film isn’t coarse by any measure, but I was wondering if the scenes depicting Anna’s dilemma and of her slightly ditzy personality might had been shown without resorting to this sort of antics.

Mixed bag then. Watch if you’re a fan of either actor, or if you’d like to get a preview for another vacation spot during the long December holidays.:)

Salt (2010) – at AMK Hub. Just before the weekend screening of Salt at AMK’s Cathay, I was at my class’ end-of-semester barbeque the Friday evening when one of my students jibed that I was catching the film only because of Angelina Jolie.

To be honest, that’s not quite true – and it’s on account that I don’t personally find Jolie that physically attractive, and apologies to all the males who see her as the exemplar of woman beauty. Personally, Jolie’s feminine features are a little too hard and well-defined for my tastes.

But what to make of her newest action-thriller though? Jolie plays a CIA agent named Evelyn Salt and she’s married to some low-key German guy who studies bugs for a profession. Early on in the film during what should have been a routine interrogation with what seems to be a Russian defector, she gets exposed as a sleeper Russian agent whose job is to assassinate high profile targets when activated.

The rest of the film from this point sees her running from the CIA and law enforcement agencies – and in a bit of a twist, not necessarily to prove her innocence. Heck; the film tries very hard to keep you guessing whether Evelyn is really a double agent i.e. she’s really a sleeper Russian agent waking to be activated, or maybe even a triple agent i.e. she’s really a CIA agent posing as a Russian agent while in CIA’s employ!

The film feels like the outcome of a wild mix of Jason Bourne, James Bond, and The Fugitive – wrapped in a package that features a female super agent as the lead pro/antagonist rather than the usual male guy. Jolie looks in top form as she runs circles around law enforcement, outsmarting them at every turn. Very nicely too; the action scenes are filmed without the hyperactive shaky-cam perspectives found in the Bourne trilogy so it’s actually possible to see Jolie karate-chop her opponents, and undertake world gymnastic stunts similar to what you saw in her two Tomb Raider films. It’s all pretty cool stuff, with the two most exhilarating scenes for me taking were when Salt makes good an escape from her apartment block, and towards the film’s final act in the White House.

That said; the film has an absolutely preposterous plot that’s even more absurd than the other recent summer action-thriller Knight and Day starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reviewed here too. The film takes liberties with real world agencies whose personnel I imagine will be taking a very dim view of how they’re represented here. Basically, if you’re in forensics, the Secret Service, the CIA, a Russian sleeper agent, or what makes for the Russian president’s security detail, the film would have you believe you’re utterly incompetent compared to the likes of Evelyn Salt, super-agent.

Also, while the film does try to keep you guessing where exactly does Salt’s loyalties lie – and it does this by minimizing her dialog apparently so as not to belay her real intentions – it was real easy to see where this was eventually going for me. Hint: just watch who she disables and who she kills.

Still, if you can discount the story, Salt gets it right everywhere else. The action is unrelenting, well-filmed, and the relatively compact 100 minute a roller-coasting ride from start to the end. I certainly enjoyed this film more than I did for Inception.

A few more pictures of Hannah and Daddy – this time shortly after lunch at Din Tai Fung on Tuesday afternoon.:)

She looks awfully cute here, but over the long weekend she was a bit of a little tyrant at home! She went about bawling whenever she sensed the both of us was doing something else at home and not playing with her.

Given that we haven’t totally baby-proofed every part of the house yet apart from the living room and the workroom, Hannah’s movements are restricted to just those two places – and even only when at least one of us is in the same room and keeping an eye on her as she baby walks about the room, exploring every surface, and pulling out everything she can get her little hands on out of its place.

It’s indeed a little scary watching how fast she’s growing. Just a month ago she was still walking unsteadily, but right now she can easily stay right up.:)

Fourth and last day of the holiday weekend. Ling had a couple of dining vouchers for Din Tai Fung, the authentic Taiwanese restaurant which has apparently been ranked by The New York Times as one of the world’s top ten restaurants before (wow). The restaurant’s signature dish is its xiao long bao (steamed pork dumplings). Ling loves them, but I’m less enamored though.

in any case, most schools were still closed for the national day holiday, so I took a day’s leave for this outing. The highlight of the event was, as always, watching Hannah.:)

It’s been a while since we’ve taken Hannah down by the pool – the last being when Matt was in Singapore. Hannah still loves getting her feet wet though, so we dropped her into the children’s pool with her baby buoy during NDP for some wet n’ wild.:)

She likes her float so much the next day she walked about the house with it.:)