Movie alone

I finally watched Divergent.

I am a sad person because I went alone, not. My date bailed out on me, so I just went anyway because that's what you do when people stood you up. Live your life.

Okay, the statement above was only half true.

I invited my friend to go watch a movie after our classes on Friday and that was the plan. On Friday, after I was done with my class, I contemplated with proceeding with it. However, I hopped on the train anyway and went straight to the cinemas.

Instead of going with my friend, I decided to go by myself because I've been wanting to try it out, being on a date with yourself thing. Weird, I know.

I did it anyway. HEHE. FREE movie :3

I bought nachos too because I thought that I cannot be cheapskate when I am on a date with myself. Eheheh. Look, it had tomatoes and I ate them (XP increased)!

For me, the movie was so-so, I did not love it that much. A lot of scenes that I think were significant were cut and altered. Oh well, I did not expect much in the first place anyway. The actor looked a lot like a Malay hero or something, or maybe that was just me? Please tell me I was not the only one who thought of that...

Anyway, the movie experience itself was pretty okay. I was a tad annoyed at the girl who was sitting behind me because of her foot that was a seat away from my head but everything else was great. There was only 12 people in the cinema hall which was awesome for me. No unnecessary interaction was needed to be done for a socially-awkward person like myself.

However, if you asked me if I would do it again, I would say maybe not.

It was too lonely. -_-"

What I've Been Reading 001

Since last year, I have set a goal for amounts of books that I will read each month. Last year, I set it to two books per month and surprisingly, I surpassed it. This year, I increased my goal and set it to three books per month. Up to now, I failed. -_-"

I have only read five books so far and that's not bad actually. I am behind by four books which I am expecting to catch up in the coming summer (hopefully).

I would love to write a review for each books that I have read but I am lacking the ability to summarize stories without giving out too much information. Therefore, I would just share my favorite quotes or short thoughts regarding the books.

1. Love the One You're With, Emily Giffin

Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.

One way isn't better than the other; they're just different.

 

As much as I find myself screaming silently to the character for the decisions she made, I think I can understand why she did them in the first place. I feel like the story is realistic enough to happen for real. Finishing this book, I really feel like misunderstandings are bound to happen if communications are being put behind most of time.

2. Heart of the Matter, Emily Giffin

 

Did they have it in them to make a wrong decision just because it felt right?

I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life.

Uhh, I hated the husband so much in this story, it's scary. I do not know if I could ever put myself in the wife's shoes and did what she did to solve her problems.

3. Paper Towns, John Green

When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honestly take those back, you know?

You keep expecting people to not be themselves.

Humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

I like how the main character, Margo, left clues for Quentin to find her. The element of mystery seemed to be working for me. My heart skipped a beat when Quentin thought of the worst things and I kinda felt his worries as well but I just don't understand the ending... Maybe I'll re-read this sometime in the future.

4. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding

 

I suddenly realize everything has shifted and now I am looking after my parents instead of them looking after me, which seems unnatural and wrong.

In short, I didn't like Bridget Jones's character in this story. She seemed to be so powerless in this story and the story itself lacks substances for me to take home as a message.

5. Divergent, Veronica Roth

I still want to be angry, but I have to let my anger go.

Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that people do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined.

I read this book without knowing that the movie is out in the cinemas soon (now, actually). The story did start a bit slow but started to become more interesting with each coming chapters. I like the main characters, Tris and Four but, I don't seem to like the image that I am seeing in the movie trailer. They are far from what I have imagined for sure!

***

All this while, I did not think that I have a very strong opinion about books that I have read. Writing this out has somehow proved me otherwise. They are not as deep but they are my honest opinions nonetheless.

Book covers taken from Goodreads

Wrong Chicken

Sometimes, I do silly mistakes like:

buying the wrong chicken... Yes, you read that right. Wrong chicken.

I went to buy my groceries three days ago, taking advantage of the student discount every Tuesday (being the cheapskate I am). Chicken was on my to buy list because I saw that it was on sale in the flyer I subscribed too (very makcik-ish, I know). However, I didn't find any in the freezer! Pfft.

I then resorted to a readily packed chicken thighs and did not realise that it was not branded with the Halal sticker on it despite being underneath the Halal section. Unwarily, I bought it because it was cheaper. -_-

I only realized it when I went to the grocery store the next day to accompany my friend. I was lucky that I felt lazy the night before that I decided not to cook the chicken and ate scrambled eggs instead.

I was contemplating to return the chicken as I was not sure whether poultry products were returnable. The next morning, I woke up early anyway and brought my chicken back to the store. I was determined that if they would not accept it for return, I would give it away to the cashier (should not waste chicken!).

Cashier: Was there something wrong with it?

Me: No, I just bought the wrong chicken.

Cashier: Um, kay.

However, they did accept chicken returns. The chicken was back in store and I am back $5 richer.

Not cool to cuss

A 10-year old boy once asked me:

Boy: Can you use the f-word?

Me: Umm, no. Why would I?

Boy: I don't know. Since you're older and all, I thought you're allowed to use it.

Me: Well, no. I don't.

Basically, our conversation ended there because somebody interrupted us and I had to leave him. I felt guilty to have left the discussion sort of hanging in the mid air with no final say or word of advice for him. It must have been his means of justifying stuff his friends normally do and he was trying to find out if it is right or wrong. I guess I could understand where and how such question could have popped up in his mind, given the environment he is in.

I pretty much do not (or try not to) use vulgar words as a regular vocabulary in my daily life. It is my personal choice because I am not comfortable expressing my frustrations in such manner. I also cannot comprehend how it would give me a sense of satisfaction. I am no saint but I highly label the act as inappropriate and thus, I avoid doing so myself.

If you decided to, I'm still cool (I am using this lightly because I do mind but it is really your choice and I have no say in that) with it as long as you're not a kid (not a teenager yet). I'm sure most of my friends are well aware of this fact about myself. I often cringed and glared every time someone cuss in front of me. Therefore, I noticed an apology would usually follow before or after their choice of bad words (which I gladly appreciate for acknowledging my uncomfortableness).

However, if you're spewing profanities at the rate of a word per second, you can be sure that I would be out the next minute. There is only so much bad words that I can handle at one time.

If you were me, what would have been your answer to the kid?

Travelog: Universal Studios Florida

We decided that the last place we would visit in Orlando was Universal Studios Florida. It was a pretty eventful day as a lot of interesting stuff had happened.

The day started off well as we went straight ahead to the Transformers ride as soon as the park was opened. We even managed to be the first group to snap a photo with the Optimus Prime (I assumed, forgive me if I got this wrong)! We also managed to take a picture with Cyclops and had a small chat with him.

Cyclops: In case you guys wanted a shorter man, Wolverine is right over there. *points to a direction*

One of our 'favorite' ride was Revenge of The Mummy. We went inside, queuing not knowing what we were in for. We were expecting a moderate ride since it was indoor but, we freaked out when we saw 'high speed roller coaster' warning while in line. However, it was too late to back out and we just went ahead. In short, the others screamed at the top of their lungs while I, stayed quiet, closed my eyes, and held tight to the safety rail.

The shows we watched here was very entertaining as well! It has been a while since I had a good laugh and Horror Make Up Show was super awesome, I almost fell off my seat laughing. We also had a good time watching Animal Actors (because we didn't get to meet real celebrities, animal was good enough) and pretty much spent half of our life waiting for the otters to come down and proceed with the show as it was having too much fun playing with water...

I also had the chance to be in a 'movie' as we recreated the scenes on a Disaster ride. We were the actors and I got to see myself on TV for a few seconds as our clip was chosen. The clip shown to the rest of the people on the ride (-_-) was of my friend and myself, faking our scared and panicked face, as an earthquake was happening underground. We were so pro at it, people should hire us...

However, our least favorite ride there was the Terminator 2 show. It was so boring, I felt asleep! While waiting for our turns for that ride, we were greeted by a Chinese couple. We talked for a while and agreed to meet up after the show for a cup of coffee and so, we did!

We found out that they both were Malaysians working in UK and went to Florida for a holiday, like us. They were so nice, they treated us drinks and snacks. She even wiped our tables and prepared the utensils for us. We felt like kids, going out with their mom for a while. We chatted a bit but we had to leave as our bus was scheduled to come soon.

We were in panic because we wanted to buy souvenirs before we left. We only had 10 minutes and ran towards the gift shop. I grabbed whatever stuff I could and went straight to queue up. Half of us was done with our purchase and half was still in line. We split up and decided to have the others went ahead to buy us some time. It was the most intense 10 minutes of my life.

After the rest was done with their purchase, we ran for our life to the designated bus parking lot (it felt like deja-vu because we actually ran for our bus the night at Disney World too). Halfway through, I saw people still waiting and no sight of the bus and felt relief. It turned out that our bus broke down and we had to wait for another hour for the bus to come... *sigh*