Week Thirteen [Singaporeans my age] January 15, 2007

I can’t write much about this topic cause i’m not really sure how similar or how different I am from typical Singaporeans my age. Here’s the poem I wrote about the little stuff that I thought of. 1st attempt at a poem! :

“I don’t try new food,
No matter how much people say it’s good.
I don’t eat spicy food,
As it totally kills my mood.

When I’m shopping for maki with rice,
I don’t wait until after eight,
So that I can buy at half price,
All the sushi they have on the plate.

When I’m looking items that I really want,
Waiting for the big sales do not come to mind.
Cause I’d rather pay the price on the tags,
To squeezing with people with large shopping bags.”

Week Eight [ action figures ] December 12, 2006

This week’s notes is short again. Or maybe I’m just not taking down enough.

During this week’s film, I dosed off too many times. Finally I decided to sleep through the rest of it. From my memory of it, I did find the front part with the pictures overlapping to tell a story, interesting.

In class we had an exercise where I had to play a girl who was two-timing Kane and Hari. It was so cool! Not that I would ever date my friends or cheat on them =P We had to portray our characters without the use of dialogue. As Ryan gave us time to prepare for the presentation, our group thought through every action we were going to do. Kane’s character needed time to realize what was going on so he could not get up too early or the audience would not be able to grasp what he was feeling. Even the time needed before he took his hand away from mine was the “point of realization” that my character was two-timing him. We did not want to make the scene too dramatic so we decided that Kane’s character would not punch Hari’s character in the face. Also, both characters did not know that they were both being two-timed, so technically they were “on the same boat”. So we decided that no physical pain would be inflicted onto Hari.

During the week I was at my voice teacher’s house several times. Every time I walk to the living room, Lyia, one of their cats whose breed is the same as the comic character Garfield, would be lazily sprawled near the armrest of either couch. I realize that I never see him happily pouncing around. He is always just lying down somewhere sleeping. Then their other cat, Zorro, who is usually quite playful, would approach snoozing Lyia to play with him. This always results in Lyia being irritated and they end up in a little paw fight.

Cats do not have a complex dialogue like humans do. All they can do to show their feelings is with their actions. Maybe Zorro does not understand that Lyia’s breed is to be a lazy cat. It probably just thinks that Lyia’s just unfriendly towards him. This causes a miscommunication between the cats. If only they could speak to eat other like in the film, Cats and Dogs. That would be really cute. Or just plain freaky.

I like the picture that I found for the Visual Assignment. I found two others but I thought this would be interesting to write a story on. I hope you read it and leave me feedback about it.

Oh before I forget, Ryan pointed out that the ‘friendship’ word that I used many times in my Letter to the Past had some hidden meaning that I did not want to reveal. The reason I used the word ‘friendship’ is because I wrote the letter as though it was really for Ethan. As if it was not an assignment where it was to be read by everyone and understood by everyone. It would not make sense if I wrote everything that happened word for word out as Ethan would already know what I was talking about. It is true that Ethan and I were something more than friends. But I used the word ‘friendship’ so as to spite him and let him know that it was nothing more than that to me.

I hope that clears things up and is a valid excuse so I do not have to rewrite that letter again.

Week Seven [ speak up! i cannot hear you ] December 5, 2006

I just thought of something. If people did not create different languages to speak maybe everyone would know the same ’sign language’ and understand each other.

here are my notes.. it’s quite little this week.

speaking of this week, i roughly remember the ‘Autograph Book’ thing. When I was in Primary 4, I bought this Minnie Mouse autograph book. I had all my ‘bestfriends’ in class sign in it and include their addresses and telephone numbers. As you know, I lost a lot of my stuff in my room fire so the book was one of them. But when I think about it, it does not matter at all. I do not even want to contact the people who wrote in it. I simply cannot be bothered. It is just like one of those, what’s in the past, just let it stay in the past.

I have a theory that the most meaningful words are the ones that you do not have to say, and that the person that it is meant for already knows what you feel. Was that easy to understand? It is something like an unspoken language that two people share and no dialogue is necessary.

I first wrote a dialogue for a couple in America. It had American slang and everything. Then I had to write a dialogue for my parents. The thing is, my Mum would not prepare dinner. She is not even at home during dinnertime to have dinner with us. Another thing, my Dad would not forget about telling anyone whether he is having dinner or not. They would converse in Mandarin too. So I came up with the idea that they would have the dialogue over the phone.

Oh writing dialogue is so fun. Especially when you are writing for imaginary people. But who would have thought? That we would have to record our work. This week I was married to Khai, Kane, Farhan, Hari, and finally Qing Hong. It was fun =)

Week Six [ sigh. what a week.. ] November 28, 2006

Reply to Mister Ryan’s comments on my posts:
Thanks for complimenting me on my use of Singlish in the dialogues that I wrote for my fifty-word Stories assignment. I was not sure whether I could use them but I wanted to keep the original dialogue so as to bring out the same impact that they had on me.

“What do you think about forced Hollywood happy endings? It’s funny you refer to it as chick-flick, because the tragedies Aristotle was writing about were essentially for men. Do you think it’s a gender thing, where women desire happy endings to movies more than men do?”
I feel that happy endings in Hollywood films are very expected in most films as they want the hero to still end up with a girl and live happily ever after. It’s like, even though the man’s love has died in an accident or murder, he always ends up with another girl by the end of the film.
Mr. Ryan, I think you’ve made a mistake as to why I wrote about the film, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. You mentioned in class that you wanted us to blog about a film that at some part, the characters don’t know something that the audiences know about. So I chose that film because of that, without any reference to Aristotle’s Greek Tragedies.
And yes, I feel that the women prefer happy endings like the female character getting the man of her dreams and they live happily ever after. That is the main reason why they enjoy coming together and watching a typical “chick-flick”. I think most men don’t really care about how films end, unlike women who like to get all-emotional after a film. I do know they like action films with special effects and maybe a film that was made after a comic book. I may be making a ton of sweeping statements here, but this is generally how I feel about moviegoers these days.
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Now lets get back to THIS week shall we.

Note taken !

Ryan’s letter to his Dad
It was an insight to where he was coming from and made us learn about how it is to write about something truly from the heart. Whether the letter was written in hate, anger, satisfaction or even relief, it has definitely taught something to each of us. The courage to write something so personal and share it with his students is something that every writer should possess. Thank you, Mister Ryan, for sharing your letter with us. =)

I pretty much had a bad week since last Monday till now. I has not quite ended yet as I still have this horrible feeling of weight my shoulders. Events have happened this past week that have been driving me crazy. I cannot believe I even forgot to put up my True/False stories. The thought just did not cross my mind. I know personal issues should not get in the way of schoolwork but I just cannot seem to focus. Even when I fenced on Sunday, I could not concentrate on the target. Something is happening to me and I do not know what it is. But don’t worry, I’ll try to put up my work asap.

I strongly apologize to my classmates who have come to my site and not see my work up. I am going to get my act together and put it up soon.

Week Five [ Blast from the Past ] November 21, 2006

I never really thought about CHARACTERS before this week. It made me think, can i write a story without characters in it. The answer is no. Even when there aren’t any characters written, the character in the story is that there are no characters.

Anyway, here are my notesfrom class =)
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When we first got the assignment, I had a huge dilemma. I thought about who to write the LETTER TO THE PAST for. I considered, one of my ex-boyfriends, JT, or the other JT. But if I did write about anyone in school, let alone the same cohort, that would be attempting written suicide.

So I scrapped the idea and went for something a little more, last season. Now this one really disgusts me. Or maybe it’s just the guys that have messed with me before, disgust me. So just read it, and maybe have a glimspe of “happy thoughts” that i’m feeling inside. =)

Week Four [ Election ] November 14, 2006

Film: Election, 1999
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon.

Even before the story unfolds, Mr. McAllister already dislikes Tracy as she had his best friend, Dave, dismissed from the school and basically destroyed his life. As he unconsciously builds hatred towards Tracy, it leads to him meddling with the results of the Class President vote so that Tracy does not win, which in turn after being caught, forces him to volunteer to resign from the school.

To make things worse, he falls for Linda, Dave’s ex-wife, and they planned to have an affair. Linda feels guilty and decides to tell Diane, Mr. McAllister’s wife, about their relationship. This results in him getting kicked out of his home and left to sleep in the backseat of his car.

Mr. McAllister is responsible for his own downfall and does not get a happy ending. He suffers even more as he gets stung on his right eyelid by a bee. His eye swells up, which makes the audience feel sorry for how terrible he looks.

The film is similar to a Greek Tragedy. It has all the elements the Aristotle wrote about. Mr. McAllister is the tragic hero.

Week Three [ To Be Completely Clueless ] November 6, 2006

Turns out, there was no need that my group met up last Sunday to work on our presentation. Little did we know, Mister Ryan had us work on the presentation in class. I guess it’s a stereotype that once someone says you have to present something means, PowerPoint straightaway.

Aristotle class notes =P
Anyways, after learning from the “Aristotle” lecture, I guess there is a lot to conveying a story to an audience. The way you write it with the different characters and scenes that come first and next are a big part of the success of the film.
_______________________________________________________________________________

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson

In the film, Andie, Kate Hudson’s character, is a woman magazine’s “How to-“ girl. She writes articles for women on how to do different things. Benjamin, Matthew McConaughey’s character, works for an advertising company. Andie takes up the challenge from her boss to write an account of the things women do that drive men away. She has to pick up a guy and make him fall in love with her, and get dumped, in ten days. Benjamin on the other hand, was challenged by his boss to make any girl fall in love with him just within ten days.

So the two main characters in this movie have no idea about the deals that the other has made with their own bosses. The fun about watching this film was that each of them thought they were so clever at fooling the other when they were actually being fooled themselves. The climax is when the tenth day comes around, they hear about each other’s schemes. They decide to confront each other, literally in song, in front of their colleagues and end up making a fool of themselves. It was exciting to watch as the plot unravels and the characters find out the truth.

But in the end its all well as both of them were in the wrong, but the feelings they had for each other throughout the film was real. Cliché “chick-flick” happy ending =)

Week two [ homework.. ] October 31, 2006

Wed: I heard from a classmate that we had a lot of work this week. So while I was panicking, I misread the instructions to the assignment. I initially thought, read our partner’s work and pick 6 sentences, write one 50-word story for her blog and the other 5 for my own, based on those sentences. After picking my 6 sentences, I read the instructions again, I realized that we only need to write one story, no need to be just 50words, for our partner’s blog. And then come up with 5 different ideas for 50-word stories. Great! Now I can start doing my work correctly.

Sat: Who is Aristotle?!

Sun: At 5:30pm, our group met up at the National Library to put our research together. Answering the questions from the worksheet was a challenge, as we did not understand what Aristotle’s views were on writing a tragedy. I have to say, that the National Library air-conditioning is EXTREMELY COLD!
So as we shivered in a corner, the corner that we shifted to after being chased away by some librarian that said we were blocking a five-meter wide corridor, we worked.

Mon: I’m confused about the meaning of writing in 3rd person. Mr. Ryan’s examples on his blog were all written with ‘I’. I guess to play safe I just wrote everything as if it was another person’s encounters. It was a bit difficult to come up with 5 different stories. I hope the presentation would be successful tomorrow =)

week one [ hmmm.. ] October 21, 2006

Notes taken in class =)

before i stepped into class on friday, i didn’t know what to expect. Was this class all about how to write stories?? oh no. not another “writcom”-like class..

anyways, class started with a game to get to know one another. i don’t really know half the class so it was good having to play that game. let’s see: rapping ryan, running rebecca, breaking bobbie, crazy caleb, killer khai, nostalgic nick, greasy gwyn, cracking kane, gorgeous geraldine, ANNOYING ANNABELLE, sinister sin, lazy louis, kinky qing and HOT hari!!! man we had laughs )))

after explaining what the syllabus was gonna be like in this module, Ryan officially started the class and the slides were up. i like the way Ryan involved the class into the lesson like, get different people to give answers, getting Kane to stand up, writing Louis as a character in the story.. i had fun trying to imagine Louis in a hula girl outfit while writing the story..

i did have a bit of trouble ending the story that i wrote.. i had questions about how i was going to end it and whether or not i could make it even more interesting. Hari had his end with S.W.A.T. barging into the temple and firing at everything in sight! He definitely has a wild imagination.

okay, i’m going to end my reflection here. happy reading everyone else’s!