微微一笑很倾城/ Love 020 (First Impressions)

So I have been crying while watching Godzilla (yes, I cried buckets of tears but don’t judge me!) and 四月わ君の噓 (which I can totally relate to and which is about music so I really am bound to cry!) and every Saturday I go to the municipal library to use their free WIFI and watch Youtube videos.

the virtual wedding of Yixiao Naihe and Luwei Weiwei

I stumbled upon Love 020 (a.k.a. A Smile is Beautiful/ 微微一笑很倾城) one day while randomly watching videos on Youtube. It kept appearing in my feeds and so out of curiosity I clicked episode 1, thinking it’s another one of those wuxia or fantasy dramas. (My sister also said she often sees it on Youtube… Hmmmm…) It turned out to be a good mix of both, except that the period stuff is limited to the virtual world of gaming while the characters are actually university students. It’s hard to believe that Mainland China has made this series. Previous attempts were a flop, like the Mainland version of Meteor Garden, which I never bothered to watch even an episode. So maybe what they say about China finally being serious with strengthening soft power is true. Also, what a fine way to finally showcase how well-off Chinese citizens are now. Love 020 is, in my opinion, a successful project because of the following elements:

1. good-looking actors and actresses so one can’t help but go KYAAAAAAAAAA~ (Compared to previous drama series where they fielded in common-looking actors… ugh!)

2. Excessive use of computer graphics which is sending out a message that China is now technologically advanced (After all, they now have the four modern precious inventions which are very relevant in today's digital age as the four precious ones were in the past. Indeed, we are seeing the revival of China in this century.)

3. The cutesy plot is similar to J-Dramas which feed on female fantasies of the ideal man (KYAAAAA~ again… My Domjouji ideal will soon be overshadowed because… Yangyang, why look so hot either as 肖奈/Xiaonai or as his virtual alter ego Yixiao Naihe 一笑奈何!!! *insert smiley with hearty eyes) Xiaonai is not just the top player in the online game, he is also a basketball player, a swimmer, a budding technopreneur, a go player, and a heartthrob to boot. (They should have added that he is a talented pianist or violinist, too! *sarcasm) If a person is that kind of a package, he will surely have large eyebags, but no, they packaged him as everything you can look for in a man, except he’s not a musician. BOO! (Coz damn it, the Chinese have a very long musical history, why not bank on that??? Come on!)

On the romance part, I find it really superficial that Xiaonai falls in love with Weiwei upon seeing her play, because she plays calmly and with grace, her swift fingers confidently pressing keyboard keys and effortlessly defeating her virtual alter ego’s adversaries with poise. (As in many shallow TV series, the characters fall in love because of superficial things, not because of virtues and values. Ugh!) It just so happens that Weiwei is an equally strong character. She is the top female player in the game, the Computer Science Department Beauty Queen, a brilliant techie who knows how to fix her own laptop, and is a loving friend. So in a way, it is refreshing to see a strong independent woman in this series unlike the those we usually encounter in K-Drama (Goblin anyone?). Her only “flaw” is just she “was an old shoe”, having “married” in the game to complete a quest and getting divorced by the asshole so he can “marry” a different female player. So when the super popular top player 一笑奈何 proposed to her, we see people’s double standards who think 芦苇微微 is not good enough for him but nobody condemned her previous “husband” for requesting “divorce” in the game. But 一笑奈何 acts as the perfect gentleman when he ensured that there will be a lavish wedding ceremony and that those who badmouth his wife are horribly punished. KYAAAAA~. And they really are a perfect couple because they both are so well-composed and sensible, both are well-respected and looked up to in school, and both are good-looking.

Luwei weiwei on her second wedding day--- this time to someone who will become his real lover

Yixiao Naihe on horsebck leading the wedding procession

First date as husband and wife... KYAAAA~~~

Notes:

1. The characters study in one of China’s prestigious universities, Tsinghua. I am astounded at how different the dormitories look compared to the ones I visited in Xiamen (not Xiamen University). I don’t know if these are just edited but I find Tsinghua University a beautiful place and the dormitories are very clean, tidy, and full of cute stuffs, like the ones you usually in Taiwan or Japan. So is this China’s way of luring international students to one of their best schools? If that’s the case, I WANT TO GO (and perhaps find my Xiaonai there KYAAAAAA)!!!

2. Is this China’s way of encouraging its youth, especially women, to take up Computer Science? I’ve watched one interview after Xi Jinping’s super lengthy speech during the last National People’s Congress and the Party openly says that science and technology are top priorities for the country’s continuous development. After that, a female scientist was interviewed about the pros and cons of working in the science sector because apparently female scientists are only allowed to work up to a certain age, a limiting factor indeed for women who have brilliant minds (and needless to say, an unnecessary loss to China’s booming tech industry.) So maybe they are lifting constraints for women after all?

So anyway, I will have to watch all 30 episodes to know. But this early, after watching two episodes, I already formed some observations and hypotheses. LOL. It’s the month of love (except I am lonely in a faraway country IN WINTER season) so I am allowing myself to partake in kilig moments in this series… while trying to shut my hyperactive mind up coz my overthinking often overshadows my [frail and fragile] heart. 

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Trivia: Yangyang played the role of Jia Baoyu in the 2007 remake of Dream of Red Mansions. *hearts in eyes.

Godzilla (2014)

“Nature has a power, a power to restore balance. I believe he is that power.”

“The arrogance of man is in thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around.”

Godzilla is an action movie yet I cried all throughout the movie. It’s about the revival of ancient gigantic creatures who are enemies, or what Dr. Serizawa calls nature’s balancer. A scientist’s wife died while on duty checking a nuclear power plant. Fifteen years later, the scientist’s son is a soldier with a family of his own, while the scientist hasn’t gotten over the death of his wife. He has theories of his own about the agency’s incorrect assessment of the situation back then, with the suspicion that they are hiding something. When he attempted to go back to their old house, he was caught. The son flew from San Francisco to Japan too get his father. After the father explained his side to him, the two agreed to return to the old house, now part of a territory that is off-limits to civilians. There they discovered that the scientist has been right all along. At that moment, a large winged creature wrecked havoc and the scientist got killed.

The US military assumed responsibility upon learning that the winged creature and others are headed to San Francisco. Despite Dr. Serizawa’s pleas to let nature to take its own course, the arrogant Americans still continued the operations. Dr. Serizawa suspected that the giant dinosaur-like creature that suddenly apppeared from the seas is the answer to their predicament. The Japanese call it Gojira.

To cut a long story short, of course the day is saved because of Godzilla. But one cannot help but note the following:

1. The Americans always want to be the heroes that save the day. Ugh! They always interfere in other countries. Why don’t they just mind their own business? Oh yeah, US businessmen run the country and so their interests are at stake which means, they project an image of benevolence to third world countries when in fact they are only after the resources.

2. A country as strong as Japan can dominate the world if it wants but its debt of gratitude to the US for making it the way it is now gets in the way. This US ally used to be an enemy during the World War 2 but the US helped rebuild its economy, using Japan as base to stop the spread of Communism in Asia. In this movie, it acts as the brains while the US provides the muscles. Oh well, what do we expect from Americans? They’re all so stupid and selfish and self-righteous. (I have never met a decent American in all my life and I always encounter annoying Americans who think they own the country when they’re just tourists! Such despicable manners and they are such know-it-alls! So I am not sorry for the overgeneralization.)

3. It makes me think how far from our agricultural roots we have come. We now have all these nuclear plants to provide us energy for warming our homes and all. Makes me wonder if geography plays a role in all these since those that are technologically advanced have winters. They naturally have big incentives to level up and provide solutions to problems such as providing cheap energy without using fossil fuels. The Philippines is not that motivated because we are a tropical country. (But maybe we should turn the harsh summers into motivation, too, to have sustainable energy to cool our homes?)

4. A soldier will always have duty first to country as top of his priority. But a decent soldier with a family will always make a way to find his way back. I am touched at how Ford and his wife Elle formed such a partnership based on trust. It’s a given that they trust each other when it comes to fidelity. I am talking more of the trust in the capability of the other to survive in unusual circumstances. 

The Pirate Fairy (2014)

I may not like Disney but then I should admit that they are really good when it comes to animation (I am a fan of Dreamworks though…). So one day while looking at the long list of movies in my collection, I got curious about what Pirate Fairy is and being a One Piece fan, I put it on my to-watch list. It turns out to be a prequel to Peter Pan because it narrates how Captain Hook got his fear of the tick-tocking crocodile.

The story is about Zarina, one of Tinkerbell’s friends. This highly inquisitive fairy questions everything and even raises important questions in science: Do we discover things or do we invent them? Her main obsession is the pixie dust which makes fairies fly and which gives them their abilities. One day while doing experiments, she accidentally created a mixture that makes things grow big. The substance fell on a plant which suddenly became gigantic, causing earthquakes and destroying the pixie lab in the process. She was stripped of her job. Her ego hurt, she ran away.

One day during a festive celebration, Zarina returned. She put everyone to sleep, but good thing Tinkerbell and her friends are not. They chased after Zarina but she fought them off and stole the blue dust which produces the pixie dust. The gang chased again and were horrified to learn that Zarina has become the captain of a pirate crew. They attempted to make her change her mind but to no avail until she divulged the secret of the pixie dust to Captain Hook who then showed is true colors and imprisoned Zarina. The fairies managed to save themselves thanks to the baby crocodile who followed them. This crocodile accidentally swallowed a clock thus the tick-tock sound it makes signalling its arrival. And it is also this same crocodile which, as a baby, terrified the young Hook.

Smells Like Old Spirit

Going on a long vacation on a small budget and bringing along my external hard disk with me, I woke up one morning thinking why the hell I accumulated all these movies yet I didn't have the time to watch them. The same goes with my books which, to my family's great dismay, ended up in almost 20 big boxes. We only knew how many I had when we moved house last year. Heh! (Reminds me of Maestra, Switters' grandma in Tom Robbins' "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates", a literary companion I planned to leave in this country I am in now, except I find it so hilarious and such a literary gem that I am having second thoughts... On the other hand, this is a practice on detachment. Let's see what will happen around July.) 

I guess I was too busy at work and school, too busy doing things for others, for my family, for friends, and for that special someone. Then again when push comes to shove, I have proven that only family will be there for you. So starting 2017 I have been more family-centered and have gone out less with friends, putting my family at the topmost priority, even before work. (In case you are wondering, work is not even in my top 5. Yes, it is important, but I realized after graduation that work only pays the bills but does not nurture the soul much. I had fun in all my jobs, but I know I am in the wrong place. But I stayed on working for private companies while being compensated not so handsomely because you know how capitalists work. I mean, they don't work, they let other people do the work for them for a measly sum, and that's how we perpetuate this stupid system that widens the gap between the rich and the poor.

After I graduated from college, all I wanted was to be of service to my country. I know that a person of my skill is much needed. In all the job interviews I've been to, the interviewers look at me with much awe and almost always exclaims, "You are such a rare breed!". Breed. As if I am some kind of an animal domesticated, engineered by humans to serve their purpose, not mine. But being someone who sees the good in everything I take it as a compliment. When you meet a person who speaks many languages fluently, and some languages that enables her to survive in different countries, I guess you will also be amazed. But I realized, I don't want to be seen as just that because I am more than that. I am also human, flesh and blood. I get hurt, I cry easily, I laugh easily, I have my idiosyncrasies that, if you are a capitalist or a friendly user, you don't need to know me in that level, you will only know me and befriend me for the fact that you know I can be of use to you someday. Pretty much how 95% of the people are in the office until I couldn't take it anymore and finally called it quits. Same with the "friends", those people whom I spent time with and whom I loved truly for who they are but who ended up just, you know, people who are engrossed in this materialistic world they don't care about other people.

But anyway, back to how I would have loved to serve my country... I got opportunities but they were small opportunities and I felt like an instrument. Like, whenever I remember how a professor hired me to do archival research and translations for her but ended up getting paid only PHP 5,000.00 per month, I cannot see how she sleeps soundly at night when she tells her stories to others about how, as a PhD student in Cambridge, she was grateful to have been hired as a library assistant which gave her extra money. (To benchmark, PHP 5,000 is monthly salary of graduate assistants who do clerical work. What I was doing was research and yet she paid me the same amount she pays to someone who just arranges her class readings and staples them. She could have added extra, just because my work was totally different and requires special skills. And yet there she was, knowing fully well my capabilities and work ethics and taking advantage of me who was a penniless archaeology student doing freelance jobs and paying my own tuition so I often worried about going on LOA every semester because I might not have enough money to pay. Talk about hypocrisy. That was my first brush with hypocritical "intellectuals", but I do know that there are true intellectuals out there, those who embody not just honor and excellence, but also service and compassion. My parents did offer to pay although they couldn't understand what got me in such adiscipline that demands money, time, and effort with no monetary returns. I couldn't tell them "THIS IS WHAT LOVE IS ABOUT." (But I guess what I understood from their kind gesture even though I stopped getting money from them after I finished my undergraduate course while working part-time for our family business for no salary, just allowances which was just enough for me to photocopy some readings and I had to walk instead of taking the jeepney to be able to save up for books... is that, you know, family will always be there for you, even if they may not, or if you think they may not, understand you fully well.)

But I guess before going on this long vacation, what really made me sure of my conviction that family will always be there for you is that, my mother arranged for my transport needs to haul away all my things from my dorm and office to our house. I already negotiated with two friends on that, one for backup just in case the other will have unexpected things to attend to. I didn't think of asking anyone from the family because I know they are always busy and I also know (or think) that I am low on their priority list as evidenced by many times I have been let down in the past, thus I was almost always a no-show in my friends important events. (Looking back though, I was able to attend two debut parties of my friends, and my first year-end party in my last company because my brother agreed to pick me up. Looking back, I was able to watch Phantom of the Opera because my dad agreed to be my date as he was concerned for my safety going home late. So maybe, even though I bore grudges against my family especially my parents for not allowing me to really get into the things I wanted, I guess they grounded me in reality in the fact that they made me realize that life is not just about art or literature or music, that it is also about WORKING, being independent, earning your own money so you can get the things that you want and need without depending on anyone, or better yet, in my words, WITHOUT USING ANYONE. (But the idea of working in the humanities is beyond them coz many artists and writers died broke and I know they are just afraid for me if I become engrossed in the pursuit of excellence in those fields.) Early on, as a grade 2 student, my mother taught me how to check receipts of payables. That made me do well in math later on until of course, being a lover of abstract ideas, I really fell in love with math eventually when I discovered its beauty... and chaos theory. LOL. So I ended up taking trigonometry (Math 17, said to be the deciding factor for engineering students because many who got in the program fail in this subject before the 50 series) right after I finish my undergraduate course and so I didn't attend the college graduation rites because I was in class and I didn't want to be absent in class. It was the first time I paid for my own tuition fee and so I felt more responsible and more serious, compared to my undergraduate days wherein I always end up sleeping in class, or being late (I had a bad reputation back then and was notorious for my tardiness thus earning the ire of many teachers).

And this blog entry feels like a small trip down memory lane. I guess this vacation is doing me good. I feel like an old person on her retirement. It's been a little more than a month living in a country so far from home. I had no one to depend on so I cook my own food, wash my own clothes, and just look after my health with extra care because I certainly cannot afford to get sick in a foreign land. So I adopted fully my being Chinese here, adopted the thousand years old tradition of preparing healthy and delicious food, by experimenting on many different things. My diet consists of veggies and fruits and little meat and carbohydrates while this winter cold persists. Of course I miss fried chicken and much as I hate the US, I do confess that I miss KFC, especially hot shots which have been my comfort food when I was staying in the dorm. (And I do miss the fried chicken in the stalls in the friendly neighborhood, the ones which come with sweetly spiced vinegar... And of course, who doesn't miss adobo?)

Oh yeah and before I forget, after one month of living here, I discovered many things about myself, that indeed I am a Cooking Master Girl! LOL. Having tasted many different food in my travels allowed me to get a very nice understanding of how different treatment of veggies and meats and fruits. One only needs to know their essential characteristics and unleash all creativity in the kitchen to bring out their best flavors. I did. And this is called living in the moment for me, being resourceful, being conscious. It's like when you date a person, you want to know about him, what makes him tick, what makes hims sad, what brings out different emotions in him, so you can support him better and bring out the best in him. But at least with food you are rewarded with good health, elated tastebuds, and happy tummy. With dating, you need to invest in the right person otherwise, you end up being drained because you give the good in you away getting nothing in return.

So there my rants and my reflections on life in general. This vacation is meant to heal me from all the negativities I let in without a thought all these years. It was a difficult process, sometimes I doubt myself if I will return to my country with a whole and happy heart again, sometimes I feel afraid of losing myself but I am taking it slow. Instead of hopping from one place to the other, I chose to stay in one place, savor the moments, enjoy the moment, no haste, no deadlines, just plain relaxation while I spend my hours walking, watching movies, reading "Fierce Invalids" (which I am reading at a very slow pace because I don't want to part with it yet), and several ebooks in between. And my offline Youtube videos don't work here which sucks so I watch very few videos. Ugh!