Avatar

Description
"Avatar" is an emotional journey of redemption and revolution. The story tells of a wounded ex-marine, who thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in bio-diversity, and eventually crosses over to lead an indigenous race in a battle for survival. Thus, combining the elements of massive spectacle and intimate character that made James Cameron's "Titanic" the highest grossing film of all time.

Summary
"Avatar" centres on Jack Sully (Sam Worthington), a U.S. marine who is paralysed from the waist down. He is recruited to travel to a planet called Pandora, where it is inhabited by an indigenous population known as the Na'vi, which takes on a human-like form but with a tail, blue complexion and a height that is 10 feet tall. Jack soon participates in an Avatar programme, whereby he will inhabit the body of a genetically-engineered Na'vi hybrid known as an Avatar. While his existence in the world of Na'vis has its own agenda, chaos erupts when the humans begin to attack their peaceful habitat in order to pillage their natural resources.

Australian actor Sam Worthington successfully delivers his part perfectly as a down-right humanitarian who is brave and loyal. Initially supposed to help Colonel Miles (Stephen Lang) destroy the Na'vi's homeland, we soon witness him embrace the Na'vi race despite not actually being one. Furthermore his strong feelings for the beautiful Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) made him willingly sacrifice anything for her, even betraying his own kind. As for Zoe Saldana, she holds her stand as a patient and wise teacher towards Jack as she slowly guides him to become one of them. She too has her fair amount of action sequences with her enemies. Stephen Lang's performance does not fall below the bar of excellence as a colonel who tries to destroy the Na'vi race. Without fail, he makes sure audiences form an immense hatred towards his actions.

Official Website
Synopsis

I was pretty keen to watch this since its a James Cameron movie ( think Titanic ). I have 2 group of friends who either hated this movie or loved this movie to bits. Well, I belong to the latter group. Its actually quite an awesome movie, an out of this world movie. A story that one wouldn't expect it to be.

Ideas : MRT

I ams sure most of you would have notice the new change on the MRTs by now, the addition of the priority seats in the cubicles where its distinguished by a different colour from the rest of the seats.
In Taiwan, no one would actually take those priority seats which are strictly reserved for the elderly, pregnant ladies or disabled folks. However in Singapore, no one seemed to care. Or rather I should say, some passengers do avoid sitting in that priority seats, like myself.
The rest of the passengers still treat those seats as normal passengers seats and would sit there with no qualms.
However, due to our culture and upbringing, we do not really tell these passengers off.

So in this idea review, we thought of having an automated seat by a corner, which we can pull down and take a seat. Its strictly for the unfortunate folks as mentioned above.
Anyone with no sense of shame can still pull down the seat but with an additional step of pulling it down and taking a seat, I hope it will deter those shameless passengers not to take it, without giving a consideration for those who really need it.

Planet 51

Synopsis :
The inhabitants of Planet 51 live in fear of 'alien' invasion. Their paranoia is realised when an astronaut arrives from Earth and befriends a young resident. He has to avoid capture in order to recover his spaceship and try to return home.

I wouldn't have chose to watch this movie if not for my group of friends. The tagging along part is more of a hanging out with my friends then to actually watch the movie.
I am not a cartoon fan and I will not attend one, unless its really a good blockbuster show.

This is a really boring movie and I believe that its strictly for children or for those young-at-heart adults. Even though it provided some good-natured laughs along the way, but it still doesn't help to garner my votes for this movie. I yawned most of the time though I will never sleep in a theatre. Thats a rule I stick by strictly.

At the end, the moral of the story is "Fear of the Unknown"
Come to think of it, its can be interpreted as a meaningful movie but I think I can find better storylines out there.

Source : Planet 51

Catching up with friends

Amidst the fast flurry of activities and how times flies, its always nice to pause and reflect on your life.
A good piece of music, with a quiet environment is what I need to actually sit down and ponder on my life reflections and priorities.

As the year 2009 is coming to a close soon, its time for you to sit down and reflect on this year - what you have achieved for yourself and was it a meaningful year for yourself? Are there things that you can improve further or wishing that you could have have a chance to redeem yourself?

I had a fun time catching up with friends last night over a hot barbeque at my house.
Now that we have reached an age where many of us are married, our circle of friends have indeed expanded to doubled its size.
Our topics have since moved on as the years flew, to more serious topics.

We are all happy for a good friend of ours who have found a guy although they are still in the friends stage for now, but for her to be able to bring that friend to our bbq for a close friends' gathering, its indeed a big step for her.
Her previous partner of 7 years have brought much hurt and pain to her by two-timing her. It took a long time for her to heal her wounds and to be able to step out of her shell to finally meet up with new male friends on her own.
She's finally opening up her heart and we are all so happy for her. Since Xmas is just round the corner, I really hope to give her my blessings for the new guy in her life.

It takes 2 hands to clap in order to keep the flame of a friendship burning strongly.
As we grew older, with more commitments, it can get increasingly difficult to meet up that often but so long each of us made an effort, it will succeed.
For friends who doesn't made an effort to meet up with me, I guess that also tells alot of how strong you value my friendship. Our fate will therefore ends there.

Standard Chartered Marathon 2009

Despite Standard Chartered Marathon had been held for several years, I was quite disappointed that their race pack collection was 3 days before the race. What a mad rush to collect the pack and where can I find time to wash the top, if I collect on the eve of the race?

This year, their tee was from New Balance ( last year, it was from Adidas ) and the bag they provided was way too ugly and looks cheapo ( last year, it was a nice sports bag) Bascially, the drawstring backpack reminded me of my primary school sports day bag. For students.

Unlike shape run, the race pack contained nothing substantial, not even some sponsers' vouchers to be used.
The race booklet did not even contain information on post run recovery tips unlike other runs.

Well, I just have to agreed that its indeed one of the most anticipated run of the year, since only the run is really the only one worth looking forward and nothing else.

Customer Service Attitude

Its really difficult to get good customer service nowadays or anyone with the passion and initiative.

Take this example, I wrote in to a vendor, asking for quotations on a particular equipment with the interest of getting it for my department. And guess what he wrote back?
He requested for my full name (when its apparent on my company email address), my email address (I almost faint!), my number (with the details furnished on it, he can call my company to ask to speak to me) and my company name ( its almost laughable).

I meant, I wondered if this guy followed a template to ask questions without even thinking about it. I am appalled and disgusted with his attitude and I simply refused to reply to him.
First and foremost, I am a customer and if he wants my deal, he should take the initiative and use his brains before writing such a no-brainer email.
Secondly, why must I provide him with all the details when its all apparent from my email address? Am I suppose to spoon-feed him?

I cannot believe there are such people around, it puts a bad name and impression on the company. I seriously hope he is not the managing director himself.

If you think this is an isolated case, you will be surprised that I met another customer service officer with the exact same attitude. Count their lucky stars that I did not remember the bank and her name.
I wrote in to their enquiry form via their website, asking about a particular account which I cannot remember now. She wrote back, saying that she cannot reveal sensitive information via email but to have me to call her back.
Since she is a customer service officer with a bank, I was expecting her to have very good customer service skills. All it will take is a simple call from her to clarify it with me on the phone, since I have left my IC number and mobile number with her. Why should I call her back?

Recently, as the last weekend was the Black Friday weekend with many USA online stores giving huge discounts, I was tempted to purchase BenefitCosmetics. I received their newletter with promotional codes on free international delivery but unfortunately, I was not able to use it during my checkout on their website and wrote in to ask about it.

The first lady who replied me with an almost zero helpfulness, requesting me to provide more details when its all written down in the "contact us" form to her. I was anxious to meet the deadline and wrote in again and thankfully, I met with a very helpful and courteous staff who eased my concerns.
Although I did not manage to get the product in the end, but her attitude certainly brighten up my day.

" Thank you for writing to us at Benefit Cosmetics.


We're sorry for any miscommunication regarding our free shipping codes. The PRETTY50 code is only valid for standard shipping on U.S. orders. Please enter SHIPINTL at checkout to receive free shipping, as we have checked this code and it appears to be working. Remember, for this code your minimum order needs to be $85.


We hope this information helps. Once again, we apologize for this inconvenience.
Thank you for shopping with Benefit Cosmetics.


Angelica G.
Benefit Cosmetics Customer Service"

Read more about what customer service is all about.

Ideas : Customer Service Counter

We were both doing window-shopping in Illuma, the latest shopping complex near Bugis Junction when we noticed that the customer service counter is on the ground floor which is actually very normal for most shopping complexes.

But because Illuma is quite a spacious and big building, therefore if a customer is on the 4th floor, its quite troublesome for them to come down all the way to the first floor just to ask the customer service officer.
So what we suggest is to get it in a video conferencing mode or MSN networking mode on every floor.

Say if the customer is on the 4th floor and he wants to get some queries answered by the customer service officer so what can he do, if he does not want to travel all the way down to the first floor?

He will go to a computer terminal, located in an isolated area ( to avoid loud noise ) on the 4th floor where there is a ready webcam positioned on both the customer service officer’s computer and on the customer.

Link up or ask to get connected to them and he can start interacting with the officer to get his queries answered.

Simple, hassle-free and efficient!

Yakking Away

One just can't feel but notice what other colleagues are doing on a normal work day.
After a major restructuring in my company, we were being merged with another department and hence, I was seated with new colleagues.

Sitting around me are colleagues with very peculiar habits.
Y - watching movies, playing games, reading novels or dozing off
D - watching You-Tube, learning magic tricks
S - yakking on the phone about her babies at different places and different times but always appears when the time is right.
R - getting MCs so frequently that one may think she is sick all year round
G - getting MCs on Mondays when she is tired of travelling back to Singapore from JB on an early Monday morning
E - getting MCs when the sky is crying, guess her sickness does follow the weather.

And here I am, so busy with work up to my neck while there are people taking a fat pay cheque just by doing half the workload. How unfair can life be?

Never Forever (2007)

Never Forever  , a 2007 joint production between South Korea and the USA is quite a touching movie which I watched recently. In fact, I never heard of this movie before till a colleague of mine passed me a copy of  it.

Synopsis :
Sophie, a young Caucasian woman, and Andrew, a successful Korean-American professional, have been suffering from infertility. The medical probability of Sophie bearing Andrew's child is near zero. At the infertility clinic Sophie encounters Jihah, a poor, recent immigrant from Korea. Sophie notices that he bears a striking resemblance to her husband. Sophie initiates a sexual relationship with Jihah for the hope of getting pregnant to keep her family.

Geox kills my feet

A good friend of mine is a fan of Geox shoes and heels for some unknown reason. For the price that she is paying and the pain that she is getting, she still loves the shoes.
Unknowingly, I have fallen into the trap and become its victim. My very first pair of casual shoes literally almost kill me or rather my feet, leaving me with painful blisters.

I bought my very first pair of Geox D Snake 25 from a very friendly Malay lady at its Raffles City outlet and happily went home with my purchase.
I don't think I have ever been hurt by a pair of casual shoes so much that I almost want to throw it far far away. Retailing at $145, I don't think the price justified its comfort ( or is there? ) at all.

Its a really nice pair of shoes which I fell in love with instantly but why must it hurt so much? On my feet and on my pockets. Nice to look at but not practical to wear.
I have been wearing slippers for the past 3 days because the blisters does not allow me to wear other shoes.

And tomorrow I will be going for my run at Macritchie, hope my feet will be in a good mood by then.
I just wondered why good looking shoes cannot be comfortable?
Can someone out there make shoes that are not only comfortable, easy on the pocket and nice to look at?

My Boys Over Flowers craze

I have been caught up in the fever of Boys Over Flowers recently, hence the neglection of this blog. I have always been a fervert fan of Korean dramas ever since I watched my first drama of Winter Sonata.

However, due to work and personal commitments, I have not been watching Korean dramas for quite some time until BOF came along. It was highly recommended by a good friend when I finally decided to just watch 1 episode to see how it fares.

Needless to say, I was hooked all the way. If you watch this drama in the hope of getting good acting and a good story plot, I will perhaps discourage you.

It does not have very good acting and the story does not link at times but what won me over or the legions of fans around the world are probably the 4 good looking guys ( for me, its just Ji Hoo ), 1 pretty girl, beautiful landscape, entertaining scenes and a fairytale like plot.

I did not think the girl who starred as Jan Di in the story was particulary pretty but she was quite adorable and as in all Korean dramas, there are always 2 guys fighting over the love of 1 girl, good looking hunks, gambling debts, poor girl and rich guy kinda story.

BOF is quite an entertaining story and with Kim Hyun Joong who acted as Ji Hoo in the show, I would not have missed an episode. Its actually very romantic and sweet when you see how the 2 guys show their love for Jan Di. One is the love of her life and the other is the soulmate. Who will you choose if you were Jan Di?

In this real life, will one actually have 1 love and 1 soulmate?

And if I was Jan Di, who will I choose? Will love be more important than soulmate or vice versa?

This show will be shown on Ch U, 915pm on 16th May. Isn't that great?

Here's where you can watch it online : mysoju

Here's the synopsis : dramabeans

The OST : koreadramamv