The wings of an angel have rusted.
Holiday booklist (most likely to become one of my new year's resolutions):
- Dracula by Bram Stoker (proudly finished)
- the know-it-all by Aj Jacobs (just embarked on it)
- The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (recently purchased in kino for only 12.95!)
- The Inferno by Dante Aligheri (finally I have laid my hands on it. Thank you mualim sisters!)
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- Cell by Stephen King
I think I have a very unhealthy reliance on coke light. Without my usual dosage of big gulp, I get cranky and crabby and it's absolutely not pretty. This only occurs when I am required to function before eleven in the morning. It could be the fizz that make me bubble, curing my morning grouchiness, or the sugar rush from artificial sweeteners in it. Whatever it is, it works terribly well.
Watched Rape of Nanking with Ky today! Am I glad to finally watch a movie after so long, and it was worth all the ten bucks. The film was shot in a sort of documentary- renactment way, with black and white clips and photos, interviews from survivors and some actors who played these group of westerners that savved the lives of 250 000 people by intervening the Japanese attacks and forming an unofficial neutral zone. Yes, I did cry. It is hard not to, as you watch the old man tear as he recounts his mother being bayoneted, and his baby brother skewered from the buttocks by a Japanese soldier when he was 7 years old. And how he had to watch his baby brother struggle back to his dying mother who continued to breast feed him even if it meant aggravating her wound( the baby was suckling on the wound itself too). There were many videos and photos or horrendous injuries, bayonet stabs, chunks of elbows and necks cut off, faces burnt and blackened yet the person very much alive in agony. It really is a very impactful image.
However, I was slightly peeved at the main gist of the story, which was about this group of foreigners who saved many Chinese. I do commend their immense courage and how noble they were to risk their lives, however, it gave me a sense of superiority. A feeling that, are we Asians really incapable of surviving without out Caucasian counterparts? I suppose the point of the film was not to propagate white superiority but to commend how an outsider could risk their lives for another, how racism is plainly ludacrious. Yet, I came a way feeling slightly indignant. Perhaps they should have shown some Chinese actually helping their own kind too, or that certain japanese general (whose name I just cannot remember) who helped many of the citizens in Nanking escape. Perhaps I am just thinking too much, perhaps I should take the filmmakers altruistic aims as the truth and not let the cynic in me take over.
Holiday booklist (most likely to become one of my new year's resolutions):
- Dracula by Bram Stoker (proudly finished)
- the know-it-all by Aj Jacobs (just embarked on it)
- The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (recently purchased in kino for only 12.95!)
- The Inferno by Dante Aligheri (finally I have laid my hands on it. Thank you mualim sisters!)
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- Cell by Stephen King
I think I have a very unhealthy reliance on coke light. Without my usual dosage of big gulp, I get cranky and crabby and it's absolutely not pretty. This only occurs when I am required to function before eleven in the morning. It could be the fizz that make me bubble, curing my morning grouchiness, or the sugar rush from artificial sweeteners in it. Whatever it is, it works terribly well.
Watched Rape of Nanking with Ky today! Am I glad to finally watch a movie after so long, and it was worth all the ten bucks. The film was shot in a sort of documentary- renactment way, with black and white clips and photos, interviews from survivors and some actors who played these group of westerners that savved the lives of 250 000 people by intervening the Japanese attacks and forming an unofficial neutral zone. Yes, I did cry. It is hard not to, as you watch the old man tear as he recounts his mother being bayoneted, and his baby brother skewered from the buttocks by a Japanese soldier when he was 7 years old. And how he had to watch his baby brother struggle back to his dying mother who continued to breast feed him even if it meant aggravating her wound( the baby was suckling on the wound itself too). There were many videos and photos or horrendous injuries, bayonet stabs, chunks of elbows and necks cut off, faces burnt and blackened yet the person very much alive in agony. It really is a very impactful image.
However, I was slightly peeved at the main gist of the story, which was about this group of foreigners who saved many Chinese. I do commend their immense courage and how noble they were to risk their lives, however, it gave me a sense of superiority. A feeling that, are we Asians really incapable of surviving without out Caucasian counterparts? I suppose the point of the film was not to propagate white superiority but to commend how an outsider could risk their lives for another, how racism is plainly ludacrious. Yet, I came a way feeling slightly indignant. Perhaps they should have shown some Chinese actually helping their own kind too, or that certain japanese general (whose name I just cannot remember) who helped many of the citizens in Nanking escape. Perhaps I am just thinking too much, perhaps I should take the filmmakers altruistic aims as the truth and not let the cynic in me take over.
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