1. Introduction
2. Exposition
3. Development
4. Conflict
5. Climax
6. Resolution

Basically it's very very very hard to find a story WITHOUT Aristotelian narrative structure, especially a good one. Watch Butterfly Effect!

• "Don't understand why he (the CEO) is sueing SPH in the first place..."
• "It's ok to sue, but accuser's own moral character must be able to withstand challenges from the defendants." (Haha!)
• "It's very rare for people to stop sueing halfway, there must be some reasons." (What? There're more hidden things that can't see the light?)

After watching the final episode of the Star Wars prelude trilogy (finally), I would like to commend Geoge Lucas for his creativity & ability creating such an exciting & exotic universe. However I would only give his Revenge of the Sith 3.5 stars. DO NOT turn away from the movie by my poor rating. I strongly recommend the entire Star Wars 'sixology' to everyone, but I've my own personal reasons for the rating.

When asked to comment on the poor rating given by reviewers on all 3 episodes of his Star Wars Prelude, George Lucas just shrugged and said, "Well, people watching Star Wars (prelude) can be divided in to 2 groups, those over 30 and those below 30. Those over 30 don't really like it but young people like it a lot. Since most of the reviewers belong to the 'over 30' category, it doesn't really matter."

Being a Star Wars fan, I've great anticipation for the movie, especially after so many people saying that it's a great movie. However, after watching Revenge I didn't feel the kind of elation I feel after I watch a good (4-stars) movie, like A Beautiful Mind, Matrix etc. I just find it an average movie, despite exciting lightsaber duels & battles, exotic worlds, beautifully designed weapons and starships, ironic development of storyline (Anakin cause the death of the woman he loves by trying to save her), and I'm not yet 30. After some thinking, I know why.

The problem is: I'm a Star Wars fan! I know the story of Star Wars inside out. I knew Papatine is Darth Sidius. I knew the Jedi will be massacred. I knew Anakin will turned bad. That's the problem with making a prelude: people know the ending before watching the movie, so they are just watching for how it reach that ending. All the twists and turns have little effects on them. It's an uphill battle for the story teller. Lucas did a good job though for coming up with something that we didn't expect (the irony). I can imagine how good the movie for someone who I don't know what I knew. (Sadly the reviewers know as much as I do, so they gave the same rating as I gave :P)

One might wonder why Lucas prefered to make a prelude instead of a follow up? Well, as a hard-core Star Wars fan maybe I can answer for him. Because the original Star Wars story is so well-written, a dozen of writers like Kelvin J Anderson, Timothy Zahn's (to name the two I like best) had written dozens of novels which develop the story from just after Return of the Jedi, to 10+ years later, where Leia and Han Solo have 3 kids and growing up fast. And what do you do when you find it hard to write an extension? You write a prelude. Simple.

One seldom sees a story so well written that it inspired so many writers, programmers, toys companies etc. and being continued indefinitely. I can only think of a few universes that is comparable to the Star Wars universe, in terms of size and quality, Tokien's Middle Earth and X-Men universe. That's why I admire George Lucas. He's a genius. Those who haven't watched Star Wars should watch it.

PS. Here's one Star Wars inspired joke I copied from http://kennysia.com/. It's to demostrate that Star Wars is so good that it can even inspire stupid jokes like this. Haha, it's damn funny =P But be warned: it contains sexual explicit contents...  

********

Imagine a female Yoda...

Girl Yoda: "Kenny sweetums. Horny I am. F**k me you must!"
Kenny: "Yes, master."

*Undress. Kenny mounts Yoda*

Girl Yoda: "Mmmmm.... Very nice that feels. Long lightsabre, you have!"
Kenny: "Thank you, master."
Girl Yoda: "Ooooh, f**k me harder my padawan! Use the Force! USE THE FORCE!"
Kenny: "Ohhh... Yes, master."
Girl Yoda: "Stop you must not! Cumming I am! CUMMING I AM!"
Kenny: "Hold on, master!"
Girl Yoda: "AAAAH!"

*BOOM! Yoda explodes*

Kenny: "Master?! MASTER!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

 ********

PS. With regards to 'Join Christianity or you go to HELL!' statement, some may say that's because we have sinned, and only if you believe in Jesus that you'll be pardoned. Fine, I admit I've sinned. But according to Christian belief, even new-borned babies are sinned. Why? Great, now everyone is sinned so everyone has to join Christianity so as not to go to hell, even babies. I can only see 3 rationale for this: 1) Head of Church came up with this thinking (slogan) to encourage (threaten) people to join Christianity. I can imagine it worked very well to uneducated mass in ancient times. I don't mean the pastors are delibrately cheating us in present day. I believe they've absolute faith in the truthfullness of the statement (Take note of the word 'faith'). But that doesn't make it true. 2) It makes it easier for Christians to deal with deaths, of themselves and of relatives. True, it's more comforting to think one goes heaven when one pass on, but that doesn't make it true either. In this case though, it doesn't matter. 3) It's true.

Somehow, I feel that case 1) is more likely. Just a personal opinion.

PPS. No offence meant to anyone believing in any of the religions mention above. I'm just expressing my opinions & doubts. Anyone with comments or answers please tell me. I'm interested.

We've came to Christianity. Here I would like to quote from Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) , which was copied from XiaXue's site:

"The Babel fish," said the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. (......) The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof for the nonexistance of God.

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

" 'But,' says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It would not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

" 'Oh dear,' said God, "I haven't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."

Frankly speaking, there's no other religion that requires more 'faith' than Christianity. 'Join Christianity or you go to HELL!' Not that I'm not sympathetic towards the sufferings Jesus underwent for us, not that I'm sure that God doesn't exist (I'm neutral), but I think it'll take quite a lot for me to believe that go to hell thing.

Anwz, assuming God exists and He did pass words to his messengers, isn't possible for those messengers, or people who listened to those messengers, to misinterpret His messages? Afterall, it has proven on a several instances that people's interpretation of His messages is wrong. Sun doesn't revolves around Earth. Earth wasn't created just a few thousand years ago. If not for the church, Copernicus and Dawin won't have such a hard time.

And this leads to my next question: if it's possible for people to misinterpret God's messages, is it possible for people to delibrately misinterpret God's messages? Or even, put words into God's mouth and said that God declared this and this?? If not, why are there witch hunts, where women deemed as witches (note: some may be innocent) were burnt at stake? Was our almighty God so tulan with these mere mortal women that they've to be treated so cruelly? (Isn't God all forgiving? Or He has some 'higher plan' for them?) Or was some people (head of the church probably) just psychotic? What about wars 'in God's name'? Doesn't God tells us to love our enemies? And if I didn't remember wrongly, doesn't 1 of the 10 commandments tells us that 'Thou shall not kill'?

Must we have faith in everything people say God says? Remember: faith = believe blindly.

In my opinion, religions started out good, but has been misinterpreted/corrupted by people as times goes on. Now, it's just a source of power for those who control the faithful masses who believed in the religion. What I feel is, believe in or join whatever religion you want, but do not believe blindly. For me myself, I only believe in one 'religion': I won't even join any religion. Instead, I will just adopt useful teachings from all religions. With regard to any teachings that's threatening and illogical, I'll jus f it and go to sleep (睡教).

I'm writing this entry partly because I've wanted to pen down my religious (or non-religious) thoughts for a long time, and also partly because I felt some 共鸣 after reading XiaXue's entry on Christianity. As far as I can remember, I don't have good opinions on religions ever since I was young. I remember I even made a girl to throw away her Buddha pendent when I was in kindergarden. Haha 我这么小就做孽了! =P Anwz here are my doubts on the 3 major religions, namely Taoism, Buddism and Christianity. (Islam is out of the question coz I'm slightly racist.)

I admit I dunno much about Taoism, I just know that it evolves from 老庄's teaching. 老庄 advocate 'be one with nature', but it seems to me that rituals that the Tao priests do are so unnatural, so... fake. How is it that a religion can deviate so much from some famous sages' teaching and claim that it's based on their teaching? Is it brand name or something?

Buddism. Of the three religions, I most incline towards Buddism's school of thought. However, I'm sceptical on the religion itself. Buddha's teaching told us that everything keeps changing (诸行无常), therefore realise that everything is just mirage (虚幻); We must put away material & emotional wants & needs (四大皆空), & most importantly, the concept of 'self' (诸法无我). Once we achieve these, we'll attain an enlightened / happy state, ie. nirvana (涅磐寂静 - the second word is spelt wrongly, it shld be 木 instead of 石). This's the aim of the religion. However, how come we can see monks driving Mercedes? Maybe they are so enlightened that Merz means nothing to them. It's just a form of transport.

Bullshit.

(To be continued...)

Just visited S'pore's most popular blog site after it being featured in ZaoBao. Well, this girl's writing style is 俗气, with lots of f-words & others, but it's highly entertaining and funny, reminding me of Liang Zhi Qiang's style of humour - she made us, as a Singaporean, laugh at ourselves. I love this quote from her blog:"Tokien can't be more long-winded than me." (For those who have read Lord of the Rings before, you'll understand how longwinded Tokien is) Seems like she's quite well-read, 不愧是 RV student.  For those who haven't heard of her site, go have a look: http://www.xiaxue.blogspot.com

PS. Her entry on entry on phone sex is damn funny, but feminists are going to protest! =P

Regarding government's new chinese education policy, I just have 3 words to say: "What the fcuk?!" Actually I've more than 3 words to say. Anwz, for those who haven't heard the news, the new policy is that in order to increase students' interest in chinese, they are placing more emphasis on reading and listening instead of writing. This means that the student can bring dictionary into exams and the spelling sections such as 填写汉字 will be taken away from PSLE. This automatically translate into students do not need to learn how to write chinese words.

After hearing this news, I can't help but marvelled at the stupidity of those people who set this policy. For a average student who underwent the traditional chinese education and memorising chinese words the hard way like me, to write a 200 to 300 words chinese essay, I need to check dictionary at least 10 times. I was wondering if these new generation can complete an essay of the same length without checking the dictionary at least a 100 times, if they don't start memorising words when they are young. Talking about generating interest, if I've to check the dictionary a 100 times to write an essay, I'll quickly lost any interest I've for chinese. Or are those policy makers going to abolish writing chinese essays in exam next?

The government keeps talking about the importance of chinese, yet by the way they are setting chinese education policies, they are treating chinese like shit. First the 华文B课程, then the abolishing of chinese as an university entering criteria, and now this.  The first 2 policies are still acceptable. But the recent one... they purposely lowering the chinese standard of whole Singapore just for a few who don't like chinese. This is totally absurb.

Actually this is none of my business, if they want the new generation to die, let them die lor. Who cares? Maybe it's even advantageous to me, since I know chinese and they don't. However I really think PAP need smarter people or else Singapore will be in deep trouble. 

PS. 佩玲，PAP全靠你了!

"How do you feel about HwaChong merging with The Chinese High School?" This is the single most thought provoking question asked nowadays (except perhaps "what do you think of the name of the new school?"), and the most interesting answer I've heard is: "Ok wat, we're from the same family..." by a TCHS guy. The reply to that is more interesting: "Unfortunately, there's lots of grudge in the family..." by a RGS gal. (As for whom they are, people from 00S60 will sure know them 'cause the guy is from my class and the girl is from senior class, and they are Angel n Mortal. Can guess? =P)

Anwz from the above exchange we can know that most if not all Hwa Chongians who are not from TCHS are against merging. I don??t know about the rest of TCHS guys, but I'm also against merging. I think both schools have their own unique identities and by merging they lose both their identities. We graduates lost our identities also... imagine next time people ask us which schools were we from and we reply TCHS n HC, and they said, "Huh? Got such schools meh?" *Speechless*

Most importantly, we LOVE HwaChong, and our class, our bench, our college songs, our dances, our crest, but most of them won't be the same next year... sad... However, as Mr Chow said, "It??s for the good of both schools and education as a whole.", and since it's already a fact and it can't be changed, let us look on the bright side and hope for the best.

Btw, I really don??t know what the heck those people deciding the name are doing... HwaChong Institution, Hua Qiao Zhong Xue... I think it's really degrading to use the word "Institution" and "Zhong Xue", it's like HwaChong downgrade into a secondary school... and they used the word "Institution" some more... wah kaoz... Must they copy our "rival" school???

Actually I think our new school name is worst name there can be, until I saw a suggestion in the petition: "The Chinese Institution". If they really use it I'm going to jump off the building...

But then a name is only a name. No matter what has changed, the HwaChong spirit will never change, because it??s in the heart of every single Hwa Chongians.

Written on 8 Aug 2004, posted on Multiply

PS. There's such a big hoo haa last time, but look at what is happening now? Now everyone is used to it and no one say anything. Anwz what can we do? This proves the rule by Rosen Blatt - "It doesn't matter. What you think matter, doesn't."

PSS. Btw, I think his book is crap.