Upside Down

UPSIDE DOWN is one film that really lifts my mind to two different sides, I mean it! It is based on the [more than slightly changed] Physics of Gravity, but it is not really a sci-fi movie though. Upside Down is more of a romantic movie with a little bit of humour and social issues and science thrown in.

The premise is kind of simple, let’s start with this narration:

We are the only known solar system with double gravity. Two twin planets whirling together against one sun, but each with its own and opposite gravity. Now in our world, it’s possible to fall up and to rise down.

I love Jim Sturgess [and Kirsten Dunst] in the movie, but the way he narrates the story in the beginning is cheesy and weird, sort of. Haha~ So, there are two planets, commonly known in astronomy as binary planets, and these two circle a sun and each has its own population. One planet is known as Up Top and the other Down Below. Rich folks live in Up, while poor ones stay in Down [Get the reason behind the naming scheme?]. No interplanetary interaction is allowed between both planets except through this mega-interplanetary-conglomerate, Transworld. This terribly unjust, Down-hating company monopolise and takes the resources from Down and piles them on Up, e.g., oil, but Down has never received the proper payment it should receive. Many people from Down have been captured sneaking to Up trying to find ways to survive. In a way, that mirrors our own world, only this time, the world is really two similar planets.

Anyway, the story centres on Adam, a boy from Down, who during his childhood met a girl from Up, Eden. Yeah, they fell in love but an incident occurred and Adam lost all contact with her, until 10 years later, when he saw Eden on this Up’s TV channel [the antenna must be so good, that Adam can watch a network from the planet above], and she’s working at, guess where, Transworld. Now, Adam is working on a beauty product based on this peculiar bees that will definitely attract the people from Up. Yeayy, now Adam can use his beauty formula as a reason to work there and search for Eden, but apparently, the incident that occurred 10 years ago causes Eden to have amnesia. What’s a lover got to do but to pull the strings together. You can expect a lot of trouble and gravitational interference between Adam and Eden.

Okay, to say that Upside Down is a movie that will turn your life 360° is too far of a stretch. It is just a simple movie with a grand out-of-the-world premise, some people will hate it perhaps, but that is why I actually love it. I mean, it’s a romantic movie for heaven’s sake, and it’s quite good, maybe a bit corny or predictable, but good. I love Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst. They look cute together. Other cast members also play their roles excellently, especially Timothy Spall. The concept of the planets and the science of gravity are great. I love the idea, but maybe for some people, they may take some time to sink in, since there are some rules regarding dual gravity. The visual is so so cool! What it feels like to live in a place where another planet lies just above [or below, it depends] you, what an eye-opener! So does the music, I love it! Upside Down has its flaws, but it is one beautiful love story.

Even gravity can’t pull two lovers apart.

Heroes of Olympus

Γεια!

For those who are wondering what the ef is ‘γεια!’, well, that’s ‘geia’ or ‘hi!’ in Greek. And if you’re wondering why a Greek phrase exists over there, it’s because I’ve just finished reading the third book of this great series by Rick Riordan, Heroes of Olympus. If you’ve read Percy Jackson before, this is actually a continuation of that series. The first book is set about six months after Percy Jackson: The Last Olympian.

Well, yeah, I know the series is targeted for, well, 9+ [as stated on the book], but Heroes is so damn good, I mean, with all those myths and legends and Gods and Goddesses and Heroes and fights and romance and… uhhh… everything. I don’t care that I’m [almost] 22!

Unlike the first series though, Heroes introduces the Roman aspects of the Olympian Deities. If you are a History buff, you’ll know that when Roman Empire conquered Greece, they actually took a lot of Greek things and changed them to suit their Roman nature, those things included Deities, and so we have Zeus or Jupiter, Poseidon or Neptune, Hera or Juno, Athena or Minerva, and a hell lot of others. Anyway, this time, besides Camp Half-Blood, there’s also Camp Jupiter, which houses the Roman community of demigods.

Since the universe of Percy has now been expended, we have new characters. Besides the old favourites, Percy and Annabeth, and Nico, we also have, from the Greek side, Leo and Piper, and from the Roman side, Jason, Hazel, and Frank. Of course, there are lots of other kind of Gods and monsters and whatever that hail from the Greek and Roman legends as well.

The premise of the story is based around the fact that Gaia [or Terra as the Roman form] is trying wreak vengeance upon the Olympians and Demigods and other mortal humans by waking up and destroying the earth [well, that’s one terrifying Mother Earth]. It’s a sort of an old feud between the Titans and the Olympians. So naturally, it’s up to the Greek and Roman demigods to unite [which is NOT something that they do the best, talk about American Civil War], and stop Gaia and other Titans and Monsters from coming back from Tartarus. And what’s best is that in order to fight them, our awesome Demigods need to fly and sail [Argo II is one great ship!] all the way to the Ancient Homelands, Rome and Greece.

That, my friends, is a heck of an adventure!

Cold, So Bitter

I saw him, he wept

last night
lying bare on the
street outside.

In the cold, so bitter
it was a pity sight.

Tried to console him
but how, for I am myself
weak. My heart is not
strong too.

People, they
shoot stab plunder colonise
you into nothing
like you’re just an
invaluable toy
torn dirty ugly,

I wonder what difference
it would make if I
just sit beside him
on that cold bitter
night.

Perhaps
it would be all
the differences
in my life too.

Thundergrass

I sit

among the thundergrass bleed
you leave: slow-ly

I watch, watch
watch
my heart (beats) (beats)

You; slips
right in my mind; O mine
this isn’t the             right
thing to do; yet I do

I sit
among the thundergrass bleed
can; I; want this
to go
a-        way
a-                way

Like windy day’s
dandelion’s seeds

I sit
among the thundergrass bleed

21 Grams

A scientist once said that a human soul, on average, weighs about 21 grams: a soul of 21 grams, staying inside a body, for 525,600 minutes every year.

I wonder if you ever realise that. We move from a place to another carrying it around.

How fragile is a soul? Enough to be broken apart by an expression too harsh, enough to be mashed to nothingness when a dream is destroyed, enough to be exterminated when the things that we believed in for a long time were actually blasphemous, all enough to fade and disappear.

21 grams of soul, hidden somewhere in the dusty corner of a body, too damn fragile, too susceptible to every threat, too easily satisfied by petty achievements, too lonely to be happy.

Agápē

You just gotta love Joanna Noëlle Blagden Levesque a.k.a. JoJo. With all the problems that she is going through right now with her record label [there’s still no sign of her third album!], her love for music and her fans shines bright, and JoJo comes out with this second mixtape.

It is known as Agápē, which means ‘unconditional love’ in Greek, and boy, how I really love JoJo. Here’s the track listing:

Back2thebeginningagain
We Get By
Interlude Un
Take the Canyon
Billions
Interlude Deux: Joel’s Jam
Thinking Out Loud
Interlude Trois: Love This Shit
White Girl in Paris
LTS Reprise
André
St. Patrick’s Day Interlude
Can’t Handle The Truth

Agápē is quite different than her first 2010 mixtape, Can’t Take That Away From Me. While Can’t Take That Away From Me feels more like a real album, Agáp­ē is like a real mixtape, not that I’ve listened to a lot of them. Agáp­ē has interludes that are actually JoJo’s own recording of the events of her life. We get to hear those the night when JoJo was drunk [haha] [Interlude Troise: Love This Shit and LTS Reprise], and also her father playing a harmonica [Interlude Deux: Joel’s Jam]. Thinking Out Loud is one of my favourite tracks, it’s a real live recording of JoJo’s singing, but damn it, it’s just one minute! We Get By and André, like many of JoJo’s songs, are so eargasmic! Can’t Handle The Truth is the jam, man! Slow but so effing good!

I think this mixtape, like her first one, is what a good album should be, unique, special, and personal! Even if it’s kinda short [total length: 27 minutes], Agápē is indeed a labour of love from the heart without limits or boundaries.

Love of a Scientist

The moon is not a symbol of love, the scientists say. It’s just a rock floating mindlessly in the space, orbiting the earth as loyal as it has been for aeons. Why can’t I see it as how poets see it? An eternal metaphor of love. Beautiful, isn’t it? A moon radiates the sky, and I appreciate its albedo, enough luminance for me to watch your countenance and fall more and more deeply in love with you. I wish upon a shooting star. I can make myself believe that I am transporting my wishes to place where dreams are valued, judged, processed. And why not I believe it? A novel idea, if not absurd; a child-like dream, but the universe is large, at some point you think there’ll be this Einstein-Rosen bridge to another dimension.

I can’t translate myself. Your voice is an atlas, and I will travel millions of light-years away when I hear it. My eardrum rings with your voice. It reverbs and resonates as loud as a bell during midnight. It hurts, but the sound longs to be listened, and I do that. I used to try distancing myself, crossing nautical miles of the seas, going high above the atmosphere, trying to get away from the slightest noise that comes out of your mouth, but in the end, the earth is not that large of a planet. This land’s end is just a short walk away from the beginning. You are still here, I am still there. Your shadow touches this place as the sun sits on a degree that signifies the late afternoon.

In a way, I am like someone waiting to be dissected, a surgery of sorts. My diagnosis is you. My disease is you. No medicine, no way to heal. Deep inside, I always want to exhale you out of my lungs, erase you out of my brain, and cut you so I have a heart that is whole again. I should not give you a room in it, it’s too small but you occupy a space too large. If you could just see the chambers of my heart, if you could see that my feeling travels throughout this body, along the veins, along the arteries, carried by my blood.

The sun still sets now and every day.

Sem Three's Dean's List Dinner

So UiTM’s Faculty of Education had organised the Dean’s List Award Dinner last week. The dinner was held to celebrate those who got the Dean's Award for their third semester. My friends from both IPG Kota Bharu and my own IPG Gaya attended the event. It was not as grand as the previous semester’s dinner, but hey, it felt good to go there! The theme was Arabian Desert, but nope, I was so not in the theme! Haha~

Now, here’s wishing that I’ll get a good result for Part 4!!! Huzzah baby huzzah!

Slight

Your slightest touch is a word, and in my heart, it blooms into 10,000 different languages. 10,000 different languages and yet, I don’t know how to pronounce any one of them. Every phoneme, every sound, it stops as it reaches my lips. No air inhaled will ever change to a noise.

Your slightest touch is a small fire, and in my mind, it ignites into the most intense light I’ve ever seen. It blinds me, keeping me from seeing the road ahead, and I walk without any sense of direction. Irony, seeing that light is what we should have if we want to see.

Your slightest touch is a seed, and in my soul, in grows into a tree, hundreds of metres high, scratching the sky, hundreds of metres below, cracking the earth’s core. The wind won’t uproot it, the wind won’t ever break the branches. It just sways and sways, and seeping me like water more and more.

Your slightest touch is a moment, and in me, it turns into a thousand years of records. I want it to stop, but each scene is so beautiful, unattainable but so beautiful.

I Will Still Be Awake Even When December Ends

Hello there!

December is perhaps the busiest and the most hectic month in my life [well, my life as a student of the Faculty of Education, that is]. There are lots and lots of work to be done.

I’ve two microteaching, one for Methodology of Teaching Literature [gonna teach my friends In The Midst of Hardship], and the other one for Methodology of Teaching Listening and Speaking [for this one, it’s all about personal pronouns, and I’m focusing on the speaking skill]. I’m so looking forward to micro-teach. Heheh~ Besides that, I will also have a solo performance during Minggu Kebudayaan. Solo performance of what? Reading a poem! I hope I’ll do great! ^^ Other than that, we should not forget about MTLS’ Creative Project and Exhibition, and also Japanese Language 2 Video Project [so looking forward to that. Our film is so ‘psycho’!!! Haha~]. Trust me when I say that after one work, there will be another one waiting behind. Heheheh~

Time just moves too fast. I can’t believe that I have been studying at INTEC for almost ONE year. Another year to go and I will go back to Sabah.

Time just flies.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. 
Abraham Lincoln