Musings & brilliant Starbucks customer service

1. For the second time in just over two years, I was in Melbourne on work. I was slightly more used to the place this time, and didn’t mind wandering around by myself as much. I had good pho at Mekong, visited Nobu a couple of times and realised the truth behind the advice to enjoy the best in life in moderation and remembered, while walking around one of the mini-marts near the hotel (or was this in Narita or Los Angeles? Darn – now I think it was in Narita, just passing through, when I was being nasty to an acquaintance-colleague) and coming across a display of Dove chocolates, that I used to adore those two-square packages of melt-in-your-mouth roof-of-the-mouth-laving luxury. Now I don’t.

2. Increasingly, I don’t know where to get good caffe latte in Singapore. In general, Starbucks’s has weak foam and no espresso kick. I now have almost all my lattes at Bakerzin – at least the foam there is consistently thick and the taste of espresso occasionally surfaces.

3. Starbucks has BRILLIANT customer service though. I have an egg-white wrap (double-toasted) and a venti iced coffee with a dash of milk nearly everyday at its branch at The Central, and the folks behind the counter there are unfailingly smiley even when they are really busy. (They remember my “usual”, heh.) When absent-minded me lost two Starbucks cards (basically stored-value cards which can be registered at the Starbucks web site and topped up), Starbucks allowed for the cards to be de-registered (i.e. made unusable, preserving the value in the cards), sent an email to say they were sorry I lost my cards, replaced the cards and allowed me to transfer my unused $$ over to the new cards. I didn’t expect all that! This reminds me: I need to put something on its Facebook page.

4. I wanted to write about this before it won all those Oscars, but I really enjoyed The Artist. I thought it was a vision sumptuously, painstakingly, lovingly and comprehensively realised :) (Though, to be very honest, I still think it’s gimmicky :p)

pieces of media

I realise I haven’t been blogging a lot, and while work and a general malaise of tiredness and lack of inspiration has been the main reasons, the following engrossing pieces of media have also contributed :) 

This one looks like a video game-inspired musing on the importance of open communication.  Loved the ending :)

This one is just GORGeous… and pushes a lot of my long-dormant “visual literacy” buttons.  (I used to, long ago now, study communication, and visual literacy was a concept we learnt early.)  I also enjoyed the sense of camaraderie among the three friends :)

stuff I bought or got and haven’t read or watched

It’s the season of gifts and excess, so I thought I’d count my blessings a little bit, just to see if it helps me ease off spending money on and otherwise collecting stuff I don’t use.  So I bought/got and haven’t read/watched

• Lost in Translation – from what I heard, starring a brilliant Bill Murray.
• Norwegian Wood – translated from Haruki Murakami’s Japanese original.  I’d read a Chinese translation halfway through, and I found it occasionally evocative but generally bland.  A colleague mentioned that a lousy Chinese translation was floating around, and another passed me the English one to try.
• The Fifth Discipline (Peter Senge) – always wanted to read it.  Now it looks intimidating.  See this interesting review.
• The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) – I read “Fooled by Randomness” and I found Nassim Taleb full of himself, too much so for me.  And then I came across his home page.  And my opinion of him remained, but at least now he seems a genuinely full-of-himself person.  And somehow that makes me more eager – just slightly so, but still – to read “The Black Swan”.
• Think! (Edward de Bono) – also, according to my long-legged friend, who lent me the book, full of himself, is Mr de Bono.
• Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) – First heard of the man with his first name in his last name while I was studying communication in university, some of the best times of my life.  I suspect my getting the book was at least partly an attempt to retrieve those times.
• Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman) – I guess if I liked poetry I’d like Walt Whitman.  Or Pablo Neruda.  Or Ted Hughes.  *Sigh*
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski) – I do want to read this book.  But I got the hard-cover version.  And it’s thicker than my thigh.  Ok I lie.  I’ll read it soon.
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers) – I like McSweeney’s, which Dave Eggers founded.  I think his talk on winning the TED prize was amazing.  I think his “What is the What” would be a good read too.  But I shall try to finish that heartbreaking work of staggering genius first.

Yes, I have too much stuff.  Time to get down to some reading.

BlackAdder

One can watch the entire Blackadder series (all four seasons) on YouTube here.  If you like British humour and convoluted similes that reward deciphering like a drink of iced tea rewards a parched throat, you’ll like this.  I especially enjoyed the fourth season :)

P/S.  Oh, I should probably mention that the series features early Rowan Atkinson (who’s unquestionably better in Blackadder than he is in Mr Bean; I do think Mr Bean’s sort of humour is appreciated by a larger audience though) and Hugh Laurie (I am one of many many many who enjoy him in House) and Stephen Fry (whose name used to be as inseparable from Laurie’s as sugar, coffee powder and milk powder that have been thoroughly blended in warm water), though I tend to think the writing, rather than the acting, is the part that makes Blackadder most worth straining your eyeballs.

Ally

Well, so a colleague very kindly introduced me to Aimee Mann just this evening.  When I mentioned that I liked Sarah McLachlan, she said that I might like Rachael Yamagata’s “I Wish You Love”.  So I searched for “Rachael Yamagata” on YouTube, and I saw that she sang “River”.

At first I was entranced by the singing, but then I got the sense that she was yawning while she was singing, or otherwise trying to sound a little different, and while the effect wasn’t half-bad I thought it too pretentious.  So I decided to search for another “River” that I remembered sounding a little different too, which led me to Robert Downey Jr’s.  The cello’s deadly sad.

Then I saw a link I had to click, given that I’d just realised how talented Mr Downey is.

And then I saw another one.  And I cried a bit watching it.

P/S.  I so totally enjoyed watching Ally McBeal and listening to Vonda Shepard and the Christmas songs – especially the Christmas songs :)

On second thought

In the comments section of my last post, I wrote that I liked Tanya Chua’s version of “The Blower’s Daughter”, which I had heard first, better than Damien Rice’s (below).  Then I went to listen to the latter again.  And got struck by the sadness of the cello chords.

Shall watch “Closer” when I can.

Movies I plan to watch

I am looking forward to catching UP (Slate review) and The Hurt Locker (Slate review) when they reach Singapore.  (Darn cool) trailers below.

Gran Torino: Eastwood is a monument

I read a bit about Gran Torino before I watched it, and I read a lot about it after I watched it with two colleagues who seemed to find it as moving as I did. The actress who plays the Hmong big sister just about lit up the screen with her sassy vitality. That is, until something dies in her, and causes something to die too in her neighbour Walt.

I agree with one reviewer, who wrote that only Clint Eastwood could have played Walt. When I saw his heart wrench – well, technically what he did was subtly change his monumental countenance – sadness made my breath catch in my throat. I don’t remember being moved by an actor’s art quite as much as I was in this movie.

The movie’s music – especially its suspenseful, expectant drum-rolls and its theme song (see previous post), a few bars of which Eastwood rasps at the end of the movie – is also one of its many joys.

[This is my first blog posting from a new computer I've had to buy because my old one was getting cranky, by which I mean there were times when it would boot up without any problems at all and there were times when switching it on would elicit a screeching whine dangerous to one's ears. Good thing I'd set up a foolproof backup system that synchronised my files every night and every week.]

Ponyo on the Red Cliff

Watched a couple of movies a few weeks ago, and I thought both were remarkable but flawed.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is Hayao Mizayaki‘s re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen‘s The Little Mermaid.  I enjoyed the movie’s energetic and witty animation; there was one bravura stretch during which little Ponyo, transformed by powerful magic, creates a storm by the sea, and runs and somersaults and leaps from wave to wave, her sheer exuberance breathtaking and almost tiring to watch.  I also enjoyed the movie’s evocative and precise sound design; the crashing waves and stormy seas, the plop of a watery barrier’s surface being breached, the chugchugchug of a magic steamer boat all sounded hyper-realistic.

I thought the movie was let down by its plot though.  There was no point when I worried about the welfare of Ponyo or the boy she loved, and the test they had to pass scarcely qualified as a test.  I enjoyed Mizayaki’s Spirited Away much much more.

Red Cliff II is the much-hyped sequel to the first Red Cliff movie, which really functioned to set the scene for this action-packed follow-up.  One of director John Woo’s fortes is action, and Red Cliff II is a showcase of his talent in this regard, with siege scenes alternately reminiscent of the signature Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan and the titanic battles scenes in The Lord of the Rings.  Another of John Woo’s forte – less cinematically obvious I suppose – is his depiction of the deep camaraderie among men who battle alongside one another.  This was evident in A Better Tomorrow, for example.

In Red Cliff II, one of these shows of brotherhood comes on the day of battle, when a guilty Zhou Yu (Tony Leung) worries about his pregnant wife, who had gone behind enemy lines to plead for peace with opposing warlord Cao Cao.  Zhou Yu, who is military strategist and commander of the Wu troops, is feeling especially guilty and worried because he only learned of his wife’s pregnancy from the notes she left behind, despite her earlier hints.  As they wait for battle to be joined, the Wu troops are treated to bowls of tang yuan (sweet dumplings typically filled with red bean paste), which symbolise reunion and togetherness in Chinese tradition.  One by one, his fellow strategists, his king, his king’s sister, even a fearsomely taciturn captain plop one of their tang yuan into Zhou Yu’s bowl.  Zhou Yu forces a crooked smile in appreciation, and downs the heap of tang yuan, stuffing his mouth.  And the troops roar!

In that one scene is also two of the film’s flaws.  The decision of Zhou Yu’s wife to go behind enemy lines is staged and unnecessary, one of the many holes in Red Cliff II‘s mediocre and predictable plot.   Tony Leung, who is a winner of the Golden Horse Award (the Chinese movies’ equivalent of the Oscar), plays Zhou Yu with one beleaguered expression, with the forced crooked smile more an irritating tic than a sign of his inner turmoil.  His acting, like the other actors’, was generally flat and uninspired.

Still, two very entertaining movies.  What’s not to like? :)

M*A*S*H fan

I’ve been a huge fan of the TV series M*A*S*H since I was in secondary school, when it was shown late on Sundays.  (I understand the series ran from Sep 1972 to Feb 1983 in the US.)  I thought the setting was interesting – life at a mobile army surgical hospital, situated near the front-line so that casualties could receive care as soon as possible, during the Korean War – and I loved the irreverently humorous tone and inherent gravitas of the show, and the human camaraderie that united the doctors and nurses there, and its memorable characters.

Recently I bought DVDs of seasons four and six.  The last episode of season four, titled “The Interview”, involves a TV crew conducting interviews at this M*A*S*H.  The reporter asks the soldiers several questions, and they answer them, like they’re on a TV documentary.  To me, it’s a classic episode: evocative writing, nuanced acting.

At one point, the reporter asks: “Has this whole experience changed you in any way?”  I especially enjoyed two characters’ answers to the question – they show how de-humanising war is.

Here’s what Captain BJ Hunnicutt said:

When I first came here, I couldn’t walk down a corridor full of wounded people without being sickened by it, and now I can walk down without even noticing them.

And this is a gem delivered by Father Mulcahy:

When the doctors cut into a patient, and it’s cold, you know, the way it is now, today, steam rises from the body, and the doctor will… will warm himself over the open wound.  How can anyone look on that and not feel changed?