Regina Glei's Blog, page 28

The Beast in the Shadows

I went to the German embassy last week to apply for a new passport, since my old one is proudly full after only eight years (it’s valid for ten) = I am satisfied with my travels. I now ordered a „big“ passport with 48 pages for visa etc. stamps, instead of only 32 pages, guess that will be enough for ten years.

Sitting around at the embassy’s office waiting for the formalities, I skimmed through the German magazine „Wirtschaftswoche“ (business week(ly)) out of sheer boredom. I did not bother to read any of the articles, just browsing, reading headlines, captions and it all made me shudder.

The impression I got from this skimming is: hail our almighty gods – money and status. Smart looking men (mostly, didn’t see many pics of women in the magazine) in slick, expensive suits, being smart about being successful and „making it“ in the world of accumulating material wealth.

I just cannot get that scene from American Psycho out of my head, where Christian Bale and his adversaries compare their business cards, which look completely the same, bitching about the embossing of characters or the coating of the paper or whatever other entirely trivial and tiny differences. I must watch that movie again.

I am thoroughly disgusted by the money god hailing impression this magazine gave me and the big big question – what’s the point of all your money? – hovers dripping fat and ugly over the pages. Of course I am a part of that system in my dayjob. However, I find myself struggling daily against overtime and the need to get out of the company so that I can have some time for writing my stories. Despite that, I actually like my current job (most the time), which is challenging and delivers a lot of food for thought.

All the time I have this what I call „industrial horror novel“ lingering in the back of my mind, which I cannot really grasp. I’d love to write that „industrial horror novel“, but I don’t have characters that would be new and fresh. The topic of the bored, or stressed, or running amok office worker has been done a million times already and I have no ambition to write something like that. It’s like a big monster is lurking somewhere in this „industrial horror novel“ that I haven’t met yet and thus cannot write about it. I’d love to discover the „corporate beast“ and the „evil god of money“ in a new way that transcends the corporate horror (or comedy) stories so many other people write. Maybe I cannot grasp it because it’s actually not a horror story but the greatest comedy ever?

Corporate life itself is highly fascinating in a perverse way. I have now entered the realms of the management at its lowest level and am for the first time haggling with the rest of them for budget, headcount and influence (yet on a very modest and low low scale). It’s a big Dungeons and Dragons game for adults and those who enjoy playing it definitely have better chances at „advancing“. Literally: who plays the budget-headcount- influence game well, advances from level to level, gets more money and status and can be the stressor of more people underneath him/her.

There is a huge horror story or comedy lying in there somewhere, some basic human flaw or trait that waits to be discovered and written. The eyes in the dark are looking at me – let’s see if I manage to lure the beast out of the shadows one day and will write such a novel. Maybe I should actually read the „Wirtschaftswoche“ as research material, although I fear that would just make me unnecessarily sick

Live Long and Prosper

Like many of my friends and many people around the world, I am very saddened by the news of Leonard Nimoy’s passing.

So here is my little personal homage to him and his iconic role of Spock.

Like the rest of my generation I know Spock ever since I can remember and I do not remember how often I have seen the original Star Trek series.

The photo below is on my computer, being copied from one model to the next, since like forever.



In my twenties I admittedly became a fan of Next Gen, but the original series was always there of course and the movies too, of which my favorites are the Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home.

I have only some 15 or so action figures, and this one here is one of them.



“Mirror mirror” is and remains one of my favorite episodes of the original series.

I am a nerd and somehow Spock is the father of all nerds, isn’t he? Now we must do without him. But I hope and think he had a long and prosperous life. He surely gave many nerds all over the world joy and encouragement by being a more humane and real character than many others. Thanks to Leonard Nimoy, Spock became the icon that he is and a big thank you to him and farewell. R.I.P. Spock. We will miss you.

No Plans Tonight

This week I was in the town where the company’s training center is located and spent one night in a hotel. On such hotel nights, my favorite place where to have dinner is a cheap-ass „Italian Tomato“ shop where you get some spaghetti, a small salad and a soft drink to a 1000 yen.

As I hung out there two young Germans, a guy and a girl, also graced the cafe with their presence. They were clearly interns at the same company that I work for. They talked rather loudly and I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. I didn’t give them my full attention the entire time but catching clearly that he was hitting on her

After spaghetti they discussed whether to treat themselves to a desert (they have also quite a large cake choice in this shop) and he said to her: „Oh, I have no other plans tonight.“

Of course his intention behind that sentence was to show her that he’d like to spend his free time in her company But that sentence hit me like a sledgehammer.

I am a workaholic after all! It’s been years and years since I said the sentence „I have no plans tonight.“ This sentence and its implications are from a different planet!

I have plans every night. I have plans from 7:30 in the morning when I usually get up to 0:00 when I usually go to bed. I have piano lessons, I meet people, I go to the movies, and of course, I write and write and write at night. There hasn’t been a single day in X many years when I wouldn’t have known what to do with my time.

What a shock! There are people who don’t know what to do with their evenings? What an incredible waste! I’d like to get/buy their time. I don’t have enough of it and always want more. How unthinkable that there are people who „have no plans tonight.“ A part of me envies them, a part of me pities them. I am so fascinated by the idea that I want to try it out what it feels like to „have no plans tonight.“

But I know myself, the workaholic would immediately start to feel guilty. What? I had time and I didn’t use it for something useful like writing? What a sacrilege to sacrifice an evening where I could write 2000 words for – what exactly? Which leads me to the question, what do people do with their „no plans“ evening? Do they watch TV? Play video games? Read a book? Sit on the sofa and stare into nowhere? Except for the sofa sitting whilst staring into nowhere, the „no plan“ turns out into an activity of one or the other sort after all, right? Or what else is it they „do“ during a „no plans“ evening?

I think most people will eventually do something – like for example hanging out in front of the TV, because I believe it’s very hard for human beings to actually do nothing. Well, I’ve seen some people in Palau which came closest to doing nothing. There was this elderly couple sitting in front of their kiosk-like shop, chewing beetle nut and just sitting there. But even they were doing something, meaning chewing beetle nut and being high.

Anyway, I doubt that I’d be satisfied with an evening of doing „nothing“, lol. The guilt, oh the guilt of not working on my beloved stories in exchange for doing nothing!

Well, I thank the flirting internship couple for triggering this fascinating insight of not having had „no plans for tonight“ in like forever!

Boring Lunch Talks

Happy Valentine’s day! I wrote a blog entry about Valentine in Japan as long at 4 years ago and you can read it here.

So, different topic today. Last week, I mentioned an interesting lunch talk with a German colleague about the calculation of the worst day of the year. Such interesting lunch talks are actually a grand exception.

What are lunch talks in Japan usually about? Food and the weather.

Let’s take a look at why that is so. It’s rather simple: Food and weather are „non-dangerous“ topics that everyone can contribute to.

Now what is a dangerous topic? The classic dangerous topics are politics and religion and for some people it’s also sports. I am living in Japan too long now to give any educated guess on what colleagues for example in Germany talk about during lunch. I vaguely remember from my three years of working in Germany that we mostly talked about the job and related issues but that we surely had a wider range of topics than food and the weather.

This food and weather talk here in Japan is in my opinion a tiny peek into how the Japanese society works in general.

In school people are not taught how to discuss and argue. It goes back to Socrates vs. Confucius. In the European style of learning you challenge your teacher, discuss with him, raise your hand and are generally encouraged to say your opinion. In the Confucius style of learning your teacher is an honored elder who spreads wisdom and you listen and absorb and do not challenge him. Discuss with him? Oh, how can you dare!

Colleagues do not debate at lunch over whether they agree with e.g. Mr. Abe’s questionable policies, since they never learned how to do that and they do not want to hurt anybody’s feelings. They are desperately maintaining „wa“ – the Japanese magic word for harmony. Thus all potentially offensive, delicate and interesting topics that invite a split of opinions are carefully avoided and the lunch discussion is reduced to: food and the weather.

Needless to say that the food and weather discussions bore me out of my mind, even though I can see why they are happening.

Among friends of course more delicate topics are being discussed, but due to the reasons described above lunches and dinners with colleagues are usually a pain consisting only of empty blah-blah.

There is one variation: As a long-term foreigner in Japan I have of course been asked a thousand times and more why I am living here. I am extremely tired of having to tell that story and can perfectly understand famous people who are being interviewed a lot and every reporter asks them the same bloody questions. After a while it truly gets tedious.

I do not know how to break the spell of food and the weather. It’s only partially a matter of how close you are to your colleagues, some of the people from my floor know each other and have lunch together for many years. They just don’t wish to engage in „real“ discussions. I suppose that what I find boring, they find relaxing and it’s a form of stress reduction for them.

The one advantage I have is that I am not every day in the same office but at least once or twice, sometimes more, not at my main desk but touring through our various locations.

Nevertheless, I’m groaning inwardly at the mere mentioning of the word „oishii“ = tastes good.

No! No more food-talk torture please!

The Worst Day of the Year

Don’t panic.

The good news is that the worst day of 2015 is already behind us

I had an interesting chat with a colleague during lunch the other day and she told me that someone has attempted to calculate the worst day of the year.

According to this calculation it’s the last Monday in January. The first time the worst day of the year was calculated, the last Monday in January happened to be the 24th and that is my poor colleague’s birthday, which is why she stumbled upon this calculation in the first place.

Deeply impressed by this magnificent idea, I googled “worst day of the year” and found even a wikipedia entry about it (God, I just LOVE wikipedia, I should donate to them again (did so twice already)).

The calculation of the worst day of the year is more than conclusive: distance from X-mas and time of realization of failed new year resolutions, distance to the next holiday, distance to pay check, bad weather conditions (at least in the northern hemisphere), general motivation and frustration level. Yes, indeed, that points to some bleak end of January day.

But, for me personally not Monday but Tuesday is the worst day of the week. The same rationale applies here. On Monday mornings I am still too shocked by my alarm clock to refuse its ringing, and pleasant memories of the weekend lurk into the Monday blues. On Tuesdays however, I get out of bed the worst, the next weekend is yet so far away, the previous weekend’s influence has volatilized.

So, the worst day of the year is not the last Monday of January but the last Tuesday! This year it was the 27th of January.

I wonder why this worst day of the year thing has not gone more viral (or has it and I missed it)? Hey, isn’t that a marketing niche? Extra chocolate to overcome the worst day of the year, for example? But alas, Valentine is too close which, at least in Japan, drowns you in chocolate and its marketing, darn.

Nevertheless, as mentioned before, the good news is that this year’s worst day of the year is already history. February is so nicely short and when it comes to March there’s spring around the corner (and hay-fever, gosh!)

In the future, I shall be aware of the worst day of the year and celebrate it somehow, by, for example, booking the next holidays…

And here is the wikipedia article about what they call the blue Monday….

Cheers!

Movie Reviews – Grace of Monaco etc.

Grace of Monaco

Hm… it didn’t knock my socks off. I wonder why they chose that episode from Grace Kelly’s life and not for example how she fell in love with Rainier of Monaco. The movie starts when they are married for a couple of years already and centers around French – Monaco struggles, sort of claiming that Grace prevented the French from annexing the little principality. I have no clue whether that is historically correct, but it does not matter, since in the movie I found it unconvincing. The extreme close ups of Nicole Kidman’s eyes do not help to establish that she was the one who persuaded the French not to invade. The acting was OK, I guess, but it failed to raise compassion. The movie did not manage to emotionally engage me in contrast to movies like „The Dutchess“ or „The Young Victoria“, which are, somewhat in the same vain. Grace of Monaco just remained too cold and distant and I also would have liked to see more emotions and action from Tim Roth as Rainier. All in all a movie that will surely be pretty much forgotten soon.

The Maze Runner

This thing seems to be from 2013 but so far it had completely escaped my attention. The premise is interesting, a bunch of adolescent boys wakes up in the central garden of a giant maze structure. During the day the concrete and steel maze beyond the garden is open, during the night the maze shifts and half mechanical, half biological monsters are chasing and killing whoever fails to return to the central garden before the doors close.

The goal of the kids locked inside is of course to find a way out. Their memories have been wiped, they have no idea why they are in there and some of them are in the maze for three years already. A bold newcomer is dead set on getting out.

They spend the entire movie with trying to get out and for the viewer the questions mount as to what’s outside, why the maze is there and who put the kids into it. The problem with building up and up like that is that you need a really smart and cool explanation in the end, or you give none. The cult movie „Cube“ wisely chose the latter and we never find out who put them into the cube, and why it exists. Smart move! The Maze Runner should have done the same. The explanation in the end that it’s a post-apocalyptic world outside and the kids have been sent into the maze to train them for survival is incredibly lame (what do you need a maze for to train when outside is training enough already?). Until the last five minutes, the movie wasn’t bad (some nice character studies of some of the kids not wanting to leave anymore) and when you watch it, stop the moment they get out of the maze and imagine how you would have let it end.

Cloverfield

A belayed review, since the movie is not that new anymore, but it left an impression on me, so I shall talk about it.

The style of the hand-held camera is very tiring, yes, and I am not sure whether I would have been able to watch it in a movie theater. At home on the smaller TV screen it was OK.

The premise: some young dudes have a farewell party for someone in New York, who is supposed to go as an expat to Japan (of all places) for a while. During their party, which someone films with a handycam, a monster of Godzilla proportions descends upon New York and goes on a rampage.

What is very well done is that the party goers have no clue whatsoever about what is going on. From one minute to the next their lives are destroyed and they face death and destruction.

One of the best scenes was for me when the camera holder and three others flee from the monster into the subway and encounter the monster’s smaller minions, spider-like creatures that attack them. The hand-held camera puts you truly into the perspective of the characters and let’s you experience the horror of the situation together with them.

I also liked all the other details, that the movie is exactly as long as a mini-dv band, 1h16 min, that it’s „government property“ now and used as a documentation of the monster’s appearance. And that, of course, there is no explanation for where the monster came from, since the guy who holds the camera and his buddies do not know. This technique gets you around wild, far-fetched and unconvincing explanations of where the kaiju in Pacific Rim come from, for example. I also liked the ending very much – they all die! The camera holder gets eaten by the monster, the rest of them is buried under rubble where the military then finds the camera and confiscates the tape.

Tough to watch, due to the hand-held camera, but great concept and very well done.

Into the Wild

Also this movie is not the newest of them all, it’s from 2007, but it left an even bigger impression on me than Cloverfield. It’s based on the true story of a smart and college educated young man, Chris, who gives it all up, drifts through the US for a year plus until he goes alone into the wilderness in Alaska. He’s suffering from identity crisis, is questioning all the materialism and the need „to have to do something with your life“ in terms of career and family.

Spoiler alert – the quest for himself and the meaning of life costs him that very life. He arrives in Alaska in late winter, finds an old bus in the middle of nowhere that some other hermit used before him, and manages to survive on his own for three months. When he wants to go back in summer, he finds that a river he crossed easily when it was half frozen, is now impassable due to melt water. He gets stuck at his bus and slowly starves, the process being accelerated when he eats poisonous plants by mistake.

He died in his bus at the age of 23 or 24 and two weeks after he died, moose hunters found him in his bus by coincidence. Had they found him three weeks earlier…

The movie is well told, alternating between scenes at the bus and flashbacks about his journey and family life before it. The guy’s journey is tainted with tragedy, since you understand his urge for freedom and leaving behind all that capitalism and materialism, and it’s such a shame that he does not survive his dream of going to Alaska and living in the wild.

For me this movie has another dimension – I was born in Germany, I live now in Japan, there is not enough wilderness in these two countries to go on an adventure like this. You can still get lost in the Japanese mountains and be attacked by a bear, yes, however, if you are equipped like Chris, hunting rifle and all, you must be extremely unlucky to die before someone finds you. There are just too many people here and the country is too small for dying in the wild. If you walk here for a hundred km, there will be a village somewhere, but if you walk for a hundred km in Alaska…

It’s a good movie worth watching and belongs to the category of‘: you’ll remember it for a while.

Writing Progress Report – January 2015

What’s going on at the writing front? A bit of a 2014 review and an outlook for 2015:

I am still tired of „marketing“ my books but not tired of writing them.

After disappointments accumulated in the beginning of 2014, I sort of withdrew from the submission circus and have not yet gone back into the gauntlet.

In the meanwhile, I finished my Hagen Patterson trilogy and put out the last one – “Give Substance to a Thought” – in November. Before that I put out the revised version of my first non-self publication „Dark Matters“ under the new title of „The Glow of the Dark“. And before that Dark Quest published my novella „That One Minute“, so actually, quite a lot was happening in 2014 even without the submission and rejection madness.

I also tackled a huge project – going back to my „Dome of Souls“ world. The entire project and world is around since the late 1990ties, was originally written in TV script format and I had sort of given up on it. However, in 2011 I published my „Dome Child“ novel, which was never written in script format but right away as a novel. It constitutes the beginning of the whole „Dome of Souls“ idea. At the time, I thought I end this idea with its beginning and was determined to put the large rest into the drawer and turned to other projects.

I made the bill without the innkeeper as we say in German (to reckon without one’s host?), and now the project has come back massively.

The „Dome“ bug bit me again and I wrote, from scratch, without looking at the old TV scripts, the second installment of this series in novel form. It’s become my longest novel so far, counting a proud 140,000 words at the moment (first draft). I am highly pleased with the outcome and the first beta reader liked it too. Now the job will be to revise this beast and put it out there somehow. I am not sure yet how. Shall I send it into the submission idiocy or just show that part of the business the finger and put it out myself? I don’t know yet.

Some hints as to what’s going on with this series:

The 140,000 words beast is not a sequel to „Dome Child“ and does not deal with the same characters.

The „Dome“ Series is my idea of „future history“. I am visiting pivotal changing points in my version of humanity’s future in this series. Usually the demise of an old system and the birth of a new one.

„Dome Child“ dealt with the demise of the times of Bihindi and its religious sects, and marked the beginning of the times of „Lei Lao“, a guild-based political system.

The 140,000 words beast deals with the end of the times of Lei Lao and takes place 500 years after the „Dome Child“, which is set in an unspecified future of humanity after the „second postmodern robot war.“

What connects all the „Dome of Souls“ novels is of course the „Dome of Souls!“

While Jove Hendricks was the first „Dome Child“, the „Dome“ has become a more common, if still exotic „gift“ that some humans possess. At the end of the times of Lei Lao there is even a „Dome guild“ where everyone who sees the „Dome“ is registered.

Impatient suddenly, I even started with the third „Dome“ novel, which, in fact, is the central piece of the story. „Jeronimo“ is the book/idea that kicked off the entire „Dome“ series. I’m at the moment in the middle of writing „Jeronimo“ from scratch, without looking at the old TV scripts. Since this is the oldest and most central piece of the idea that’s quite a challenging task.

So, there is a lot more „Dome“ stuff to come

I’m very glad that I went back to this world, I sort of feel incomplete without finishing this big big thing that has been with me for such a long time.

But, I have more in store. At the moment writing work on „Jeronimo“ is resting, since I am, for the 100th time, revising another soft SF project, a space opera, which might also be the start of a bigger series. The problem with this beast is, that it’s written in 1st person and I wrote its first draft before I learned a lot more about the craft and am now struggling with the language.

I still love the story, but the execution and language… sigh… anyway, I already asked Katoh sensei for cover art and it’s excellent as usual and I am eager to get rid of this beast so that I can concentrate on the „Dome“.

I am looking at new ways of distribution and am thinking of publishing this space opera myself via Wattpad. Well, we’ll see what happens.

So, 2015 will, in whatever form, see the birth of that space opera and it will see some action concerning the „Dome of Souls“ novels, plus? We’ll see, since there are even more finished novels in my drawers!

Since I am still frustrated with the submission hell, I guess I’ll just let it burn and consume others, and put things out myself again…

Stay tuned for soft SF pouring out from Regina in 2015

Singapore Travel Report Part 2

Every guide book of Singapore tells you to go to Little India, I did so and it is nice but little nevertheless there was some Indian flavor about the area with the shops and architectural style. I definitely have the plan to go to the real India one day.



Next I went to Clark quay and took a boat ride on the Singapore river and into the bay with the Merlion on the one side and the Marina Bay Sands on the other. The day was very cloudy and astonishingly cool and it started raining during the boat ride.

After lunch I fled the bad weather into the movies watching Interstellar (see review here) and called it a day.

Two more days to go in Singapore and I tried to get away from the big city to a small island off the coast called Kusu, but I went to the ferry port too uninformed and found out that there are only two ferries leaving for the island per day, one at ten in the morning, which I had missed by half an hour and one at two in the afternoon.

I gave up on the plan, also cancelled plans for the zoo since it was a sunny and hot morning and just too hot for wandering around outside, and went back to the island of Sentosa where also Universal Studios is located. I had

discovered a big aquarium there on my Universal Studios day – animals as well, but indoors and cooled.

Arrived at the Sentosa train station I asked for a ticket to the aquarium and the lady told me if I pay one dollar more I can see three attractions on the island and not only the aquarium. That of course sounded like a good option and so I decided on a cable car ride to the top of the island’s mountain which includes a luge ride down again, the aquarium of course, and a laser-light-water-fireworks show at night.

In the morning I walked around the beaches of Sentosa but I’ve seen better and all those ships lying out in the harbor don’t make the water very attractive either.



The aquarium was very good, if I had to share it with too many other people. The highlight was the shark tank where I just stumbled into shark feeding time. Two divers in metal mesh gear fed the Sharks while a third one with a big long pole had the job to fend off too aggressive sharks. He didn’t have at ouch job though, since the Sharks seemed rather peaceful. They were a bit agitated thanks to feeding time and there was a lot of turbulence in the tank but none of them snapped at the three divers. I love sharks and it was great to see them in such action.



When I left the aquarium, big fat thunderclouds had appeared and the very moment I left the monorail at the southern-most station to kill some time there until the laser show, all hell broke loose and another epic thunderstorm descended upon us. I found and edge of bench and had to wait there for an hour. So much water was coming down that you would have been drenched to the bone in ten seconds.



It was still raining for the laser show but not that strong anymore. The laser show called “Wings of Time”, starring a phoenix-like bird and two humans who travel back through time, had its moments but I wouldn’t have paid its stand-alone price of I think 25 dollars for it. Sentosa is worth a trip, if you can tolerate the artificial tourist flavor of the island.

I apparently have a new-found weakness for modern architecture and I had seen these four skyscrapers from Sentosa island that I wanted to take a closer look at. I drove to Harbor Front and tried to walk there, but got blocked off by pretty gated communities and this picture is the closest I got to the towers.



It was too hot to keep on walking and look for another way to get closer, so I returned to cooled-down shopping malls at Harbor Front called Vivo City with the intention to have lunch there. In a food court I tried a noodle soup with beef inside from a Chinese stall. Sounds harmless enough but the meat was utterly disgusting and I ended up eating not even a quarter of it.

I had to kill time until sunset, since I wanted to see the Bayfront and the Gardens by the Bay at night and ended up watching Hobbit 3 for a second time. After a more successful dinner of harmless spaghetti, I went into the gardens by the bay to watch the Christmas super-tree light show together with about a million other people. I had a good laugh at a lit up pavilion which provided a “blizzard” at 19:30 where snow was simulated with foam made from soap



Then they had light show with Christmas and other music for 15 minutes and together with a million other people I wandered to the Bayfront side through the Marina Bay Sands.



There had just been a light show going on too and I ran into another million people. (Well, a million is of course exaggerated there were a hell of a LOT of people.)

I didn’t want to wait for another hour or so for the next light show in the bay and decided to call it a day and rode back to the hotel.



Singapore is well worth a visit but be prepared for leaving some money there. The prices are all rather hefty.

On the moving to Germany day, it rained again like on the day of my arrival. In the afternoon, it rained so hard that my flight to Shanghai was delayed. We eventually lifted off with almost two hours delay and I was getting nervous about changing planes in Shanghai and whether I could catch my plane to Germany.

Astonishingly, the procedures at Pudong airport were quite efficient and I reached my plane to Frankfurt in time. Even my luggage made it to Frankfurt, if it was all wet from apparently having stood in the rain in Singapore…

After twenty hours of darkness, Germany presented itself to me in snowstorm fashion!



Just what they had wished for in Singapore the day before and tried to produce with soap, I had now in the original and cold version.

The Germany visit was dedicated to friends and family (and a bit of heavy metal ;-))

So no grand adventures here…

Where will I go next? Nothing planned yet except for Wacken *and Spain and Portugal ;-)) in the summer. For golden week some Japanese islands are on the radar again, maybe Miyakojima? We’ll see

Singapore Travel Report Part 1

I arrived in Singapore at 5 in the morning and rode still in the dark and pouring rain to my hotel by taxi. I went to bed for some four hours and got up again at 11:00. It was still raining massively.

Despite that, I ventured out and walked to the nearest subway station, only to realize that my hotel was in a red light district with street restaurants and ladies of questionable virtue in explicit clothing standing between them and hidden away sex shops. Hmmmm…. I rode to City Hall station first of all and due to the heavy rain discovered there that the underground of Singapore is one giant shopping mall. You can literary walk around for hours through underground malls. Tired from the journey and not thrilled about the heavy rain I ended up at the movies in one mall and watched the greatly anticipated Hobbit 3, see comments about it here

A not very Singaporean day yet, but the following days compensated for that

After the horrendous rain the day before, this morning the sun was shining through fluffy white clouds and I tried the other subway station relatively close to the hotel called Mountbatten. The way there was lonely, leading along a highway and office buildings, well, better than the red light district.

I headed down to the Marina Bay Sands and rode up to its viewing platform, a bit disappointed that I was not allowed into the roof garden, which is only for hotel guests.



Nevertheless, the view over Singapore is magnificent.

After that, I went into the gardens by the bay and was grateful for the cooled down cloud forest and flower dome installments. The flower dome disappointed with Xmas decorations and the only remarkable flowers being cacti, but the cloud forest is impressive with all its exotic tropical mountain growth and many orchids.



It was so cool inside the cloud forest and so hot outside, that my camera fogged for a while



Sufficiently cooled down I wandered around the entire bay to get to the Merlion.



Barely retreating for a break into a Starbucks all hell broke loose with a giant thunderstorm and I sat it out outside under the Starbucks tent with the rain being so hard that you nearly lost sight of the Marina Bay Sands across the bay. These tropical downpours are quite something. I wandered back to the city hall station in lighter rain and called it a day.

I planned for a religious day and that is what I got at first I went to the most famous and oldest mosque of Singapore, where I was surprised by not having to put a veil over my head, you only have to cover your legs and shoulders, which is the case with me always anyway, due to T-shirts and long pants against the sun. Half of the mosque was under repair but the main prayer hall in green was still intact.





Next up was the oldest Indian temple of Singapore which happens to be in Chinatown and not in little India. I must admit I don’t know the deity that this temple is dedicated to but I had the luck to be there when a service happened. To live music from three players the deity was unveiled from behind a curtain and priests poured buckets full of water, milk and other paste-like creams over it. It was interesting to watch and I appreciate that they tolerated non-believer picture-snapping visitors.





Just a few meters down the road from the Indian temple was something more familiar to me, a Chinese Buddhist temple. The Buddha relic tooth temple is very rich (thanks to donations of believers I suppose) and glittered in gold and red. In the back was a display of the twelve guardian Buddhas of the Chinese zodiac. Amongst some praying believers loads of gawking and picture taking tourists and thanks again for the tolerance towards them.





I had a good lunch in a cooled down restaurant in Chinatown and then went back to the shopping malls because of a serious shoe problem. The sandals I had brought were not fit for long walking and after some searching I bought new shoes and retired the hurting feet in the hotel.

The next day was a “junk” day! meaning, I went to the universal studios Singapore and had a good time. After lining up for the children’s ride of “Madagascar” for half an hour, I got too impatient and seeing the lining up time for the “Transformers” ride of 80 minutes, I decided to afford the luxury of an express ticket, which allows you to skip queues and ride all rides as often as you want.



I ended up riding the high speed roller coaster in the dark of the “revenge of the mummy” five times and the impressive 3D Transformers ride 4 times, all others at least once. The Jurassic Park water ride scared the hell out of me in L.A. Where I’ve once been in the universal Studios many years ago, but the final drop down the waterfall in Singapore was harmless by comparison The “drying pods” after it were hilarious.



It was a fun “junk” day and I really liked the Mummy roller coaster and was very disappointed that the much more challenging looking Battlestar Galactica roller coaster was under maintenance luckily the weather held by the way, it was mostly cloudy but rained only late in the evening when I was only returning home anyway.

The rest will follow next weekend and as usual there are more pics on Flickr

Movie Reviews – Hobbit 3 and others

Holidays = movie time!

Flying on planes always gives me the opportunity to catch up on things a little, so some of the movies reviewed below are not super new, but anyway

I recently watched:

Locke, Captain America – Winter Soldier and Frankenweenie on planes and

the Hobbit – Battle of the Five Armies and Interstellar at movie theaters in Singapore.

Locke

Is an interesting experiment of filming a man alone in his car driving into London whilst having dozens of phone calls. The only thing you see in the entire movie is the motorway and Tom Hardy driving his car and phoning around. There are three main story lines. He is a married man with two teenage kids and has once had a one night stand with another woman who just called him that she is getting his baby that very night. He decided to drive to the hospital to see her and has to tell his wife about it. At the same time he has a very critical job issue. The following day he is supposed to oversee the pouring of basement concrete for a 55 floor high skyscraper.

He is on the phone with his family, the woman who gets his baby in the hospital and guys from work. We witness the drama unfold only via voices and the images of Hardy in his car.

It’s interesting but straining at times and the reactions of the people on the phone did not always convince me, especially the female reactions. For some odd reason I felt that this screenplay was written by a man. The women came across as hysteric, while Tom Hardy stayed oh so cool the entire time. If you are in for serious drama, watch it, if you find the thought of 90 minutes of a one man show sitting in a car dreadful, skip it.

Captain America – Winter soldier

What can I say? Typical marvel flick? I must admit I didn’t see the first captain America movie. This second one didn’t knock my socks off. What sticks in my mind most of all is that Robert Redford looked so old, despite him not looking that old in the brilliant “All Is Lost” (now that’s a one man show worth watching! While Locke lives from talking, All Is Lost lives from action. Redford hardly says a word the entire movie and yet it is very intense. But anyway, we are talking captain America here, not All Is Lost.) The second thing sticking to my mind was that Scarlet Johansen looked so sunburnt all the time….

The plot? It was as clear as a sunny day that Fury wouldn’t be dead dead. An organization like SHIELD, or the bad guy elements in it, working against the people and not for the people? No news there either. Brining down three of the flying fortresses? Well, Loki and company brought down one in the Avengers, so what’s news there? An old friend of Captain America abused in experiments? Seen stuff like that all before too. So, I missed some new interesting, funky stuff. I liked Guardians of the Galaxy much better for example, plenty of funky characters there that lighten things up I suppose funky characters is difficult in a Captain America setting.

Frankenweenie

Lovely! I had missed that movie somehow. I generally like Tim Burton’s movies even if they have sometimes the tendency to be a bit too alike in their looks. Beetlejuice is still my favorite and Sleepy Hollow is so awesome thanks to Christopher Walken… As for the puppet movies of course A Nightmare Before Christmas stands out, but Frankenweenie is pretty cool as well.

The story is simple. Frankenstein with a dog. Little Victor looses his dog Sparky to a car accident and reanimates him. Other kids at school try to redo the trick and create a whole horde of more or less agreeable undead monsters. The homage to Japanese monster movies with the giant turtle was just hilarious and the cat/bat and her owner were putting many smiles on my face too. It’s a fun movie not just for children and black and white sometimes does have its appeal.

Interstellar

Much has been debated already about the science in this movie and I shall not focus on that here. Entering a singularity… Minced meat? Space ship fitting into a wormhole? Time traveling?

Anyway, the movie had lots of great aspects, too, one of the strongest moments for me was when they visit the first water planet, to find out that it’s close proximity to the black hole causes these incredible tidal waves, then finding out that the two, three hours they had spent there cost their crew mate left on the mother ship 23 years. That was an amazing scene. Also what followed, the messages from 23 years that Cooper and Brand receive were big emotional highlights. Just a few hours for them, years for others. That was powerful stuff.

The devastation on earth was also well portrayed with those dust storms and reduced crop variety. McCaughney and Hathaway were both cast a bit against the stuff they usually do and both did excellent jobs in my opinion.

And Matt Damon as the ice planet asshole, what a befitting role

Interstellar is a complex movie as I expect one from the Nolan brothers, and that I will definitely watch again, but for the moment I still like Inception better

The Hobbit – The battle of the five armies

Hmmmmm… It all came to a conclusion, yes, we have gone full circle, yes. There is closure now, yes, but there was also repetition. The grand battle in the end reminded at times so much of the battle for Gondor… Whilst I never had the impression in LOTR that there was too much battling going on, in the Hobbit 3 it felt like, hey it’s enough. The Eagles again… Why do they always come only at the last minute and not the first? Why are the orcs so suicidal (e.g. the giant Orc that makes a hole in one of Dale’s walls and falls dead) What are these Dune earthworms doing there suddenly for one bit? Olifants in LOTR – Orcfants(?) in the Hobbit? Why didn’t they use cave trolls? – “they’ve got a cave troll…” As Sean Bean used to say so wonderfully in LOTR.

But there were nice things too in the movie. I liked it very much that Thranduil got more screen time. Thorin’s gold sickness and the parallels to Smaug were nicely played. The final battle between Azog and Thorin on the ice was quite epic. So, a worthy conclusion? Maybe, but one thing is for sure, the Hobbit trilogy has not reached the drama and quality of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which also is of course due to the fact that LOTR is the grander literary work of the two.

One last thing that vexes me:

Have you ever noticed all those widowers in LOTR a and the Hobbit? Elrond’s wife, dead, Thranduil’s wife, dead, Bard’s wife, dead… What is it with this wife dying? Not to speak of that we never get personally introduced to a female dwarf… Since Jackson has changed one or the other significant thing as compared to the Hobbit book anyway (introducing Tauriel, brining Legolas back) I’d have liked him to dare to give us a female dwarf character! Was that the last of middle earth from Jackson? I actually kinda doubt it.