Peace

The dearest hubby reminded me just in time, before the day ended, that I have not posted today.  I don’t have much time left – precisely to say, only 8 minutes – so I’m going to cheat again with a video.

Make Me a Channel of Your Peace – is a song I loved since young because of its meaningful lyrics.  Many a times, I have been moved to tears while singing this.  This rendition by Sinead O’Connor is not my favourite (the favourite has been removed due to copyright issues) but this is my second most favourite.

I hope you like it too.

Circles of Friends

For the first time, probably, I’m blogging on a Daily Post topic on the day it is posted.  Or something related.  It’s a long topic, so please click on the link to read more.  All I can say is, this topic came at such a right time.  Damn.

How many friends do you have and how do you classify them?  Well, first of all, I think that is dependent on your definition of ‘friends’.  Do you include only people you keep an active social contact with, or not.

A conversation with two friends (or three, if you include a teleconversation) over dinner brought on some interesting ideas.  A used-to-be friend puts her friends in circles, and because of a misunderstanding, she has placed me in a circle far away from her.  Another friend has only one circle – you’re either someone she cares about, or someone she doesn’t care shit about.

I put my friends in concentric circles, with myself right in the centre.  Well yes, I’m kinda self-centred, if you haven’t already figure that part out.  Here’s a very rough sketch which I drew on my iPad.  Wait… did I get the spelling of acquaintances correct?

My first concentric circle is incredibly small; much smaller than most people, I think. Excluding my family and husband, less than 5 people actually make it to this circle. I would do anything for this group of friends.

The second circle is made up of ‘Friends’, and is a rather large group of people, including people whom I do not actively meet.  Most of my Facebook friends fall into this category – I may not meet them for years, but hey, I’m interested in what’s happening in their lives.  So I hope these people don’t just write me out of their lives.

Acquaintances are like my Japanese language teachers and colleagues I hardly know.  They could fall out into the ‘Strangers’ black hole or move into the ‘Friends’ circle.

I used to think that everyone maintains circles of friends like mine, but I learnt today that it might not be the case.  What’s yours like?

In any case, lesson of the day for me – trust your intuition.  It is really a lot more accurate than you give it credit for.

And while we’re on the topic of intuition, let me share the video of a song titled ‘Intuition’.

Thank you for being my friend.  I’ll try not to take you for granted, but please don’t take me for granted either.

Invitation

Yes yes, yet another video to share.  Sorry, I’ve been getting lazy – far too lazy.  I’m stuck in the rut.  Need to break the vicious cycle!

So anyway if you’re wondering, still, after watching the video, this is ‘Uninvited’ sung by Alanis Morissette.  I’m not the typical Morissette fan.  In fact I can’t even name more than 5 of her songs, but this particular one is strangely hypnotic and so compelling.  That it was also featured in the movie ‘City of Angels’ must have contributed to the intriguing pull of this song.  I liked that deeply profound movie.

Too Much Love

Will kill you, as claimed by Queen.  I may not look the part, but I’m a huge fan of them.

Nobody ever does music like Queen anymore.  This band is awesome.

Will try to return to regular blogging tomorrow.

The Colour Blue

My latest obsession – CNBLUE, a korean rock band who started out as an indie band playing at various train stations and pubs in Tokyo for one year. I’ve picked two of my favourite songs from the band that feature the second vocalist a little more prominently. I like his voice more than the lead’s. Unusual taste I have.

Incidentally these two are not their most popular songs. If you think they are worth listening to, go search for ‘Love’ and ‘I’m a Loner’ by them.

Of late, I’ve been entertaining thoughts of picking up the Korean Language as well. Compared to Japanese, I think I am going to excel in Korean – I watch and listen to far too many Korean drama serials and music. I’ve read up, and learnt that it is possible to be picking up both Japanese and Korean at the same time, but one will get rather confused at times. I reckon it would be like how I confused Italian and French languages when I learnt them within a short space of time.

I’m going to pull the plug before I think further. I should concentrate on re-learning Japanese first, and give it my full attention. Till end of this year, at least.

And I Love You So

And I love you so because:

You take care of my every meal when I don’t feel like cooking

You do the laundry because I will take ages to wash the clothes by hand

You are more concerned about how I spend my time than I myself

You know the real reason why I love to travel so insanely much

You clear the pee tray because you know I don’t like to do it

You tolerated having one, two then three dogs because I wanted to

You will exercise with me even though you are so dog-tired after work

You put my welfare above everyone else, including yours

You will travel to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell for me

Despite all your faults (I’m not saying I’m perfect either), the above tells me that I did not make the wrong choice.  I would still like you to change your quick temper and impatience with everyone, but I can live with it.  They are my old friends.

Goodbye darling.  Keep safe, and I’ll see you in 4 weeks’.

And now, it’s time to get used to life alone with the 2 furkids.  For some reason, my parents and relatives seem to think that I will need their company more than usual.  Mum asked me if I wanted to return home to stay with them for a spell, and my dearest aunt invited me to have dinner with them every night.  Contrary to what they think, I am kind of looking forward to this one month of ‘solitude’.  Home Improvement Project continues, and I foresee that I will be much busier now that I have to do everything by myself, myself.

Yes, I’m sad my beloved won’t be around for me to bully.  But I really do like being alone too.

Need You Now

Not much a fan of country music, but I love this song by Lady Antebellum.

Well, yes… I’m cheating.  Will return to my regular posting schedule tomorrow.

For God So Loved the World

It’s Good Friday today.  I would like to share this video that never fails to bring tears to my eyes.  It’s not a happy day for Christians all over the world, but an important day nevertheless.  Even more important than Christmas, if you ask me.

May we all on the train realise what He has done for us.

Peace be with you.

Shooting Star

SPOILERS ALERT!

Shooting Star, or 流れ星 (romanised as Nagareboshi) is the latest Japanese drama I watched the last weekend.  Admittedly I bought the DVDs because my favourite Japanese actor Yutaka Takenouchi was the male protagonist in this drama.  Apart from that, I had very little expectations of the drama but if his past works are of any indication, this drama is likely to be good and rather heavy-going.  You see, I have been following Takenouchi-san ever since watching his stellar performance in ‘Heaven’s Coins 2′ back in the mid-90s.  He is an extremely versatile actor who can carry off any role given to him – a beach bum in ‘Beach Boys’ to the brooding music composer in ‘With Love’ and now a responsible and heavily burdened brother in ‘Shooting Star’.

Does he have an equivalent in Hollywood?  Hmm… perhaps John Travolta?

In ‘Shooting Star’, Takenouchi-san plays Kengo, a 37 year-old aquarium employee obsessed with jellyfishes, especially moon jellyfishes.  And he was preparing to marry his long-time girlfriend at the beginning of the drama when tragedy struck – his 20-year younger sister Maria was diagnosed with liver failure, and without a transplant, she only has a year more to live.  Kengo was first to offer part of his liver but upon deeper examination, his liver was not suitable as he once suffered from liver infection when he was younger.  And their mother’s liver was found to be too small in size to be considered for transplant.

The both of them frantically sought all their relatives for help whilst the Maria was blissfully unaware of her acute medical condition while staying and recuperating in the hospital.  One night, at her wit’s end, their mother kneeled and begged his fiancée to agree to a liver transplant to save her daughter.  The fiancée was not agreeable, and guilt-stricken at her own selfishness, she initiated a break-up with him.

On his way home from work a couple of days later, Kengo spotted a girl standing on the railway tracks, in the way of an oncoming train.  He dashed over to pull her to safety, only to realise that it was Risa, the same troubled girl he talked to a few days ago at the aquarium when she stood at the tank of moon jellyfishes, mesmerised.  In his despair, Kengo proposed to pay off Risa’s debts, and in return, she would have to marry him and donate half of her liver to his younger sister, if it was assessed to be suitable.

Risa brushed him off as crazy, but after taking a few steps, and turned back and agreed.  She was tired of carrying her irresponsible elder brother’s debts, and extremely unwilling to return to work as a sex worker to repay the debts.  Both willing parties entered a marriage of convenience and the story took off from there.

Because of some copyright issues, J-drama DVDs were not available in Singapore in the early part of the last decade.  With a lack of supply, I had myself weaned off J-dramas with much difficulty and switched to watching K-dramas.  I got used to the cliché storylines frequently used in K-drama (think: melodramatic love stories that almost always end with one of them contracting cancer, leukemia etc).  They are getting better as we speak, but my first love will always remain to be J-dramas because their dramas are short (typically 10-12 episodes) and most of them usually reflect the social problems faced by the Japanese at that time.  If you remember (or know), there was a J-drama titled ‘God, Please Give Me More Time’ in the late-90s and it reflected the social problem of Japanese schoolgirls selling their bodies in order to earn money to support thier idols (either through attending concerts or buying merchandise).  In spite of reticence being highly valued in their society, the Japanese are not squeamish about being truthful.  This makes their dramas highly realistic and credible.

Organ donation is a very controversial subject but I think ‘Shooting Star’ nailed it.  This drama series is now on my list of J-drama favourites together with ‘Shotgun Marriage’ and ‘Pride’.

Of Okinawa and Americans

In my previous blog, I talked about my desire to visit Okinawa and the renown Kuroshio Sea, the main tank at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.  Then the hubby commented on the post, and C and L commented… and then the whole conversation steered towards something else altogether.  It was a hilarious conversation but I’m not about to share it here, partly because I can’t seem to locate the post and partly because it could ermmm… potentially offend some people.

But something good turned out of that warped conversation – L found a lovely video of Kuroshio Sea on YouTube.  I love the video and I sometimes turn off the lights and watch it in HD, full-screen on my 21-inch iMac.  It can be extremely soothing after a long day at work.

Don’t worry, this is not a practical joke I’m trying to pull off on April Fool’s Day.   Nonetheless, Happy April Fool’s!