The Simpsons Movie turned out to be better than expected. While I'm not going to give away any spoilers (I hope), I just have to say that most of the characters who have ever walked the streets of Springfield are represented here, in one way or another.

The first 60% of the movie were snappy and funny right from the get-go, but as with most movies, the next 30% dragged because there's always a need to create some plot contrivance around the conflicts facing the main characters before the loose ends get tied up in the last 10% of the movie.

*SPOILER ALERT* (Fine, I lied)

While I expected quality jokes (and those were definitely delivered), what I didn't expect to feel was well... sad during a scene where Marge reflects on her marriage. Throughout the 18 years of The Simpsons, Marge has always stood by her man, no matter his flaws, and this time round, we get to see what all of Homer's idiocy has led to.

What was my favourite scene? Strangely enough, nothing to do with the Simpsons family itself, but the one scene where Homer is playing Grand Theft Walrus which involves a tap-dancing penguin. It's so cute and hilarious that I defy anyone not to laugh when they see it. There's also the Disney moment when Marge and Homer are alone in their new home in Alaska. Oh, and of course, Spiderpig! Spiderpig, Spiderpig, does whatever Spiderpig does...

Other great moments:
(When Homer is told he must have an epiphany if not he will be alone forever)
Homer: Bananas are an excellent source of potassium!

Ralph Wiggums (after seeing Bart skateboard naked): I like men now.

Oh, and the most annoying part of the movie? Sitting next to a couple where the girl has clearly never watched an episode of The Simpsons before (what rock does she live under, I wonder) and her boyfriend, happily and gleefully, explaining everything to her throughout the movie. Kids, take it outside, or educate her before the movie. Don't annoy everyone else in the cinema by explaining every joke.

The thing about me is that I can be a little too honest. And then I'll spend the rest of the day angsting over it, knowing full well that the best thing that I can do is to acknowledge that I should think before I speak, and just move on.

And though I think I did well enough nonetheless, man, I hope I didn't mess up my chances.

Saw the theatrical legend that is Sir Ian McKellen last night at King Lear, and haven't quite processed it yet.

In the meantime, check out an unexpected response by Sir Ian on a ChannelNewsAsia interview. Freaking hilarious. And if it weren't so strange (seeing as he's an atheist and all), I'd say God bless you, Sir Ian. You made my day.

Other than Kit Kat, Kit Kat Chunky and Time Out, I'm not a big fan of candy bars. When I was younger, I used to think Hershey's was heaven, but have since realised how erroneous that assumption was ever since I got to know the wonder that is Italian chocolate.

In any case, according to the New York Times, the best candy bars in the world are English.

A Television news producer from Atlanta recently made a deal with her boss, who was traveling in London. The producer promised she would submit her script for an investigative story ahead of deadline in exchange for two British Kit Kats and a Curly Wurly bar.

The woman, who did not want her name revealed for fear of being teased endlessly by her colleagues, so loves her British chocolate that she takes an extra suitcase when she travels to London just to bring back a haul.

Deep fried Mars Bar (and clogged arteries), anyone?

Today was the day I embarked on my long overdue epicurean exploration of the East.

It all started a few weeks back when I got the chance to taste what is supposed to be the original Katong Laksa stall (47 East Coast Road, authenticity of claim to be verified, but supposedly true according to the New York Times article on the wall), which resulted in my texting an old friend, W., who lives in the area, and our deciding that, yes, we really ought to meet up.

First stop was Changi. During the half hour bus ride there from our meeting point, I proceeded to chat W.'s ear off, as is my wont. Meanwhile, he was trying to decide between bringing me to Changi Village hawker centre, or La Cantina, the rooftop restaurant at the nearby Changi Village Hotel.

For a second here, let me digress. I love colours. I am a sucker for colours. And so it was that I found the facade of the hotel absolutely adorable.

Anyway, because I very rarely go that far east, W. decided we should try the famous nasi lemak at the hawker centre. I'm not a huge fan of coconut, but I love the sambal chilli, chicken wings and otah that accompany the rice. Incidentally, there was a brief moment of amusement when I pointed out that ordering a standard chicken set with otah as an extra only cost S$1 more, while ordering a standard otah set with an extra chicken wing cost S$1.50 more, and therefore, there was potential for arbitrage.
Overall, the nasi lemak was not bad. The chilli wasn't as hot as W. (or I, surprisingly enough) would have liked, but I guess they heard I was coming today. The chicken wing was done in the traditional crunchy Malay style, while the otah was huge and tasty. It's not the best nasi lemak I have tasted though, and I think either Punggol or my favourite, Qi Ji, do a better job.

Next up was one of W.'s favourite drinks, soursop kalimansi, which turned out to be almost a meal in itself. It was a nice lime-flavoured ice-blended-like concoction from the drinks seller in the row over, but it was a little too much for me.

We ventured to the beach amidst the threatening grey clouds, only to be chased off when the rain started. So it was we turned to Plan B: Eat some more. We took a cab down towards Siglap, where W. was hunting for a dessert cafe which his friend had told him about, and as it turns out, I had recently read about in The Straits Times - Ice Cream Chefs. The place was rather small, with about three tables inside, and was generally rather cheerful, with the Ice Cream Addict, Ice Cream Freak and Ice Cream Fanatic all manning the er... stove?

We chose to mix Nutty Peanut Butter ice cream and Maltesers (left), and Nutella ice cream and marshmallows (right) together. The cooking process was rather cool, and although they offered to let us try to mix the flavours together, we decided to leave it to the professionals.

(Nutella on the left, Nutty Peanut Butter on the right)

Our final verdict? The taste of the Nutella ice cream was rather subtle (so subtle to the point that you don't taste any Nutella at all) while the Nutty Peanut Butter ice cream (with Maltesers) was rather like eating a giant frozen Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. And the two ice creams mixed together? Awesome.

After that, we went to get a drink and basically called it a day (with respect to eating, that is).

The next epicurean journey - to the north! Or perhaps back to the East. There's still so much there that I haven't managed to try yet... but I'm only one girl, and I only have one stomach!

I was feeling proud of myself yesterday; I tackled something which we hadn't done before the week earlier, and got a lot of praise for it, and at the same time, recognised it as being just that: praise, and nothing more tangible than that. Despite that, I was still feeling motivated about doing my job. One of the great things about me is that I am an immensely responsible person. I do not like seeing something which I had a part in fail. That still drives me to do a good job, in spite of my not getting paid quite what I'm worth.

But today, that all vanished. I'm not sure what exactly triggered it... the knowledge that a colleague of mine in another office was leaving to join a competitor, another trite statement trotted out by my boss which we all recognised as being mere lip service, the ever-present resentment that we all feel at another department getting substantially higher pay than what we get even though we work our asses off too, or maybe, just maybe, the end of Volume 1 of Heroes. Whatever triggered it, once it came on me, I couldn't shake it off.

And so it was at 8.15 pm this evening, a colleague and I went off to one of the meeting rooms and just bitched our hearts out. I'm sick and tired of all this favourable treatment for fresh graduates, I said. It's not them you need to worry about attracting or retaining; it's us. We know how rare we are in the market. After all, you've just found out how hard it is to find good people with the experience you require. Why aren't you doing something about it?

And there it was. I'm still a fighter. I'm still self-motivated. But I'm also incredibly frustrated. I need a change. I need two changes, in fact, but right now, I'm focusing on just one. I'm not sure how much longer I'll last before I get to the second change, if I ever get to that stage.

And now for your weekly dose of I love Heroes (now with spoilers and twice the size!):

Heroes #1:
So I finally watched the season finale. 23 weeks of my life spent following this series. And that's IT?

Nathan flies off with Peter and now both of them may be dead? Sylar, in spite of having been stabbed through the heart, escapes? Matt Parkman, the most annoying and boring character of the entire show, might still return? And why on earth did Hiro, in spite of all that samurai training with Daddy (aka Mr. Sulu), just well, poke his sword through Sylar? LAME!

To put it mildly, I'm a little frustrated. Still, I'll miss having it around. I can't wait for the new season to come!

Favourite parts:

• The Milo. As always, he is hot.
• Ando's "You look badass" and Hiro's delighted "Really?" in response
  
• Claire declaring "I already have a family" and jumping out the window so that she can help save the world instead of being kept safe
• HRG's "Call me Noah." Ha ha ha ha ha!
  
• Hiro, after accidentally hurling himself hundreds of years into the past, swearing in Japanese, with the subtitles, "#@*$" Hee!

Heroes #2:
The cast of Heroes will be coming to Singapore in August as part of the promotional tour for the DVD launch. Most of the main cast will participate in the tour, including my favourite Heroes, Milo and Masi Oka. Yay!

Links:
The Official Heroes Site (check out the comics!)
Television Without Pity - Heroes
IGN - Heroes: Season 1 Review
IGN - Heroes and Their Comic Book Counterparts, 3rd Edition (For Marvel fans too)

The new Seven Wonders of the World have been named:

• The Great Wall of China
• Petra in Jordan
• Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer
• Peru's Machu Picchu
• Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid
• The Colosseum in Rome
• India's Taj Mahal

Along the way, I found out that apart from the Pyramids in Egypt, all of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have been destroyed:

• Great Pyramid of Giza
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
• Statue of Zeus at Olympia
• Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
• Colossus of Rhodes
• Lighthouse of Alexandria

Out of the eight Wonders (one ancient and seven new), I have only seen the Colosseum, which cost me a princely sum of 8 Euros after my student discount back in 2001. I wasn't incredibly impressed at the time, but I acknowledge the skill and ability needed to construct such a monstrous stadium back in that time and age must have been considerable.

The first and last Die Hard movie I watched was Die Hard with a Vengeance, which came out 12 years ago, and was coincidentally, also the first date that I had ever gone on. Neither the movie nor the date was particular memorable, other than for the fact that I fell asleep midway through the so-called action movie.

So it was with some trepidation that I suggested catching Die Hard 4.0 (aka Live Free or Die Hard) when inclement weather scuppered our original plans of going roller-blading at East Coast this morning. The trailer, quite frankly, looks incredibly unbelievable. In one scene, a helicopter get taken out by a police car, and you just can't help but go, "aww, geez, come on!" However, the movie seemed to have garnered generally favourable reviews, and there was really wasn't anything else on that we wanted to catch.

The plot of the movie, if I may attempt to summarise it, is basically, America is under attack by a team of hackers, masterminded by the ultimate hacker, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant). Traffic, communications, financial services and utilities, all run by by computer systems, are methodically taken down one by one, throwing the entire nation into chaos. Essentially, every paranoid Luddite's worst nightmare. After the first breach (of the FBI computer systems), the FBI decides to round up all possible suspects for questioning, with Lt. Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) of the NYPD sent to pick up Matthew Farrell (Justin Long) of Camden, NJ and bring him in. Nothing is ever routine for Detective McClane, as it turns out, because he arrives just when Gabriel's henchmen have arrived to dispatch Long after Long had unwittingly provided Gabriel with a computer algorithm he needed for his grand plan. McClane saves Long's life and together, they set up to figure out what's going on, who's behind it and naturally, how to stop it.

Much to my surprise, it didn't turn out anywhere as bad as it could have been. John McClane, so wonderfully embodied by Bruce Willis, is a rather believable hero. He doesn't set out to be all brave and heroic. He doesn't even like it because of everything it has cost him; his wife has divorced him, and his daughter doesn't speak to him. Nevertheless, he does it because it's his job, and there's no one else there to do what needs to be done.

There are more than a few clichés in the movie. For instance, Mai (Maggie Q), Gabriel's lover and henchwoman, is your typical long-haired Asian beauty who's an expert at kung fu and generally kicks McClane's ass before he finally gets the upper hand. There're also a lot of improbable action sequences, as I mentioned earlier, but after a while, I felt those were acceptable because for McClane to be able to survive everything being thrown at him, he has to be someone with the ability to pull off those ridiculous moves.

My favourite parts in the show (I never thought I would say that about an action movie) are:

• the Parkour sequences most ably done by Cyril Raffaelli (a French martial artist and stuntman, and friend of David Belle, founder of the Parkour movement)
• Kevin Smith's appearance as Long's hacker friend, the Warlord
• When we're shown how unfamiliar McClane is with computer technology nowadays (particularly when he covers up a web camera lens which is broadcasting to Gabriel and asks the hackers a question, only to have Gabriel point out that covering a lens does not turn off the sound)

All in all, I would rate it 3.5 out of 5. It was way better than the last Die Hard movie I caught (I didn't even fall asleep in spite of my exhaustion) and it actually felt rather believable.

My mother tends to worry whenever my parents go out of town for a while. They're going off tomorrow and will be back on Sunday, and I've already told them that I have dinner with friends on Friday. Still, when I got home today, I found a couple of tubs of food which my mother had cooked in case I come close to starvation this weekend.

Me: Mum, I lived in London for three years on my own!
Mum: Yes, I don't know why I still worry.
Me: Do you see how much fat there is on my bones?!

So far, this week's been all about ex-es, and guys I used to date.

On Sunday, I SMS'd one ex because I happened to be in his part of town. I haven't seen him since the night of the Coldplay concert last year. He replied by telling me that it was freaky as he had just been thinking about me.

Today, another ex added me on Facebook.

Yesterday, while helping at a presentation to university students, I spotted someone who - for a split second - resembled a guy I used to date, but turned out not to be him.

The thing with all these instances, is that I still felt the proverbial jolt. And it bothered me that time had passed, and for some of them, a considerable amount of time too, and yet, I still felt a little something. Perhaps it was because I didn't expect to see them and that's why they had that effect on me. And maybe the truth is that I will always feel a little something for the people I, at one time, felt strongly about.

I don't know if other people feel this way, but I certainly hope there are others out there like me. I would hate to think it's because I'm crap at letting go and moving on.

I walked into the office at 9 am this morning with three meetings on my schedule. By the time lunch time came around, I had gone through five meetings/conference call and had to head to another lunch meeting. By 6 pm, I was completely wiped, and chose to stay on because I had a 9 pm conference call, and some stuff to work on which I didn't have a chance to look at the whole day because of the phone calls.

On days like these, 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself totally sums up my day. Played it once through and managed to death by weasels in 4 minutes, 3 seconds.

"Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art." (Washington Post article here)

Pictures here and here.

Awesome!

I've been ill over the last few days, and in between naps, I've been catching whatever's on cable. This time around, I caught the majority of Disney's High School Musical, a movie which I recognise as being something which would have appealed to me were I in the relevant age group.

Other than making me think the obvious (Vanessa Anne Hudgens, with her mixed ethnicity, is amazingly pretty, and has added further credence to the theory that we should all try and mix up our gene pool a little), it made me think about the dreams I had when I was a kid. You know, the secret dreams and ambitions which we always wanted to happen, but never really tried for.

Me? I have had several over the last few years of my teenage life, but only one which I can recall which has stuck with me ever since I was a little kid all the way till the almost 27 year old I am today. And in spite of every Disney film's inspiring message of how dreams have no limitations, and how you can be anything you want to be, if only you believe in it hard enough, I have my doubts, being the cynical adult that I am, having gone through enough to know the difference between where determination can get you, and when you should just give up.

Like most little girls, I liked singing. And like most children, I was very shy about singing in front of other people. I loved watching each and every Disney animated feature, from The Little Mermaid all the way to Mulan, and learning the songs from each film. And I fell head over hells in love with musicals when I watched my first one, Les Miserables, at the age of 14. You should be able to guess what it is I wanted to be when I was a kid by now. Yes, I wanted to sing... be in a musical, in a band, just sing.

It's kind of strange, if you look at it. I'm one of the few kids I know my age who has never taken a single piano lesson, or any other musical instrument for that matter. I don't know how to read notes, and I can't play anything to save my life. My singing goes off the moment I realise someone is listening, and I definitely can't sing as well as my friends do when we go to karaoke.

There definitely isn't anything I would change about the way I grew up. I may not have excelled at anything in particular while in school, unlike most of my friends, but nevertheless, I was still good at some things, rather than just be Jane Average. And now, even though I'm not in the most exciting of industries, I still am enjoying at least parts of what I do, and I know I do it well.

Still, watching High School Musical tonight made me feel a little sad at not being able to be that young teenage girl who still believed that anything was possible as long as I put my heart into it.