100 Must-See Hong Kong Movies - How many have you seen?

One of the 100 "Must See" Hong Kong Movies
according to the Hong Kong Film Archive experts
(and, for what it's worth, me too! ;b)

A few months ago, the Hong Kong Film Archive announced a screening program of 100 Must See Hong Kong Movies (that will go on through 2014 according to an official spokeswoman). Upon looking at the list compiled by six people (Hong Kong cinema experts, for sure, but still just six of them!), this Hong Kong film fan could not help but be shocked to discover that certain movies she considers great are missing as well as raise her eyebrows upon noticing the inclusion of other movies she doesn't consider all that wonderful.

Granted that it turns out that this list actually specifically only covers the years 1916 to 1999 (hence the exclusion of such cinematic gems as Toe Yuen's My Life as McDull (2001), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs (2002), and Ann Hui's The Way We Are (2008)). But two of my favorite films of all time -- in the form of Peking Opera Blues (1986) and Peter Chan's He's a Woman, She's a Man (1994) -- are missing as well as a number of other movies I would put in my Hong Kong cinema pantheon!

Rather than quibble and gripe some more about it all, however, I'm going to invite the (Hong Kong) film fans among this blog's readers to consider doing -- on their own blogs or in this entry's comments thread -- what I've done on this entry: i.e., bold the titles of the films that you've seen on the Hong Kong Film Archive's list. (And no, I'm not challenging for bragging rights. Rather, I just thought it'd be interesting to see what one has seen -- and not -- to date of the works that acknowledged experts consider "must see" films originating from my favorite cinematic territory!)

1916	A Trip Through China
1939	Orphan Island Paradise
1941	Scenes of Yan'an (aka On The Northwest Front Line)
1941	Roar of the People
1941	A Page of History
1948	Sorrows of the Forbidden City
1949	Blood Will Tell
1949	Wong Fei Hung's Whip That Smacks The Candle
1949	Wong Fei Hung Burns The Tyrants' Lair
1950	Dawn Must Come
1950	The Kid
1950	Awful Truth
1950	The Misarranged Love Trap
1951	Blood-stained Azaleas
1951	Should They Marry?
1951	Mysterious Murderer Part 1
1951	Mysterious Murderer Part 2
1952	The Prodigal Son
1953/1954	Family/Spring/Autumn
1953	Festival Moon
1953	In The Face of Demolition
1954	Story of Father and Son
1954	Mutual Understanding
1955	It Was A Cold Winter Night (aka Cold Night)
1955	Parents' Hearts
1955	Eternal Love
1955	Anna
1956	Blood In Snow
1956	The Wall
1956	The Seventh Heaven
1957	Golden Lotus
1957	Love Lingers On
1957	The Sorrowful Lute
1957	Our Sister Hedy
1959	Money
1959	Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom
1959	The Chair
1960	Laugh, Clown, Laugh
1960	Forever Yours
1960	Motherhood
1960	The Wild, Wild Rose
1960	The Eternal Love
1961	Father Is Back
1961	How To Get A Wife
1963	Empress Wu Tse Tien
1963	Father Takes A Bride
1965	Ungratefulness (aka Remorse)
1966	Come Drink With Me
1967	Story of a Discharged Prisoner
1967	Paragon of Sword & Knife Part 1
1968	Paragon of Sword & Knife Part 2
1968	The Golden Swallow
1968	The Pregnant Maiden
1970	The Arch
1970	Yesterday Today Tomorrow
1971	A Touch of Zen
1972	Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan
1972	The Way of the Dragon
1973	The Blood Brothers
1974	China Behind
1976	The Magic Blade
1976	The Private Eyes
1978	Drunken Master
1979	Dirty Ho
1979	Raining In The Mountain
1979	The Butterfly Murders
1979	The Secret
1980	The Spooky Bunch
1980	Dangerous Encounter - First Kind
1981	Man On The Brink
1981	Martial Club
1981	The Prodigal Son
1982	Boat People
1982	Nomad
1983	Reign Behind a Curtain
1983	Ah Ying
1984	Long Arm of the Law
1984	Homecoming
1984	Shanghai Blues
1985	Mr. Vampire
1985	Police Story
1986	A Better Tomorrow
1986	Just Like Weather
1987	City on Fire
1987	An Autumn's Tale
1987	A Chinese Ghost Story
1987	Wonder Women
1987	The Romance of Book and Sword
1988	Rouge
1989	The Killer
1989	God of Gamblers
1990	Days of Being Wild
1991	Once Upon A Time In China
1992	Swordsman II
1992	The Legendary La Rose Noire
1992	Autumn Moon
1993	Fong Sai Yuk
1993	Fong Sai Yuk II
1993	C'est La Vie, Mon Cheri
1994	Ashes Of Time
1995	A Chinese Odyssey - Part 1: Pandora's Box
1995	A Chinese Odyssey - Part 2: Cinderella
1996	Comrades, Almost a Love Story
1997	Made in Hong Kong
1999	The Mission

And if anyone's counting, the total's a rather respectable -- I reckon -- 60 1/3 (since Family is counted as merely one third on account of it being one part of a film trilogy) for me! ;b

Travelling woman

Apropos re travel talk in the blog entry below (including its comments thread), an upcoming vacation and also a friend's impending travel abroad...

visited 23 states (10.2%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Things are really relative. Compared to many people, I'm pretty well-traveled. (Wanna let me know how you compare? If so, give this meme a spin on your blog!) But looking at the world map indicating where I've been in red above, I realize how much of the world I've actually not set foot in.

Worse, the picture above is actually quite deceptive. This not least since while the United States is completely red in the above map, it's less so in the one down below... :S


visited 28 states (56%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

The Omnivore's 100

Yes, it's edible (albeit not on the Omnivore 100 list)
-- anyone else know what it is? :b

I saw this meme over at Alejna's Collection Tokens and couldn't resist trying it out. The directions are as follows:-

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

With that in mind, here goes with regards to The Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (although I have eaten alligator!)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoissest
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns (i.e., char siew pao?!)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or Head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam Chowder in Sourdough Bowl
33. Salted Lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted Cream Tea
38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu (aka puffer fish)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snails
79. Lapsang Souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom Yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose Harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole Poblano
96. Bagel and Lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Which makes it so that by my calculation, it's 71 items eaten, 18 items not yet eaten and 11 items that I never want to eat. So... wanna try doing this meme yourself over at your blog (in which case, do please come back and report your results) or in this entry's comments section? :b

Six Unimportant Things About Me (Meme)

A fellow Photo Hunter, this one known as the teach (aka mary t on another of her blogs), tagged me for a meme that requires me to share six unimportant things/habits/quirks about me as well as do the following:-

- Link to the person that tagged you.
- Post the rules on your blog.
- Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
- Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
- Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

With the understanding that something about me that's 'unimportant' can be defined by it being something that I've hitherto thought to be too trivial to blog about, here are six unimportant things/habits/ quirks about moi (in no particular order):-

1. Pretty much all my life, I've been prone to having bouts of insomnia.

2. I use to try to literally count sheep in order to overcome my insomnia when I was younger.

3. In recent years, I taken to compiling mental movie lists (e.g., of Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia movies that I've seen, my current top twenty favorite Hong Kong actresses, or the Milkyway Image movies I've seen thus far) or naming my current Arsenal first eleven (or, including the five substitutes allowed by the English Premier League, first sixteen) instead!

4. I prefer to feel good rather than look good -- and base my choice of clothing on this personal quirk (that, just this past weekend, a fellow female flatly told me was against nature as far as women are concerned -- and when I begged to differ, promptly accused me of being a lesbian! :<)

5. I prefer stripes and plaid patterns to floral ones (for clothes but also curtains and couches!).

6. For some reason, my ethnicity and/or nationality tends to get mis-identified pretty much every where I go. For example, in Hong Kong, I've been asked more than once "are you Japanese or Korean?" (as if I can't be anything else!) while on our recent visit to Taiwan, my mother and I frequently got misidentified as Japanese, regardless of whether we spoke Hokkien (a language that's actually very close to Taiwanese) or English! And if you're think this is "understandable", whither my also having been misidentified in the past as Ojibwa (by Utes), Hopi (Utes again), Navajo (by Hopi), Cochiti (by Cochiti), Americans (by Americans and Canadians), Welsh (by an Englishwoman from Birmingham!) and Tanzanian (by a Zambian man)???!!!

So... okay, I gotta ask: Are these things about me interesting and does anyone think that any of them are worth devoting entire blog entries about? If so, do let me know and maybe I might do just that in the future! ;b

Before that though, here's going ahead and (-- if truth be told -- not so randomly) tagging the following six bloggers for this meme (and hoping that they'll play along!):-

1. A. at A Changing Life

2. Alejna at Collecting Tokens

3. hd at Falling Stones Are Not Heavy

4. Glenn at A Pessimist is Never Disappointed

5. Willow at Morsels of Peach Souffle

6. sbk at Pictures, Thoughts and Comments

And should anyone else be inclined to try this meme, do please feel free to do so! :)

Have you ever? (meme)

A picture from my Japan 2006 photo album

Alejna of Collecting Tokens has done it again: i.e., posted about something that made me want to follow suit. In this case, it's a meme that, in her words, is "a big old checklist of things done in one's life". As she went on to explain, the idea is to go through the list of 150 items and bold the 'done' things. So, while I'm in a revelatory mood, here goes on my part with regards to disclosing what among the list I've already gone and done (and, for good measure, I'm going to italicise the top ten things on the list I haven't done which I'd like to!):-

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped

11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper

21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight

31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states

41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving

51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them (I do this pretty much every day here in Hong Kong!)
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football

61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class

71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo

81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on a television news programs as an "expert"
83. Gotten flowers for no reason (0r, at least, no reason that I can think of!)
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house

91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over (Boy, have I ever!)

101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication (Does one with a 1.4 million circulation qualify? Trust so)
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart

111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet

121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school

131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read (Don't quite understand this item)
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language

141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

So... does that make for 60 things on the list that I've done? In any event, hope that the list was even half as interesting for you to read as it was for me to go through! Also, if any of these blog's readers decide to go ahead and do this meme on their own blogs, do please alert me to that fact. :)

Four Books

Quiet time by the harbour in Hong Kong

I was recently among the people tagged by A Changing Life's a. for this meme. I found her blog entry on this subject to make for interesting reading and can but hope that mine will prove to be the same to at least some of this blog's visitors.

Four childhood books

Like many others who was born and spent the better part of her childhood in a British Commonwealth country, I read tons of Enid Blyton. However, for added interest (and since I've already previously blogged about them), am going to refrain from naming any books by her or the two other favorite female authors from my younger days. Which makes things a bit difficult, seeing as that eliminates so many works! Additionally, these days, I find myself once again residing in a different part of the world from the bulk of my personal library. Still, here goes:-

• Winnie-the-Pooh - A. A. Milne. The edition I got in London came complete with original illustrations by E. H. Shepherd, and I'm going to take this opportunity to state how much I prefer those original depictions of Pooh and Piglet to their Disneyfied versions.

• A Child's Garden of Verses - Robert Louis Stevenson. Funnily enough, I never ever managed to get into Stevenson's more well known Treasure Island and Kidnapped but I adored this poetry collection, with particular favorites among them including the one about Leerie the Lamplighter (even if also belatedly realizing how ethnocentric some of the others in the collection were!)

• Swiss Family Robinson - Johann David Wyss. When I read the English translation of this classic book, I was bemused to find that there are some Malay words in it!

• King of the Wind: The Story of the Godolphin Arabian - Marguerite Henry. My favorite of the many horse books I read during my "horse" phase that also included the same author's Justin Morgan Had a Horse, Mary O'Hara's My Friend Flicka and, of course, Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. :)

Four authors I will read again and again

I'm going to take this category to mean authors who I've got more than one book of (rather than just authors of books I read again and again). Again, have made things more difficult for myself -- but, hopefully, more interesting for regular visitors -- in that rather than repeat what I've previously written on this blog, I'm going to go for some more 'new' (at least for this blog) names here...

• Sara Paretsky. The latest crime fiction novelist whose books I've become hooked to.

• E. M. Forster. And for the record, my two favourites of his books are Howard's End and Maurice. Incidentally, very much dislike the film adaptation of the former but am fine with the latter.

• Ulf Hannerz. One of the sadly too rare contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists whose theories and observations make sense, and can write well.

• E. L. Braithwaite. I have to admit that I've only ever read and know about two books by him (i.e., To Sir With Love and Paid Servant) but believe you me when I say that I'd like to get my hands on more books by him!

Four authors I will never read again

Figuring that I might as well go for the big rather than obscure names here...

• Jane Austen. I know she has many fans but I tried to read Northanger Abbey and then Sense and Sensibility and couldn't make it through more than a few pages of either! And this from someone who's been to Bath and even visited Winchester Cathedral, where she lies buried.

• Jostein Gaardner. Sophie's World started off alright but at some point, I'm afraid that it all got too complex and 'meta' for me.

• Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I get the feeling that a lot of the quality got lost in translation and since I doubt that I'll be picking up the Russian language any time soon...

• Homi K. Bhabha. Not so long ago, I was obliged to read more than my fair share of post-structuralist, meta-critical theory tomes. Am I glad that those days are now gone! (And for those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a real example of Bhabha's babblings: If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.)

The first four books on my to-be-read list

I'm going to take this category to refer to books I already bought copies of but have not yet gotten to reading...

• Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min. I got much out of reading her Empress Orchid and am looking forward to see her imaginative take on another notorious historical Chinese personality.
  

• Last Princess of Manchuria - Lilian Lee. I've viewed several film adaptations of this author's works, including Rouge, Green Snake, Temptation of a Monk, Dumplings and Kawashima Yoshiko: Last Princess of Manchuria. It'll be interesting to see whether I like her prose as much as many of those movies.
  

• Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the Men and Women of Hong Kong's Sex Industry - Yeeshan Yang. I viewed Whispers and Moans the movie earlier this year and still would rank it among my top five Hong Kong films of 2007. It'll be interesting to see how much the Herman Yau helmed work did in fact take from this non-fiction book.
  

• Fire Sale - Sara Paretsky. Like I wrote above, I've become hooked to this crime novel series that centers on Chicago private investigator V.I. Warshawsky.
  

The four books I would take to a desert island

Three of these books I love and read many times; one of these I've yet to finish but like enough of what I've seen thus far -- and since I figure I ought to bring something to a desert island that's new to me along with old favorites...

• To Serve Them All My Days - R. F. Delderfield. First read when I myself was attending boarding school. Still love it after all these years.
  

• Return to Laughter: An Anthropological Novel - Elinore Smith Bowen (since revealed to be the nom de plume of Laura Bohannan). The book that I made sure all my "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology" students read whenever I taught that course (which, I will still maintain, actually can have practical relevance and utility in this increasingly interconnected world of ours).
  

• The Last Star of the East: Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia and Her Films - Akiko Tetsuya. Yes, well... and it's not just to gaze at the pictures of my favorite actress of all time (aka The Great One) either! ;)
  

• The Importance of Living - Lin Yutang. At the very least, a book with a great title! ;b
  

The last lines of one of my favourite books.

This is the city
with a history
unforetold.

This is Hong Kong --
my city
of poetry.

Agnes Lam
20 April 2003
Hong Kong in spite of SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome)

-- From Michael Ingham's Hong Kong: A Cultural and Literary History.

As for tagging: I'd like to see the following four's take on the Four Books meme:-

• Ho of Falling Stone are not Heavy
• Newley of Newley Purnell
• Alejna of Collecting Tokens
• Glenn of A Pessimist is Never Disappointed

...but only if they are inclined to go for it. Really. :)

Another revelatory post and meme

A little more than a week ago, I got tagged by Lissa of a pity i'm an aquarius to take part in this meme which asks the participants to reveal seven little-known facts about themselves. I must admit that while thinking up this post, I had a sense of deja vu in that this meme seemed rather similar to the one I participated in back in April that got me to reveal six weird things about myself.

Of course, for this one, I'm not obliged to reveal weird things; yet, doesn't it seem to be the case that things which are -- or may be -- interesting also frequently can seem weird at one level or another? Anyways, you can be the judge of this by reading and then commenting re the following revelations... ;b

1) I share the same birthday as Will Smith, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas, Mark Hamill and the late Christopher Reeve.

2) When I was about three, I was bitten in the neck by a dog and, according to the doctor, literally came within half an inch of losing my life.

3) At aged seven, I won first prize in a dog-handling competition handling my pet dog, Cindy (named after the youngest daughter in The Brady Bunch; incidentally, one of my favorite TV shows as a child).

4) I studied music and to play the piano for more than ten years (from the age of about five to fifteen) but haven't played the piano in earnest in years.

5) I was stung by a pretty toxic jellyfish on my ninth birthday and couldn't walk for a few days as a result. The experience has left me with, among other things, a taste for jellyfish. (I feel like I'm having my revenge every time I eat some jellyfish!)

6) One of my still unrealized childhood ambitions -- and one which I don't think is going to get realized any time soon -- was to cross the Sahara Desert by camel!

7) I belong to a club that counts Sir Run Run Shaw among its members... :o ;)

And now comes the hardest part: i.e., tagging willing others to take part in this meme. Since I had some difficulty with this part the last time around, I'm going to just try for three rather than the requisite seven individuals. So will the folks behind the following blogs please consider themselves tagged?

i) Alejna of Collecting Tokens

ii) Sharon of Bibliobibuli

iii) Willow of Morsels of Peach Souffle

_

Ask and ye shall receive (Some answers, that is!)

Another day, another meme. This one came courtesy of Collecting Tokens' Alejna and, interestingly, has her e-mailing five questions that were completely of her choice to answer as a follow-up to someone else having done the same with her.

In return for my participation in this meme, she is courageously volunteering herself to be tagged for the Six weird things about myself meme. And yes, the idea with today's meme is to also see whether anyone wants to volunteer to getting asked five questions by me -- and in this way, further continue the meme's progress -- in addition to finding out what my answers are to the questions that were asked of me (and which I actually had to spend quite a bit of time pondering since, as I told my questioner, I've never ever been asked four out of five of those before!)... ;)

In any event, and without further ado:-

1. What is your happiest childhood memory? (Or more than one if you'd like.)

I'm not sure I can pinpoint a single childhood memory as the happiest of the lot. However, I can recall many happy times spent in England exploring museums (yes, really!) in the company of my mother and being allowed by her to go on buying sprees in more than one bookstore there.

As I disclosed in an early post on this here blog: for a good part of my childhood, I used to regularly spend part of each year in England. However, what may not have been clear previously is that this involved my being taken out of the Malaysian schools I attended for weeks at a time. Alternatively put, my parents got me playing "hookey" for significant periods of each year!

As compensation, my mother would see to it that we did educational things while there -- like go visit museums and other places of cultural and/or historical interest (of which there are, to put it mildly, quite a few in England!). And lots of reading. Only, for the most part, she didn't dictate which museums and other places to visit or even what I would be reading.

Rather, I got to research, pick and plan stuff pretty much all by myself! And oh boy, did I get quite a bit of joy -- and, looking back, quite a bit of a practical and useful, even while also unorthodox, education -- from doing so! :b

2. What do you see yourself doing in 10 years? Are there any particular goals you'd like to accomplish in that time frame?

For the record, this is the only question of the quintet that I've been asked before by others. And, as I told Alejna, usually in job interviews and/or by individuals who were my bosses at the time of their asking this question!

Also for the record: My response these days -- one which can seem to freak people out -- is that I no longer try to look 10 years down the road and, instead, tend to only look at my life and related matters in, at most, six month increments!!

My reason for this is that once upon a time, my life path did seem like it could have been as predictable as that of a train's but, especially over the past 10 years or so, my life has taken such unexpected twists and turns -- much of which I truly feel were beyond my control -- that I no longer am inclined to try to predict nor seek to purposefully and single-mindedly dictate the course of my own long-term future.

Instead, I'm content to see what life brings and respond as well as react accordingly to the surprises along with more expected developments that it tends to turn up. This way, I feel that my life path is more flexible and open to interesting possibilities. And even while this way of living can bring with it its share of anxieties, I think it compensates by being more exciting as well as generally less disappointing.

3. If you had the power to bestow a gift upon a baby girl, such as those given by fairy godmothers in a fairy tale like Sleeping Beauty, what gift would you bestow? If you could bestow three such gifts, what would they be?

If I could bestow just one gift, it would be the ability to think for herself. And if I could bestow two others, it would be a good -- as in caring as well as physically healthy! -- heart and the ability to not take herself too seriously. This way, I hope, she'll grow up to be a wonderful individual who will do some good in the world, and without getting an over-inflated ego while doing so!

4. Let's go with the inanimate object route. If you were a box, what kind would you be? Describe yourself, your uses and your contents, if any.

"Boxes are highly variable receptacles." Thus began the Wikipedia's entry for "box". This fact notwithstanding, I have to admit that I've given scant thought to these inanimate objects and, especially, what of their kind I'd like to be!

After devoting some thought to the matter, however, I'm going ahead and concluding that I'd like to be a box that contains a present and which, when opened up by the recipient of the present, would be party to seeing her -- and I'm definitely seeing a female in this vision! -- face light up with happiness.

And no, my size won't matter or even my appearance (though, for some reason, I'm getting a distinct vision of myself as being rather plain and square in shape!). Rather, it's what inside that counts -- ...and here I feel compelled to make clear that I most definitely am not the kind whose purpose is to house or transport jewellery or some designer dress or associated accessory! -- and the role that the box has in making someone happy even for a time... :)

5. I think the word "pants" is a funny word. Also "squid." I like to say "arugula." Do you have words (in English or other languages) that you like to say?

Hmmm...words that I find funny and like to say or just like to say? In view of the examples that were given, I'd say the former. Okay, then, about the only one that comes to mind fairly immediately is "walaubagaimanapun" (the multi-syllabic Bahasa Malaysia equivalent of the English "although") -- in part because although we were taught this word at school, very few people (beyond grammarians and government officials) really use it in real life!

(As an aside: I often find Bahasa Malaysia -- or, at least, its official version -- to be a way too long-winded language for real, practical and regular use. As an example, the English "please help me" (three syllables) would get rendered, if one stuck to the language's formal rules, etc., as sila berikan saya pertolongan (eleven syllables). So you tell me which phrase you'd be more likely to utter if you really were in serious trouble!!!)

As far as English words are concerned: Um...maybe just "squish"? On second thoughts, there's also "hippopotamous"; this not least because I was taught to pronounce it as "hip-po-po-tey-mous" in Malaysia, something which got my English friends laughing hysterically when they heard it, while to this day, I still find their pronounciation of the word as "hip-po-pot-te-mous" as not sounding quite "normal" to my Malaysian ears! ;D

Six weird things about myself (meme)

Earlier this week, I got tagged -- along with six other individuals she considers to be "strange and interesting people"! -- to reveal six weird things about myself by Bibliobibuli's Sharon Bakar.

According to the rules of the meme: People who are tagged should write a blog post of 6 weird things about them as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

So here goes (and please don't say that you've not been warned!):-

1. I've not worn a skirt in at least five years, and a dress in eleven and a half years.

Even as a child, I didn't care much for wearing skirts and dresses. And this before one fateful incident which saw my dress get caught on one of the spikes of the then spiked front gate of my family residence as I attempted to climb over it, with the result that I was left dangling fearfully in mid air for the better part of a few long minutes!

Then, much later, when I was a student at Beloit College, I used to get annoyed by it being so that every time I put on a skirt, I would get people asking me whether I was going out on a date that evening (and if so, with whom)! So much so that it gradually was the case that I only ever wore skirts on laundry day, when I had run out of clean pairs of trousers and shorts to wear...but since I've not had days in which I've run out of trousers and shorts to wear in years... ;)

2. I organized Communal Screams at my college.

At boarding school in England, a friend took me to an isolated end of the school grounds one day and introduced me to the wonders of destressing by screaming. In my first semester at college in Wisconsin, I decided to take the screaming to a new level by having a whole host of others scream with me at the same time for a fixed period. After getting the permission from the college authorities to organize such an event at midnight on the eve of Finals Week, the Beloit College Communal Scream was born.

Imagine, if you will, what seemed like a whole college screaming in unison for five minutes at a fixed time and place. And individuals being inspired to add to the experience by doing such as recording their screams in advance on tape and then playing the tape at full blast over their hi-fi stereo's speakers or augmenting the act of screaming by scattering their term papers from the windows of their dorm rooms...

It may all have seemed like bedlam to those not in the know. Except that it actually was organized bedlam. So organized, in fact, that before too long, the college actually took to funding the Communal Scream (and paying for the printing of the posters and for the artist who designed the posters)! As an American liberal arts college student -- like I was at the time -- might say, "how seriously cool was that?!" ;D

3. I used to think that I wanted to have my ashes scattered at Highbury after I died.

For those who don't know, Highbury = Highbury Stadium = the home of Arsenal Football Club (the English association football club and team I've supported since 1978) until the Gunners moved in the summer of 2006 to the far more modern plus larger capacity Ashburton Grove (AKA Emirates Stadium). And I used to fantasize that if my ashes were scattered there after I died, my ghost could maybe help Arsenal by doing such as trip up opponents and help block those of their shots that otherwise might have been goal-bound!

However, Highbury is now in the process of being converted into luxury apartments and penthouses and, as yet, I don't feel even half as much love for Arsenal's new home as I did for its old one. Perhaps, in time, I will come to yearn to have my ashes scattered over at the Emirates Stadium. But I think this development will need to involve at least as many visits there as the number of pilgrimages that took me to Highbury. Therefore, in the meantime, I'm open to suggestions as to alternative places to have my ashes scattered after my death! ;S

4. I ate 96 chapatis in three and half weeks in Kenya.

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, I went to Kenya in the summer 1986 at the invitation of a friend and stayed with her family for the bulk of my visit there. But what I haven't written about until now is how much I loved my Kenyan Indian friend's mother's cooking. And in particular, how much I loved her chapatis.

So much did I love those home-made flat breads that every meal that we ate in my friend's Nairobi home, be it breakfast, lunch, tea or dinner, I would choose the chapati option over, say, rice or Western style bread. Before too long, this came to be noticed by my friend's mother and the rest of her family, and they decided it would be fun to count the number of chapatis I ate during my stay in Kenya.

Later on, as the end of my visit neared, that motherly cooking genius proceeded to announce that I wouldn't be allowed to leave Kenya until I had eaten 100 of her chapatis! Alas, despite my valiant efforts, I never did eat 100 of her chapatis -- at least, not on that particular visit. Still, the woman did generously decide to allow me to head home without having achieved that feat. Though not before enquiring only half in jest, as I got ready to head to the airport on the final day of my visit: "Are you sure you don't want me to pack four chapatis for you to eat on the plane?" ;D

5. I was bitten by tsetse flies in Tanzania.

As also has been mentioned previously, I spent two years of my life in Tanzania (Kenya's southern neighbor). Towards the end of my stay in East Africa, I decided to treat myself by going on a wildlife safari that took in visits to the ecologically diverse Lake Manyara National Park, the truly vast and animal-filled Serengeti National Park, the seriously awesome Ngorongoro Crater and surrounding Conservation Area, and elephant-rich Tarangire National Park.

For the most part, this wildlife safari was a wonderful experience. However, even in this modern day and age, this kind of experience is not without its problems and perils. For example, at one point, one of our Land Rover's tyres developed a puncture and, since an unpunctured spare tyre couldn't be found for miles, the car had to limp along very slowly for a few hours.

Then there were the tsetse flies which dogged us for much of our stay in Tarangire. And, I found, were well capable of biting through layers of clothing, socks and safari leather boots! While these insects' bites were painful and thus bad enough, what worried me more was that they are known carriers of the incurable disease popularly known as sleeping sickness. Fortunately, however, it does look like the tsetse flies that bit me weren't carriers of that fearsome disease... ;S

6. I have lots of dreams in which I'm doing things like reading, writing, watching movies and -- these days -- blogging.

In conversations with various friends, I've been told that they don't dream much. Or, at least, don't normally remember their dreams. I, on the other hand, feel like hardly a night goes by without my having at least one dream.

Something else in which I differ from many of my friends is that they tend to have -- or, at least, only remember having -- dreams which tend to be really unusual. Meanwhile, I seem to be stuck with having generally mundane dreams. Ones in which I do a lot of what I do in real life -- e.g., read, write, watch movies and, increasingly, blog and check my blog's site meter! I wonder: Is this because I don't have much of an imagination; or is it maybe a sign that I'm generally happier with my life than most? ;b

In any event, here's going ahead and tagging the individuals behind the following blogs* and requesting that they divulge six weird things about themselves on their blogs:-

Falling Stones are Not Heavy
Morsels of Peach Souffle
The Places You Will Go
Cultural Snow

Now off I go, as the meme's rules direct, to leave "you are tagged" comments over at their blogs! :)

* Addendum: As per the rules of the meme, this group originally was six in number but two individuals have asked to be "let off" having to write six weird things about themselves. However, if there are any volunteers to replace them from among this blog's readers who have their own blogs, please let me know and I'll happily add two of you to this list!

** 26th April update: The game and interesting individual behind Collecting Tokens has volunteered to be included on my list of "taggees" for this meme. Here's looking forward to seeing her "weird" revelations over on her blog at some point in the near future! :)