20 things I did/that happened to me when I was 20. (inspired by Kenny’s posts)

#1

Got gold award for IPPT (Individual Physical Proficiency Test) twice, on 20th January and 15th September this year. Lol, and no, my body is not as scary looking as the one above. Those are the first golds in terms of physical fitness in my life! I’m at my fittest stage of my life now. =)

#2

Started learning Korean.

#3

Got myself my first guitar (which, unfortunately, is a second-hand guitar… but it’s really cheap!). Started learning how to play guitar.

#4

Broke up. Cried. Recovered. Moved on. =)

#5

Donated blood. (I have mentioned this before eh?)

#6

Decided to combat my acne and scar problems seriously so I went to see the dermatologist and at the same time got myself a The Face Shop membership. *gasp* Bought shitloads of products from them ever since. Oh my I’m becoming more and more vain!

#7

Designed a magazine, some posters and videos in my unit. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to keep in touch with design despite being in a military organisation. XD

#8

Received the Best Soldier Award in May. =)

#9

Ran 21km in Army Half Marathon for 2hrs 5minutes.

#10

Sang and danced Got involved in a self-initiated music video production with my campmates. -_-

#11

Went to see the Da Vinci - The Genius Exhibition.

#12

Spent my first Chinese New Year eve and Day 1 not with my family, but with campmates who were also performing duty in camp.

#13

Appeared on a Chinese CG magazine. Hmm I don’t know if we can find this magazine in Singapore. Hello China!

#14

Walked from Thomson to my home at Yishun with a friend. It was roughly 17km, probably the longest distance towards home that I have walked.

#15

Met up with my primary school classmates after almost 10 years of not seeing each other. It’s quite amazing my ex-classmate and I can still understand each other’s jokes telepathically just by winking or smiling. The long time spent apart hasn’t corroded our chemistry a single bit.

#16

Saw double rainbows for the first time in my life. I was so excited about it that I immediately notified my friends and sat there watching it until it disappeared 50 minutes later.

#17

Bought a netbook. Funny how a lot of people always misheard it as ‘Macbook’. I admit they sound really similar, haha. Ultra portable computer GET!

#18

Watched a total of 53 movies in the theatres. On average, that’s like 1 movie per week!

#19

Met many new friends. Looking forward to more food tasting trips and random funny discussions with them!

#20

ONE FULL YEAR OF SERVING THE NATION. This is the only ‘year’ of my life where I am fully in National Service.

This week, on 12 Oct, I officially turn 21.

I wonder what will my list of 21 things be?

- - -

Movie Reviews!

500 Days of Summer

I watched this movie just a few hours after I caught ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’. While the latter has a fairytale-like feel in its story, 500 Days of Summer is painfully raw but also refreshingly realistic. It is totally unlike the usual romantic comedies that seem to overuse the winning template/formula to death, where happily-ever-after happens. Instead it gives you a ride back and forth throughout the 500 days of Tom’s (the boy) life with and without Summer (the girl), just like how we revisit good and bad memories of our past, usually in non-chronological (more like random) order.

How many times in life do you feel ‘right’ about being with someone, a potential soulmate? What if you are wrong about ‘The One’? Will you find ‘Another One’ or stubbornly stick to your instincts telling you what is meant to be? You feel something towards this person, but does that person feel the same?

It’s a rather simple movie that makes you think about all those questions above, which I believe most people must have encountered countless times in relationships over the years. I can’t help but feel sorry for the boy in the movie because of all those shit he had to go through, where expectations and realities are unfortunately two different things.

As the credits rolled up when the movie ended, I was like “huh? that’s fast.” Good moments in life come and go quickly, so do the bad ones. Or maybe they tend to linger a little longer. If there’s anything that I feel the movie is trying to tell those broken-hearted souls out there, it is ‘Move On’.

8.5 / 10

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

I was warned not to watch this movie on an empty stomach and luckily I didn’t. Filled with colourful visuals, every single frame of this animation oozes maximum delightfulness, fun and FOOD. I like the quirky characters and the engaging subplots touching on father-son relationship (the part about the technologically-handicap dad is totally classic and so familiar) and the sweetness of boy-girl first love. This is the kind of movie that you can expect yourself to feel good walking out of the cinema after watching.

8.5 / 10

Accident

The movie started off very promising with a super well-planned “accident” (more like an assasination) by a team of assasins. As we enter Brain’s (Louis Koo) world of mistrust and paranoia, we learn more about his team’s intelligent process of thorough planning and seemingly perfect executions of murder that appear to the public as “accidents”. However, a minor negligence can also turn into a fatal encounter (another accident) for the team. Even though the story didn’t turn out to be what I expected (something exciting and brilliant throughout), it serve as a nice reminder of how thinking too much in life can sometimes lead to disastrous consequences. Sometimes you just gotta trust people a bit.

7 / 10

Crows Zero II

Fighting. Shouting. Men. That pretty much sums up what this show is about. In some parts where there’s no fight and only talk going on, you start wondering when the next fight is going to begin. While it’s pretty fun to observe the exciting action sequences, when the movie ends you probably end up feeling quite empty thanks to the paper thin plot. It’s quite like rollercoaster ride. Like, “What? I just spent $10 on this?”

5.5 / 10