Other than visiting friends and family during Chinese New Year (CNY), many Singaporeans also went to visit the dead and coffins on the third day of CNY. I was one of them. =P

Why? Because it was free!

The National Museum of Singapore was opened for free admission on that day, and the Quest For Immortality exhibition attracted the most crowds. And I have to admit, the large crowd was a bit of a turn-off, because you have to (sometimes) squeeze through people just to see things closely.

See, I noticed this crack on the coffin after looking closely. It’s like the corpse, woken up by the crowd maybe, couldn’t take it anymore so it came back to life and attempted to break it open and escape.

Rather than only showing mummies and coffins, the exhibition also showcases accessories, tablets, scrolls, etc, to help visitors understand ancient Egyptians’ concept of afterlife and immortality.

That looks like a lot ingredients for CNY reunion dinner. But in this case they are probably used as offerings. How many different food can you spot?

It seems like ancient Egyptians have already discovered advanced printing and graphic design techniques to tell people not to touch their sacred artefacts.

According to my friend, a little boy came and saw this ‘do not touch’ sign, and thought that only the sign itself could not be touched, so he used his fingers to touch the artefact instead. Haha so cute!

This is the copper mirror they used in their time. Hmmmmm I think the surface it is lying on is much more reflective than it.

A mummy of a cat. It is said that millions of them have been found buried in cemeteries.

Bad thing about not paying to see an exhibition like this is that, you don’t feel the need to read and experience every single thing there. Even though there was some form of crowd control to regulate the number of visitors entering at a time, I still felt rather distracted by the huge amount of people wandering around.

It felt kinda like a huge CNY gathering happening in the dark (the whole exhibition was kind of dark).

All in all, I would highly recommend everyone to go there and spend S$15 for this experience! (Personally I wouldn’t mind going down again, because I didn’t manage to look through every single thing) Not all their artefacts have the ‘do not touch’ sign so feel free to touch (but be careful not to damage them)!

I touched his face.

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Lousy Movie Reviews!

14 Blades

I went to watch this movie purely because of Donnie Yen and Qi Yu Wu. And it certainly didn’t disappoint too much. The concept mainly revolves around dignity and bonds, with Zhao Wei’s constant reminder in the movie that ‘the world needs a hero to fight against injustice’. In this case, Donnie Yen is our hero in the movie. Frankly speaking, I didn’t really understand the storyline fully. The premise seems to be pretty complicated (or rather, maybe not very well explained) for a story that’s basically about good fighting evil. Luckily the fighting scenes and the occasional comic relief moments were pretty decent.

7 / 10

72 Tenants of Prosperity

Drawing audience into the cinemas using a large strong cast line-up is not new, and this is one of the movies during the CNY season this year that is heavily relying on this tactic. While the plot is paper thin and nonsensical humour not really funny (partly due to it being lost in translation from Cantonese to Mandarin, and partly because it’s really not funny when it tried too hard) sometimes, it was rather fun for me to spot various cameos of different Hong Kong actors and actresses. As the movie ends you might feel like you’ve watched a 2 hour CNY variety show.

5 / 10

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The main reason why I’m (and maybe everyone too) watching this movie is Heath Ledger (it’s his last movie). And Johnny Depp. And maybe, Jude Law. Haha. And nah, not really a fan of Colin Farrell. When the movie ended, I thought it gave me a pretty weird experience. Not bad, but not mind-blowing great either. It surprisingly has a lot of Ledger moments, and a heavy dose of magical fantasy elements thrown in. The story has managed to keep me engaged most of the time, even though it went a bit slow sometimes. The enjoyment of the movie largely came from watching Heath’s character slowly revealing its different sides and knowing more about himself.

7 / 10

… that Mr Bean’s Soya Bean Ice-Cream + Roti Prata = Awesomeness.

… that Dropbox is one of the best free apps (who still spells ‘applications’ nowadays?) ever. It has made sync-ing (and the word ’synchronising’ too) and sharing large amount of data across  computers so much easier and pleasurable. Why haven’t you started using dropbox too?

… that Gindaco @ Ion has the BEST TAKOYAKI IN TOWN. Seriously. It is so nice all over, a baby can probably learn to spell n-i-c-e after eating it. Like what ahdui from headphonehaven describes, it is “Crispy on the outside, moist in the inside with a rather decent cut of octopus meat, accompanied with the right amount of okonomiyaki sauce, mayonnaise and katsuobushi. *orgasmic*”

… that the food court at Cineleisure sells biáng biáng noodles! Haven’t tried it though. The Chinese word biáng is made up of 57 strokes, and is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary usage.

… that I just watched two Asian movies (one from China, one from Taiwan) about dreams and passion.

Hear Me is good. It’s the kind of movie that makes you feel warm and happy inside. It reminds me of Cape No. 7. It explores themes such as sibling love and overcoming obstacles (in this case, being deaf) to achieve something in life. It’s a movie that requires a bit of patience and effort from the audience to read the subtitles as most of the dialogues are presented in sign language, but the sincere performance and much-welcomed comic timing of some supporting casts eventually makes you forget about the read and draws you intothe enjoyable light-hearted story. The female lead, Ivy Chen, is so cute! =D

8.5 / 10

The only obvious evidence of Stephen Chow’s involvement in the comedy Jump is during the opening credits, when it said ‘Stephen Chow presents’. However, I couldn’t help but feel the whole movie has his signature ‘Mo Lei Tau’ style stamped all over. It’s a straightforward story about a village girl who enters a modern city to learn how to dance. She encounters quite a fair bit of obstacles along the way but eventually manages to impress the right people with her gung-ho attitude towards dancing. It’s quite entertaining and well-shot, but you can’t help but feel empty when the credits start rolling and wondering why the movie didn’t have more dance sequences.

7 / 10