A Christmas Carol & A Birthday Note

**Disclaimer: I've started this post almost a month ago but it was sitting in my draft for that period of time without getting published. Since it was a special event I had with my girls, I shall continue to post this outdated post.**

It was a sweet November for all of us. By all of us, I meant, myself, my besties K & N as well as our all time favourite big sis A and the crazy partner of hers.

In attempt to surprise our lovely girl N for her 26th birthday, I came up with the grand plan. The plan was to bring her out to a date and leave her thinking it's just me and her. The rest of the group will show up quietly from somewhere so that we could have a nice dinner together. The best part of the plan was to bring her to a movie, better still, a GOLD CLASS movie.

I knew this is going to a great experience, not only for her but for all of us. None of us has experienced the Gold Class movie before, simply because the tickets themselves were too pricey and there will be additional costs to the refreshments you most likely want to order to enjoy the movie with something to chew/sip on.

But, immediately after I've suggested this plan, K and A agreed to the plan with a lot of excitements. The reason why I've suggested this was because our dear birthday girl N is a movie buff. You could tell from this post she posted on her blog. So, everyone agreed that bringing her to a special movie experience sounds like a plan!

Being a GOLD CLASS cinema, they didn't have a whole range of movies to choose from but instead only selected movies made it to the Gold Class. We were given only limited choices at that point of time. Out of which, N has already watched most of them. So, that left us to somewhat a new Christmas Theme Movie - A Christmas Carol.

Here's the movie detail:
Name - A Christmas Carol
Genre - Animation, Drama, Family
Director - Robert Zemeckis
Main Cast - Jim Carrey
Running Time - 85 Mins

Frankly speaking, I didn't have a lot of things to talk about the movie because sadly I thought it wasn't that fantastic afterall. It was one draggy with little-to-no-interesting-scene movie. Although the running time was 1 hour and 35 mins, it felt like forever to finish the movie. Kids in the cinema didn't enjoy this as well, we even witnessed the parents waking their kids up after the end of movie.

We had fun taking picture with the pro cam, having coffee and chicken wraps at the Pacific Coffee Shop, having dinner at Thai Restaurant and a movie at GV Vivo city. The bottom line is, everything happened on that day was GREAT except the movie itself. Although all of us admit that GOLD CLASS experience is what made the day most memorable and it is one b'day celeberation we will never forget.

And, here's to the Birthday Girl!

Book Review: My Best Friend's Girl by Dorothy Koomson

A friend of mine S who has the common interest as me, and I love going to the book stores together, get lost in the isles and isles of books, in search for a few we wanted to read. They seem to me like how the delicious cupcakes seem to be for a cupcake lover. No, I'm not exaggerating. I'd rather read a book at home then going out for shopping, not because I'm a nerd who doesn't do shopping, just because reading is like my favorite past time activity.

S has gotten hold of this book, which is why I borrowed it from her and hence the review. My first read from this Author Dorothy Koomson and the first book I've read from a black author who grew up in London and in Leeds. This explains why the lead character in the book is black and the book covers a great deal about Leeds.

I'll try writing this review without revealing the interesting plots in the book. The power of a good writing lies in making a simple story utterly interesting and getting the readers feel the same way as you wanted them to. In this book, DK was able to do that. The story revolves around 2 best friends who grew up together in the most years of their lives until someone came along and something happened. I'm not going to tell you how, but the one thing I must say is that the small girl in the book is one who will make you go 'Aww.. she's so cute', at least she got me a few times. This book is packed with emotions pertaining to love, hate, betrayal, sense of responsibility, friendship and many more. It sure is worth the while for your reading time.

Reading a good book like this usually inspires me to read more. It's never enough. The next time I step into the bookstore, I will be looking out for more books from DK.

Movie Review: Spread

As much as I hate Mondays, I always have a reason to look forward to my Tuesdays. It's becoming a ritual for me and my 2 other girls to catch up for a movie on Tuesday nights. So, this movie was just another movie date with them. I was fairly surprised when I found out that one of the girls wants to watch this movie, given the fact that this movie isn't going to be a gruesome and violent type to be rated as R21. So, there could only be one other reason why this is the case. Hmmm. Of course it's adult related. Blame it on our sweet, young looks, the moment we set our foots at the line to hand in the tickets to get into the cinema, we were asked to flash our ICs. Feels good to be looking young but it's kinda embarrassing when other people in line start to check us out.

The story revolves around this guy named Nikki (played by Ashton Kutcher). He's not only a homeless but also a jobless person and the look and charm are all he possess in life. A womanizer who works his way through to say in a big house, charge on their credit card and drive their Mercedes or Porsche just like his own. Gigolo isn't enough term for Nikki, but rather, he's much more than that. All he has to do is to satisfy woman who has money and life's all good for him.

This only made it to 2 stars for me because it's just a simple story, and it's a cheap flick except for the fact that they use Ashton as the actor, which I'm sure has cost the producer of the movie a good amount of money. It's somewhat predictable in the sense that this gigolo who makes his living out of cheating women ended up learning how meaningful love is to him. And, there are many other things in life that's much more important and earning money in a easy but the wrong way is not the way to live your life. That's the message they are trying to send across.

At the end of the show, I did realize that it's a good thing they check ICs at the entrance. It's definitely not for young kids. Sexual scenes are rather explicit. And oh, I have to mention this, the last scene of the movie was kinda disgusting. You can go watch it and tell me what do you think of that last scene.

Afterward, we headed out for dinner at the restaurant nearby and had our fulfilling meal topped with taking lots of pictures. It was a fun night, although we were not very much happy with one of the staffs at the restaurant who serves our food with zero level of customer service orientation. We should even look at sending in feedback for that particular girl. Oh well, anyways, this was somehow compensated with another staff who is a complete opposite of her. So, we will just let that slide this time. =)

Book Review: The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin

It's interesting, whenever I feel an itch of reading a book, I'd somehow get an idea given to me somewhere somehow. Okay, I will explain to you if this is quite confusing. While I was reading the Chasing Harry Winston, one of the characters in the book 'Leigh Eisner' was reading this book in bed and was mentioning to the guy that she loves this book. So, I thought this must have been a nice & famous book and which is why it has been turned into a major motion picture in 2007 acted by Scarlett Johansson, which I've watched and liked it. Since then, my curiosity kicked in, wanting to find out how the book be different from the movie. Although only a good 10% of the movie has left in my memory, as I read the book, I managed to visualize what have happened in the movie.

It's a good book but I found out something interesting as I read it. As far as my past reading experience is concerned, I concluded that any book that is co-produce by one or more authors is likely to be less interesting and readable than the single author books. Why I'm saying this is because as the two individual authors, they have their unique writing styles and they have their way of presenting what they have in mind to the readers. When there are more than one authors involved, the book seems to lack consistency in one way or another, although I can't really point out which, but I could feel it. At some point in the book, I lost track of who's talking which line. That's how I keep loosing my interest in continue reading this book. It's very unusual for me to leave the book unfinished at any given point of my free time nor to prolong the reading time to finish a book. Usually, I'd be hooked on to the book and sometimes, lose my sleep over a good book. This book didn't do that for me. Which is why I'm giving a 2 stars rating for the book.

Go have a read if you're free, the kid in the book was really quite cute and you could feel the love-hate relationship between the little boy and his nanny.

Movie Review: Love Happens

Okay, this movie cost me a half day off from work, 6 bucks for the movie tix and 17 bucks for the lunch at Dome. Why? Because, a few of my close girls from office and I took leave together, planned on enjoying a high tea at Canosour Restaurant at Royal Plaza Hotel on Scott Road, Orchard. BUT, our dear A who is supposed to be the event organizer gotten the info wrong about the timing. We left office at around 1pm, thinking that the high tea buffet starts at 2pm. But in actual fact, the buffet only starts at 3:30pm, we only got to know this after 4 hungry stomachs reached at the place all ready to eat and were highly disappointed. So, we have changed our high tea buffet plan to a quick lunch followed by a movie. It was the opening day of this movie and the whole theater was fulled of 2ndary school kids. I have no idea what they were doing there at that odd timing of the day about 3pm. Don't they have homework to do? *shaking head like an adult*

It a love story between a famous book author (Aaron Eckhart as Burke) who has been hiding the true past of his life and a simple life leading florist (Jennifer Aniston as Eloise). I could never really recall watching a single movie done by Aaron or rather, he's never really left me any impression on my memory even if I did watch his movies before. But always been a fan of Jennifer although she doesn't really get listed in my favourite actress. Aha. It's not that easy to be listed in my fav list, you see. Ahemm.

A simple story which is very much predictable on what will happen next. The acting skills for all other casts besides Jennifer (of course), are just a so-so. This definitely isn't worth paying more than $5, which I sadly did. Not that I've regretted watching it with the girls. I really enjoyed that evening. But not the movie. In the middle of the show, it gets real draggy, to a point that I get to hear very deep breathings beside me that's when I realize my friend S has fallen asleep in the middle of the show.

I'm giving it 2 stars. But if you really must watch this movie cuz you're a fan of Jen, I'd want to encourage you to wait till DVDs are out and just rent it at lower cost, even better, share it with your friends for a even lower cost as well.

Movie Review: Julie & Julia

Watched this movie with my 2 best girls. We love to do this ( a movie night out ) and we are going to do this again next week. After contemplating enough between the 500 Days of Summer and this Julie and Julia, we have decided on this. And so, here goes my review.

The story is based on 2 different stories in 2 different times. 2 true stories it said. Julia Child played by Meryl Streep and Julie Powell played by Amy Adams. It's just happened that I've recently watched one of the Amy Adams movie 'Sunshine Cleaning'. Anyway, this is just a side track. Aha. Julia Child got married to a really nice man and followed him to France and fall in love with the place as well as the food. She does look huge in this movie by the way. Being a housewife, nothing special what so ever to do, she started picking up cooking and produced a cook book. This book then became a hit and hence Julie Powell, an office worker who is insignificant and not satisfied with her life, challenged herself on trying out all the receipes on Julia's cookbook and managed to obtained the sense of achievement that she's always wanted.

See? It is just 2 simple stories cuz they are based on the true story. What we've learnt from this movie is how important for us ladies to be able to get married to such a nice man who is very much loving and supportive just as Julia did. Haha.

Besides the storyline. It gets kinda annoying after looking at Meryl Streep's non-stop laughing and numerous 'Bonjour's and Bonjour-liked french words throughout the movie. It was adoring at first but I kinda got over-dosed on this. So, there goes a 2 star rating for this movie since I didn't enjoy it as much.