… well, not quite.

But I am proud to say that I’ve watched my first full-length Bollywood movie. Entitled Kal Ho Naa Ho, or literally, Tomorrow May Never Come, it is a modern Hindi movie set in New York and stars Jaya Bachchan (incidentally, the wife of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan) and Shah Rukh Khan along with Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan.

Naina Kapur (Zinta) is the eldest of three and currently doing an MBA course in New York City. Her coursemate Rohit (Saif Ali Khan) is a playboy wannabe who fails more than he succeeds, and the two befriend each other since she’s one of the few women he doesn’t plan to court. Naina lives with her mother (Bachchan) and her paternal grandmother who, in essence, is your stereotypical mother-in-law. Not everything is going smoothly for the family. Their restaurant business is constantly in the red and family squabbles between the two in-laws are constant. However, the Kapur family still maintains their status quo, even if the children are unhappy about it.

Enter Naina’s new neighbour, Aman Mathur (Shah Rukh Khan) - a charismatic busybody who gets into everyone’s face and then gets away with it. He brings a new life to the neighbourhood and slowly but surely begins to change the lives of everyone around him. He pushes people to become the best that they can be, and even gets Rohit spurred on enough to court Naina seriously. That is, until he realises that he’s falling hard for Naina as well. And to complicate matters, Naina has also fallen for him.

How they resolve this love triangle, as well as wrap up all the little subplots in the story - including the true identity of Naina’s sister, is done in dramatic, sometimes campy, fashion that leaves you with a completely satisfied feeling at the end of the 186 min movie. The humour (found mostly in the “gay” relationship between Aman and Rohit) is hardly forced and the light-hearted nature of the story make the real drama easy to enjoy. I need not mention the mandatory 10 minute dance sequences, of course.

An excellent tale about love, family, sacrifice and living life to the full. After all, Kal Ho Naa Ho.

…paying attention to the lives of people.

Today, in the same spirit of the community that I had a part in engineering last Saturday, I spent an hour or so looking through blogs belonging to several members of the YC. Blogs have always been a window into the lives of these people whom I claim to share community with… but don’t really know, ironically. This is my chance to change that, hopefully.

*Blob* is frank and open but doesn’t blog often. When she does, though, it never fails to surprise me — mainly because she’s normally so quiet and reserved in person. Her posts describe what is important to her and usually… it’s life. I wish she’d post more, though. It’s been months!

noelbynature expresses himself in a myriad of ways and his blog reflects just that. Everything from digital photos (either singularities or in montage), in words that reflect his vast vocabulary, or simple poetry (that sometimes isn’t so simple when you think about it), his blog is always a favourite visit of mine. It helps that he’s one of only three Trekkies in the YC too. =P

sarah is who she is, and arguably one of the more verbose of all the bloggers among the YC. Her entries are often encapsulated in three long paragraphs that aptly describe her life, her feelings and her emotions to just about anyone who reads it. It’s been often mentioned between us how freaky it is that I know things about her that she’s never told me. I can’t help it… it’s all in her blog after all. =P

ly, ironically, I don’t read too often. It just feels weird, you know, reading a blog belonging to your brother’s girlfriend. I guess it shouldn’t, since we were friends first (for all of a month… *LOL*) but it does. It’s the same with *Blob*, except she doesn’t blog much nowadays. Maybe it’ll take a while before I treat girlfriends normally.

Aloysius or, Father Aloy as we know him better by, is the spiritual director of the YC. This means (as all good Catholics know) that he doesn’t appear often at our meetings, but is always praying for us nonetheless. Fr Aloy always seems to give a very cosy feel to his blog. He shares openly (which is especially admirable, seeing how he’s a public figure and all) and warmly and sometimes just posts really thought-provoking pictures which he somehow gets a hold of. Sometimes I wonder if I do follow the path of priesthood, if I should reveal this blog to my parishoners… *LOL*

And then there’s slayer… my sis. I read her blog (not as often as I wish I would) and I am amazed how different she is from my brother and I. She blogs with eerie honesty and often I realise I learn more about my siblings through their blogs than I do at home. That’s eerie. But it’s always fun to read about myself, both good and bad things.

Corny Moooo Bah! had to change her Blogger name for some weird, obscure reason. But Corny just isn’t quite as corny any more. Ever since she’s discovered how to post pictures, that’s all her posts really consist of. It’s alright, and her nephew is REALLY cute… but I wish I could learn more about the person rather than her new Altec Lansing VS4121.

B.A.C.A.N rocks for having the best initials ever. I mean… Mine is PLJL (or, if you count my Confirmation name it’s PJLJL) which is really retarded. On hindsight. But BACAN is so cool. And so’s the person herself. I mean, her blog is unabashedly PINK! And it fits in with the personality she displays half the time so it’s alright!!! *LOL* I’m learning how to punctuate in exclamation marks from her. Her blog tells me nothing new because she’s very open in person. One thing I do know, though… Life would be really boring without her.

pearp1cker blogs even less that *Blob* does, which comes as no surprise since they’re attached, which simply leads to them having less time to blog! *LOL* I crack myself up. AHEM. Right, whatever. His posts are short, concise and sometimes simply an indication of something new he’s learnt or thought of. Ain’t got nothing much that is personal in there. Except for the fact that he’s almost HTML illiterate.

andalyte has stopped posting on his public blog. Which is kinda weird because I was just beginning to enjoy reading about my brother’s thoughts on the web. Ah well. Guess I’ll just have to poke through his brain more often when I see him at home. =)

and lastly, but not leastly…

Chucky who, due to his commitment to Genesis II, the youth choir of our parish, almost never joins our meetings and who, due to his commitment to his medical studies, almost never blogs either. Which is really scary, because that means that that photo of Jeremy Bek in drag will remain on top for a LOOOOOONG time. *shudder*

Alright! That’s the Youth Council of Holy Family for you… at least, those who are blogging online. I’m late for Economics!

Because I’m too lazy to HTML up my post, here goes:

I suck at these nerdy quzzies… I’m never geek enough to do much in the way of being geeky, but that hardly means anything, since in general I still am a geek. Maybe a Catholic geek, but a geek none the less.

Over here I wonder if a higher score is good or bad. Actually, I wonder if even taking this test is good or bad.

And finally, no surprise here. I’ve always felt older than I am in most cases. Glad to know I’m actually catching up with myself now, isntead of acting twice my age like I used to at 14.

And finally… WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! See 2nd set of picchurs.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Prescribed Elective.

With all due apologies to Kubrick’s brilliant work, the module I’m taking this semester has all the elements of a possible distinction.

1) Brilliant lecturer.
2) Brilliant subject content.
3) Brilliant use of media.
4) Not very brilliant competition.

Of course, there’s the possibility I might be underestimating my fellow coursemates, but the module in question: Engineering Fiction: Science and Technology in Literature, may just be my ticket out of probation hell. Asst. Prof Tamara Wagner has come up with an amazing line-up of media for our “texts”: Shelly’s Frankenstein, Wells’ Time Machine, the 2000 BBC production Pandaemonium among others.

In particular, the above-mentioned film (which features The Mummy’s John Hannah, Minority Report’s Samantha Morton and Andy Serkis, better known as Gollum, also stars Linus Roache, whom we shall soon see as Bruce Wayne’s father in Batman Begins) is a brilliant take on the origins of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge (Roache) is joined by William Wordsworth (Hannah) in a small countryside village (I couldn’t catch where - probably the Lake District area). Together, the two aim to revolutionise the world through their poetry, but as with all dramas, the reality is far from the dream.

The two poets are initially unproductive, with a bored Coleridge even going so far as to tease an affair with Dorothy, the younger sister of Wordsworth. However, one night Coleridge decides to pen a collaborative effort with Wordsworth, but after taking some opium (to soothe a toothache) he begins to furiously create the opening parts of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. The now inspired Coleridge, with encouragement from Dorothy, soon completes one part after another, to the great indignation of Wordsworth.

That’s as far as we watched today, however. However, from Net spoilers, it would seem that Wordsworth becomes the film’s villian, fueled by his envy of Coleridge’s genius.

Hmmm… well, no one said it was historically accurate. =P

How brilliant is this? We have a bunch of engineering undergrads who are mostly here because they can’t get any of the other modules offered by the new school of Humanities and Social Sciences. Even better, we have a good majority of them who do not speak English as a first language. In other words, this should be a breeze.

I hope.

Hot on the heels on the news last year that NTU was NOT changing its name back to the classic Nanyang University or “Nantah”, yet another naming boo-boo has been spotted in the Boon Lay campus.

Yes, welcome to the School of PMS, due to open in Academic Year 2005/2006. I hear students applying to the school will be frustrated and irritable on a monthly basis.

Urgh.

Right, so I’m back at school, once again. Hogging a computer in the library, once again. It’s almost as if things were back to normal. Figuratively speaking, of course.

The low down is, I’m in danger of striking out this semester. After failing the past two (i.e. the whole of 2004) all it takes is one more failed semester for me to bid goodbye to the college. Whether I will, or not, is all up to me now. My timetable’s a lot easier to manage compared to last semester and the free time I have should be put to good use preparing for lectures and tutorials.

I hope.

No New Year Resolutions from me again this year. I’ve always felt it made no difference when you made resolutions. However, I have been planning to start the Purpose Driven Life Diary I got over a year ago, so maybe I can consider that a resolution.

Sometimes it scares me to see how concerned everyone is about life. It scares me because I don’t feel it. By feigning pessimism and cynicism about the way reality is run, I try my best to hide the fact that I’m fearful of it, afraid to live, afraid to learn, scared out of my wits at the thought of facing reality head-on.

But since I’ve got to do it sooner or later… why not now?