PENTAX OPTIO S4
After using my 'fool camera' minolta riva zoom pico for a decade, I finally got my first DC in my life, a PENTAX OPTIO s4, one of the 'must have' coolest things chosen by a UK magazine. Anyway, I bought it because 1) it's slim & petite (just like me) 2) the price's good (just HKD2380 , i.e around USD300 only) 3)it has many better functions than canon ixus i as PENTAX has optical focus mode while canon can't zoom too far 4)sum up that the look and price are a bit better than canon's 5)my young sis got 1 and never wanna lend me, what a 'practical if not selfish' gal 6)my friend thought this dc is better than canon, even canon is a better brand, 7)...

As a conclusion, I finally got my personal dc and you guys! Wait for my more masterpiece (or amatuer) photo shootings ;)

LOST in TRANSLATION
After being stood up for weeks, I finally managed to this movie directed by Sofia Coppola, on a leap day sunday, Feb 29, which will come again 4 years afterwards ;P

This film is fine, subtle, deep and real. And it just remind me how noisy & lousy neon light Tokyo is ;) And how much we need 'only connected' more than merely 'sex', especially when you feel so lonely and just want to find someone who can understand you/talk to you in some ways only. Urban dwellers are so easily feeling lost in the metropolis and to find a easy ONS or causal sex is more easier than to find someone you are willing to talk to/willing to listen to/ willing to hang out with/willing to spend some fun times together. So that's the movie, my grade is A--.

Followings are some reviews you can find at http://www.lost-in-translation.com/home.html

- You know the sensation: It's not love, but it's some immediate awareness that the two of you may have been separated at birth, your minds operate alike, your synapses fire in the same pattern, you recognize the same enemies (many) and the same allies (few). It's you and she against the world.


- Sex, somehow, doesn't come into it. Sex, somehow, would ruin it. You can get sex anywhere. (And Bob does.) From this one, you want that precious process that E.M. Forster so wisely described as "only connect." So Bob and Charlotte connect and proceed through a number of adventures in Japan, and discover that their equal bafflement at all things Japanese is somehow a part of their bond.

- Murray certainly doesn't overdo it, but with that prehensile face, and its weird ability to project not just broad-stroke attitudes like "irony" but substates like "58 percent irony/40 percent fatigue/2 percent responsibility," he's very funny.

- The movie follows the twists and connections in Bob and Charlotte's relationship - like some trans-Atlantic phone calls, their feelings reach each other on a five-second delay. The lag time only embellishes the comedy, and the heartbreak.

- The corollary of this is that Ms. Coppola's direction is so breezily assured in its awareness of loneliness that the film could potentially be dismissed as self-consciously moody rather than registering as a mood piece.

- The film is equally shrewd about noticing the ways people can be at loose ends in their intimate relationships, not exactly ready to end things but unsure where they're headed. With a strong feel for divergent generations, "Lost" understands without having to say it that people at widely different ages can be equally uncertain about who they're supposed to be, equally impelled to question where they want to land when they grow up.

- It may or may not be romance these two are reaching for in this 21st century version of 1945's classic David Lean-directed "Brief Encounter," but they definitely yearn for something more essential: simple human connection. Coppola's formidable delicacy rules out any slam-bang emotionalism, but that doesn't lessen our involvement. What "Lost in Translation" demonstrates, among many other things, is how much weight and substance something slight can have in just the right hands.

- It's about being alone in a crowd and the power of unexpected friendships.

- Bob and Charlotte's brief encounter is built to last, if only in their memories. Before saying goodbye, they whisper something to each other that the audience can't hear. Coppola keeps her film as hushed and intimate as that whisper. Lost in Translation is found gold. Funny how a wisp of a movie from a wisp of a girl can wipe you out.
In 'Lost,' dislocated, lonely lives merge in a lovely limbo.

- It's not a love story, or, at any rate, the sort we expect from movies. It's something deeper and simpler.

- "Lost in Translation" gets more out of nothing than most movies even try.

- In a touch of irony, Lost in Translation is actually about the fragile connections that develop between people and the longing, no matter where we are, for human companionship. It is equal parts love story and droll comedy, with a splendid travelogue tossed in for good measure.

- But this isn't a "Will they or won't they?" kind of movie. Lost in Translation is less about passion and more about longing - much like life itself.

- Coppola's "Lost in Translation" who wrote the unmistakably personal and poignant script, has given Murray a great gift with this quiet, endearing comedy, in which he is more "serious" than most actors playing someone dying from a terrible disease. Bob is quietly fading away, and though Charlotte is not a cure for his malaise, she is the energy source that renews him.

- The two characters who pretty much wholly comprise writer/director Sofia Coppola's textured, thoughtful and touching "Lost in Translation" are lost indeed, seemingly good souls at different stages in life, looking for the next step, the right direction, the right connection.

- Charlotte's no longer sure whom she married. Neither is Bob. He's at one end of that bewilderment and she's at the other, both sleepless yet sleepwalking through life.

They wake each other up.

What follows is a non-affair to remember, which maintains a delicate balance between friends, lovers and something ineffably greater than either. They are made for each other in a million ways, with sex being one of the lesser ones (though that tension is ever-present).

MY MR RIGHT
What kind of MR RIGHT I am looking for? I guess he should be a mature man.
What is mature?

Mature doesn't necessary mean that you're a good guy, but definitely a mature man is not a bad guy!

Mature doesn't mean you can do everything, or you know everything.
Rather, it means you know what you can do and what you can't do. You know what you should do and what you shouldn't do.

You dare not to do what you can do, because it's not appropriate and you know you should not try to do, even everyone else thinks you should do but you have the guts not to do.
You dare to do what you can't do, because it's appropriate and you know you should try to do, even everyone else thinks you should not do but you have the guts to do it.(even you failed in vain at last)

You don't mind to be smart, and you don't mind to be foolish, as a human being always does.

You don't mind to be with a smart gal and you don't mind she can be somehow foolish sometimes...

I guess you need to be a self-conscious and wise person so that you know what I'm talking about... ;P

*Sigh* I m still searching for such mature guy, you know any of them?? Give me a call then *G*

Quote
Someone says:
1 smart guy + 1 smart gal = romance
1 smart guy + 1 stupid gal = affair
1 stupid guy + 1 smart gal = divorce
1 stupid guy + 1 stupid gal = marriage

What do you think?

APRIL ~ by GEORGE LAM (Hongkong singer songwriter)
Baby is mellow, soft as the sky
Bells they won't bellow, don't ask me why
Fast as the sun rise, cold as her dark eyes
April will never be the same

The sun it ain't shining, I'm closing my eyes
Days are spent pining, don't ask me why
Can't let this heart die from saying one goodbye
April will never be the same

Wait until the morning comes through
Fast becoming dawn
See a reflection only of you
It's dawn, but she's gone

Cause baby was mellow, soft as the sky
Bells they won't bellow, I'll tell you why
Gone is the sun rise, gone are her dark eyes
But April will always come again

WITHOUT THE 2 OF US ~ by GEORGE LAM (Hongkong singer songwriter)
I want to see the pyramids of Egypt! Sail in the Mediterranean Sea!
I like the feel of silk upon me skin while growing old so gracefully.
I want to lie on the beach at Malibru! I want to wear Italian shoes!
I wouldn't want to work if I had to choose, but it won't mean a thing without you!

Without the 2 of us! Without the 2 of us!
Who would be left to pay the bills?
I could be flying a plane, I could be riding a train,
but I would still be standing still!

I want to loiter in the streets of London Tower, go to Rio for the Carnival!
Take the Oriental Express I might request if just to see you smile!
Won't you travel with me to my fantasies, would you promise to be my guide!
We could make believe and sail the seven seas together side by side.

BOOK REVIEW OF 'THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING' by someone

'THE HEAVIER THE BURDEN, THE CLOSER OUR LIVES COME TO THE EARTH, THE MORE REAL AND TRUTHFUL THEY BECOME' BY MILAN KUNDERA

What makes the best novelists brilliant is the way they go about saying thing we al know - a writer who thinks he's handing us profound insights into the universe and humanity, like Kundera, is simply pontificating.

The unbearable lightness of being is a particularly bad example of Kundera's style as we get not only the egotistical existentialist meandering, but also transparnt characters, eroticism recycled from previous books, and rather stiff prose. Don't get me wrong, I do like some of Kundera's books. "The Joke" is the only real novel he wrote (no coincidence it's his first) as the insights are part of the novel itself and not the mini essays, and I love "Immortality" which is such as extreme example of his style that is actually works.

But "Unbearable lightness" simply is simply irritating, as it tries to make itself a real story, like "The Joke" - while also going on for pages about Kundera's marvelous insights into human nature. Avoid this book, unless you're as easily impressed by this stuff as most of the readers are.

Short story by MURSI SAAD El-DIN
Translated by HAMDI SAAD El-DIN
(Station on silk road linking turkey & china, magazine)

In Alma Ata (meaning country of apples) We were invited by our Kazakh friend, a poet, to his home.

At the dinner table, our eyes (with his young wife) met and I felt that haunting beauty. The look was a sort of message. A message that contained a unique combination of surprise and beseechement, it was also a message of absolute innocence. I felt that I was in front of a child, unaware of life, sheltered by her parents to the extent of incarceration, seeing no one and being seen by no one, then suddenly like Cinderella, she finds herself in an enormous ball, meeting people she had never been seen the like of before.

The letter was from the woman called Delbar, from Alma Ata, capital of Kazakhstan: "You came from countries we did not know, with faces we had never seen. You may have noticed how I looked from one of you to the other, but then my gaze was attracted to you. I don't know if you noticed these looks but my husband did. He reprimanded me afterwards. I know that Lena told you the story of my marriage and how my poor father sacrificed me, he could not have done anything else.

Perhaps you were surprised, even shocked, by my fears that I was unable to stop. It is true, we are romantic people by nature but our emotions were stolen from us and instead we were given curtains to hide them.

Our love songs were turned into songs about factories and the honour of working. Then you arrived, like a gentle breeze that flows through the flowers sharing their sweet smell with those around them. I shared the beautiful aroma to the extent that I forget myself and my circumstances for the one or two hours you were with us.

After that I started to revolt, and for that he punished me. I didn't care. I lived in a totally different world. In an hour or two you taught me the meaning of life, and more importantly you showed me what I was missing.

Then the changes came, my husband lost his important post and I discovered some horrifying facts about the massacres committed by the gentle poet who recited his romantic poems to you. As you know he was also the party secretary. My husband could not take these changes and feared he would be put on trial. He died, I think naturally but others say he took his own life.

Now I am singing again in the theatres and hotels. I moved to Moscow where I have become quite famous. My favourite song that I always end my repertoire with is the one I sang for you over twenty years ago. I sang "Que Sera Sera", thinking that it was my fate, what will be will be. But my fate changed thanks to you. My messenger from a far away land.

So good-bye my dear friend, or may I say my lover?" ~Delbar

QUOTE
Memories I am now trying to collect because one cannot get rid of the past, as one cannot get rid of our personal characteristics

QUOTE
The past enriches our lives, it gives life that distinct, unmistakable zest