Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday, dear no-longer-little Little Brother Jacky!
Happy Birthday to youuuuu!

This is also probably Hong Kong’s most mis-sung song. And the lyrics are copyrighted? Outrageous! I’m so ignoring that.

Later, Vickie gets sued.

Silent Hill the movie wasn’t released in Hong Kong until the day before, so naturally I went to the movies with Bro first thing after work that night. We actually made it on time for it (and even had time to be subjected to the torture of slimming product ads before it started), seeing how we didn’t usually get to see the first 10-15 minutes of other films. My first impression of the movie actually had nothing to do with the production itself. Just look at this.

What the hell is up with the Chinese title, “鬼魅山房”? The direct translation of Silent Hill wasn’t powerful enough, so they justify themselves in making up a name that isn’t accurate to the movie or the game, huh? Well, Bro and I already mocked at it enough, so let’s move on to the movie.

It started with the music theme of the first Silent Hill game, audience stirred. Cool, fellow gamers around. Until a few more scenes later, the movie was still forcing music from the games into it at, in my opinion, inappropriate time (or inappropriate choice of clips. Either one). It was as if they were trying too hard to emphasise how they were a movie based on the games. “Hark! Loyal gamers! We’re the Silent Hill movie! We use all the music from the games!” I read later that they did so because they wanted to use the same music tracks at similar scenes of the game. Darlings, what works for a game doesn’t necessarily work for a movie!

While I love it that they kept a few characters and monsters from the game, and understand that they couldn’t just use the exact same story, I didn’t like how they twisted it. It’s similar in a sense (presence of a cult, a few locations, the disfigured corpses, etc.), but the main storyline! Cybil turned a tomboy; Lisa turned into a nameless nurse who didn’t appear until quite the end; Dahlia got split into two characters — “good” Dahlia and Christabella; there was also only one Pyramid Head Red Pyramid who didn’t seem to serve any purpose other than scare factor in the movie compared to the one in the game.

There are some little things I love about the movie, though. For example, I think how Cybil said “what the fuck” instead of “what the hell” was really in-character and appropriate, because that kind of situation deserved something much stronger than a WTH. The “foggy” Silent Hill to alternate Silent Hill transfer was well done as well.

But all in all, with the amount of blood, gore, violence, cleavages and girl power in the movie adapted from a game, what’s not to love about it?

Heh. I almost screamed at a certain guy sitting somewhere behind me. The song “You’re Not Here” played at the credits, and he commented that the song sounded vaguely familiar. Vaguely familiar only?! It was the Silent Hill 3 theme song! Blasphemer! We must burn him! … If only I wasn’t busy singing along.

P.S. I still don’t understand how this movie could be rated Category IIB and not a III.

P.P.S. Bro’s comment on the movie (in Chinese).

As everybody already knows, I do it solo all night every night. Literally. Well, sort of. Aaanyway, since I’m not really as open and selfish as people thought I am, I always keep everything down — especially considering that I still live with my parents, and the brother’s room is just next to mine.

So then there was this weekend that Bro and I decided to play an old and out(?) game called Beat Mania on the PlayStation together. We played through every single song once, until this song called “Do It All Night” popped up. We’ve played the song so many times over the years.

“It’s so your song,” Bro commented suddenly while the song was loading. “You do it all night.”

Speechless, I sat there, not sure whether to laugh or blush or argue or deny. “Caught ya!” I could almost hear my brother say. It’s not that people don’t already know what I do all the time, but to be “confronted” like that after so many nights… Gosh, perhaps he’s been waiting for this chance to tell me that he knew when I’d been doing it all along.

I headed back to my room after supper and took trusty vibrator #2 out. Now that I think about it, Trusty #2 is actually rather loud even when it wasn’t on full power. It must be her that Bro knew. It had to be.

I looked at the vibrator one last time: it’s rather worn out being used so frequently for almost 4 years. See, that little piece was kind of falling out, the other side wouldn’t start sometimes and I almost had to kick it to get it working, and the batteries always choose the best time to die…

I giggled at the thought despite myself; considered chucking the vibrator in the bin for a moment but decided against it. Perhaps. Perhaps she’d be useful again one day.

“It’s been fun, Trusty #2, really,” I told her as I gently placed her back to where she always rested. “Rest in peace, darling. I’ll miss you.”

But oh, this can’t possibly be the end of Vickie’s fun nightlife. What is it you say you see Vickie has in her hands? That’s right! Trusty vibrator #3: bigger, better and much quieter.

Heh heh.

And the other day Bro spent a whole day in my room working on the Father’s Day card, he had the honour to see things vanish as I said. He peeled off the film of the double-sided tape, it slipped his hand, fell to the ground, and… gone. Please stop eating my things, black hole.

And wah! I haven’t visited the blogs on my blogroll for so long. Now even online people would go “Vickie, who?” very soon.

Warning: gazillion images beyond this. Present tense, past tense, we, they, I, her, etc. all mixed up and mixed together. Hover on images for additional descriptions (Firefox friendly ). Teaser:

I haven’t actually been playing the game since I last blogged about it. New patch; the next thing Bro and I wanted to do after unlocking our sealed armours was to play in the arena since we’re already in Giran.

Just fooling around. My Lightning Strike did paralyse (or freeze?) Bro’s character this time, though.

A flying dragon wyvern (a new feature: only a castle owner gets to keep one!) in the very crowded arena.

We went mini shopping in Giran afterwards. It’s almost like she’s clinging to my arm. (Although they both looked rather scary because of the bad “lighting”. )

At the master’s learning new skills (or skill – singular, since I didn’t have much SP left at all…).

The “kiss”. You don’t get to kiss (yet?) in the game; it was just the characters overlapping by mistake and the camera angle, hehe.

We went to Hunters Village after the Giran shopping, where I bumped into an old friend, a fellow Shillien Knight and Hong Konger, whom I haven’t seen for aaaages (because I’m not playing as much as I used to).

On our way to Aden. Just thought the picture was kind of cool.

Swimming/diving. Not much to see under the water.

New effects for a couple of magic! “Greater Concentration” in the pic; and I’m clapping.

And crying because Bro’s taking forever to cast buffs on both of us. Nah, I was just bored.

Swimming in a new place only available from C3 onwards. No idea what it’s called in English.

Bro buffing again. Ooh, possible new quests here?

And that was pretty much the day. If I could just fix the DirectX 9.0 bug that keep on closing the game and bugging me…

But anyway, Happy 19th Birthday, my no-longer-little little brother (also known as “Bro” here at the blog), Jacky!

In unrelated news, I’ve been slacking so much — online, even — I could almost hear this.

But of course The Boss won’t actually say anything like that to me; she’s very nice. </freak show>

“You could become an actress;” Awww. “since you’re so good at faking.“

Hmph… Now I’m flattered and offended at the same time. But, what?! Faking? I don’t remember ever being fake to her! Grumble, grumble.

There was a scene where the guy in the middle pointed a gun point-blank at the head of the guy on his immediate left. The middle guy struggled between whether or not to fire.

“If he shot the guy at this range, his brains would be blown apart and his eyes might pop out.” Mum analysed. “Seriously, his eyes might pop into the shooter’s mouth, too.”

To which we giggled.

“Imagine this scene:” Bro changed into a stern tone. “I’m not going to shoot you because your eyes might pop into my mouth.”

And we all burst into laughter.

We’re a sick family. We are.

In the beginning, a lot of people (including myself) were in a mansion playing a massive zombie-shooting game. The people got tired of shooting the actual zombies, so they decided to pretend to be the zombies and be shot. A few of us refused to do that so we ran away and hid ourselves.

Our group got separated, but one girl kept following me. She hasn’t got a gun (what?) so she was hanging onto me the whole time. I ran everywhere until we got to a kitchen, there she started to cry for no obvious reasons. Annoyed, I told her to shut up in a not-so-nice manner but the ‘zombies’ already heard us.

As the first zombie walked in the room, I darted out and kicked him in the face (I didn’t use my gun?); then I realised that he was a Hong Kong celebrity. I was shocked and looked at the other zombies that wandered into the room. They were in fact all celebrities.

The dream jumped and I was in the same mansion on my own. I was running through glass doors after glass doors but still couldn’t find a way out. I saw a guard and wanted to ask him what this mansion was all about, but before I got to him, I woke up…

On another note, I’m very jealous of my family members.

My father:
He’s got a new car – a damn cool Mercedes-Benz. Now he gets to drive that shiny silver thing to work every day, while I haven’t even learnt how to drive. I’m 18 already, dammit.

My mother:
She’s invited to watch the Hong Kong vs Real Madrid football match free of charge tomorrow, and she gets to sit practically next to the football managers. Ssh, I’m planning to drug her tomorrow so I could disguise as her and go instead.

Last but not least, Jacky my brother:
His public exam (HKCEE, if that makes any sense to you) results are out, and they’re damn good. He’s secured a place in his own damn famous and popular school to read Hong Kong’s damn hard Physics and so.

As for myself… pathetic.

You know how people did experiments on twin telepathy. The twins were separated in soundproof rooms and wired to lie detectors, not knowing what the other was doing. One twin was told to put his hands into near-freezing water; he let out a gasp. At the same time, the other twin’s respiratory rate went up as though he gasped himself.

Now nothing as freaky as that has happened to us. My brother is a year and a half younger than me, and we grew up very much like friends. We’ve never fought physically and have argued only occasionally. We spent a hell lot of time together.

Sometimes we start humming/singing the same song without it being played earlier or talked about. But I’m sure that happens to many people as well.

What about these two?

My brother suddenly decided to clean up his desktop today. He deleted most of the useless shortcut icons that have been there for years – and I mean years. I did the exact thing just one day ago (didn’t tell him, he didn’t check mine).

When I was in England on the phone with him, I started calling “PJ*~ PJ~” and poking it lightly; which was weird because I never really poke cute stuff. My brother asked, “Are you poking it?” (*PJ is my green apple soft toy. ‘Par Junior’, not pyjamas.)

Damn, and to think I believe in science!