Random rants from a random rambling soul

Man! i am running out of titles to put for my reflections. Any suggestions?

Anyway let me reflect about class as usual. We had what i would call a rather intense and emotional lesson. We had to read our letters to the past where we had to write to someone who we no longer talk to any longer. We were broken up into groups and all us girls were split up. This was good for the first time as i think if there were more of us in the class, we might have actually cried. But i guess being surrounded by testerone-filled guys somehow their “thou shall not cry” commandment must have subconscious rubbed off onto us-well to me anyway.Oh that was a compliment by the way. haha.

Well to me it was like entering a therapy session as we each shared out stories. There we saw a different side of some of our classmates. It was a good insight I must say as they were the kind of things that we would not usually talk about.

After which Ryan read us his letter. It was a rather moving and emotional letter. I really admired him after that (No, I am not saying it for more marks,not that there will be anything wrong if he gave them to me:D) as I think it takes a lot of courage to pour all your emotions out onto a piece of paper and reading it out to a group of students-not once but three times.

Then something he told us hit me at that moment. I remember he said that as writers we must think how much of ourselves we want to share with people. I guess it is fine if you are sharing happy things like your first birthday and things like that. However delving into the more touchy stuff like how your parents divorced or you got abused when you were young takes a lot of courage to write. It depends on how much of yourself are you willing to share with your readers.

I realized that authors who write about their own experiences via a biography or when they use an event that happen in their life in their stories it somehow is much better than when not written through experience. I guess the key might have been that it was written with and through emotions so that as readers we can relate to it. An example would be Chicken Soup for the soul series.

However the same does not really go with screenwriting. The stories written about reality such as Election where nitty gritty details of life were shown and where not so happy endings are added as a bonus-they do not become a hit.

Maybe it is because we do not like to see our hunks and babes of Hollywood fail in a task or in life. Thus happy endings usually are better received.

Though like everything there are exceptions. I think Titanic would be a good example. Where the hunky (?) hero of the show Leonardo died at the end. I remembered the number of people cursing at the end of the movie as they watched him die.

The only times sad movies make it through, is when it is star-studded and/or have really good characters.

I still feel that movies should have happy endings and if you want the gore and depressing stuff just tune in to the news:D

Ohh heres a picture that i thought is funny. It was under political humor though so i am not sure if i can post it here.So if i am not supposed to erm… let me know.

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Yes yes another reflection.Its a weekly thing and i cant help it. You can blame Ryan for them if you want its his idea. I do have fun writing these , but i am not entirely sure why i am doing this though.Hmm.. anyway i shall resume this ranting of mine.

We did something interesting today. We had to write a story from the two characters that we got from people watch.Boy was i not prepared for that.First my two characters seem to be total opposites like one of them is a Hawker Uncle and the other a night dweller.However somehow i manged to pull it off.If you’re remotely intrested you can check out the story titled Gothic Hero Of Singapore.I really had to rack my brain to try and write this story but i just let my pen to let the words flow. I remember something from secondary school where my teacher told us not to really think but just to W.O.W= Write only Write.Yes that was a nostalgic moment…but it had worked for me in this case:D Even if there was no flow in the story various ideas would come pouring in what you get into the what i call zen-like writer’s mode.

After which 2 people were chosen to read their stories out loud and i happen to be one of the two lucky people.Oh joy! Not that i have a problem with sharing my story its just that i hate to talk/ read out loud to a group of people.I tend to stutter and stammer and cough a lot god knows why… stage fright perhaps…oh well.. moving on ….

Next we watched 2 short movies.Well one of them was just 15 minutes of the movie. The first one which we watched partly was titled Taxi Driver and the other called Les Mistons.From there we did character analysis where we learnt how to make the character more real more 3 dimensional.

To end it off we were given a rather personal and interesting assignment where we have to write a letter to someone.By writing what you know and so its ike pouring out your emotions onto the page and revealing about yourself. I remember ryan said that as a writer how much information are you willing to reveal about yourself and in a way by doing so you are putting yourself in a position where people could and most probably would judge you. That got me thinking…How much is too much? Where and when do we draw the line?

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Let me drift off from class now… oh yes i went to take photographs today and it happened to be a rather eventful day for me at the Botanical Gardens. Firstly i went to take pictures of the swans at the swan lake but they refused to come anywhere near the distance where my camera could capture their image -_- All my bird calls deemed to be useless there. On the way back only did i find out that all it took was to clap your hands have a piece of bread/ kangkong with you and they fly towards you. Well now we know oh so thats a tip for all those who wish to take pictures of those 2 darn swans. However i think the swans are not mentally right as one of them think its a dog it keeps wagging its tail whenever its happy. Despite being disturbed by that i was also rather amused.

Oh and there happened to be a duck there too. Sadly only one duck and i think it felt lonely like the ugly ducking not knowing where it belonged. It was sulking away at the corner as it watched the swans greedily eat them up. It was funny to look at the duck as it sulked away at the corner. I thought it was rather dumb of it to refuse so much food and sulk there. It could sulk later when nobody is aorund to give it food but nooo it had to sulk then. Poor duck i hope it comes to it senses soon and learn that there is a place and time for everything and that it doesnt starve to death by its stupidity.

Next i went to the lotus pond where i saw a beautiful blue bird i think it was the same family as the king fisher but slighty bigger. Boy did it test my patience as i had to sit there literally waitng for it to finish its meditation. It was in a zen like state as no amount of noise nor could the twigs and stone that were thrown near its direction disturb it from its intense gaze at the pond. It made me wonder what could that bird possibly think of? Usually if something was thrown near them birds tend to fly away but not this little fella it just stood on its branch oblivion to the word as it mediated there.I wasted 15 minutes as i waited for it to fly but that did not happen and i had to give up due to time constrain and walked away.

Lastly i saw a bunch of squirrels who were happily nibbling away at some fruits in the trees and i tried to capture that moment.whether i was sucessful in doing that is another story. However as i was about to walk off i heard a lot of noise coming from them and when i turned to look i saw that the largest of the squirrel had an indigant look on its face.Why? i had no clue though. I decided to ignore it and just walk off as the exit was near as i was doing so a nut like thing landed on my head. I was pretty sure it was that squirrel atttacking me as it seemed to have a rather smirk look on its face after that. It happened to me twice so yes i must warn all future visiotrs there to beware of those squirrels i think they have been watching too many cartoons like madagascar and over the hedge where they learn to defend themselves by attacking us , humans.

Pictures aka The Evidence…

THE EVIL SQUIRREL

Meditating bird

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ok! week 4 lessons are over.Wow time sure flies. We watched a movie during lesson.How cool is that? haha.It was titled Election. It was a really different movie i must say. It wasnt your typically perfect live,gorgeous people sort of movie. It was just your regular life with almost regular looking people acting in it.The exception would be Resee Witherspoon who acted as Tracy in the movie.

This movie shows the nitty gritty details of life that usual Hollywood films tend to leave out.One example that i can still remember until today is when Mccalister went to Diane’s house to help her unclog her bathtub and took out a whole chunk of hair. This scene just left me disgusted. It wasn’t exactly the most visually pleasing scene I must say.

After watching the film I realized why Hollywood tend to portray a rather perfect life of a perfectly gorgeous perfect teens/people. Besides it being visually pleasing it provides us an escape from reality during the two hours or so.

I am one of those who would rather see the usual type of hollywood films.I mean i do not mind variety but at least give me something that is pleasing to the eyes.One or two awkward reality-type scenes are ok but the whole film is just a bit too much.

After watching the film i was speechless as i really had nothing to say about the film.I mean there werent exactly morals there since Tracy who did something bad still manged to wint he elections and moved on to be sucessful in life.I mean if you’re making this kind of show at least give us some morals to look for.Don’t let the bad guy win.

Ok call me old-fashioned or whatever but i still like happy endings most of the time.It gives me some sort of satisfifaction that good always still prevails even though we all know that it doesn’t really happen all the time in life.This is especially true now with the after effects of the war in iraq, the many many natural disasters etc…

Sorry i am not exactly a big fan of the news as i personally feel it is very depressing.Have you ever noticed that there is hardly anything good in the news? Anything happy? There is always deaths,violence ,natural disasters and what nots.The only good thing perhaps would be that they found a new solution for some problem and soon after a new probelm will arise and the cycle goes on.

Yes you may say that it is their job to keep us updated on what is happening around the world while the magazines do the job of entertaining us. They are doing a mighty fine job i must say.Too good a job with the constant updates during major events.

However i do read the news and no its not for contemporary issues or anything.Just a quick scan of updates but mostly its to check out the more happening and happier news thats covered under Lifestyle Section Of our Wonderful Newspaper.:D

I wonder if anyone else feels the same way?
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I am not sure if i drifted off too much though but i remember ryan said to talk about outside class and im just expressing my opinions:D Oh and i did reflect over class… ok maybe more on the movie…but it is still part of class:D

We are into week three of our storytelling lessons.I decided to write my entry quite early because i am not sure my memory will suffice till next week. As usual the lesson was engaging and i didnt stone or sleep. Usually i would have probably have slept in that freezing room as my brain shuts down to preserve itself.

We learnt quite a number of things today.

Ryan made some of us read out one of our stories and then the others had to comment on it in the following format:

Author:

Title:

What it’s about:

What’s great:

What’s not so great:

I happened to one of those lucky few. In fact i was the first to go. I thought this was really a good idea as sometimes you would not be able to realise your own mistakes or highlights or you story. Having someone else pointing it out to you helps you to improve yourself.

For myself, i chose the story titled ” Danger: Pole alert!” as the story to share as i had trouble writing that. Humour isn’t exactly my forte but i wanted to do away from sad and morbid stories and try something new. Moreover, the fact that it was inspired by a real life event made me want it to pen it down and turn it into a story.

After listening to the comments i realised that there was some redundancy in the story like the word “handphone”.It was obvious that one would sms on their handphone.However i think that it could also be a pda or something.Besides if i was to edit that i would be lacking in words and have to try and add extra words here and there just to fulfil the criteria.At the moment i cant think of any two words that might be able to change the story so i decided to stick with it.

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After this we did our presentation on the old man Aristotle.For those who have no idea who he was (I didn’t until i came to this class), he was actually a greek philosopher who came up with somewhat like a set of rules for storytelling .More information about him will be placed under the lecture notes that will follow below.

Lastly,we ended off the lesson with another new assignment called “People Watch” . Boy does the assignments get more and more interesting. And Yes! Its exactly like what the title states we have to go around and watch people. To summarise it ,it would be stalking people. I am very intrigued by this assignment as i have never in my life stalked anyone and i feel kind of sorry for the two people who i might have to go and stalk.Haha!

Luckily (?) Ryan had specify it as people of i would have probably gone after some cat in my neighbourhood.

Anyway when Ryan said this and i quote “YOU DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET YOUR ASSIGNMENT DONE” he sounded like he was out of the godfather movie.Ok random i am distracting you from my main point and Aristole would not have appreciated that.

Yes onward…oh i have come to the end of my reflections… well now its notes time… especially useful for those of us who did not pay attention during lessons or those who might probably forgot what was done today the minute the day is over….

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Oh hold it…its not the end yet.i thought i shall just let you know how my stalking assignment went since i managed to finish it.

I have to say trying to find the right people is very hard.Everyone here hardly seem to display any sort of weirdness that i could use. It was all really mundane that i almost gave up.Just when i was i was about to give up there i found Mr Popular.I realised sometimes you find what you’re looking for when you’re not looking for it.Thus there should be no deadlines,no rush.Let inspiration come naturally. Sadly though this excuse/proverb doesn’t seem to work with the lectures or the school boards.