Have you watched X-men 3? No? Well lucky you. Dont watch it. The story left me empty. Instead of caring for any of the good guys, i cared for Magneto.



One day i came in for Cam and Lighting class and was handed my first assignment for the semester.

The ass looked good; frame composition and the use of lighting to convery certain moods. Basically we had to plan shots that fit certain themes such as love, hate, romance, etc etc etc.

Well i knew there would be plenty of people who would be making shots of their subject in the middle of nowhere/corner of a room/isloted to convey "loneliness" so i tried to stay away from the cliches as far as possible.

You know.. some of my classmates, i kid you not, plan of making a heart shape out of two light sources that shine onto their subject, who's hugging another one of it';s kind, no less. I mean... WWHHHAATT??? three more people in class has the same idea as you and you still think you can pull something out of this?!?!?

"oh i will be using red gel..."

spare the teacher....



I let myself lose and wandered around the deeper ends of my imaginary world. No matter how twisted an idea is, i just let it in and tried to sraighten them out with an unplugged iron.

so i drew stuff....


Not exactly the best art piece in the world... but it'll do since i have 15 more to go.

Our focus of the day.

Typical of me, i'd always add in some hidden agenda behind my school assignments.

Like the NVAU shoot that went bust, i used that as a reason to rent all those huge film equipments... i had fun using them. noone else did so what does that say?

This time round i wanted to explore the uses of..... DRY ICE.

The Singapore Dry Ice.



Dry ice everybody! it even says on a website that dry ice has many uses..... such as.. for camping, drinking, parties, weddings, film special effects.....


the only use i've ever seen coming out from dry ice is burning irritating children's hands when they stick their's in the bubbling pot of carbon dioxide at weddings.

Die, children!



For the first part, i did some naughty things.

It was about 2 in the morning. Maybe three. My mum was sleeping. My sis was dead. and i had a line of plastic water bottles in my kitchen.
I took some dry ice, marvelling at the cool vapours sinking onto my legs. A hammer did easy in crushing them into smaller pieces that could fit through the mouth of the bottle.
Pretty soon the white vapour started spilling out of the bottle. And here's where i got the idea; biology and chemistry and physics has thought me that gases are larger in volume... which means if confined into a small space, pressure gets built up easily. And when pressure gets built up, the container gets unhappy. And just like the analogy of a class being thought by crack teachers, students will eventually BURST by the unneeded stress put on them. Like for example, O levels were EASY. But our tecahers kept making us think it was a matter of life, death, and government reception.
So in went the warm water. And out went the bottle immedietely. I watched as the bottle went thud thud thud on the pavement below.... and..... and......
.... nothing.

Damn.. bloody science theories.


PIAOAKKAAKKKAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


there was this LOUD BANG. like.. i dunno... POW! liek a freaking MG!

I looked down and the bottle was in pieces. A few of the resdent's lights went on, a couple of car alarms went off, everything was a MESS!
I bent down and crawled to my room, hiding.

A few people started to come around the area below.. a couple of policemen were around.. awesome awesome sight. Like the explosion was...... BOW! PANG! beep beep beep beep beep beep....... sweet.

JIAHUI... i think i found out what we need for explosions.... bury these sick puppies under the ground and boom!

... on second thought nvm... those anals in school probably would be paranoid with stuff that go louder than their handphone ringtone.

Moving on to things that are less hurtful.... i looked again at the shot that i wanted to do.

The second drawing, with confusion as the theme, had my little doll peeking through frm all the ruckess that's my war memorabilia.
I used the famous overcoat as my backdrop, the 25 dollar helmet i bought from Kuching that looks like a WW2 German dickhead helmet and the Vietnam helmet.
And of course the British arty shell.

At first it looked like this.



I had one key light (just a normal table lamp) shing fomr a direction. I think the position was too straight on and made the picture look like somehting taken with flash. Naturally, ugly. (dont use flash, people. Unless you're a bimbo or in a club.) But i didnt see this coming since i was lying on the floor and could see the lcd screen clearly.

in any case, here came the dry ice.


and things started to get foggy....


...and then it became too foggy... (P.S. Pls rate which picture stuck to the theme more closely. Thanks)

...and it decipated... (P.S. I'm serious.)

I ordered five kilos. When i saw my order at Queenstown, i quickly SMS-ed Don and went,"So i realised i ordered four hundred percent more dry ice than i needed..... wanna see what a special effects set looks like?"

I got it open late at night where the atmposphere was cooler... but didnt really make a difference anyways since Singapore's so hot from the concrete and.... concrete.

Dry ice is HARD.. no doubt about that. I used the knife and started bending it here and there and my fear of the knife suddenly snapping and stabbing me in the eye began to surface.

In the end i got the first 1 kg slab off with an iron rod.

and back to my room... add in some warm water.. and tada.... holy smokes that got into every nook and cranny of my electrical switches.



These few shots are my final ones. I took, in total, twnety over shots for this set up. It was a bit difficult to direct the vapourto get what i wanted.

i loaded it up on the computer and went....

. . . . . . . . . . .AUDI
. . . . . . . . .(satisfied)
. . . .Wow.... that's some serious shit.

Cleaned up my room for a bit.... then went to sleep. Who cares about the commotion below? Police? So what? Terrorist attack? I blame the government.

The next morning....


INT. AUDI'S ROOM - DAY

Audi wakes up in his sun-drenched room and stretches. He lazes around for a while before staggering to his computer which he left, switched on, overnight. The screen flickers, clicks and fades to life. Audi stares at his photos.

. .AUDI
. . Wow...
. .(beat)
. . this really is shit.

Looks like it's gona be another long night for me today. I stil have a few more sets to carry out.

Bloody hell.... complacency and me goes back a long way. I cant believe i ever thought of such corny ideas.

It gets kinda brutal here. Forgive my one-sided approach.


This morning during Screenwriting class, i got a call from Erwin. And guess what he said?

Let's consider this; he's still in the NCC, still very active, still going around like a paedophile (sorry) and IS the only 2001 NVAU batch to be around after so many years. Let's not talk about the other fat tub of lard that i so freakingly hate because he's a freakin betrayer that has "honor" so high up his nose... (you guys SO know who i love referring to as a rotten container of pig oil...)

Thought about it?

I got called up by my loving NCC unit to start a production for their Tenth Anniverssary.

let me give you a background first on the huge whoo haa that happened five or six months ago. Here's an edited cut-and-paste from one of the emails i sent to Hyde.


I declared myself as a freelance videographer, got called up by NVSS to make a video for their NCC unit's tenth year anniversary, i was given the go ahead and suddenly on the shooting day, everything was cancelled. The problem was that the officers supposed to run the show ran off overseas without leaving much of a guideline, leaving the responsibility to some officer, who didnt know what was going on, incharge. Worse still, no other staff in school knew what was going on, including the principal. Then the newly-installed guards at the gate were very anal and think that poly students in bermudas and facial hair were terrorists so we got into a lot of trouble... think of the guards, to the DM, to the officers and all the way to the office clerks and principal looking for your butt at the end of the day. I mean, the rifles were already chosen, the money was given, the actors were called up, the script was printed (500 pages in total, including copies) bla bla bla.... even the budget was agreed on (SGD$600). The poly guys i brought in were my trusted crewmates. They KNOW what to do. So i lost 300 bucks, which was money from my dad's pocket, to the film equipment renting guy Hurt, i went to the officers straight, and demanded them to cover up the losses. They did. And i can feel they werent too happy about it since i got my dad to fly over and sort things out face to face and all.
And after that i closed down my small little company. It was one of the most painful lessons i've learnt.


There was A LOT of confusion as well. You know how some guys get when they see people thrown into a small bit of confusion? They find it like it's an avenue to boost their little ego.. and they start to spread rumours. A particular asswipe told me straight on the phone that the security guards BANNED me from coming into the school.... and the word spread like wildfire. It may seem like a little thing to him and his little dick, but because of this fake ban, i gave the prodcution to someone else, my crew went totally piss (and we didnt talk for a nong nong time.), they thought i was a loser because they think i'm just another silly noone in sec school that gets bullied here and there but they know nuts... and finally.. my dad got pissed. All because of some fucker who needed a little bit of a kiss from mommy.

When i told my Mam about the ban? she was SHOCKED. The DM even had to mention that they cant posibly ban one of their ex-students from school. (and their first FSV student, lol)

So this time round, i was referred to another CLT. So i told him what i needed before i could gather my crew and script. Some of these are like.. guidelines on my limitations, who will be in charge, the tiem frame it must be completed and the budget.

These are just basic requierements! Even if you're in business, in art, in engineering.. if you want to start a project you NEED to have a proposal to show people! Some sort of formailioty and assurance! My dad specifiacally told me,"No paper, all bullshit." meaning if there is no paper to prove anything like the budget or the promise of the location.... there IS NO PROMISE.

The new guy started to ask me more questions on what they need to prepare first and he obviously doesnt understand what is needed in a bloody proposal.

A few hours ago, i woke up and found on my phone that he just referred me to another person.

BLOODY HELL.

this is the first, second, third step to ANOTHER FAILED PRODUCTION!

wth i'm being asked to start something so complicated and i'm running into the battlefield with a headless chicken for a leader? We're not even SURE if our headless chicken IS our leader!

I'm on the verge of screwing the current CLTs. One of their best ones have told me a few weeks ago that he is utterly disappointed at the segregation between all of them... and the trend of "supporting the man with more money" instead of thinking if his actions are right or wrong. Bloody nepotism.....

This time round i'm going to go straight to the officers and choose my bloody CLT-in-charge. If everything else looks as if it's gona get bleak, i'm pulling it out. Forever. I have film cameras to play with in school anyways.

I honestly, truly, pity the other cadets.. the sergeants.. the corporals.. who actually know better how to work with people... and they LOVE to do things like these. Their love itself creates ome level of udnerstanding between them and me... and that is cool. During production, they'd hang around, carry stuff, look at us work the camera and lighting and all that. They know how much i love my video productions.

Instead they are there sitting on their asses while watching the higher ranks fighting it out for their own bloody ego and not the project.

if there is no love.. no serious attitude towards a certain project, DONT PUT YOUR BUTT IN THERE!

ESPECIALLY IN FILM PRUDCTIONS. and especially mine.. because i get VERY anal as a director to the point it's unreasonable. I make the most absurds commands and spread the most airy philosphies on set....and it's not as if it will benefit the production, really.

Fuck people who make decisions to boost their ego.


Okay Jia Hui.. pick up your guns again.. we're going to war. Pretty ironic how just a few days ago i was complaining of how seven thousand offers come to me and seven thousand of them go abandoned....

And also, to stop being bugged by mum that she doesnt have any money in the bank, or my dad has no money in the bank. i think the family's going bankrupt.

But no.. instead im just sitting around, wishing and imagining i had the bloody money on my lap, dreaming of all the hundreds-of-dollars job i was briefed about.

Damn MSN.






P.S. VANILLA!!!!! Guess what..... AIZZAT has a blog! and it's by no means anything soft-hearted.

School ended early today; around 1145. i just flopped my Film History presentation by giving a speech on Stalinism and the Russian Idea instead of talkin about Pudovkin, the director, and his works. Wendy Wee is probably shocked at my lousy work that came out since over the weeks i kept askin her for details details details and i DID grab a whole bunch of books to read. Maybe i'm just not suited for talkin to the public. I know nuts on how to use a Powerpoint; I went over to Henry's house last night till the wee hours of the morning to do my work and he helped a lot on how to use Powerpoint. Or maybe i'm not fluent in planning my speeches.

I can just feel the bad vibes from Wendy as she went on to teach the class; it's as if her references to what i said was done out of courtesy and all that "aww cmon dun make him feel bad for that presentation he bombed..." cos i was literally hitting myself on the face as she brought up points that i knew, but skipped.

But it wasnt so bad. I took the bus and train back to Yishun, the whole time sitting on the floor of the train scribbling things i know i couldnt read later but just doing so cos it felt good. A Bangladeshi worker came into the train a few stops before Yishun and everyone started moving away or waking up. I found that hilarous... in a dark sort of way.

i strolled past Burger King and Long John, peering through the glass for a while. I wasnt sure who i was looking for. i jsut wanted to see if anyone i knew was there. And nope.. i didnt see anyone.... till i backtracked a bit and saw two very familiar figures standing at the Burger King counters.

I didnt recognise them at first. They look so young. So short. So clean. But i thought i knew them... but how can i know anyone from North View who's in Sec 2?

And so i walked closer, cooly because you know.... that's the trend.

My gawd... it's my ex-girlfriend!

A little bit of history; she was the best i had out of the five.. and the last. It was amazing.... we got together after this short fling during Speech Day 2004, after i was looking for Hui Shi (and she disappeared....forever). She saw me and we started to make eye contact. Fate had it; i was her NCC senior... and a very naughty one, in fact. We got it on... during training i gave a bit more attention on her... meaning i teased her in public more often. Well those were the times. Happy times. .... No... happy/sad times because we were happy and thought we were well off as Staff sergeants only to realise we were puppets by our so-called "parents" after ORD. Anyways so we got together... and i dont know how it happened, but i told her that i dont want to meet that regularly. So she got pissed... in a subtle way. She was shy... REALLY shy. Add that to the fact she was three years younger... and the teachers crapped in their pants when they found out of my little cradle-snatching adventure. I knew she was pissed, so for some reason, i started sending her a 5-page sms that started with, "Once upon time... there was a boy and a girl..." and pretty soon that was how we talked to each other every night adressing problems and relating experiences. My handphone bill maxed to three hundred bucks and mother was definitely unhappy. For her, my phone bill rising up is equal to me having a girlfriend. So i got blasted. As with me and my girl.... we didnt really got through that shy-stage. Everytime we called each other there was this dead silence. On my side, i felt that no that wasnt her. Even though it was her voice. So sms-ing stuck. And for all the idiotic reason in the world... she had the same horoscope as my sister... which somehow made me think i was going on with my sister so it really, really, gave me a lot of mental discomfort. Four months into the relationship (that was my longest), i ended it all. She was still young and, plus, my interests and future plans would most definitely not tie in with her.... or anyone else. As we have come to realise today.

We met up again two months later; she gave me a birthday present. I now have it in my treasure chest, locked up, in the original box. it was a necklace... or a wristband. I have no idea. I never used it to find out.

After that we pretty much lost each other... though in MSN she comes online sometimes.

But today I saw her. And i advanced. I was curious.. how is she? Has she grown? is she still immature? Did she grow plump? Whenever we were in our regulary 811 bus rides around Yishun, I used to keep poking her and telling her legs were a bit huge. Obviously, i got a bucket of slaps. All the time.

"Hi Sir welcome to Burger King!" said the man behind the counter.

I put on my "in-deep thought" face; low-eyebrows, down-turned frozen lips, tongue pushed up the roof of the mouth and an eye that looks through other people. And also started doing the complementing body actions. I stood beside her. She was with her friend and they were waiting for their order. I held my now-famous G2 pen in my hand and started clicking it.. as if i'm thinking.

"Yeah can i have a Mushroom Swiss Double, please"

From the corner of my eye i saw her turn. She did see me. She quickly turned back at her friend and they started talkin with frozen jaws at a really really really low voice level.

"Mushroom Swiss? This one?" came the guy behind the cashier, a newbie.

"Yes.. this one.. there are no other mushrooms around."

My my... my "girl" has grown. She didnt grow fat as i expected her to. She's slim, but not those ridiculously slim type. I dont know if she grew shorter or i became i man cos she suddenly got one head shorter than me rather than just a mere 5cm. I never heard her voice though. But i bet she heard mine because i gve that "booming low voice" thing i learnt after Henry and I had a "voice talent competition" a few months ago.

Maybe i should say hi to her. Maybe to catch up on stuff. You know... stuff like that.

Or maybe im having this subconcious goal that runs on the dark side of life.

The guy behind the cashier and his more experienced friend started fiddling and arguing over the register on which buttons to press.

"it's six thirty." and i threw them a ten dollar note.

She turned around a bit again, and turned back. I was laughing in my heart. She always was so... shy. So i took up my head and turned to her direction, but not straight at her.. just at the fries-making thingy, just enough to let her see it's me. And i stood like that for eternity. Their drinks came. The money was exchanged. Their cashier said to wait for their burgers. And all the time she never turned back, still talkin through that frozen jaw.

"Here you are, sir."

I turned back.

"Chilli or ketchup?"

"Nah... it's ok."

The cashier stared at me... and went,"You mean you dont want?"

"Yeah i dont."

"Okay then everything is okay already." and he pushed the plastic bag at me. It wasnt even properly packed.
i took one last look at her tray.

I turned back and grabbed my order, finally giving my first smile to the cashier,"Thanks..."

and i left the place.

I took one last look at her legs. Yeah... they didnt grow wide. I felt this sense of relief and it stayed on til i got home.

Only then i realised i didnt bring me house key and no one was home so i had to stay under Donald's block where i eventually slept till six. What's worse; they gave me a Turkey Double Bacon!

..

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P.S. The Da Vinci Code is out. Honestly i'm having some doubts about this film living up to the hype. It's just me; i dont get how a novel as huge as the Da Vinci Code (i tried reading it but fell into a comma) can be turned into a movie two hours long. Might be interesting to watch. The cinematography and visual texture was beautiful in the trailer. And lastly, I dont get all the religious hoo-ha over the movie. We all do know Da Vinci Code is a work of FICTION right? But then again... Tharik seems to be one of those people who believes the story is real in some aspects.....

Junction near Yishun Esso station.

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Henry aims again...

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The showdown. Guess who's winning?