Tribute: Mr Lee Kuan Yew 1923 - 2015

Tribute: Mr Lee Kuan Yew 1923 - 2015

As you all are aware of, this is world wide news, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, one of the oldest residence of Singapore, the holder of NRIC number S0000003E has finally come to rest. The people of his generation, have already went before him and finally, after battling with the natural wear and tear of the human body, he finally has a chance to be at peace and rest.

I'm no traditional blogger, with no ability to write a proper tribute like them, nor poems, nor songs. But what I can do in my own capacity, is what I have always been doing. To give a final review of what kind of person Lee Kuan Yew has shown himself to be. I'm but a layman, but like every other layman Singaporean, this is what I know about him and what I feel about him from all the sources of information around me and the Singapore around me.

Leadership 5/5
Lee Kuan Yew was a person who worked his way up. He didn't start in a position near political power, but as a ordinary lawyer like many Singaporeans today, but he didn't have interest in money, he didn't have interest in fame, but he had interest in Singapore, and in making Singaporeans different from the rest of the world. We are not the traditional country with plenty of resources to get rich by, we are not even the country with plenty of people to utilize. But he made the most of what he could do, going around the entire Singapore to rally support for decisions and to relay confidence when the country was shaken. Look at the people and yourself and think of the aims for money, fame or property we have today, and you will know why we are not like Lee Kuan Yew. At best we want a good life for our families, but for Lee Kuan Yew, he wanted a good life for everybody and he did it.

He knew he had the influencing power to give confidence and direction to the people, and this was what he knew he had to do personally. He was a born and trained leader not through academic studies, but through discipline and the drive to lead. He was a leader who spent as much time on the ground as he spent in strategy making.

There will never be a leader like him, to do both ground work and thought work simultaneously especially if you look at how Lee Kuan Yew started out in the very beginning stages of his political career without a entire entourage to help him.

Speechcraft 5/5
If you listen to his speeches, you will notice something about this man. He speaks his mind without fear, because he knows that if you follow his direction, it will be the right direction. He speaks for his team, and makes good of his promises and is more then willing to be held accountable for them.

He speaks with fire and with emotion, because he feels that the country is as much his as much as it belongs to the people, and he knows he has the right direction to lead Singapore. And he was right. When he speaks, you can see the determination he has and the enthusiasm to make good of his words and he does this while not constantly referring to a script. For people who do speeches or plan to do speeches, if you believe in what you say, you will realise that you don't need a script, because this is your natural direction already. Lee Kuan Yew knew of the direction he would take Singapore, and was convinced and assured as time proved that he was right.

Also, respect to MR Lee Kuan Yew, who though being english educated, made it a point to learn Mandarin, dialects and Malay for the sole purpose of appealing to the crowd he is talking to. This was the sacrifice and mental energy that he expended to make sure he was perfect in speeches, and all his efforts paid off in the end.

Do we have a leader like that today? Do we still speak what is politically correct in fear of offending others? Do we make effort to learn the language of others just so that we can identify better then them? You know the answer to these questions and suffice to say, he deserves respect in the speechcraft arena.

Dedication 5/5
If you haven't, google Lee Kuan Yew's little red box which described the way he carried out his task on a daily basis. I can safely say that if you spend time surfing the net during your work hours, you are far away from how dedicated Lee Kuan Yew was to carrying out his task as a minister of Singapore. This was a person who eat, sleep and breathed Singapore. A person who dedicated almost everything to Singapore and as he famously said, his life for Singapore. A person, who stayed up late and lost sleep to make sure that his people could sleep longer, with peace and security.

You see a person whose his wife rested earlier then him, yet managed to shift his focus to Singapore and his work to keep himself going instead of breaking down benefiting no one.

He was not in it for the money and honestly, there is hardly any news that said Lee Kuan Yew misused or was extravagant in his spendings. He was truly a person who was in politics for the people, and not for himself, because he was dedicated to Singapore and the people and nothing else.

You see a person, that dared to give promises beyond death that although impossible, are strong words that not many of us dare to even imagine, let alone utter out. This was the extent of the dedication he had for Singapore.

Would our leaders today be like that? It's hard to say because none of them are like Lee Kuan Yew who spent nearly 30 years as PM of Singapore, another 14 years as SM of Singapore and 7 years as a mentor to Singapore. He didn't want to stop as long as he thought he could contribute and regardless of whether or not he did especially in his older days, his spirit and drive for Singapore can't be denied.

Foresight 5/5
Mr Lee was a leader in attitude and spirit which is all good and important, but what he also had was foresight to see what the country needed, and to lead the country in the direction to get it. This is a blessing that not many people in the world would have and share, but Singapore had the fortune to be blessed with foresight through Mr Lee and his direction.

He saw the importance of the English and Chinese language, and thanks to him, we are now able to go compete and gain economically from both powers of the world to the extent where westerners are amazed at our grasp of English and Chinese welcome us as we converse in their familiar language.

He knew what steps he had to take to lead to the economic prosperity of Singapore and this is evidenced in the Singapore you see today that stemmed from the good direction that he set right at the get go. Even more commendable was that he did this without the natural resources that other countries have.

He never forgot the importance of being green, and thus we do not have a grey urban country, but a country that has its pockets of greenery that do bring some calm to the hectic lives we live in today that will be enjoyed by us and the generation to come.

No one today has been proven to have seen as far as Mr Lee has and has created a country that is comfortable to live in whileunder his charge. And let us also remember, Mr Lee did this without the help of computers or simulations which is an even more insurmountable feat and I am doubtful anyone can do this anymore in this modern age.

Personal Touch 4.5/5
When you look at the crowds of people who are visiting him as he lay upon his state rest, you see people from all walks of life, all ages, all races, coming together as one to bid him farewell. You see the elderly, the people who directly benefited from the decisions of Lee Kuan Yew,  making their way to the city (a place that the old won't really find a reason to be in) just to say their final farewells, with tears in their eyes. They can personally testify to how their lives were changed and are grateful because the lives of their children and grand children are better, because of his sacrifice. You hear the stories from the people whom he fought for while as a lawyer, right from the start, before he started his fight for all Singaporeans. He didn't aim for GDP growth for GDP growth sake, but he aimed to give us Singaporeans a good life, a standard of living above that of the world and this resulted in the GDP growth during his time as the Prime Minister. He was a down to earth minister from the get go, and the people of his time all knew this.

When you look at Lee Kuan Yew, you don't see only a minister or a politician, giving speeches and meeting dignitaries, but you see husband and a father, living and bringing up his family the only way he knows how, which is by giving his best. He is not just some person high up, but a human who loves, just like you and me and finally he may rest, together with his wife, ashes to be mixed together, for as long as time permits.

Credits to Ashley

The only thing he lacked out of necessity, was to be gracious to people who may or may not (but in his opinion may) had the motive to harm Singapore all the way to the end which might have been a impossible task when the country he had worked so hard to achieve and build was at stake. But let's face it, Lee Kuan Yew is only human, just like all of us.

You can't hear of dedication on the personal level like him today. To esteem and remember all the moments with his wife, with ZERO issues that plague politicians all over the world today such as scandals and corruption.

Spectacle 5/5
There will never be someone else like him whose achievements are recognized all over the world even by people of stature and authority. There will never be any chance to make a difference as big as him in Singapore, because we have already travelled the entire path from 3rd to 1st world and are already in front of the pack. There is no longer as large a developmental gap left in this world for Singapore to bridge as we grew exponentially faster to catch up with the front. There will never again be someone, who can touch the hearts of the Singaporean people, uniting them regardless of race, language or religion to respect even if they did not agree, with the direction LKY took us.There will never be anyone else, as synonymous to Singapore as Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore.

Overall 

Leadership: 5 (A leader who led by example, coming from the bottom up)
Speechcraft: 5 (A persuasive man who spoke his mind and walked his talk)
Dedication: 5 (A person who gave up everything for his people, including his life)
Foresight: 5 (A person who made Singapore the way it is, respected by the world)
Personal Touch: 4.5 (A person who was a father and husband and taught us how to be a good father and husband too)
Spectacle: 5 (A person who is likely the only one in the world with such an achievement of bringing up a country like Singapore, from 3rd to 1st world.)

Overall: 4.9 (There's no doubt about it. Lee Kuan Yew will be remembered in Singapore as the person who led and gave the direction for the development of the country and more importantly, succeeded. He did this from the bottom up, starting with small feats that garnered him respect, worked with all sorts of people to push his agenda, handled setbacks and made personnel sacrifices, all for the country that he loved and the people of that country Singapore. There will be no one like him but rightly so, because there is no one with his leadership, speechcraft, dedication and foresight, matched with his personal touches that made him so human to the people he served. Singaporeans have much to appreciate and be grateful for and the best way to do this is to serve with the spirit that Lee Kuan Yew has served, to the best of our abilities. Majulah Singapura!)

RIP : LKY

Disclaimer: This post is written with information obtained from the net and research and are accurate to the best of the author's knowledge. There is no intent to offend any party, political or otherwise. The author merely wishes to pen down his tribute, at this significant juncture of Singapore's history, to Lee Kuan Yew in the most appropriate way that he knows how to and has the utmost respect for the accomplishments of Mr Lee

Movies: The Spongebob Movie: Sponge out of Water

Movies: The Spongebob Movie: Sponge out of Water

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....... who lives in a pineapple under the sea?!?!?!?! Absorbent and porous and yellow is he............ If you do not get what I am saying here... then you do not know the infamous Spongebob and his annoying laughter! And you are probably from a different generation then me... But what generation does Spongebob actually appeal to? That is the big question that you got to ask to see if you can enjoy this movie. So who is spongebob? A bathing sponge?? You ain't all that wrong. Here he is in all his yellow glory!!

Wow! he is hunky!!

Actually no. This is the real spongebob. If you seen this before, then most likely you have seen and grown with the spongebob cartoons that sadly, have not had much new episodes in the past few days. However, spongebob and its cartoons are known for its overall silliness humor as well as the occasional dark and gory kind of humor.. Yes it is that strange....

Look at him and his pinky friend!!

So what does this spongebob have to do with the hunky one above? How did they even match all these together?? Is all that even worth seeing? Read on to find out more.

Storyline 3/5

The storyline is actually something quite similar to what you have from a traditional 20 mins spongebob episode, only about 5 times longer. They writers are smart to create two distinct portions of the movie, one being the cartoon world and the other being the real world, and linking them seamlessly to keep the audience interesting.

However, that is all there is to the show and it is a simple storyline in its entirety. One problem however, is that it is not entirely clear at what is happening at all times and they do use words such as apocalypse and other difficult words. This, is not your usual kids show and if your english is not that great, you will miss out what is happening.

The entire link at what exactly is happening throughout the show is also not very clear cut especially for children to understand. Personally I was confused about what was happening at times but maybe kids these days are smarter and more able to understand.

Character 3.5/5

The main characters as well as the villain/s in the movie are well represented as well as their distinct personalities that you will get from the cartoon shows. The problem here however is that the writers expect that their audience would have already seen the movie and hence they will know why the characters do the things they do but it would get pretty heavy for a new viewer with questions such as why is a squirrel living in the water and other big questions.

Cinematography 3.5/5

The movie is done in a relatively creative way as its cartoon and real life mix keeps things interesting and fresh even after 40 minutes into the show. It's not an action show however but it does try to make things exaggerated and exciting at whatever action parts there are.

Music 3.5/5

Ahhhh, music... spongebob's favorite hobby... ok its probably not his favorite hobby but it is not the first time he sings also. The movie makes use of music at a certain juncture of the movie as a throwback to what was done in his previous cartoons. It made the movie fun although the singing is horrible as usual (that's the way the character sings anyway.) Overall, it added some fun value to the movie.

Spectacle 2.5/5 (3 for spongebob fans)

I would say that this is where the movie takes the biggest hit. Let me now justify the 2.5 score to you. First of all, this movie expects u to have quite a lot of background information on Spongebob and his friends to really enjoy everything. Without it, you will miss out on a lot of the jokes and not be entertained by what is happening. Spongebob cartoons also take pride in going out of the box and being unbelievable at times. However, this movie takes it to really the next level and it might have gone too far away from its cartoon to the extent that even I, a fan of the movie, was confused at what was happening. Action wise it is normal, nothing too exciting and storyline is simply just ok, passable and merely just sufficient for a entertaining movie. Comedy wise, it is also mostly only funny for those who are aware of the spongebob story and if you are a person completely new, it won't be as entertaining for you. In light of all these, I could only afford a passable score for non-spongebob fans and perhaps a 3 for spongebob fans because even as a fan, you won't be able to catch everything.

Overall

Storyline: 3 (It is kept somewhat interesting with the two different worlds and a out of the world story, but it is not particularly easy to follow)
Characters: 3.5 (A lot of characters from the spongebob cartoons appear, but only those fans can appreciate most of them and the non-fans will be confused)
Cinematography: 3.5 (Things are exaggerated, you will see many strange colors and it is creative, but not all of these things that are done added to the enjoyment of the movie)
Music: 3.5 (Music is fun, singing and stuff is bad, but that's spongebob for ya)
Spectacle: 2.5 (The deciding factor, there is entertainment factor but only the most informed of fans can fully enjoy. For the storyline, action and comedy aspects however, it's only just passable)

Overall: 3.2 (A pretty realistic score if you ask me. If you are an extreme fan, you should be able to like it. A normal fan however, you might not be able to follow everything but at least u get to see your favorite characters. Non-fans however, you gonna need to keep an open mind. In fact a very very very open mind and just accept everything the way it is. If not, nothing will make sense and the whole movie will just be.... nonsense. If you really feel the need to see the movie, then perhaps you should take a look at some of the cartoons first so that you can better appreciate the movie. If not, don't worry if you give this movie a skip because you ain't really missing too much. For those with kids, the above advice also applies. Young kids may only enjoy the color and cute characters but like the cartoons, spongebob content and jokes was always the more adult kind (not sexually, just more complex).

Movies: Dragon Blade

Movies: Dragon Blade

This Chinese New Year, this movie had the unfortunate situation of coming up together with Fifty Shades of Grey, a highly anticipated sex movie! After all, sex sells doesn't it? But does action sell too?? Apparently, not as much because the theatre where i saw this movie was only about half full. However, if you already had your fill of "Fifty Shades of Grey" and am looking for a movie to keep you entertained, could this movie be the one for you??

Look at the poster first and maybe it will help you decide!

Now look closely. we all know who the person in the middle is but look right above him!! OH its a bunch of English people!!! I would say that this might be the attractive point of this movie in that you get to see English people fight with Chinese people. But what kind of story do we actually have? Lets read on to find out more.. But something to help you manage your expectation, this movie has nothing to do with a dragon blade. There's no dragon, theres quite a lot of blades.

Storyline 3.5/5

This movie has a pretty interesting storyline. It starts off saying it is inspired by historical events. This term is very vague and for this case, basically could mean something like 10% related to historical events. Maybe just that the main character has exactly the same name. That probably what they mean when they say inspired by historical events so don't be looking for a history lesson here. Nonetheless, storyline wise however, this movie has a pretty flowing storyline and it flows quite well especially for an action show. The only big issue of this movie is the START and the END where they introduce and end the movie. If you see this movie, you will understand what I mean but in short, if you want to make a movie about a period, there is absolutely NO NEED to use the present day time as a filler or introduction to the movie with completely no links and relevance using an actor and actress that totally has nothing to do with the main content of the movie itself. It is so absurd that you should just treat it like a joke or a non existent part of the movie.

The movie does a good job of introducing the background of what is happening and does it with appropriate amount of action in the middle which is what Jackie does best. As the movie flows on, it injects more and more storyline elements explaining what and why is everything and this keeps the audience interested in the movie and thus allow the movie to not seem too draggy or boring.

Character 4/5

This movie involves quite a lot of characters and also the introduction of different tribes. All the characters/tribe are pretty unique in characteristics, language, dress sense and even fighting style and in some way it becomes very entertaining to see all the differences in culture all these people have.

With regards to the main characters, the movie does focus on the backgrounds of the two main characters and the bad guy through various flashbacks that are short, but sufficient. Most of the stuff that happens is rather believable which serves to keep the audience immersed in the movie.

Just like most fighting movies, there will be a lot of death in this movie and this movie does the deaths relatively well with all the dying people having a nice short  death sequence before they drop dead and die. The bad guy in the movie is also done very well and as you see the movie go on you will start to root more and more for the good guys and start to detest the bad guy. One flaw is however towards the end the bad guy gets conflicted for some reason which is somewhat not in character and not that believable.

Cinematography 4/5

This movie's cinematography focus on two things, 1 to 1 fighting as well as large scale epic battles. In fact, it can be said that the main fight scenes are reminiscent of "The Hobbit 5 Armies". It is almost like a chinese version of LOTR. Unlike the LOTR series however, the movie stays constrained to 2 hours and due to the need for some storyline, there are some room for improvements. Nonetheless the battle scenes are fun while they last and due to the variety in character, you will not end up in a state where your mind just says "blah blah blah, another fight scene, blahblahblah yet another fight scene".

They could have utilized more perspective shots that are fun to have in an action film to increase the entertainment value.

Music 3.5/5

Music is commonly quite a obvious part in chinese movies and this movie does it too. There is one part of singing in this movie to evoke some emotional attachment to what the people are feeling but this is still not a musical.

I still can't really appreciate Jackie Chan singing though.

Spectacle 4/5

In the genre of both action and storyline, this movie does fine, just not too spectacular with a bit of hiccups here and there However, it stays entertaining, unique, fresh and fun all the way from the beginning to the end which is what every action movie should at least have to attract the general public. It also has a relatively unique storyline as compared to the traditional chinese fighting movies although there is not too much kungfu in this. At least its not a all chinese affair in the end

Overall

Storyline: 3.5 (Interesting take on "historical" events, told in a attention grabbing way at least for the duration of the movie EXCEPT start and end)
Character: 4 (Quite a nice variety with good differences amongst all. Celebrating the differences makes it more entertaining)
Cinematography: 4 (Good 1 to 1 fight scenes with quite a bit of epic battles on the list)
Music: 3.5 (Uses music to push the emotional part across)
Spectacle: 4 (Storyline and action are done well and overall movie is kept exciting and flowing)

Overall: 3.8 (A very safe score, indicating that if you really have nothing you want to do in particular and like to see some actions plus big army fighting, this is the show u can see. It's not a must see however with a lower then 4 score but you would most likely be able to enjoy the movie nonetheless for its action scenes. Remember though, don't be affected by the start and the end of the movie. Just treat it as not being there at all.)

Let me know if you have any comments! 

Movies: Into the Woods

Movies: Into the Woods

Disney is at it again. After doing the twist in Maleficient whereby they made the bad woman good, they are now trying this new idea. Oh what will happen if we combine some of our stories together... like maybe Jack and the Bean Stalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella... wait lets put a baker inside just for fun... and Oh maybe just put Rapunzel inside!! That's what this movie is about.. Wait.. lets not do it like a traditional movie.. LETS DO IT IN SONG!!!!!

Actually into the woods is a broadway musical but not as well known as those like Les Miserable. But for the usual uncultured people like us, this would probably be our first foray into the movie. So how did this movie perform? Read on to find out more!

Woo! It's a scary witchie!! But without this witchie there won't really be a movie...

Storyline 3.5/5

It's quite a seemless integration of the entire movie but the thing the movie had to do was to cut down some storylines. So you would see Cinderella story but very little of Jack and the Bean Stalk. It's a fun combination and the movie actually continues after the first happy ending part which was pretty good because it was fresh material from then on. However, the story at that part was pretty weak and some things that happen didn't really have any proper explanation. Also note that this movie follows the Grimm version of the movie so it is slightly slightly morbid as according to the Brothers' Grimm version.

The other big problem this movie has is that the audience will need to have good knowledge of what happened in the stories so that they will know what is happening. The biggest offender of this is Jack and the Bean Stalk again.

All in all, the storyline is fine especially if you know the fairy tale involved but if you don't know the stories, you can't enjoy this movie as much.

Character 3.5/5

As you realise, there are some movies that can spend the full 2 hours on a single fairy tale. For this, they need to squeeze 3 - 5 storylines together and as a result there are scenes and parts that cannot be focused and elaborated on.

Nonetheless, all the involved characters are distinct and unique in the character types which made for quite a bit of fun in how they interacted with each other.

It's also quite fun to see how their storylines intertwined with each other but the movie had to make some strange stretches to allow their characters to meet each other.

Cinematography 3.5/5

The angle this movie worked on was being fun and entertaining as expected from a musical and they did this well. It won't be anything impressive with the many close ups of people's lips vibrating from emotion but that's what you usually see in movie musicals.

Music 4/5

Musical obviously have good music. In fact, for a good whole 3/4 of the movie its all music and song and music and song. It's those kind where by no one can talk properly and it must all be done in song. However, after the "happy ever after" part, the movie will actually go into a portion with slightly too much talking which is strange in a musical movie.

Still, the lyrics and singing style made the overall experience a pretty good one as they used different kind of genre to bring out uniqueness in the character. Not a entirely large genre but it has a musical feel to it.

Spectacle 4/5

Overall, this movie was a good entertaining musical with its fun and even funny lyrics and good expressions from the actor and actresses. Only flaw is that if you see the trailer, you might not have realised that this was a musical and if you weren't expecting a musical, or HATE musicals, this might be a painful experience to you.

The other draw is the way it twines all the fairy tales together into one continuous narrative which is pretty seamless. But besides that, this movie has nothing else going for it.

Overall

Storyline: 3.5 (Pretty interesting way of intertwining, but some things just happen for the story sake and it was not entirely logical or continuous)
Character: 3.5 (Characters were all nicely distinct but they had to share the screen time)
Cinematography: 3.5 (Musical focused so you won't see anything awe inspiring, but it works fine.)
Music: 4 (Nice lyrics, nice tunes but there was some parts that was too much normal talk!)
Spectacle: 4 (Interesting story line told in a singing way for a unique twist, added much entertainment value to the movie)

Overall: 3.7 (A pretty accurate rating for this movie. Basically, if you are a lover of musicals, you will like this movie quite a bit as it puts good music alongside a pretty unique storyline. If you are a storyline lover that doesn't hate music on the other hand, you can still focus and appreciate the artistic flair in joining the stories seamlessly although there are some hiccups here and there in continuity. If you are looking for action and anything else however, you might just find this movie a bit too painful and slow to sit thru. So don't see this movie if you hate music and expect people to actually talk to each other properly. Don't be led astray by movie trailers and the lack of emphasis that "THIS IS A MUSICAL")

Food: Hai Di Lao

Food: Hai Di Lao

So finally, after waiting for almost a whole year, I finally had a chance to eat at the famed Hai Di Lao. For those who don't know, Hai Di Lao is considered as a ala carte steamboat style of food whereby you will need to pay for the soup you choose, and every dish you order you will pay for the specific dish. This is in contrast to other steamboat buffets a lot which can be found in Chinatown and quite a fair few from all around such as Coca steamboat and Sukiya. These other buffets are free flow and you might need to go ahead and grab or order the food but you can eat and eat. However, Hai Di Lao is an ala carte but all in all, do you need to hesitate when deciding what to order? Would you end up paying more? Read on to find out more.

Food 4.5/5

You get to choose two soups, for this, Mala and Tomato

There are quite a variety of soups presented including the standard chicken stock soup. I think there should be four or five different soups in total. For us though, we got ourselves the Mala which is the spicy type of soup, and a tomato soup for those who did not want to eat spicy. Nonetheless, my mates with me tried the Mala and it was not TOO hot even for them. However, when we ordered the soup, there was the option presented to us to add or reduce the spiciness of the Mala soup. It's this type of variety that made the entire meal a bit more pleasant, and I believe this was the concept that the management of Hai Di Lao wanted to focus on and can be seen in many aspects of the management of the eating experience.

The soup overall, was tasty. Yep, I would dare say that amongst all the soup I have tasted, this Mala is one of the more unique, and even the best, so much that even Mala lovers could give it a try and it might ignite their passion for Mala.

One point to note however, is that when you ask for refill of the soup, I noticed that the soup was the normal chicken stock at least for my Mala. Hence after refilling twice, it started not being that spicy anymore. Not sure if this is the standard but it could have been expressed to us.

Here comes the first course of meat! Note, these were all HALF portions

 For a start, we were allowed to order half portions of almost all the dishes on the Ipad provided. What this means is that, you can go for variety and you do not have to force yourself to stuff down too much of the food, making you full and unable to try other dishes. You can also decide from the first round which meats you find most delicious and then order it subsequently. It's a very smart move and like i said, this is a variety in the ordering style which adds to the experience.

Taste wise, you can see that the meats are very thinly cut, and thus very easy to cook and consume. All the meats we chose were tasty, not too fat. For beef alone, they had like 4 different grades or types of beef for people with different tastes and budgets, and this makes good business sense.

Tofu, mushroom and a bunch of 4 different pastes, vermicelli

 As you can see from the photo above, you can ask for an assortment of mushrooms, nothing new many places have this. but look further above and see the red white and white green oval dishes. This was one of the paste dish ranging from prawn, to meat to spinach prawn and one more that i cannot remember cause the waitress said it in chinese. Nonetheless, they allow you to order small bits and really just try everything.

Sauces to tantalize your taste buds

 And look at the variety of sauces. They had a sauce rack with like over 10 different kind of sauces and that rack also had some small dishes like peanuts and pickles. But wait! What if you are not the sauce loving person? Well Hai Di Lao has gotten this covered. For HDL, their sauce and small dish bar is not included, but is free flow for a price of 4 dollars. What this means is that for those who don't need sauces, they actually don't charge you for it like what other companies do in their buffet prices. Hence overall you might not spend too much. You will see this further in the pricing section.

Taste wise, with so many different kind of sauces (in fact this is the biggest array I have seen so far), you SHOULD be able to find one to your liking. In korean BBQ buffet you always only have maybe chilli soy sauce and the korean chilli which honestly I don't really fancy, but here, you can get the spicy chilli paste, but if you like still must have korean chilli they also have that too. That's the variety they give. Other sauces include chilli oil, mushroom paste (chinese version), sesame and more.

Atmosphere 4.5/5

This is the style for 4 people hotpot, come prepared with charger, you might spend long here

If you haven't noticed, I have given the atmosphere 4.5 out of 5. Is that justifiable, well, let me tell you why.

Look at the size of the table. Its big and that means you don't have to try to squeeze all your stuff on the table. Of course our table was for 4 and maybe 6 people may be given this table too but it is quite large in general already. For 8 tables and above there are even bigger and more fun round tables. With a huge table like this, there was also no worries about the steam and smoke flying into your eyes. In fact, none of us left the place smelling like Mala. The whole place is well ventilated.

When the guy brings in the soup, he even asks you which way you want to orientate the soup. So if you are the only guy eating using one of the soup, you can arrange it so that its convenient for all. 

All tables are also looked after by a specific waitress. For us, our young waitress only had to look after 4 tables. There is no need to reach out and try to grab the attention of the waitress and spend quite a bit of time looking like a fool. Nope, our waitress was right there for us and she even offered to help us order when the chinese words and the navigation of the Ipad became a chore.

The waitress can even help you scoop the soup and filter it for you

The waitress can go all the way to the extent of helping you scoop your soup and she even helped us put in the mushrooms and tofu when we started.

Lazy to hold the soup? Make use of the ladle holder

Other good things that they did, they offered to give us plastic bags to cover our hand phones to protect from the splatter.

The overall structure and layout of the place was also very very good. No one was too close to anyone and there was much space to move around. They didn't squeeze all the sauce and small snack bar at a corner and make everyone go long distance for it. Instead they provided no less then 3 corners for all their customers at the sacrifice of their number of tables that they could lay out.

Price 3.5/5

As you can see from the picture above, the price for 4 people would total to about 130.65 which is about 30++ per pax. Granted not all of us took the sauce, we still ordered pretty much to our fill and it was filling. Note that I ate with 3 ladies so maybe their amount they ate was slightly lesser but in all honesty i doubt that.

On a side note however, I made another visit to the place and this time two of us actually ate a sum of 90++ dollars which is about 40+ per pax. So this would be the probable range that you spent but the 2nd time we ate, we slightly over ate.

Nonetheless, they actually allowed you to order HALF portions so that you can actually try and sample the food first before deciding on what u want to order more of which will help keep the cost reasonable.

It's not entirely cheap but you will feel that overall, you got your money's worth (unless you really wasted a lot of time waiting)

Accessibility 4/5

Hai Di Lao is actually famous for it's long queues if you ask people who have been there before. If you plan to go there for dinner, i would recommend you actually go down at about 4.30 or even 4 to get a number first so that by the time you reach your number, it would be about 6.

In fact, when we were done eating at about 10 plus, we still saw people queuing outside. Be prepared for 2 to 3 hours queue at the peak weekend hours. Also note that the staff will tell you that it is a 2 hours wait but in the end you wait for about 3 hours instead which was what happened to us.

However, if you are up to it and just want to try the food, you can come down early at about 11.30 and treat it as lunch instead. The 2nd time I went around that time, there was no queue and we could go there to eat.

On the other hand, the reality is, despite the long queue, HDL actually managed to score some points back in accessibility. This is because unlike other places where they want you to stand in queue, this place allows you to just take a number and come back a few hours later. Even if you came back too early, they actually served some drinks and fruits AT NO CHARGE. In fact you can even go get a manicure done over there, just walk in and get a time slot for it to be done and this is also free. All these facilities and actions make this restaurant well above the rest in service and making the wait less miserable.

The queues are long because this place also DOES NOT restrict your eating time unlike buffets. So you can go in and take as long as you want and it adds to the overall comfort of the place.

One more thing is that phone bookings are possible, but only if you book weeks in advance. Their booking seats are very limited such as half of their premise at a time and actually I would say that this is the better arrangement because you can go and eat when you feel like it and the waiting times for the waiting queue will not be atrociously long as there are more tables allocated to walk in.

It is also just above somerset MRT which means it is easy to get there and easy to get back from there which is a big plus.

All in all, besides the long long long wait, HDL has done a lot to make the wait less miserable and in all honesty and realism, it is difficult to improve further given what that they want to focus on a good eating experience and good service instead of just merely focusing on profit.

Overall

Food: 4.5 (Food and soup tastes good, has a huge variety and is highly customizable)
Atmosphere: 4.5 (Very customer service orientated right from the queuing stage all the way to the end)
Price: 3.5 (It's not cheap, but its not expensive. All in all, you feel that the price is deserved)
Accessibility: 4 (Easy to get to, and if you in a rush, go there very early first. Even if you queue, you are not stuck there and can do other things)

Overall: 4.125 (This is a kind of place that I can safely say, you should go and eat there at least once in your life. In fact, if you have friends coming from overseas, get them to visit cause they are not just selling the food, but also the entire experience. Tips to make the wait easier, bring card games to play. You can literally sit there for hours and if you have cards, the wait can be longer. Didn't see anyone doing this though so don't go gambling there. Just make proper planning and I think your visit to HDL won't be anything regrettable.)

If you want to check opening times and other details, click here

Movies: Exodus: Of Gods and Kings

Movies: Exodus: Of Gods and Kings

If your first thought to this movie title is... the Bible! then you probably have a chance at enjoying this movie! This is of course, a movie that follows the story of one of the more well read books in the world, whether for research, academic, rebuttal or religious purpose! If you want to just read the whole story, its free on the internet and all you have to do is do a brief search! Don't worry, just read the exodus portion of the entire book and you will get a gist of the story.

If you find this idea familiar, your not the only one. This movie was done before in albeit a different style and angle. The previous movie following a similar premise was called the "Prince of Egypt"

In fact, click on play and enjoy the music as you continue reading. It's pretty nice.

Ahhh... how time flies and these two divas are already pretty old. (They don't look the least bit older)

Nonetheless, lets talk about this new movie.

Storyline 3/5

There is probably a 80% chance that you, who is planning or has seen the show, already know roughly what the show is about. The movie manages to follow generally the story and in fact, it does make some creative direction to sort of make things more believable or well explained.

Don't think i can really be a spoiler to this movie but the part about the plagues on Egypt was interestingly done. I would say interestingly because the way they explained and put the plagues in sequence is not what one would originally imagine, and yet why not?

The front part of the story however is done more movie style with a bit of action and it was done pretty nicely to add some background to the movie. Overall however, this is the main focus of the movie and that is why it did suffer at some points as elaborated below.

The movie does assume that the audience has quite a bit of prior knowledge about certain sections of the source material and as such makes some leaps and misses out some introductions to allow the audience to know exactly what is happening at this point of time. Hence you may actually get lost at some points of the movie especially if you are not that well versed in the verses (woohoo a pun)

Do note, that from my viewing of the movie, there is quite a few starking differences between the movie and what you are used to.

Character 3/5

This movie focuses on only 2 people mostly, and the rest of them, and i do mean the rest of them are EXTREMELY similar to each other. You cannot really discern who everyone else is. Many of them have very very minor screen times but of course this is true to the source material.

Unfortunately this adds back to the confusion factor as you do not know who the people are and what is their role in those sections of the movie.

Of course there is a particular portrayal of a certain character important in the movie also and some people may like the way its done, some people not so. I leave you to see the movie and decide on your own of the direction they took.

Cinematography 3.5/5

This part was just sad in the movie. From the start of the movie, you would have been awed by the cinematography when they did their first battle. The way they did the action was like a LOTR or good epic castle fight. Sadly. This will not be repeated any other time in the movie.

There are still other pretty good scenes but all in all, this movie did not want to go towards the action style but rather more of the storyline route so you will not be impressed or awed too much until one last section in the end.

Probably another case of a pretty misleading trailer.

Music 4/5

The music was done very well in this movie. I would go so far as to say that every section was accompanied with music and its very prominent. It did add a lot to the feel of the movie.

Spectacle 3/5

Unfortunately for this movie, it chose to focus on the storyline aspect, but could not do it well enough. The source material might have been a factor, but still a good director would have been able to make it easy enough to follow. For the action scenes, scenes that had it was good, but there was just too few for such a long movie and it is a real real long movie.

There are tons of areas that the movie could have done better but I guess they might have got the priorities somewhat all around the place and lost focus as the movie went on.

Storyline: 3 (You need to know the storyline before hand, or you might get lost)
Character: 3 (Main focus was only on 2 guys, but everyone else was really hardly elaborated on. Too touch and go for me)
Cinematography: 3.5 (There were good scenes, and they had the ability to do good scenes, but they just didn't have enough opportunities for that)
Music: 4 (Good music, added a lot of excitement to the atmosphere)
Spectacle: 3 (I would say that they made a grave mistake and didn't do well on the main focus which is the storyline. Their secondary areas which was the action scenes were done ok, but they were not impressive so it ended up feeling lackluster)

Overall: 3.3 (I would say, to enjoy this movie, you first need to know a bit of the source material or else chance of you getting lost is really quite high. Next, you need to be able to appreciate some creative direction and twists to the movie. Next, you need to have an open mind to accept certain portrayals of certain characters in the movie. Next, you should be a person that likes storyline and not the kind that needs a high amount of your movie to be action based. All in all, it's an ok movie especially for the length of time, but you do need to have some preparation to be able to enjoy this movie fully.)

Movies: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

Movies: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

It's been a while since the last installment of the Hunger Games, and for those who do not know what this movie is... you probably don't see movies much... I remember this movie as the first movie to show its advertisements almost a year before it really came out (or was it six months) which I thought was a bit extravagant. Nonetheless, its one of those movies that follows a book similar to LOTR and Harry Potter and is currently doing a Harry Potter thing which is instead of being a normal Trilogy, they take the last book/episode and split it into two.

What this means is that you will not get  closure at the end of this movie. It's more like seeing a serial or a normal TV show where it will end abruptly. What this also means is that you probably need to manage your expectation when you see the movie. I will tell you more as we move along

For those who do not know, this movie is set in an alternative universe where by all the people in the world are divided into districts. In their districts they are in charge of various tasks and products that they will supply to the capital where all the rich and famous and strange people live. So you have districts that focus on woodworks, some that focus on mining, some on farming etc. So every year or some time that I don't remember, there is hunger game whereby some people from the districts are selected to fight to the death and the last remaining person gets much riches and food and all that. So obviously after many years of doing this, you soon get some sort of rebellion started which is the focus of the next set of movies starting with Mockingjay Part I. So this is the starting phase of the rebellion itself. To not give any further spoilers, the introduction ends at this point. Here's some pictures

The movie that started it all

The continuation, look at her bow!

This movie's poster!!
Look her bow is gone.. wonder why

So if you did not watch the first two however, I would recommend that you actually see the first two because it does add some value to the movie especially since it introduces everything that happens and the new world that this movie is based in. In fact, I will go as far as to say, if you didn't see the first two of this movie, you will not enjoy it. You will understand as we go along.

Storyline 4/5

The storyline is the main aspect of this point of the movie. In fact I would say that the storyline makes or breaks the entire enjoyment of the movie because this show lacks action. Yep. Unlike the other 2 movies that came before this, this movie action portion is maybe only about 15% of the entire show.

You pretty much should treat this movie as a build up to the next movie episode where all the action is. The thrilling and exciting sequence is still here in this movie, but there is not much action. See the movie and you will know what I mean.

That is why you have to see the first two, then you will appreciate the build up. Or else you will have zero clue why the main characters in the movie are running all around the place and doing this and that and if you were to see the movie without any background it would probably only be worth 3/5 points. 

Characters 3/5

A lot of the development of the movie has been done in the previous movies before this. As such there is not much character development here in this movie. The difficulty this movie faces is that in a world like theirs, the people start to lose their character and basically become like everyone else. And this shows in the movie where everyone else feels relatively similar. You also might not know who many of the people in the movie are if you did not see the previous and hence you will have no clue why they are doing certain actions in the movie.

They do make some fair effort to distinct some people from another by giving them stranger hairdos and characteristics but there won't be nothing spectacular that makes you like any particular person. As in any rebellion there are a few speeches, but I guess it was the aim of the movie to show that because the characters in this movie are not born politicians, the speeches are not as inspiring as it should be.

Cinematography 3.5/5

This movie has some pretty good shots overall but unlike the first two, due to the lack of action scenes there is not much superb action shots. Has some nice outward top down views to show u more about the world and it does have the occasional epic things happening.

There is only portion in this movie however, that shows you that you can make a movie very thrilling, without having action. They do this towards the end of the movie so watch out for it the way they build up the audience and not have to worry about blowing extra money on budget. Hopefully, this translates to a more epic part II.

Music 4/5

The musical score does a very good job in this movie. In fact, music is used up to build a certain portion of the movie which is pretty creative although sometimes it feels slightly awkward to have someone singing as a part of the movie. Nonetheless it did a good job adding entertainment value to the show itself

Spectacle 4/5

Overall, especially for people who read the book and saw the first two, this movie does the story telling portion very creatively and well. But being the only focus of this movie, it takes a toll on the action scenes which is pretty minor for this movie. Thrilling factor however picks up very well towards the end of the movie and you will probably enjoy that portion of the movie well enough to say that the movie was in the end pretty entertaining. Its not the best and they could have done many things differently to cater to the more main stream action lovers, but for storyline lovers, this movie does well enough.

Overall

Storyline 4 (Main focus of the movie, does it pretty well, moves the story along to build up for the next movie)

Character 3 (Did not spend too much effort on this because this was done in the previous movie, if you didn't see the previous, you might get lost)

Cinematography 3.5 (Good effort and has some enjoyable shots but wasn't the focus of this movie)

Music 4 (Creatively incorporated in the music into the show and added much entertainment value)

Spectacle 4 (Did well on both the thriller and storyline fronts but sacrificed a bit of action for the movie, probably was not the focus either)

Overall 3.7 (My advice to you is, see the first two before you see this or it will not be enjoyable to you, and also if you think you are going to see the continuation of this movie in the future you can go ahead and watch it. The storyline and entertainment value of the movie is definitely there if you are a fan but just not derived from the usual pure action sequences. Not having too many epic scenes however means that you could actually just wait for Part II to come out and then see the movies together for you to have a complete picture instead of being cliff hangered but its up to you. Nonetheless, its a worthwhile way to spend a movie session especially since its quite a long movie)

Here is something fun for you to do! As you can see from the poster, this girl likes bows and arrows a lot. Count the number of arrows she fired in this movie!!!