Friday, February 12, 2010

coming out of nowhere

yup, a sudden impulse to post an entry came out of nowhere.

just checked this note from a link on my facebook account. it's a note created by some girl, which is a friend of one of my acquaintance. I know everyone gets so touchy-feely as Feb 14th is getting closer, but I want to keep a little bit of my attention to this one. If you ask why, then it's not about the contents or anything about love. The answer is because she thinks that she has a good English. Is that true? Check this out for yourself:

" a good boy left me alone

at the first time i met you..
you seems like a kind and good boy
u showed me many good things..
u always care to me
u always make me smile
u make me sure that i'm the one whom know you the most
u make me sure that you're the right guy..
until i know that something has changed
i can feel it
slowly but sure you don't care to me anymore
you are so far away..
i can't reach you..
i can't feel your pressence..
...
then one day..
you told me..
that you love the other girl..
oh my God..
it's like a thunder in a sunny day..
i'm shocked..
dissapointed..
sad..
broken into pieces..
i'm sad coz this situation makes me feel that she is better than me
so you left me alone..
....
but now..
i'm happy^__^
i realize that you're not the best one
you're not my man...!
i'm still happy with my life without you..
so...
i can let you go boy...
=)"

okay. comments, anyone?

In my opinion, that was not even a good ENGRISH*, or even ENGDONESIAN**. And she claims that it IS a GOOD ENGLISH. The fact that she FEELS that she has a good English drops the score further.

Spotted a load of basic grammatical errors (for instance, "you seems" - should have been "you seem"), simply translating Indonesian sentences into English in a word-by-word manner without any regard to its context... and you say you got a GOOD ENGLISH.

Next time, practice English A LOT before claiming yourself to have a good English.
With this level of GOOD ENGLISH, you wouldn't pass a score of mere 20 on Madam Kosasih's*** English test. My best score on her test was around 40, but I had a TOEFL Score of 626 last year. All my thanks goes to her Spartan training :D

I've never claimed to have a good English myself, but I'm sure as hell that my English are better than yours. So please, don't humiliate yourself by claiming a good English with that note above.

little notes about something:
* Engrish - Japanese English. Known for their inability to pronounce "l" correctly and spell "r" instead of "l", Japanese people without proper English training tend to scrap the very basic structure of English sentences and vocabularies when they try to boldly speak this foreign language...

** Engdonesian - Indonesian English. Even worse than Singlish, Engrish, or any other hybrid language. Most Indonesian people with little to no English training tend to literally translate Indonesian sentences word-by-word, sometimes with incorrect vocabularies... and they proud of it.
Even those who had some basic proper English training on their school years still tend to translate word-by-word, and even though they had a better vocabulary, little-but-fatal mistakes occur often, especially in written texts. They still feel good with their English, though they couldn't care less about the context.
On the higher levels of education, most people are aware of their mistakes but they forgot (or too lazy) to mind THE WHOLE CONTEXT of the sentence. This is the source of the difficulty to understand (or even to read) English textbooks, as happened to most of my med student comrades.
Last, is the tendency to use the slang or informal form of English which are commonly found on English movies. While it's not a problem on conversations, it sports a big deal of trouble when one shamelessly uses it - without a second thought - in written texts. Just like the one above.

*** Madam Kosasih is one of the senior teacher at Canisius College. With more than 30 years of experience, she puts high standards to her student - and herself, as well. While it feels really depressing to always get scores less than 50 on her exams, I think it's the way she forces her students to always improve themselves. At least, that works for me. Flawless Continental and British form of English is her specialty, along with the manners, etiquette, and behavior of a royal descent. She walks with a dignified and proud aura radiating from her gestures, and teaches her students with a youthful confidence despite her age. One hell of a lady :D

Saturday, February 6, 2010

posting again...

Durandal reporting in, back from the dead ^^

Been a long, long time since the last post. All due to a viral infection that requires my HDD to be formatted - and after the tiring process of backing up data and reinstalling Windows XP, I was granted a selective memory lost. Yes, it occurs in whatever lobe of my brain that stores the memory of my username & password. You know what happens afterward ^^

So, it's been a long time, and a lot of things happened too. I guess I wouldn't tell every single thing (I couldn't remember some important events too, maybe another temporary memory lost surged?), so I'll try to write the events that brought the most impact.

Start from my GUNPLA build. I've started Project Babylon (starring: MG RX-78 NT-1 Alex) since December, but up till now I only managed to finish snap-fitting its left lower arm. Expect a WIVFSP (Work In Very F**KIN Slow Progress) on this one.

You see, a lot of things happened on late December: a sudden vacation plan, followed with an unexpected death of one of my closest relative, sudden cancellation of the formerly planned vacation plan, followed closely by arrangement of funeral rites and monitoring the health of my "left-behind" relatives, finished by a holiday finale of being a photographer on my cousin's wedding. Practically I had NO free time during holidays.
Well, I learned quite a lot about management of psychological burden and hypertension, as well as a little glimpse of myocardial infarct and heart attack. Need to follow it through, since the Cardiovascular Block is on the final part of this semester.

Next, is the campus life. After the not-so-refreshing holiday, the Block of Neoplasma starts at full speed. All materials about cancer is far away from the word "easy" but the lecturers keep stuffing us with chunks of hard, raw knowledge with their own pace like no tomorrow. Do you guys really think that we're that brilliant of a student? Now I'm really against the idea of compacting Medical Education from a total of 6-7 years into a whopping 5 years. Last semester, we had the 5-weeks Block of Infectious Disease which is a RAR-packed form of lectures and practices that worth 2 full semesters in the old curriculum. 1 year zipped into 1 month? after 3 months, I bet most of us retained only 10% of the knowledge, at most.

Finally, about my life. My diary. Haha...
Still haven't changed much, I guess.
I still love guns. Though I can't allocate the time to play airsoft for now.
Still love GUNPLA, for sure. Though I think I'll stop building after finishing all my pending projects (Alex, Zeta C1, and Ball).
Still very much love to read. From lecture notes to visual novel, medical textbooks and journals to interesting articles on the web.
And still having trouble to socialize with other people ^^

Well, maybe what's rather different is in terms of responsibility. Now I'm the second-in-command of my "other family" - AtmaSEARCH.
Well actually I'm glad I lost the election, since I know I'm not a good example of a leader. Besides, the new president has some astounding qualities: good social, communication and networking skills, stubborn (both in good and bad ways), and intelligence - a nearly perfect GPA to boast (*.*).
So I guess, now I'm trying to be a little bit more disciplined and careful instead of being more aloof and careless. And I should seriously pay more attention in improving my communications and socializing skills.

It's all nice and dandy with the new responsibility, new Block (the PBL sessions suck really bad, though), and new spirit, but then recently something just went wrong along the way.

I think I had a crush with a certain girl.
Feelings never come at the best times, don't they? or rather, feelings always come at the wrong times. Things are going to get messy. Should I restrain myself and keep the mess minimal, or just let loose and wreak some havoc on the process? Whatever the options, my scores and achievements are at stake.

I wish this would end like Kaho's path, though. The composition fits pretty well - the characters and personalities, club activity, best friend / rival twists... but I guess there are no happy endings in real life. I think I've read too many VNs ^^

Relationships and me just doesn't mix too well... I should have realized that from the beginning.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

"2012: Doomsday"

Okay. I just watched “2012: Doomsday”… all I can say for now is, I wanted to make some comments about this movie. Comments, not review. So there will be spoilers ahead with 50 or so pictures. Let’s start, shall we?



First, the title looks menacing.
Are there any people out there who has never heard about the predictions, premonitions, psychic prophecy, etc – that mentions about year 2012, where the year is covered with some “veil”, thus it’s nigh impossible to predict. Add with the fact that supposedly, at December 2012, the earth is at its closest position with a black hole, so there will be some gravitational disturbance on our solar system. Oh, don’t forget that the year 2012 is the last year in ancient Mayan recording..
Pretty good composition for an “Armageddon” theme, eh?

So, onto the movie. The movie is apparently called as “A modern Christian Epic in the tradition of The Omega Code”. (Code? What Code? Da Vinci Code? ^^). Sounds thrilling. Combining Science and Religion. My first impression was particularly negative – I’m as skeptical as I’ve ever been with any religious movies, since I don’t believe in any religion, really – but I still try to watch it though…

Basically, the main characters are: an Archaeologist, a Daddy Geologist (or something like that) and his Missionary daughter (a Missionarist? Check for yourself what she wears… if all Missionarist wear the clothes she wear, what comes to mind would be “Missionary Position” rather than the religious Missionaries), and an atheist Paramedic (at first I kinda hoped that she would bring the balance to the movie – since she had some similarities with me, turns out that my hope had failed me though – oh wait, according to this movie, it’s rather God said no).


The movie starts with an archaeologist digging site, disturbed by erupting volcano and the arrival of archaeologist’s ex-wife. Apparently they found something in a Mayan cove, which is a golden cross.

Funny, since Mayans exist long way before Jesus Christ born. About this, the movie only said that it was made during 600 A.D. – so they expect us to believe that there are European Catholic Missionaries (there are no Christian at that time – Martin Luther is still yet to exist) coming to South America during the ages where the religion was only started flourishing. Then, why didn’t the Mayans got sick by diseases that the 600 A.D. European Missionaries brought from Europe? Found one logical flaw here. Columbus would never meet any Mayans or Aztecs if European Missionaries came to South America 1000 years before him. Let’s move on.


Oh by the way, the Ex-wife has a bad accented English. You'll get sick of it later on in the movie.... keep reading ^^


The next scene tries to show us how dire the situation we’re facing on 2012, with a scientific approach. They tried, but to me, I think it failed. The theory of the doomsday threat was explained and announced by the Geologist – with a boring lecture sort-of-a-way. The only skeptical comment was said by someone “Impossible, NASA would have known and predicted the position between earth & black hole before!” So what? And the Geologist shrugged it off easily, as easy as I’m not buying any arguments they placed on the movie. The phrase "CHEAP MOVIE" comes to mind...


Ah. Next scene depicts the Missionary position. Oops, sorry. My bad. It depicts the Missionary slut running around the town. Oh, sorry again. She’s no slut, isn’t she? Okay, so the bitch is looking for a doctor. Almost every village member on her Missionary got sick, and unfortunately there are no doctors in town. Then, along came a photographer that apparently was studying for some time in Medical School. Coincidence? No, said the movie. It’s the will of God. Yeah, only God knows what’s in his head when he decided to help the bitch. Maybe he wants to be in a *Missionary*?

Want to see the first EPIC FAIL of the movie? Take a look at that cassette icon and the well-known red dot as a “record” icon on the TOP picture. Compare with the camera that the photographer used, on the BOTTOM picture. Since when did a Nikon DSLR features a recording system?

Up next is the atheist who seems to like drawing about pyramids and cross… Strange, isn’t it? I didn’t realize that she was an atheist and firm believer of science until finally she spat out that “So many good people died everyday… Where the hell is God?” after she failed to save a wounded guy.

With this kind of drawing when she's introduced, you would never know that she's actually an atheist at first, don't you?


Oh, the process of saving the guy is interesting. He’s wounded, and all the paramedics do was just asking his name, heartbeat, trying to convince him that everything is okay with the power of words alone, and not checking on the wound first. Then, after all the lengthy procedures, they put some tissues or bandages over the wound, and the man began to pray. Sounds funny? Apparently not.

He knows that his end is nigh, so he prayed while clasping his hands with force, until it goes spastic and thus hindering the *awfully untrained* paramedics’ effort to put oxygen mask on him.

At first I thought the paramedics were trying to finish him off as fast as possible… turns out that they’re trying to save him. Well, they’re not really smart, you know. Even the dying guy was smarter than the paramedics!

starting from this point, I've made my decision to watch the movie to exploit all its flaws, not for my own enjoyment. So, up next is a load of pictures, maybe sometimes accompanied with my comments. I tried to make it as funny as possible, since the movie is rather boring. Please enjoy :D


So apparently we have accurate weather-prediction software available for personal computers on 2012… Bullcrap. It’s another EPIC FAIL, by the way. See the “National Space Administration” and the logo? It’s just NASA without the first A (Aeronautics)… what happened to National Security Agency?


Nobody on the village of the bitch’s Missionary. So, severely sick people can walk now? Oh, I forgot. It’s a Miracle from God!

conversation:
Native guy: Sick, pregnant woman needs help. Her boobs just became this big!
Photographer: WTF?! I’m going!


The Atheist Paramedic has a God-fearing mother… who thinks that it’s already the end of the world, so why bother running away. LOL @ the mom’s expression, which is pretty much the same as the statue

This is God speaking via TV. You two need to go to your temple of dreams: Chichen-Itza. Or else, you’ll end up like the guy you couldn’t save earlier (He had the pyramid-and-cross tattoo)!


Okay. Small particles and grasses flying about, signifies the presence of a high-speed wind flow, or even worse, a tornado building up. But why are those green plants stood still as if there are no winds at all? EPIC FAIL. Oh wait, God wants the plants to stand tall! Who dares to refuse His will?

The Death of the Archaeologist's Partner Scene:

Fat boy struggling for life. Archaeologist says "Hold On", Ex-Wife still need to think what English sentence would fit for this situation. Fat boy screams Noooooo… why do I have to die with ugly special effects?

Ex-Wife felt guilty... on to the "a minute of emotional moment with bad-accented English". EPIC FAIL.

Meanwhile, at the pregnant woman's house...

Bitch asks “are you okay”. Pregnant woman speechless. Photographer says “dang, her boobs aren’t as big as he said! F**k that puny native scum.”


Bad special effects, again. Snow? Like that? Are you kidding me, bub?!


Oh, apparently ex-wife got wounded pretty bad. Why didn’t he notice a wound that big while on those emotional moments some time ago? Oh, God’s will. I see.

Oh crap. She’s losing a lot of blood and yet here we are having another minute of emo-moments…


The mother is the major source of common preachers “Believe in God” cheap propagandas… from “why can’t you feel that He loves you?” “God loves you, it’s not a fantasy and not a lie” “you can’t see it, but you can feel it. And that’s God” “How beautiful the life is… The glory of Life, everyday is a gift.”.


For some reason my atheist comrade seems to get convinced with all this preacher talk. You’re not smart at all, indeed - to be convinced by cheap pep talks like that. You suck at being a paramedic, and you even sucked at being an atheist...


It is the will of God that the photographer parked his car near the hill in the middle of nowhere where the pregnant woman lives. And now we’re having a merry ride…


8 hours before doomsday and… Daddy’s going to Chicken Pizza, umm I mean Chichen-Itza. Daddy’s gonna teach the bitch some lesson!
Oh, it’s another will of God that every cluster of character has always been paired with His believers: The Archaeologist, the mother, the bitch, and now… the pilot. “God was not trying to hurt you.” How reassuring. Have you ever met God in person, pilot?

Apparently all you need to get across in between two huge storms is an extremely light airplane and Faith in Him. Maybe the Aviation companies should try this, because there has been a lot of aviation accidents and plane crashes this year...

Right after getting through the storms, the weather is clear in the airstrip. Seems God didn’t help the filming to provide more consistency, eh? Or is it God’s will for this movie to be an EPIC FAIL?


See how EPIC the FAIL is? All of a sudden there’s a car with full gas and key’s inside. For free.


Now here comes the big mystery. God's major believers, the mother and the pilot, are suddenly gone! Maybe the producer called them for more preacher lines in next TV Channel…


The atheist denies her atheism and prays to God… and Daddy comes to the rescue! SEE THE POWER OF GOD?! HOW HE MIRACULOUSLY GRANT YOUR WISHES IN AN INSTANT?!
Cheap propaganda. Nothing happens that easily in real world.

The first thing Daddy says when some stranger asks for help was... "ARE YOU OKAY?"

Aren't we had enough of "Are you okay" lines, already?!
Every character in this movie said that line at least once. Some even said that same lines over and over, ranging from "Are you Okay", "Are you alright", "How are you doing?"

If I were her, I'd reply with "THE HELL I'M OKAY?! YOU F**KING THINK I LOOK OKAY?! GET OVER HERE, YOU F**KING SCRIPTWRITER! I'LL STICK MOSES' POLE* UP INTO YOUR HOLE!"
*the pole that splits the Red Sea... maybe it could split someone in half if you stick it on to someone's ass...

Just when they finally arrived at Chicken, eh Chichen Pizza, I mean, Chiken-Itza, umm... Chichen-Itza, the Ex-Wife dropped dead at an instant. Probably due to excessive blood loss. And what will the Archaeologist do?

yes! CPR! Just like any cheap movies will do! Just for you to know, death due to blood loss can't be resuscitated by CPR... Futile attempt to resuscitate a person who died of a blood-loss, only with CPR... you’ll need a disinfectant, fibrin bandage, defibrillator, blood transfusion, and skilled paramedic... Which is unavailable at Chichen Pizza.

Dead In Peace, Still Hot Inside Though. (DIP SHIT)

Back to the bitch, the photographer, and the pregnant women…

they’re under some heavy rain of ice…

...But why are the weather outside seems nice? EPIC FAIL


Oh, there goes the falling ice again… but it's still kinda nice ride for them... apparently the ice were thrown by an ice-sprinkler machine mounted on a truck in front of them.
If those ice blocks were made by condensation of clouds from up above, the car would’ve been a Swiss cheese by now.

The Death of the Photographer Scene.

Seems like God is a sniper after all, and he had armed himself with a .338 Lapua Magnum Sniper Rifle.

The Last Words of the Photographer:





That’s all I can get for you now. I don’t put the ending scene since it’ll be a huge spoiler…
I want you guys feel the same disappointment I felt when I saw the ending… after all the shit we’ve been through and all preachy propaganda of Christianity throughout the movie, the Ending just doesn’t fit, pretty much unclear, and totally disappointing… Just, what kind of End of the World is that? Even if it's not the End, but rather a New Beginning (Neon Genesis Evangelion comes to mind ^^), what kind of Beginning is that?!

So... After about 80 minutes of watching the movie on DVD all I can say about the movie is… Craptastic.
A whole lot of inconsistency, faulty mindset, cheap acting (includes overacting, too), relying too much on coincidence (or as the producers would say,” relying on God”), f**king bad ending, and… too many religious jargon and propaganda.

Conclusion: Watch this movie if you’re interested in being totally disappointed.

I think this movie just degraded Christianity by a level, at least in my mind. What a cheap way of spreading the Goodwill throughout the world. Nobody would feel positively interested in Christianity after watching this movie. It’s been thousands of years, and their method of spreading their Bible is pretty much the same...

Atheism is the best.