The goggles! They do nothing!

I consider myself lucky to have Nathan as my brother in law (unofficially, until next year, but he is already part of the family). I have the benefit of his empathy and understanding of situations from a male point of view, which is a very useful and precious thing. It’s easy to get caught up in the hurt of previous experiences, to say, “I can’t handle this”, and to hold yourself back from ever opening up to someone again (because with that one act, you are opening yourself up to be hurt in one of the worst ways possible, in an emotional sense). However, it is with Nathan’s encouragement that I am taking things as they come, and being content with feeling content, and not questioning everything all the time.

Chris is also a wonderful help in this way. Our friendship is very important to me. It’s amazing to have an understanding of where each other is coming from. I must remember to take real notice of his advice, though sometimes I’m not in a position to be able to do that. Also, I have to apologise to him (sorry Chris!) for never believing his outrageous stories which later turn out to be true. And Willy’s stories never turn out to be true! Or very rarely anyway. It’s not Chris’ fault that he has such an interesting life. But I know that this isn’t going to stop me from doubting him again… I think that’s just the way that I am, and the way he is.

And also, I miss Tim because he’s overseas!

Emo!

So anyway, I went to see a couple of movies this weekend. Two in a row, actually. On Saturday afternoon, at Rosie’s cinema, I saw “The Curse of the Golden Flower” with Rosie, and then following that, I saw “The Lives of Others” with Mum, Helen & Noelle. They were extremely different movies, so it wasn’t too bad sitting through two movies in a row (often at home, I can’t even sit through one movie in a row because I have to get up and walk around or do something. I think a cinema kind of forces me to sit down and watch, because I can’t just get up and go play tetris, or play with Napoleon or whatever.

Okay so firstly, if you plan on seeing this movie, be careful of reading this next bit because there are spoilers. But they might not really be spoilers… The movie doesn’t make much sense anyway, so I won’t really be ruining the story for you or anything. It’s a very incestuous movie. Starting off, the Emperor has three sons – one from his first wife (whom he maintains “died when her son was very young”), and the two other sons are to his second wife, who is the current Empress. The Empress is having an affair with the first son from the Emperor’s first wife, but he doesn’t really want to carry on with this affair anymore, he wants to run away with his new secret love. His new secret love is Chan, the daughter of the Imperial Doctor. The Imperial Doctor, meanwhile, has been following the Emperor’s orders to put poison into the Empress’ medicine that she takes every two hours, which will slowly leave her with no mental capacity whatsoever. So anyway, it turns out that the Emperor’s first wife is actually the Imperial Doctor’s current wife, and she’s not dead at all, which makes the Emperor’s first son and the Imperial Doctor’s daughter half-brother & sister. On a technicality, first son is screwing both his mother and his sister. So the Doctor’s daughter goes insane and runs off screaming, and the first son gets killed by the Emperor’s youngest son, who turns out to be a real freak (anyone surprised?) and has organised his own little army of about five or six soldiers who are efficiently butchered by the Emperor. The Emperor then goes on to bash his youngest son in the face with a huge metal belt that he’s been wearing, until the kid is mushed into the carpet. After this, they all go and sit up on a big round tower in the middle of the Imperial Palace, high above the courtyard which has been covered with chrysanthemums for the chrysanthemum festival. Then some other stuff happens, second son kills himself, and then it ends. No closure, I’ve no idea what happens. I think the Empress probably just goes crazy and the Emperor does whatever he wants to do. That’s the Tang dynasty for you. Brutal.

Second movie – Lives of others. This is about the surveillance of supposed “enemies of the state” or “suspicious persons” that was carried out by the government during the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the end, it’s a beautiful story. There’s a lot of horribleness going on throughout, but humanity redeems itself by a few important acts of benevolence during a very volatile time of history. It was very interesting to see. I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess that stuff like that still goes on even today, and probably even moreso with the technology that is available now. It’s a bit scary, to think that this all happened less than 20 years ago… it’s surreal. Like a bunch of surrealists changing a lightbulb. Or like chinchan.

Also, last week was my birthday. I had a small party on Saturday 21st April at my place. So many of my favourites were there. Here is proof of their awesomeness: