December have been a whole lot of fun for me!

While taking the back seat on guiding, and working on another project, 

I get to spend more time to reconnect with my friends. 

Had a gathering with TG04 once again. 

Full of laughter as always! 

Full of educational as well as nonsensical dialogues.

We started talking about Briyani and the different styles, 

and then moving on to Pork Chop and all,

then north south indians,  

then for some reasons into Punjab culture,

and wedding rites, 

then chinese ink painting, 

and PDCs, etc etc, 

never ending topics and fun! 

So heartwarming to see everyone excelling in their fields, 

in their pace, yet coming together once again to gather.

Then 2 occasions I went to JB,
One with SS and her friends, a simple cafe hop, ktv and massage kind of day,
then one with SY just a day trip of shopping, bak kut teh kind of day.

Then would be Wilson's 27th. 

Booked a staycation at Oasia for that.  

Thankful for Colin to help open up a table 

for Xi Yan, a popular dining place. 

Great food, great cocktails and top notched service. 

He brought a giant rubber duckie over, 

spent 1h getting to pump it up manually, 

using breathed balloons as a medium.

Then the entire group came at night, 

was really fun. A moment to chill. 

Then it's BDS gathering. 

We played Off Track for the first time. 

James was a great host and gamemaster. 

A simple gathering, leading on to a major one next year, 

wanted to do a BDS 10 anniversary if possible. 

Again reconnecting and updating. 

Met up with some wushu peeps too, 

and also connecting with a kid and his family, 

kids are adorable la! but I can imagine the toughness, 

to raise 3 kids of different personality....... woah........ 

Met up with CH too for a quick shabu shabu, 

a man with little words, 

but very grateful he always took the effort to catch up. 

despite my busy schedule. 

Yesterday was a super impromtu Christmas gathering, 

because DQ commented feels weird 

that we have always been celebrating christmas at my place annually, 

so then they did a party last min, 

bring different food items, drinks, wine, logcakes, 

I didnt need to do a thing! amazing.  

Very very touched that this group of people, 

after so many years, 

now have a unspoken culture with me, 

knows what i want, knows what i need, 

always there when i needed them most. 

and I watched many many movies too! 

Ip Man 4

The final installation of the series. I thought it kindda deviate away from Chinese Martial Arts but into more discursive topic and cliche plot. They touched on the topic of suppressed minority and the mindless competition to be number 1, or to be superior. About suppression, it's funny at certain parts they mentioned about who are the native people. The entire movie look into the concept of "winning", is it really that important? Ip Man has to tackle his parent-child relations, is it important to dictate your ideals rather than understanding your kids? The industry tackles on having Bruce Lee as a representative of Chinese Martial Arts, is it that important to have equal representation or is 1 style good enough to get people curious to find out more? The marines tackles on acceptance. Is it that important to have 1 superior style or is better to look into shortcomings of every style by cross referencing? It's a good closure however, for everything. I thought it was a good time to spin off to the different masters of different styles and go back to the promotion of Chinese Martial Arts again. As the series, I thought 2 was by far the best, as it does highlight lesser known styles of Chinese Martial Arts, and had good character development, a good build up, and side stories are completed. It brings out emotions and juggled well with pace. 

Cats 

was weird, but to me, it's not that bad that was slammed int he internet and reviews.

Appearance: there are in musical costumes, meaning it's not a full "cats" rendering but still humans in costumes. I am totally chilled in this because I dont actually expect full cats in the movie that it may take away the facial expression of the actors. by not having full cat, they retain the essence of musical actually. 

Format : to me, the point of movie is to be able to do what musicals cant? Like greatest showman or les miserables, to blend the environment, to switch scenes seamlessly, to create impossible props. But the CGI rendering supposed to create a more realistic environment or to do the impossible, became amateur, very haphazard work, like the cast set into a template background of a video arcade game. 

Cinematography: certain parts I thought was out of focus. Camera angles seems to unnecessarily move around too.

Acting: amazing! the cast team is just too solid, the reason probably they cast them in the first place and loose all budget for a proper production team 

Songs: Objectively its great. The nostalgic viewers wouldnt like it if you are anchored to the original music. The modern teen wouldnt enjoy it, as it is a rather weird blend of genre from classic musicals to pop. But I appreciate the effort actually, to reinvent. 

Jumanji 

Hmm, a guess it's the same format as the first movie (referring to the same cast). Enjoy is as a family movie, it's not meant to be a sophisticated movie. Every now and then I enjoy this kind of adventure action movie with slapstick comedy here and there. It's entertaining! Life is hard enough that we dont need too much realistic movies but occasional guffaw-inducing entertainment. 

Knives Out 

Truly amazing piece! Didnt expect a crime thriller to be so entertaining, full of twists and turns, and red herrings here and there too. I always thought the twist was that the movie tried to convince us murder is fine but turns out to be part of her sinister plan all along, but the plot didnt go that way, but instead turned into something I never thought of. Must watch! Hard to put the piece in words.

These days working real hard, though I always felt lots of redundancy. The feeling of helplessness, and that nothing is productive.... that sucks.

Anyways, so went to a Philosophy Discussion group.

Glad to be there again, but as usual there is always some kind of dominant figure.

Had a 2nd round after the event and I thought it was so so much better with proper discussion.

The topic was "Free Will".

What I thought, was that we have 0 to maybe a little bit of Free Will, as most of us are influenced in our decision making with external factors such as culture, marketing, environment and induced emotions. Strip away the idea of influence then yet we always have a "Choice", but that's not Free Will.  But there's this lady for every perspective she would jump in a bite on the speaker's flaw to say that whatever points does not affect Free Will.  IRRITATING!

Actually, through the discussions, I saw many interesting views on Free Will. Some argued that there's a matrix of "Consciousness vs Unconsciousness". We think we are exercising Free Will but at the bigger picture we see just how little it is. Supporting cases included AI who could predict choices, and Business Marketing practices.

Some argued that everyone has a Free Will but it ties with the responsibilities or consequences that comes with it. So therefore none of us could do whatever we want lawlessly.

Some argued that the notion of "Free Will" is an act of "Egoistic Nature", because we start to associate with "I". Humans love to be in control, to feel that they are in control, to try to attach meanings to things. This is reinforced by the point that do we FIRST make choices, THEN justify why do we do it? So the intrinsic nature causes us to act, then we rationalize it?

So then on the wine table for 2nd round we went further. We went into Personality. There is actually a C.S Joseph type Grid based on Myers Briggs. It's interesting though about the order in which we make sense of things. I am a ENTP, so it was said that I listen and absorb everything, then sieve out only what is necessary based on my own world view.

Then we discussed about entity. How whatever we perceive, the tables, chairs, etc, are made out of atoms, but our mind uses senses to form images. That the idea of consciousness is like a brain trapped in the skull, using signals and organs to function and make sense of things.

We moved on to Hedonism and Narcissism, and eventually to meaning of life and happiness. The idea that Perfection is a goal for a process, and that it leads to boredom, and on one point we should have Existential Peace. About the idea of knowledge. Knowledge can be scary. Do we still pursue knowledge despite knowing Ignorant is Bliss, so we instead gets Anxiety of Knowledge? Then Escapism.

Woah, after a loooooong day of tours, meetings and philosophy, went to just chill and unwind with the kampong at Punggol Container Park. Got home at 4am, up by 9am due to work. Sigh.