New cantonese opera magazine. Real one, not my creation. (Picture taken from MSN Opera Forum, link on the right).
About the Quiz in the previous post You need to know something about the story Journey to the West. Here goes....
Monkey King and Bull Demon King were sworn brothers. BDK was the husband of Iron Fan Princess. They had a kid called the Red Child who was very mischievous and caused a lot of troubles. MK had to fight with the Child to stop him causing troubles. He captured the Child and the Goddess of Mercy took him away for punishment. Because of this, BDK and his wife hated MK.
By the way MK can do 72 transformations.
Answer to the quiz Monkey King transformed himself into Bull Demon King and conned his wife Iron Fan Princess to give him the Fan.
Refer to previous post ..... Monkey King transformed himself into an insect and entered Iron-fan Princess's stomach. He then forced her to lend him the Magic Fan. But she gave him a fake fan.
Question: Finally how did MK manage to get the real Fan from the Princess?
If you are not aware, there are already 3 HK cantonese opera magazines on sale here. You can find them at a ground-level shop in Bras Basah Complex. One or two shops opposite the Complex also have them.
A man was sitting next to a group of women who were indulging in their favourite pastime - idle gossip. The man was a little annoyed with their incessant talking. Later their topic was about birds which the man had a little knowledge. So, occasionally he intervened to make comments.
Some of the things he said about birds were true but others were his own inventions. He sounded very knowledgeable and the women believed him. He became bolder and talked more nonsense. The women began to regard him as an expert on birds.....
Hahaha, you see, if you are bold enough and the others are not knowledgeable enough, you can pretend to be an expert in almost anything. Do you remember my other post about a simple dim-witted gardener who was mistaken by a media reporter to be an eminent economist.
Yesterday I was at a video shop. A HK cantonese drama was showing on the TV in the shop. I remember I saw something of it in HK. I asked a girl attendant what the show was. She said 'qiang jian'. For a second I thought of 'rape'. Got such a title?
Then I realized it is not rape; it is 'Strong Sword', a swordsman drama.
"Hee hee hee hee hee" - someone tickled her funny bone. Recognize her? But I don't think you have seen her laugh like that before. "Oh no, not every night, please go away" - trying to hide from her suitor. What's this...now, which opera got this scene?? This is not a gangland confrontation. They are 'imperial guards'. Some of my files (pictures, videos & applications) just vanished overnight. Does anyone know what is a possible cause or whether the files are still there, hiding somewhere...
There are some old things I would have forgotten about if I had not read about them again in Laokokok's blog, Times of My Life - things like blotting paper, old paper bags, old school textbook books, Hero pen and ink and others. It is quite amazing the collection of old things he has.
So I rummaged through my cupboard and flipped through some dusty albums to see if I still got any old things not thrown away yet.
Nothing of interest.....anyway just show you an old bus ticket and an old book.
No, I don't collect bus tickets, I just have a few with some nice numbers. This picture shows you both sides of the ticket. No idea what year it was. By the way, the number 8 lying down looks like the symbol for infinity in mathematics which is also a good sign - abundance of wealth and fortune and longevity.
This is one of the few old books I still keep because it had helped me a lot. Hee hee, you see, I'm a grateful person. It is a useful little book with good explanations followed by lots of exercises to reinforce what you have learned. It was also cheap. In case you don't know, calculus is a topic in Pure Maths, a subject I took in Pre-U.
A few days ago in Circuit Road I saw the driver of a car dangling his arm out of the car window. It was quite far down. The driver's body must be leaning towards the door with only the left hand on the steering wheel.
It was a very stupid thing to do. It endangered himself as well as other road users.
I was hoping something would happen that would give him the fright of his life.
Hahaha, I'm not evil-hearted. I feel that sometimes people need some reality check to teach them a lesson or to jolt them out of complacency.
The escape of the JI leader is an example. Or a person may need a sudden pain to make him go for a long-overdue medical checkup.
李後主之去國歸降 - this was one of the shows on a poster I was looking at. In this excerpt there is a line with these three words. So I just used these words as the title.
I mentioned the Japanese Occupation in the previous post. Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. It was not a country then; it was a British colony.
I have read a few books about the Japanese Occupation in Singapore. One of them is Sinister Twilight - The Fall of Singapore by Noel Barber. This book is an account of events leading to the fall of Singapore and of the Occupation period. It was a great setback and embarrassment to the British. The next three years were perhaps the darkest years in our nation's history.
The picture below is from a picture book about the atrocities and other bad things the Japanese did during those years. I think many of you would have seen a video about the fall of Singapore in your CME or NE lesson when you were in secondary school. And your teachers probably would have discussed with you about the lessons we learned from this.
In my primary school geography lessons, I remember learning about rice-harvesting, rubber-tapping and tin-mining. All were tedious work. So we knew rice did not grow in Singapore. The rice we ate was the result of toil and sweat by farmers in far-away land.
Our forefathers were a hardworking and thrifty lot. They saved every spare cent and ate every grain of rice. Whatever food that was left was put away for the next day.
Today, the scene is very different. In a restaurant or a food court, you see a lot of wastage of food, including rice.
The hike in the price of rice may not be a bad thing altogether. It reminds people not to waste food. I think the price will go up further.
In future there could be a severe shortage of rice. Rice-producing countries may have to keep the rice for their own people leaving very little or none for export. Rice will be scarce. Although Singapore may have a stockpile of rice for emergencies, that cannot last forever if there are no supplies. Singaporeans will have to include other staples in their meals.
If it were to reach a critical level, the Government would have to impose rice-rationing. I think it was done during the Japanese Occupation.
Meanwhile, don't waste food and at your next meal savour your rice, enjoy its texture, taste and fragrance.
