Terminator Salvation

A rare instance of a blog entry featuring frank, unfettered, politically incorrect raving

There was a rare class gathering involving a heftier portion of 06s6E (not HCAEP batch 3, who so far has been gathering on weekdays to tekan the stay-in people) at Cineleisure. I had always regarded Cineleisure as some kind of prison, owing to its fetteringly-designed interior of winding passages and oddly-placed elevators, not mentioning the cubicles of glassy-eyed gamers in the upper stories and the delusional atmosphere thanks to neon lights. This feeling of repulsion is weaker now, for some strange reason.

I have never seen people like the girls and Gooi Khai Shin and Singhwa for exactly 9 months. I have, however, met up with Jedi quite often. And my sister got to know Lisheng and Zichun meanwhile. So it's still OK.

Not everyone was invited through calling. Excluding now those who're studying overseas, the remainder suspiciously rather neatly corresponds to the nerd quartet of Damien, Yixiong, Jedi and myself. This is not cool. I made a mental note of holding our own outing in the future which is now, of course, no longer mental. By the way, DOTA must fit in here somehwere!

I have to admit that I resented a shift in dress sense observed in an exclassmate but was too polite to point out to her. And I am still too polite to point out, even though it is now 12:23 AM. And I had better finish this before I turn impolite. So

We watched Terminator Salvation, starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington, who looked so much like Christian Bale I confused one for the other for the first 1/2 hour. (A bow to our class spirit, of course, because if I came alone I would have picked the movie with the cute Chinese vampireslaying ckick donning school uniform and pulling off Zhang Yimou special effects.) It was not a good film, but I enjoyed watching it for the sheer joy of discovery, namely of atrocious breaches of logic, physics, and military science.

Christian Bale is an idiot: how many choppers he must have crashed! And most glaringly detonated the nuclear energy thingimmabobs right when the chopper was flying over HQ Skynet! And the ammunition is like free, like they're still the United States Army! And the robots are harder to kill than zombies- well, not even molten metal would melt their metal. Hells bells, must be bloody kryptonite, or a metastable isotope of element 287, say I! Do have some more cake

There was also this racist and inflammatory scene of a resistance army angmoh kao-pehing the Chinese woman next to him: Shut up! Shut up! Can't you speak some English? Ach, would someone please bother to kick him in the face.

Dinner came mercifully as soon as possible afterwards. Guys of the table talked cock that night as virulently as my dad would do with a similar bunch of fellow Xiamen University alumni. Ohgods, what did we talk about? Well, what did we not? Ach, and the Xiao Long Bao has scarce lost its taste, many thanks be to God!

Took a bus home reading an exposition by Noam Chomsky entitled Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, which I think is true reason behind my being so rude with the keyboard. Good night, America! Good night, United States Army! I sure hope you run out of ammunition pretty damn soon.

This Sainted Year

It's the last day of this sainted year so I thought I might just write something to say goodbye. There are a lot of things I may just prepare to say goodbye to, but there is another time for that, don't worry.

I've left behind quite some mess for the preceding twenty-four months, altogether quite a lot of fortnights. I meant mess as in very assorted, not full of rubbish, as is a very male way of looking at the word. I guess near anyone I know hereabouts in college would agree to that first point.

And it's been quite some change as well.
It's weird but maybe I should just set down these changes for the record; I haven't been writing on things pertaining to myself and those around me much anymore.

New Friends
is a fact of life for us young ones. And so is separation; this specific one ongoing especially abrupt. In our soldiering days one will meet the peeps he will be hanging out with for the next two years, and there's not much choice to who you get. Would be wise to leave it up to yuanfen, and accept your comrades as they come. Meanwhile the girls will be spread all over the world in premier colleges because they're so smart.

Christmas
I got cards from Yee Chien and Siewch for Christmas, and I was more than a little touched when I read them. Attached to Yee Chien's card, one safety razor and one safety razor holder. Hope they'll come in useful. Dah, just like I hope that my gifts of hand soap will come in useful as well.

Heritage
I hear now more of it and has grown proud of it.
You can now find my home village on Google Earth, in high resolution, here in 25.6 N 119.4E. It's called Wenfang and is the centre of a large parish. Our church is the one way off main road and with a domey tower to the west, and the house we lived in every December is not far away east.
I drew a picture of the village from the rooftop two years ago. Maybe I'll put it up soon.

[Jan 26 2008: Here it is

Wenfang Church and Surroundings
December 2005
29 x 42 cm / Pencil on paper]

Church
My family has resumed church attendance last July, which is some achievement. And life in church did become more interesting to us, now that we become more than passive overlookers of the consecration of the bread and wine and other rituals suchlike, say I! Do have some more cake.

Sports
I was never much of a sporty guy before '06, but all thanks to the peeps in S6E, who opened the doors for me to the simple joy of getting hit in the face by basketballs and running into people randomly, and ultimately giving back to me a long-lost childhood. Thanks to you again, you know who you are!

Astronomy
Here's one to Mak who brought me to be a steward and a head of the club, and from whom I asked more help than I should.
Here's one to the people who have to put up with my less than adept leadership, especially Weiqi, Lin Xi, Ming Wei and Yam Huo. Despite my faltering manners and dismal ideas about job allocation, you supported me to the end. Will remember you guys for your being positive, and well wishes to you juniors as well. Do keep alive!

Ways of Thought
Some change there.
Where I used to be spirited with my opinions, now I seem more settled; more or less cynical I cannot tell.
A lot of reevaluation happened with the way I treat other people's ideas, and with it prejudices based upon provenance, popularity and othersuch. Maybe I've become more calmly and neutrally stanced when presenting my own; more or less rationally I cannot say.
I've ceased to believe in doing things like art or daydreaming (read: contemplating) for their own sake, at least partly arising from the unpleasant images it brings into my head. British comedy has had a lot to do with it, what with them portraying career poets as raving psychotics wherever I look.

Oh goodness they've completed the countdown and it's 2008 now.

Hnallþóra

The time is 0000, midnight. Upon my word, isn't that some kind of coffee smell wafting towards me out of the house! Inside, the table had been covered with a cloth and laid with a variety of cakes of many shapes and colours; I think I'm safe to say that there were hundreds of them, set out on nearly twenty plates. To cap it all, the woman brought in three war-cakes, so called because they became fashionable during the war, each about twenty centimetres thick. Finally the woman brought in coffee and switched on a light, a naked 15-watt bulb that hung by a flex from the ceiling.

Woman, apologetically: I'm going to light this thing anyway, even though we don't go in much for that sort of thing in this house. It was forced onto pastor Jón a year or two back when every farm was connected up in accordance with the new regulations, whether people wanted to have it or not.

The undersigned wasn't very sure at first what the "this" was that couldn't be mentioned by name. Gradually it dawned on me that the woman was talking about electricity.

Embi [the bishop's emissary]: It's quite unnecessary to switch on the electricity for my sake. A candle will do.
Woman: That's hardly good enough for bishops.

However, the upshot was that the woman switched off the light with the unmentionable name and lit a candle; this was actually far more festive than the naked 15-watt bulb. The woman poured the visitor a cup of coffee and invited him to help himself, then took up position by the door with a stern expression on her face. The coffee had a mouldy taste, and truth to tell I was paralysed by the sight of these innumerable cakes arrayed around such awful coffee. I felt that the woman was watching over me in the same spirit of duty as when one is making sure that animals are eating the fodder they've been given.

She is a woman of dignity, but taciturn; perhaps she yearns for eternal silence and feels uncomfortable in body and soul if anyone addresses her first; it's better to tread warily. Perhaps there was just a small railing around her, like a statue in a square. A cleanly woman. Not much over sixty. Thickset, rather clumsy.

Embi: Perhaps the pastor has gone to bed?
Woman: That I do not know.
Embi: Excuse me, but aren't you the pastor's wife?
Woman: I've not been so considered hitherto.
Embi: Never before have I sen so many cakes all at once. Did you make all these cakes?
Woman: Who else, indeed? That's why they call me Hnallþóra (Pestle-Thóra) hereabouts.
Embi: An unusual name.
Miss Hnallþóra: I suppose the folk here think I wield the pestle in the mortar rather vigorously.
Embi: A very entertaining notion, certainly.

Miss Hnallþóra: There's a lot of envy around here, you know. The madams with their mixing machines say things about my mortar. But what's cardamom until it's been under the pestle, say I! Do have some more cakes.
Embi: Excuse me, but is the pastor's wife not at home herself?
Miss Hnallþóra: I don't know. I rather think she isn't here. Did the bishop need to have a word with her?
Embi: No, not really. I was just asking.
Miss Hnallþóra: Quite so. One could try asking down at Neðratraðkot (Netherland Croft). It's thought to be haunted sometimes in springtime, or so they say.

Embi: But you're the housekeeper, are you not?
Miss Hnallþóra: I'm simply here. I go with the parsonage.
Embi: Were you already here when pastor Jón came here?
Miss Hnallþóra: Yes, I'm from up the mountain.
Embi: From up the mountain?

The lady heaved a sigh, closed her eyes, and inhaled a needless sort of "yes" all the way down into the lungs -- yessing on the in-breath, as it's called.

Embi: From up the mountain? Is that some particular family?
Miss Hnallþóra: I don't come from any particular family. That's for other folk.
Embi: Nothing particular in the way of news around here?
Miss Hnallþóra: There's nothing much happens around here. Nothing ever happens to anyone. No one has ever seen anything.
Embi: Nothing ever happened to you either? Never seen anything?
Miss Hnallþóra: Nothing to speak of.
Embi: Perhaps something you cannot speak of? Have you never owned a horse, for instance?
Miss Hnallþóra: No, praise be to God. Others have owned horses, I'm happy to say, but not me.

Embi: Who owns the calf?
Miss Hnallþóra: The calf! That thing on its last legs? I've no idea why I was given it. There's nothing here to feed to a calf except coffee once in a while, and old cakes I mash up in it. On the other hand I won't conceal the fact from anyone that once upon a time a little something happened to me. I saw a little something. But never except just that once.
Embi: This is turning out better than seemed likely.
Miss Hnallþóra: Of course, I wouldn't tell a soul about it.
Embi: That's not so good!
Miss Hnallþóra: I'll just go and make some more coffee.
Embi: Thanks, but there's really no need. I'm not accustomed to drinking more than a half a cup or so. And I'm sure that coffeepot holds at least a litre and a half.

But there was no stopping her going out again with the coffeepot to replenish it, even though the level couldn't have been lowered by much. While the lady was out, the bishop's emissary could scarcely take his eyes off the three war-cakes bulging with spices and measuring a total of sixty centimetres in diameter. I was sweating a little on the forehead.

In the hope that with a little patience some information might be got out of the lady, I accepted a third cup contrary to my custom. It worked. The visitor's coffee-swilling began to have a loosening effect on this fettered woman. Her reactions became more human, and she submitted to that softening of the soul and surrender to God and man that comes from telling a story. She returned to that one thing that had ever happened to her in her lifetime, that one and only time she had ever seen something. It was very nearly fifty years ago, but, she says, I remember it as if it had happened yesterday. May I not cut the bishop a wedge of layer cake?

Embi: There's really no need, but, well, yes, thank you.
Miss Hnallþóra: Would you not like a piece from each one? It wasn't the intention to have to throw it to the dogs.

The visitor besought her only to cut from the one, preferably the one with the sugar icing, because that one wasn't as moist as the others and wasn't oozing quite so much juice and tinned fruit. So she cut me a wedge that would have been a suitable portion for seven people, and laid it on my plate.

Miss Hnallþóra: I was just a chit of a girl at the time. I was sent on some errand out to Bervík. Instead of going the direct coastal way along the seashore, I followed the sheep-paths higher up, straight over the glacier moraines. There are lots of lovely dells up there, full of mosses and heathers. And then, as I am walking over one of the ridges, suddenly I see a brown ram with trained horns standing there on its own, with no other animal anywhere near, and looking up at me from the hollow. I've never been so frightened in all my born days, a speechless person, a helpless girl, because I knew that neither this nor any other straight-horned brown ram existed here at Glacier. A golden lustre shone from him. Never in all my born days have I seen such a fleece on any living animal. I felt I was turning to stone. For a long time I couldn't tear my eyes from this beautiful animal I knew didn't exist here in the valley not down by the shore not anywhere in Iceland. The ram just stood there and gazed at me. I feel as if I'm standing there this very day and the ram is gazing at me. What was I to do? In the end I had the sense to run out of sight. I made a wide detour down from the ridge and ran helter-skelter along the hollows all the way down to the sea until I reached the main road. Thanks be to God.

Embi: A fairy ram?
The woman inhaled her answer in a falsetto, no doubt still with palpitations to this very day: I don't know.
Embi: Did anyone ever get to the bottom of this?
Miss Hnallþóra: No, of course no one ever got to the bottom of it. Everyone knew as well as I did that there were no straight-horned brown rams in these parts. Some lads from the next farm went up to have a look, but naturally they saw nothing. And since then I myself have never seen anything one could call seeing. And nothing has ever happened to me.

Halldór Laxness / Chapter 5 of Under the Glacier (Kristnihald undir jökli) / The Story of Hnallþóra and the Fairy Ram