Go watch August Rush!

I watched a great movie called August Rush today. It's the first movie since Pirates of the Carribean 3 [I think] that I'm really impressed with. It made me feel emotional, thrilled and scared altogether. So needless to say, it's a must-watch especially if you love music. The movie is about an eleven-year old boy called Evan, played by Freddy Highmore who is also starring in The Spiderwick Chronicles, looking for his parents. This innocent orphan displays such a sweet spirit of purity and depth without saying much in the movie. It's a feel-good movie la, so of course such movies have their fair share of skeptics. But it was such a good movie to me.

I bought my first Chinese book today from Kinokuniya. It's $7.25, whatever you say, it's super cheap! I'm inspired to pick up Mandarin again after reading about Dr K K Seet, one of the judges in The Arena, he speaks impeccable English. [I privately dislike his British accent though] But he's also fluent in Chinese. Talk about Huayu being really cool! This novel I bought has simplified Chinese characters and they are a little bigger. Tiny chinese characters scare me. They make me feel illiterate.

Finally, allow me to include an abstract from non-fiction book, The World is Flat.
'When I asked Bill Gates about the supposed American education advantage - an education that stresses creativity, not rote learning - he was utterly dismissive. In his view, the people who think that the more rote-oriented learning systems of China and Japan can't turn out innovators who can compete with Americans are sadly mistaken. Said Gates, "... Who has the most creative video games in the world? Japan! I never met these 'rote people' ... You need to understand things [through rote learning] in order to invent beyond them." '

I was quite comforted to read that paragraph, it really does give the Singapore Education some justification for it's supposed stiff learning and emphasis on Mathematics and Science. [Hear me clearly, I'm not saying that arts are bad but it's time that the my arts and humanities friends stop bad-mouthing the science people and vice-versa.]

BNSS no longer need my services anymore until they call me. So until then, I'm gonna do a lot more reading of English and try to brush up my Mandarin. And then... look for a new job.