Appassionato

A good-things round-up of a bad 2011

Categorised as Personal, Rants & tagged with celebration, law, lists, uni.

Year 2011 has been — to say the least — the most horrible year of all the years in my memory. The best of the worst is, of course, having neglected my blog for almost 10 months, and not finding the time nor motiv­a­tion to redesign it.

But since it’s already three days into a brand new year, let me not dwell on the past and instead write a summary of what has given me the greatest joy amongst the bad:

• In January, I turned 21.
• In June, I completed all my LLB exams, one semester ahead of expected com­ple­tion date.
• In July, I received con­firm­a­tion that I satisfied all require­ments for my BCom/LLB degrees.
• In September, I offi­cially graduated from the Uni­ver­sity of Auckland with conjoint BCom/LLB.
• In October, I completed my Pro­fes­sional Legal Studies course, and the New Zealand All Blacks team won the Rugby World Cup 2011 yay!
• In November, I got my first ever smart-phone — iPhone 4S, baby!
• In December, I was admitted as a Solicitor and Barrister of the High Court of New Zealand, received my prac­tising cer­ti­fic­ate, and received LLM offers from both uni­ver­sit­ies I applied to.

I mean, how could that sound like a bad year, right? But at each and every step to attaining an achieve­ment in 2011 I was met with a challenge, an obstacle, and (what seemed like at the time) the biggest headache of my life. Even when signing the contract for the new iPhone plan I became the victim of a muck-up that has less than a one-in-thousands chance of happening. The bigger the achieve­ment, the bigger the headache. *facepalm*

But hey, the year is now behind me and I am ready to face what may be the last 12 months of the human history. Happy (belated) New Year!

My life is a sad grey hue except for…

Categorised as Movies & tagged with lists, Movies.

Reese­Sticks. Only the best (cheap) chocolate existing. Brought to you by The Hershey Company.

I’ve also continued being a movie whore after the last post. Over the last seven days…

1. 13 going on 30: So true, so fun. How would you choose? Work or relationships?
2. The Bee Movie: very cute, very funny. I was probably PMS-ing for some time and then this godly thing cheered me up, brought laughs and good luck.
3. Mutant Chron­icles: Human vs alien beings bloody scenes and all that. But a nice (and depress­ing) pro­jec­tion into the future of earth.
4. Mamma Mia: I actually thought Pearce Brosnan sounded okay. But the girls, the girls were GODLY. It almost made me cry watching them sing so happily as I was remin­is­cing my old high school days singing with our girls’ quartet.
5. 1408: I couldn’t continue watching it past 11.50pm last night. Was jumping in my seat from shock scenes and having my hands half-covering the screen half the time. Extremely depress­ing movie that made my life this afternoon a sad grey hue until Reese­Sticks came to the rescue. Honestly, I didn’t really under­stand the meaning of the movie.
6. Beijing Olympics 2008: Not a movie but def­in­itely deserving a 5-star rating! GO NEW ZEALAND (and Australia, UK, Chinese Taipei)!

Next on the list: The Onion Movie, Wanted, The Dark Knight (hopefully). Will need to stock up on Reese­Sticks tomorrow to save myself from more possibly-depressing movies.

Update: Reese’s Butter Cups are good but I assure you all, Reese­Sticks PWN Cups’ ass.

A movie-full holiday and new semester

Categorised as Movies & tagged with lists, Movies.

It was rushing a criminal essay during the last week of my three-week semester “break” and cutting the number of words from 2870 down to the maximum of 1800 the night before deadline (actually went down to 1798 woot).

And it’s movies and anime to welcome the pile of work to get started on. In order of movies watched:

1. Flushed Away: very, very cute adven­tures of mice.
2. The Comebacks: fucking gay and wrong in every single way possible. The 1 point is for being so bad that I could better con­cen­trate on my work rather than watching it.
3. Rata­touille: abso­lutely godly! Cute genius definitely.
4. In the name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: some mock-Lord of the Rings-ish thing.
5. Devil Wears Prada: watched it for the second time. I love the pretty dresses.
6. One Piece: only watched four episodes so far. It’s good, but I still like Bleach better.
7. Enchanted: creative, beautiful, happy, simply great, great, great!

I’ve never watched so many movies in such little time. In addition, I also watched four movies in the cinema during the short break:

1. 21: I liked it for the smart students but it was much too kiddish cheating, highly unreal­istic for Las Vegas casinos.
2. The Incred­ible Hulk: other than the admirable digitally-created green giant itself, the plot and ending is by far worse than the previous Hulk movie.
3. Kung-Fu Panda: so incred­ibly cute and funny, I like the strong links to actual Chinese history on martial arts. A must-watch!
4. Hancock: very average. Funny etc. in the middle but ending wasn’t anywhere near good. I repeat: very average.

Now just waiting for the bumhole New Zealand cinemas to hurry their arses up to get “Wanted” and “Wall-E” out!