I never understood when people had recordings of their performances (singing, acting, dancing, etc.) and they said they could never watch it back.
I always thought, “why the hell wouldn’t you?” Wouldn’t you want to know how your performance went from an outside perspective?
Well, I get it now! I’ve had a recording of a scene in a play I did and one time I sang on stage in front of 100+ of my coworkers for a company talent show (good lord…).
I have these recordings saved on my phone and I’m pretty sure both times I watched them as soon as I was able to, and wooooow the cringe! I pretty much wish I hadn’t watched them, but I always knew I would. I could never watch them again.
It’s really difficult watching yourself back and now I totally understand why. I don’t look or sound at all how I think I do and it’s really quite confronting to see yourself do something and it looks completely different from how you thought it looked? And it’s so easy to criticise every little thing you do. For example, at one point during my scene I remember thinking to act upset and impatient, so I had my hands on my hips and was tapping my foot. Then I look at this in the video and that is just so… disingenuous to look at. Or when I was on stage singing, somehow it’s so much easier for me to hear the flaws in my voice when played back, as opposed to hearing it in my own head as it leaves me mouth. Also, do my legs always look so awkwardly angled like that when I stand?
So yeah. Lesson definitely not learned. I already know that I can’t not watch a playback of myself if the situation ever comes up again. I’m just way too curious. I will just have to accept the fact that I’m 100000% going to regret my decisions always.
I don’t know how, but every time I go through a series of big changes in my life, I get this urge to look back. It’s like my past self knew I would have this pattern because after graduating high school almost 9 years ago, I wrote a letter to myself and made a time capsule which I’ve since updated twice.
It’s as though I need to remind myself time again to enjoy things and to be happy – to remind myself what makes me happy.
What is it that I’m looking for when I go back in time? Even, as ridiculous as it sounds, watching The O.C. reruns or listening to music from that TV show sends me back with this indescribable feeling. It’s comforting, but gives me so much sadness, like the show takes me back to a better life when I was watching this for the first time in the early 2000s. Every Tuesday at 8:30pm on Channel 10, laying on those ugly beige floral sofas alongside my sisters as soon as it was on, hating the ad breaks but relieved for them to relieve myself and the panicked run back to the couch when my sister would yell, “It’s back on!!!”
Do I really want to be a child again? According to my high school journals I was a big ol’ dramatic brat who felt like the world was against me and everything was horrible. It’s like being 26, unemployed, engaged but can’t marry helped me realise how little problems I had back then.
What I would give to have the body I had the first time I thought I was fat. What I would give to have my biggest problem being exam period. What I would give to actually enjoy having hobbies instead of feeling guilty indulging in hobbies over “being productive”.
Is this what adulthood is going to be? Is this it? Younger people thinking you have it together, thinking you’re a “grown up” when I don’t feel like one? Am I going to be stumbling through life forever?
It’s been almost two months since I was made redundant at my previous workplace and I’ve since had plenty of time to grieve the seven years I spent there and the unconventional way I had to leave.
I spent several weeks waking up with “update resume” as my agenda for the day and just completely ignored that by binge-watching The Office. At some point I just gave up on the idea and said to myself that I’ll get it done eventually. ‘The pressure of having to do it was getting to me,’ I would tell myself. Then out of a complete spur of the moment, total fluke, one night I just hunkered down and completely transformed my resume and did a lot of research on how to alter it for today’s market.
Over the next few days I went in hard, updating my LinkedIn profile, my Seek profile, browsing through hundreds of job ads to save to my list of jobs to apply for later. I did a heck of a lot of research on covers letters and then drafted a template as my base point for future jobs to apply for. Did you know that almost half of the recruiters out there don’t even read your cover letter, yet most recruiters expect you to submit one even if they don’t ask for one? Crazy.
A few days later I came across a job ad for a company I’d never heard before but appeared to have a workplace culture that I was really excited about, but most of all, the role they were hiring for absolutely fit me to a T! Everything they asked for, I had done before, and done well, but I had done it in a tourism environment rather than an office environment. I was so excited to apply for this role in particular that I just had to apply right away. I made some small changes to my resume and personalised the cover letter to them, including that little trick where you research to find a small detail about the company and mention it in the letter. Yes, it was only the first ever job I was applying for but I was so hopeful because I was most definitely qualified and based on my research I felt like I would fit in really well with the company.
The next morning I received an email from Seek notifying me that the recruiter has looked at my application. The day after that Seek told me it’s unlikely my application was going any further (likely put on a cull list by the recruiter). I was a bit disappointed, but not at all surprised.
I didn’t think this rejection would hit me so hard and I honestly didn’t have any big feelings about it. But I can’t help but feel so discouraged by it. I know, it’s only a single rejection, but I can’t help but feel like it just proved my worry, which is this: Yes, I have a lot of customer service experience, I’ve worked in an office, I have learned a LOT, really. All my skills have trained me to become a very good people-person and an all-rounder. Quite literally, my previous job was a leadership role which expected me to do … everything. BUT. Because I came from tourism, hospitality, food and beverage – I’m an instant write-off to any office job.
I just wish we could skip the application process and head straight for the interview. I don’t know how to show it in my resume and I thought I showed it in my cover letter – to just give me a chance. I am a very insecure person. So insecure that I will not apply for a job if there’s a single dot point requirement on there that I think I couldn’t do (I’m working on that). So if I apply, I really believe I can do it and do it well. If recruiters could just give me a chance, I know I can do it. There’s only so much you can say in a resume.
It’s probably been over a week since I last looked at job stuff. I’ve lost the motivation. I just did all this work but I feel like I need to start over again.
Does anyone have any tips? Or better yet, is anyone hiring?!
A bit of an oldie but a goodie. This is one of my all-time favourite films. I’ve seen this a few times but last night was the first time I showed it to someone who had no idea what it was about. When I suggested watching this with my fiance last night he asked what it’s about. But this is the exact type of movie where you shouldn’t know. You shouldn’t watch the trailer. You shouldn’t look up its synopsis for fear you might not like it. Just trust me!
I was really biting my tongue throughout the first half of the movie apart from the occasional, “Does it makes sense yet?” This is the kind of film you have to watch twice. You’ll see it in a whole other light the next time you watch it. Some things I caught which I hadn’t before – peep the travel agent who had a napkin over her clothes when she showed up. Upon first viewing, I thought it was because maybe it wasn’t busy at the time and she was in the middle of having lunch. When seeing it again, I realised it was more likely that maybe she was on her break, from acting, perhaps was rushed through makeup due to the fact that Truman hadn’t needed a travel agent until now.
The one and only reason that this film loses one star is because of how long it takes the viewer to piece things together. Yes, from the start they do make it pretty obvious that it’s TV show but it’s not obvious why, or that Truman is unaware. Until we find out the why, we are just watching a lot of confusing things that don’t quite make sense. I especially felt this watching it last night, when the last time I watched this was definitely many years ago. Maybe it felt long because I already knew what was happening and was waiting for it to be clear, maybe it was because I was waiting for it to make sense my fiance, a first-time viewer. Maybe it’s because we’re in the digital age where 15 second videos are just about all we can take and our attention spans are as fickle as the 2 minute time limit you have to engage a viewer and keep them engaged nowadays.
I’ve mentioned in my previous reviews before that I have a weird and unconventional love for the villain. And you know what, this is somehow still not an exception! This guy is just so completely misguided, but he is Truman’s “real” father. After all, he knows what Truman’s habits are enough to predict a lot of what we would do even in his most unpredictable state. He knew where to find Truman. He spoke to him for the first time in the tenderest (creepiest) way – it’s clear how much he loves Truman like his own son. He is the classic overprotective parent who wants to keep him in a literal bubble as a warped feeling of safety.
Unique concepts are truly my cuppa tea. They float my boat. I like to relate this to films such as Stranger Than Fiction, The Invention of Lying or Ruby Sparks, albeit not executed quite as well. Or rather, they relate to this one. We could always do with a little bit of unconventional in a realistic world. A good old “what if?”
At the end of the day, the reason I love this film so bloody much is because I’m self-centred. Aren’t we all a little bit? It makes you question your own life through Truman’s, in the best and worst ways possible. He does the same thing everyday, he keeps it safe, he doesn’t venture, he avoids his greatest fears. Imagine feeling extremely average and mundane, completely insignificant in this huge world, then finding out that you are the main character. Think about this during your darkest of days and you’ll remember that this is just an obstacle that you have to overcome. You, as the main character, have to do the Big Courageous Thing to get past this.
In some ways, watching this film is kind of this meta wake up call for us all to do things as though we are the main character.
One thing I like to do before watching a movie is avoid watching the trailer. If I had watched the trailer for this movie I would have thought it was another one of your run-of-the-mill rom-coms. But this one is so unconventional, and not just for the obvious reasons. To call it a “rom-com” seems ill-fitted even though it really is a romantic comedy. Can I just say, first of all, how freaking cool would it be to write a movie about yourself and then star in it?!
What I find separates this to a conventional rom-com is that it’s almost as if the more important relationship that blossoms is not actually between Kumail and Emily, but instead between Kumail and Emily’s parents, AND as a ripple effect from that, the relationships between Emily’s parents themselves, Kumail and his parents, and eventually Kumail and Emily.
What worries me the most about how people might react to this film is that they might not understand why his family is the way it is. I am not saying people would be ignorant or uncultured, but I truly believe it would be so hard to wrap your head around his parents’ reasoning for basically disowning him.
Take it from me, a Filipino girl whose devout Catholic parents moved to Australia for a better life but are still so attached to their ancient, strict, Catholic Filipino culture, and I am in love with an Australian man! My life is basically a watered down version of Kumail’s, and I still find it hard to not think his parents are being unreasonable. If I didn’t relate to Kumail so much, I would probably think the way his parents were portrayed was a wild overreaction and that that just does not happen in real life. But it does!
One thing I found a little bit hard to believe was their reason for breaking up in the first place. It just wasn’t enough. I thought that it was just a heat-of-the-moment fight, not that they would break up over that.
Again, I personally went through a watered down version of this. While my parents preferred I married a Filipino man, it was forgivable if I didn’t, but there was absolutely no way I was “allowed” to marry a man who was not Catholic. My boyfriend is Catholic, but he is the kind of Catholic who was baptised as a baby and that’s about as religious as he gets. We were three months into our relationship before I told my parents about him, and not once did he even worry about the fact that I was keeping him a secret from my family, because he understood. He understood that even if you are a grown adult, parents are still going to be strict and sometimes scary. Emily did give Kumail a chance to explain but it seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other. She doesn’t understand that it’s just not that simple.
Kumail’s relationship with Emily’s parents, especially her mother, was just the absolute best part! She was being such a bitch to Kumail, as per the protective-motherly rule of disliking anyone who hurts your daughter, and then she did a 180 and straight up defended Kumail from a racist heckler at one of his stand-up shows. It totally humanised her, made her a real, complex human being. And the way she turned into an excited little kid when Emily woke up from her coma…
There needs to be more characters like her in movies. Not just people who are evil simply because they are evil. You can’t have the good guy as always and only a good guy the whole time, nor the bad guy only ever being bad. To make them real everyone has to have a bit of a shitty moment or a sweet moment and it shouldn’t be unusual for that character, it should just be one mood in a whole spectrum of emotions.
The overlapping dialogue makes the conversations real. We often forget that real life doesn’t play like he-said-this-then-she-said-that. This is what I love the most about The Big Sick. Everything is so real. The characters are real. The premise is real and very relevant to second generation (or other) kids from traditional families growing up in the modern western world. I want to forget that I am watching a movie – I want to see reality.
This film recently popularised a conversation about the lack of brown women in films. I find that the topic was raised for the wrong reason, seeing as it is based on a true story and I don’t believe there is any “discrimination” here by having a white girl as the female lead – it drives the story. But it does bring forward a true and important issue. This has been something I’ve had a problem with for a long time since I dreamed of being an actress as a young girl and found it difficult to not just be cast as a character who didn’t have a nationality specified, but also to even be typecast because of the fact that there is just no demand for brown-skinned South-East Asian females.
By all means, start the conversation about this – let’s finally have real diversity in the screen industry – but don’t use this film as a platform for this argument. Really just take any film with a white female lead where the nationality has nothing to do with the story.
Anyway. The Big Sick was a big plus for me. Seeing a non-Hollywood romantic comedy on the big screen is refreshing.
Let’s cut to the chase. There are so many things wrong with this book that I don’t even know where to begin. I can say that at least first of all, this book is not for young adults. Yes there’s a lot of graphic violence but also a lot of sexual tension and a little bit of sex. Truthfully, this girl could’ve been a grown woman and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the story, except that it wouldn’t be in the young adult section of the book store.
A Court of Thorns and Roses is like one big Twilight, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Hunger Games mash up.
My biggest issue with this book is that nothing really makes much sense. I found it hard to believe a lot of things in it.
Why did Feyre not find it bizarre that because of some “treaty”, she had to live with the High Fae of the Spring Court? Wouldn’t there be a ton of other criminal human beings also living there with him if that were the case? Instead, it was all new to all of them and yet there were no questions asked, just constant escape on her mind.
Why did Feyre bother so much with her family? They were horrible and not worth caring for. I understand there was a “promise” she made to her mother before she died but even then, she explained that her mother wasn’t great either when she was alive, so why would she want to keep a promise to someone like that? She slaved away for her family and there was hardly any gratitude in return. Her sisters were selfish and her father may as well have died considering how miserable he was with his botched knee. The way her family was introduced at the start of the book portrayed them so negatively in my eyes, it never made any sense to me why she would be so desperate to get back to them and take care of them when she was able to live a luxurious life without having to work and being able to paint, because she killed a faerie.
Tamlin was a confusing character for me. I felt at times like he was literally just the beast from Beauty and the Beast. His attitude towards Feyre was confusing. One chapter they hate each other and the next chapter he’s like some cute Labrador puppy and they’re in some meadow hanging out in the sun and it’s all happy out of nowhere and they’re getting along so well. Then there was all this sexual tension that I just couldn’t buy. Honestly, I could tell they were supposed to end up together just by how it was being written, but characteristically I couldn’t see it. I mean damn, I shipped Feyre more with Lucien or Rhysand than Tamlin!
That leads me to my next point. The trials that Feyre had to undergo to “prove her love” is true and pure towards Tamlin proved anything but that. How does fighting a giant worm prove you love Tamlin? Doesn’t outsmarting it and killing it prove you are street smart? That doesn’t prove love. That doesn’t have anything to do with Tamlin. Even her second trial proved more about caring about Lucien than Tamlin.
Amarantha was so powerful and evil, and her whole backstory was not enough to justify it. One of my peeves about stories are when there is an evil person who is just… too evil, you know? It’s like she’s just being evil to be evil. There’s nothing really there to her character apart from some very petty revenge she should have gotten over decades ago. I also find it hard to believe that all of Prythian would have submitted to her so easily. If someone rules over a country the way she does, she would have caused a riot so fast that she would have been dead or other decades ago.
This one book could have been two separate books. The story of the blight/curse and then Feyre’s long ass story. Another peeve of mine is when a character has to explain everything instead of information being found out as the story progressed. I don’t know if that would have been possible for this book, but when Alis explained the entire bloody history of Prythian and the curse, etc. just, no! It’s not natural or realistic. It’s as if the author had written the whole backstory about the blight separate to the book, but then couldn’t find a way to integrate it into the story, so she just copied and pasted it into Alis’ mouth. And it was conveniently part of the curse that they weren’t physically able to tell Feyre any of this during the 49 years.
I don’t think I need to explain why I didn’t like the part where Feyre was dead, but then the High Lords all gathered around her body and dropped some golden kernels on her and she came back to life as a High Fae.
ACOTAR moved at an infuriatingly slow pace. A whole lot of nothing happened in the middle. There are about 200 pages worth of things that didn’t need to happen, or could’ve been written faster. For an illiterate girl, Feyre sure has a lot of descriptive eloquent thoughts.
I was most impressed with the writing. It was beautiful. I could really picture everything, from the description of different kinds of magic, to even the way a person can have a hundred different kinds of smiles (Amarantha). Truthfully, it may have been part of the problem the book moved so slowly. There was one part that went on for 3 pages where Feyre was describing music that she could hear playing somewhere in the distance. Like I get it, there’s music playing and it reminds you of Tamlin from that night of festivities. The only reason I finished reading this book was because I bought it (I try not to leave unfinished books on my shelf) and because there was so much hype around this trilogy that I was hoping the story would get better, but it was a mess. If I had borrowed this from the library I would have stopped about 100 pages in.
Finishing this book was actually quite a relief because of how long it dragged on.
I feel terrible for leaving such a scathing review. There were a lot of issues with the story and so much of it was not believable but weirdly enough, I didn’t hate it as much as I thought. If the writing wasn’t so good, this would’ve had no stars and maybe not even a review because I would not have bothered finishing it.
Sarah J. Maas sure knows her way around words, but the story had a lot of holes that needed filling. Who knows, maybe the next two books make the story better (though sequels rarely are) but I think I’m going to give this series a miss and move on to faster-paced things.
There are very few movies that leave me sitting there as the credits roll, as if stunned, trying to sink myself back into the real world after being so lost in a thrilling story. Surprisingly, this did it for me.
Forgive me as it’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed something!
Nerve is a cautionary tale for youth in the digital world. Unfortunately, it seems almost entirely possible something like this could happen, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe something pretty similar actually did happen, resulting a lot of young teen suicides.
There are a lot of digital world issues that this film touches on in a realistic way. Many people nowadays are glued to their phones and obsessed with “instafame” and gaining followers. Sydney (Emily Meade) is the prime example of this in the film and even though you can see her growing obsession with followers from a mile away, it’s still infuriating to watch, but in a good way. Her scene on the ladder between the two windows was so nail-biting! Drunk and in heels doing that?! Also, how did they happen to know the people in the apartment at the other end of the ladder? She is just that desperate to have more watchers than her own best friend, she would risk her life so callously.
The characters are a little stereotypical, but it’s hard to not make them like that. There’s Tommy (Miles Heizer) who managed to nab two stereotypes as a character – the shy friend who is in love with the main character and it’s so obvious to everyone except for the main character, and the tech geek friend who knows all about codes and hacks, and coincidentally becomes a very useful skill when push comes to shove.
Ian (Dave Franco) is the cool and mysterious hot guy (he rides a motorbike…) who is always composed and you know he’s going to be the love interest the second you see him. His character wasn’t bad. I appreciate that he didn’t play it so over the top.
Vee (Emma Roberts) was a shy girl who rarely did anything out of her comfort zone and was unsurprisingly the school’s photographer because she’s an *outsider looking in*, she’s invisible, an observer, quietly captures *moments*.
I would consider Sydney to not be quite the stereotype only because she is friends with Vee, which is baffling to me. She is a bit of an obnoxious, out-there, “bad girl” who does what she wants and (apparently) doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. So why is she friends with Vee? Sydney even said it herself, something along the lines of, “I’m fun and you’re boring.” Vee seems like someone she wouldn’t even notice in high school.
J.P., the guy Vee had a crush on, is one hell of a jock stereotype that I can’t even be bothered getting into.
What I really enjoyed about this film is the editing and motion graphics. I believe what made this film so good was, yes, the story, but also the way it was put together. It really got my heart racing because the pacing was just right. The graphics made you constantly aware of the app, so that even when you weren’t looking at the app itself on screen, it was like you were always in the app, hyperaware of it like it was following them everywhere.
I have to admit, when we were made to believe that there was something sketchy about Ian’s past and found out that he had played Nerve previously in Seattle where he and some other guy were in the final when the other guy died, I thought I had already figured it all out. Since Vee never divulged into how her brother died, I thought we would find out later that the other guy who died playing Nerve against Ian was her brother, and she would find out Ian was the guy that could have saved him and climactic drama ensues. Though that might have been an interesting path to take, I’m glad I was wrong because I don’t like being able to predict a plotline.
My favourite part was the ending. I was a little hesitant to believe that the majority vote was ‘yes’ to shooting her. People are messed up, but I like to believe that they aren’t that messed up and that stupid. What did they think would come of it? There were thousands of people in the arena watching, and tens of thousands more watching online. Do you really think authorities wouldn’t know or do something about it? Or the media turning it into an international headline? There were thousands of cameras there to capture the shooting and the sickening jeers from the crowd chanting for Ty to shoot her.
But of course, they are that stupid, because it’s only until they read on their phone that they are an accessory to murder that they realise what they just took part in.
The crowd went from 100 to 0 after that, and their silent exit didn’t sit well with me. They didn’t appear to feel guilty – which I’m assuming that’s what they were trying to portray – instead they looked careless, as if it was just another notification on their screen. They read the message, then shut off their tablets and went to bed like they didn’t believe they really are an accessory to murder. I mean I know they weren’t because she wasn’t actually shot, but they don’t know that!
But after all of this reflection, in the end it’s all about that premise; are you a watcher or a player? And that’s what resonated with me the most. Some might argue that Vee didn’t need to step out of her comfort zone because there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert. True – there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert, but there’s a difference between introversion and never taking a risk. I’m just like Vee at the start of the film; I am 100% a watcher through and through, and I hate it. This movie doesn’t inspire me to take risks (if anything, it is steering me deeper into the opposite direction) but it does send a true message. It really is in all of us – we just have to get out of our own heads. No, you don’t have to shoot someone to take a risk and no, followers do not equate to love.
I really did enjoy this movie. I was on the edge of my figurative seat the whole time and never knew what to expect or how it was going to end. It was a pleasant surprise how well they sent you a message about our world without being too obvious about it.
One more thing – there’s no way in hell their phone batteries would have lasted throughout the night like that!
Shout out to seeing Coldplay in concert for having a small time Aussie ex-busker as their supporting artist. Jess Kent’s music definitely deserved the attention.
Long time, no talk! Here are the tracks I’m digging at the moment.
Spoiler alert: there is no Frank Ocean on account of not having his album just yet!
“Oceans” by Seafret
“Cold Water” by Major Lazer feat. Justin Bieber and MO
“Twice” by Catfish and The Bottlemen
“Body Say” by Demi Lovato
“Drive” by Oh Wonder
“West Coast” by Coconut Records
“Papercuts” by Illy feat. Vera Blue
“Boom” by Major Lazer feat. Too Many People
“Toothbrush” by DNCE
“Closer” by The Chainsmokers feat. Halsey
“Ease” by Troye Sivan feat. Broods
Small end note: I saw Troye Sivan live not too long ago and his performance and engagement with the audience just shows how REAL you can be on stage, no matter how big you get! He pulled a lot of things out from the crowd, including a cut out of himself stolen from an Optus store, and lettuce, which he also tasted. Lol. Also took someone’s phone from the crowd and took a ton of crowd selfies! That has only been a dream of mine.
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