"A thousand years- Part II"

You: ‘ “A thousand years” by Christina Perri? I've already heard it!’

Moi: Well, hang on a second. Did you realize that ‘A thousand years’ at the end of Breaking Dawn- Part II has a pre-verse specially written? Huh, didn't think so. This song is gold, people, so just listen to it!

It was originally written by Christina Perri as a duet but she didn't have the time to find the right duet partner. She personally said that's why the original version didn't make sense when they first released it. This new version is a duet between Christina Perri and Steve Kazee, who is, quote, a super amazing Broadway star, Tony Award winner [for 'Once'] and an incredible human being.

Argh...who am I kidding? I can't leave this post like this! Here's the original version.

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

In the spirit of Christmas (although I am a Buddhist), will you all forgive me if I did a review of the book that was released two years ago?

It’s one of my favorite books as well- “Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares”. You might want to put it in the Young Adult category but hey, if a book is good, it doesn’t matter what genre; you just gotta respect it.

This book is co-authored by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. -“What? Co-authored?” –“Yes, co-authored”.  I think it made the story much more interesting. I’d like to add “more realistic” here but then if you’ve already read it, you’ll tell me, “What’s realistic about two teenagers leaving hints for each other before having met?”, which is why I’m not adding it. I’d also like to say co-authoring made the plots more natural but I won’t do this either for the same reason.

This book of dares is witty, funny, romantic, sweet, young, and fresh. It’s everything you want to find in a Young Adult book and a Holiday book. Taking place in the Christmas holidays in New York, the story originates with Dave, calm but daring, challenging and snarly boy who uses all the big words. His biggest Christmas wish? Twenty volumes of unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. On the other hand, Lily is the sweetest girl in the world. She loves pets too much, she loves caroling, and she loves her grandpa. She is wonderfully weird.  

It all started with a red note book. Dash saw the hints that Lily left in writing as he figured out all of them. The point of the book is that Lily’s big brother wanted her to find a good boy she can spend time with. And the boy crazy enough to follow all the clues in the book must be the perfect boy! What kind of clues did Dash leave back for Lily? Who else got involved in this book exchange? How did they do it without really seeing each other?

Honestly, I read though the whole book with a happy feeling. I loved Lily and Dave. You will find that this book is not of a cheesy kind at all. It’s actually worth my time every now and then I want some happy reading.

When writing this book, David Levithan wrote a chapter for Dave and then sent it to Rachel Cohn, who wrote a chapter for Lily. They kept exchanging e-mails to finish this book, just like Dave and Lily, who kept exchanging the red notebook to know more about each other.

I hope this book will be worth your holiday time as well. Happy reading! And happy holidays!

My most romantic song- "All I ask of you"

I realized that most of the songs I upload here aren’t that new. But who cares? The label is “My current favorite music”, not “Billboard Hot 100”.
So this time, I’m uploading the world’s most romantic song… well, at least it is for me. Have you ever seen “The Phantom of the Opera” in New York or in Paris? Yeah, me neither. I sure will though, some day. I have been in love with all the soundtracks in the movie adaptation since long ago. I don’t know why I never remembered to upload some of them.
This song below is so romantic in the most ideal way. Think before all the boyfriends or girlfriends who has disappointed you. Think of the time when you believed in true love. Wasn’t it so dreamy? Wasn’t it so wonderful and perfect? The mutual feeling of two lovers who are determined to stay together and to protect each other forever really is sweet, even though you might not believe in it anymore.
If any of you guys want to experience that feeling of true belief again, I hope this song helps. “All I ask of you” is a duet between Christine and Raoul, performed by Emmy Rossum and Patrick Wilson.

One Direction & The Wanted (or) The Wanted & One Direction

Are you a Directioner or a Prisoner/The Wanted Fanmily? As for me, both One Direction and The Wanted have unique but different strengths and truly deserve the fame they have received. Will I tell you which boy band I prefer? Sorry, I won’t.

But this isn’t about me. I just wanted to give the Directioners a taste of The Wanted’s Music and vice versa, so here, I’ve uploaded each of their new hit singles: “I found you” by The Wanted and “Live while we’re young” by 1D. I’m really trying to be unbiased here.

Let’s start with “I found you”. Listen to the song and I want you to think about the one that you've found (if you had) or one you would like to find. I have been to my darkest hours and this song gives me hope that one day, I will find that special person who would bring light to my life. I sincerely hope that this song would give you a direction were you lost.

“I found you, in the darkest hour

I found you, in the pouring rain

I found you, when I was on my knees

And your light brought me back again”

Now, “live while we’re young”. I think it makes the listener embrace the present time, without worries for the future. You’re only young once. When will you ever get to go crazy again after this? Here are the lyrics of the chorus and the song.

“Let’s go crazy, crazy, crazy ’til we see the sun

I know we only met but let’s pretend it’s love

And never, never, never stop for anyone

Tonight let’s get some and live while we’re young”

"Prometheus", the Sci-Fail

Why do all Sci-fi films have to include something gross? I just watched Prometheus and although I do admit how exciting and consuming the movie is, I am also grossed out.

So when two archaeologists, Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway, found some 35 thousand year old drawings of giant humans pointing at some sort of galaxy, they believed that the makers of the human species must be on a galaxy of the same pattern.

Pictogram found in a cave in Scotland

Prometheus about to land on LV-223

When Peter Weyland, who later we come to know as an old man who simply doesn't want to die, funded them and gave them a team, they found a galaxy with the same pattern 34.56 light years away from Earth. There was a planet in that galaxy that resembled Earth and a moon encircling it. “Prometheus” is the name of the spaceship they rode to that moon, named LV-223. Why the moon? Because the moon had conditions that could sustain life.                     

                                     

LV-223

                                       

So, the whole crew got to that moon and they were all hoping like there would be the “Engineers” of the human species on that moon. All was excited except Meredith Vickers (she's not a scientist; she's just there to look pretty and give her father, Peter Weyland, more lines) was all Victoria Beckham (unsmiling).

Charlize Theron playing Meredith Vickers

But, uh-oh, first problem in the sci-fi problem pattern, they found amazingly preserved bodies of the “engineers” who have the same DNA as humans! The engineers are just disgustingly muscular Voldemort-skinned space screwballs really.

Lord Voldy face (but this guy has a nose)

An engineer probably going to create life on earth

 In the first scene, one engineer drank some liquid from his bee-hive style container. This liquid immediately broke his DNA strands but the strands form new DNA as they combine with water. I saw some weird form of cell division that happened in his changing cells - weird, because the mitosis didn't seem to end and I didn't see any cytokinesis.  

DNA strands breaking

Weird mitosis

So when they got on the moon, there was no trace of a living being on it. Perhaps all beings on this moon created bio-weapons (the slimy creatures and the infamous “black goo”, the term that everyone is using now for the black stuff in the movie). It seems that the weapons got creative and turned on the spacemen themselves, leading to eradication of every spaceman- sorry, engineer- on the whole moon.

Black goo oozing from the mysterious urns

The sick deadly reptile

Ooh, ooh, did I tell you about the zombie part? Ya-ha! There were some reptiles (think grey, unfashionably patterned, slimy, blunt snakes) in a cave that all the scientists go into. These things are capable of rapid regeneration, have sort-of-acidic body fluid (or blood; I’m not sure. There's no hemoglobin in it), coil around limbs of prey to crush bones, and enter esophagus of prey.  I think they enjoy human's esophagus a lot because one stayed in it overnight until other scientists discovered the dead body of the said prey. A geologist kind of died because of its poisonous body fluids but then came back as a moaning zombie-looking maniac killer with ninja moves when the movie had nowhere left to go but the ending climax.

Zombie (he's on fours; he's not spider-zombie)

There was also called a robot named David (there were lots of others like him back on earth so he isn’t that cool) who came along and he's like the smartest of all. One downside? He wouldn't obey all your commands entirely. He kept a lot of secrets and I think he’s intelligent enough to develop feelings. He didn’t like Dr. Shaw’s boyfriend, Dr. Holloway, so he infected him with the black goo. Dr. Holloway ended up with red eyes and bad skin and was later incinerated by Charlize Theron - sorry, I meant Vickers.

David,the android; the first to know about the black goo

And then, and then, did I tell you how the main character, Dr. Shaw, got pregnant by the black-stuff-infected Dr. Holloway although she was sort of infertile? The fetus grew the size of a 3-month-old human fetus in just 10 hours. But don't expect Dr. Shaw to pull a Bella Swan, people. She practically removed the "foreign body" from her abdomen by herself with a robotic surgical machine (they call it the “med-pod”; it's quite advanced, being made around 2091.) After the surgery, the fetus did not die but grew gradually all by itself! Nonetheless, I do think it still needs a host to develop into adult form of human/goo hybrid.

the gross fish-like creature is the fetus

David found that there was still one spaceman alive (but preserved in a hyper-sleep mode of course) and he/she ended up being the host for Dr. Shaw's baby! So I'm thinking ,usually the host is supposed to be the actual mother but the fetus was able to adapt to whatever human-like creature’s body to undergo metamorphosis.

Do you want to know what happens in the end? What happened to the scientists, the robot, the last engineer, Peter Weyland, Dr. Shaw, and Prometheus?  What were the “engineers” planning to do? It's an entertaining movie so I'm not against people watching it. I'll just leave it to you. If you have the guts to watch slimy stuff in human bodies, you’ll be fine. If you're too busy to watch, then read Wikipedia to see how it all turned out.

All Sci-fi movies have its holes in the story. That doesn't mean it won't give you a good thrill. I probably won't watch Prometheus again for the third time (I had to watch it twice to take pictures) but I don't regret watching it. I had fun to watch how unprofessional the “scientists” were and how impossible the plot was.

A biologist ran away from a dead body of a Spaceman! Not kidding.

Some of the scientists got onto “Prometheus” from Earth without knowing why they were going. Not kidding. 

Prometheus got to their destination, LV-223, that was 327,000,000,000,000 km away from Earth in 28.5 months, which means that it was travelling with 17.13 times the speed of light. Not kidding. 
Dr. Shaw carbon-dated the body of a Spaceman without knowledge of the 6C14 percentage in LV-223's atmosphere and used the carbon-dater from earth. Not kidding.

 Everything on LV-223 was grey (and more than fifty shades of it too!). Not kidding. 

You will only see the interior of Prometheus, the interior of the cave and the way between most of the time in the movie. Not kidding. 

And don’t even get me started on evolution.

If you believe in evolution (No, I don’t “believe” in evolution. Evolution is the truth!!!), then think of “Prometheus” as a child’s imagination going wild. Because there is no way we can crunch the numbers “Prometheus” gives into our evolution calculators.  

Before you watch it, be prepared to see “scientists” talking “science” without any proof. It bugged me so hard I had to force myself to stop thinking about it. If our future world is going to let people like Dr. Shaw be called “scientists”, then there’s no point of education at all. Damn it, I thought about it again!

After watching it, you will have all these questions. Most of them can be answered as followed: “Because they had to die” and “Because they wrote it like this”. For the rest of the questions, there’s no answer except a sequel, if there is going to be one. And being the fool that I am, I’m probably going to watch it, and of course, write a review about how much it sucks.

Good luck deciding! 

When we're not perfect anymore

As we grow up, we begin to notice our strengths and our flaws. We realize what we love doing and what palls us. We’re just not perfect at everything anymore and we can deal with that. But do you know who can’t?

Parents. They’re so used to us being the perfect students and perfect children. They used to be so proud of our straight “A”s, awards, praises from teachers, recruiters, and professors, good colleges, the new job that have so many great opportunities, etc. We were their diamonds.

Then we grew up. And some of us tried to find a job that they really wanted to do and lost about a year or two. Some of us have been stuck for years in a job they don’t like. Some of us are still trying to find what they really want to do in life. Some of us changed their major. Some of us dropped out of school and started doing a business that isn't flying that high. Some of us started to gain weight. Some of us broke up with the person they once hoped to spend the rest of their lives with. Some of us got married and are struggling to get back to work after having a baby. Some of us are still travelling around the world. But these guys are not the only ones meeting new adventures.

Life is an adventure! We may get into crappy situations sometimes but we’re still trying. That’s life! Every day brings us a new sunshine. No matter how messed up life gets, we’re still finding ways to make things work. Our eyes have opened. We have new dreams and we are pursuing them.

At times, we feel that we have too many obstacles to deal with. That’s a part of life. No matter how trivial or great our work is, there will always be forces that try to get us down. Every once in a while, we even take ourselves into trouble with bad decisions. So, is there nothing enjoyable in life anymore? I don’t think so.

If you really look for it, there is always some light shining even in something as tough as life. It may come from a friend, a colleague, a teacher, a family member, etc. With this light, life isn't that vague anymore. I’m not perfect but I’m fine with it. I have my strong skills. I have my friends.  I have my goals. I’m waking up each day to get to my nearest goal. I don’t know how many more setbacks I’m going to have to contend with. I don’t know if my life is going to turn out the way I want. But I’m moving and jumping and kicking and running.

If our parents wait a few years, we will become their diamonds again. Heck, some of us will even outshine those rocks. But they’re not getting younger and they want to see us succeed now. What do we do? Parents only want the best for their children anyway. We spent all our lives complaining to them; it’s only fair to listen to what they have to say. They’re not trying to get us down. Maybe we should start seeing their words as the push we need (or just a push) to get to our dreams.

So, I don’t do yoga (yet) but I’ll end this article with a

“Namaste” (the light in me meets the light in you).

Feeling Good (Feeling real good)

We were all impressed by Carly Rose Sonenclar in the X-Factor auditions. (Check it out here.)
She auditioned with "Feeling good" by Nina Simone. "Feeling good" is a quite famous song that has been sung by over 40 artists. It was written by English singer-songwriters Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the 1965 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd starring Cy Grant, who sang the original version of the song.
I have posted below four recordings of "Feeling Good" that I really like, and yes, Carly's version is among them.

Feeling good by Nina Simone

Feeling good by Michael Buble

Feeling good by Jennifer Hudsen

And the latest version, Feeling good by Carly Rose Sonenclar

Make me wanna die- The Pretty Reckless

Singer of “The Pretty Reckless” band, Taylor Momsen is pretty reckless at interviews and everywhere she goes (but to her, maybe that’s being cool!)

Appearing nude in her music video, going pantless or in lingerie all over town, giving eye-raising interviews (let me give you an example here and here) have made me reconsider her maturity. Because I think people like her who have been in the entertainment industry for too long should know the definitely-don’ts at the very least, right? Is she doing all that stuff for publicity? (Then maybe it’s working because I’m writing about it right now.)

However, I don’t have to like Taylor Momsen to admit that I like her music. To all the guys who stand by Miley Cyrus in the Miley-Taylor feud, I’d like you to give The Pretty Reckless’s music a chance. As an introduction to the band, I've uploaded here their first single, "Make me wanna die". It absolutely did NOT make me wanna die.

No title- just a thought

"The Internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink."

Does that ring a bell? Ding ding? I'm quoting Erica Albright (whose real name is said to be Jessica Alona) from the Social Network.

Hello, the internet has an eraser! It's called "Delete Post"! It would definitely anger me if I were called a bitch on the internet but don't you think the producers of "The Social Network" made it wayyyy dramatic? 

Anyway, just a thought- TV adds so much drama into our lives...(I'll write more about it when I get the drama load off my shoulders).

'Fifty shades of grey' sucks!

Okay, I’m gonna start off with an easy one: one book series that should be ashamed that it exists and for having sold over 40 million copies.

Give it down for ‘Fifty shades of grey’, ‘Fifty shades darker’, and ‘Fifty shades freed’!!! They suck (no pun intended) so bad that I could not, would not finish reading. I skimmed the first book and when I discovered the ridiculously poor story line and the mentally ill characters that can never exist in real life...I’m not even going to discuss any of the plots (what little there was) in the books. I’m writing this as a red light to anyone who saw how many women and celebrities are reading the idiotic book series and is considering reading it.
It is "mommy porn".

SO DON’T READ ‘FIFTY SHADES OF GREY’ TRILOGY, EVERYBODY! Save yourself!

But it’s not fair of me not to let you know what the books are about. However, since I promised that this blog would contain no adult content, I’ll link you to two reviews written by Katrina Lumsden here and here.
She will give you the main idea of the books and you will get 10 minutes of rolling-on-the-floor good laugh, I promise!

La La Love- Ivi Adamou

Ivi Adamou is a Greek Cyriot singer (But what the heck is a Greek Cypriot? It means that she’s born in the Republic of Cyprus which lies east of Greece. She is one of the 77% of the ethnic greek population living in Cyprus.)

She entered the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 representing Cyprus with the following song, “La la love.”

Euphoria- Loreen

You know what we should do? We should pay more attention to the UK and Europe song charts. I always find stunningly great songs there.

Loreen is a Swedish singer (God, I sound like Wikipedia!) who represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 and won with the following song, “Euphoria”. Listen to this song. You won’t regret it.

The Secret Circle soundtrack

I thought “The Secret Circle” sucked. They made a big mistake in casting the role of Adam. The real Adam should be tall and intriguing, with arresting features. I read the books; Adam is hot! Thomas Dekker just doesn’t cut it. No wonder the show was cancelled. (I do feel for the “save the secret circle” campaigns though.)

Nonetheless, I think we’ll all agree that the secret circle soundtrack was pretty amazing. It’s dreamy, light but deep, and soulful. So I found the original song and posted it below.

1901- Birdy

I’m sure at least half of the TVD (the vampire diaries, duh!) fans know the song “Skinny Love” by Birdy. One of my friends made it her ringtone for like 3 months! This song also made it to the UK billboard charts in 2011.

Last month, I found out that Birdy is only 16 years old. But the girl can sing! Here’s another song by Birdy that I like. Nothing vampire-related here. It's called "1901".

Safe and sound- Taylor Swift ft. The civil wars

So we all went to see "The Hunger Games".

But did we all listen to the songs in the Hunger Games?

If you want the full list of all the songs used, then go
here.

If you want to listen to one, then here you go.

This song is "Safe and Sound" by Taylor Swift Ft. The Civil wars.

Skyfall- Adele

I don't care what you say. I like all songs anyway.

By the way, did you hear the new Adele song? "Skyfall" for "Skyfall"? If you haven't heard of it, google it!

If you want to hear it, then listen below.

Vampire princes

Once, on a website called www.perusingtheshelves.com, I started the following topic: “How do vampires earn money?”

It’s kind of depressing (yes, even more than being the undead) to find out that our vampire princes (eg. the hotties in the Cullen family, the Salvatore family, and lots more in other fictions whose occupation is “King of vampires”) do not work. What lazy asses! Our wonderful real life princes work, you know? Yeah! Prince Harry of Wales is also Captain Harry Wales! He has an Apache flying badge and everything. Besides, he looks so yummy in his pilot uniform.

Where do our vampire princes stand? Crazy, impulsive (sorry I stole from TVD a little bit) drama freaks or classy uniform/suit wearing hard workers?

I'm a true Damon fan but I'm starting to think he spends wayyyyy too much time drooling over a girl we know he's not gonna end up with and little time to keep his Salvatore mansion in tip-top condition. We never see a housemaid there but that place is so sparkling! How does he pay for the invisible housekeepers? 

So there’s a poll going on at the bottom of the page. Vote vote vote! 

100 word story

So I wrote this when I saw a 100 word story contest in Reader's Digest. I wrote 2 different stories and sent out the first one. Since we're only allowed to send one story, this one's left with me. Why don't you try writing one? It's like a fun brain-teaser.
If you have time, please comment on the following story and write how you understand it. I think every sentence can have different meanings on different people.

My hunter speeds up.
I power up my leg muscles even though they have been begging me to give in. Instinct is all I have left. A deer runs past me. I realize in horror that I am left behind every animal.  The cat makes a leap to kill and my entire life flashes for the last time through the eyes of a vengeful leopard.
The leopard knew it lost. It wriggled in the pool of blood that had spurted from its neck. I made sure not to stab it on the body. It looked at me in searing pain.