GEP Guys, Tennis, Blockbusters

The last couple of days have been refreshingly different in small but worthwhile ways.

Friday: dinner at Newton hawker centre (where I haven’t been for years), with, er, seven guys (which I also don’t do too often. I usually stick to about four or five), followed by the immensely entertaining Rush Hour 2 (as cosmopolitan as I like to think of myself as being, I still enjoy watching a yellow man kicking white butt), and intermittent discussions about the sociological ramifications of the GEP. (Gifted Education Programme. All seven guys were from it. I got in but chose not to go. Obviously there was lots of room for discussion.)

Monday: night tennis fun with Ken. Despite my stint on my primary school mini-tennis team (downsized racquets, oversized spongy balls) and Ken’s recent buff sportiness, our tennis hour could perhaps be accurately described as a breathtaking showcase of incompetence, as much of our cross-court repartee acknowledged.

Ken: Okay, let’s set a goal for ourselves! Let’s try for a rally of five!
I serve into the net.
Ken: Okay, one! Let’s go for one!

Me, serving: Right, let’s focus on control!
Ken swings the racquet but misses the ball completely.
Me: Right, let’s also focus on aim!

Today: excursion with Luke and Yuping to Darkest Singapore to watch Moulin Rouge at Causeway Point (I admit that in a country with a total landspace of 640 square kilometres, nothing is very far, but Causeway Point is as far northwest as you can go in Singapore without having to visit Malaysia), because it was the only cinema left in Singapore that was still showing the movie.

The movie? Nice eye candy. Reasonable ear candy. Liked their cover of Roxanne. John Leguizamo’s always a treat to watch. But it left me completely unmoved at the end, so I’m wondering why so many people kept telling me how much they cried. I guess the fact that I feel absolutely no need to spew copious amounts of words in either praise or censure of it probably says the most of all, and something tells me this is actually the worst possible reaction a director like Baz Luhrman could have. It was worth the money, effort and time, but I like it the least out of the three Baz Luhrman films I’ve seen. (I liked Strictly Ballroom best, followed closely by Romeo and Juliet)