Back from hong kong

Seriously, this is the first time I got to somewhere other than hong kong. It was very exciting; it is the first time that I got on to the plane. It did shake a bit, but was within my expectation. The food up there was better than I expected guess it is because of it is SIA that we took. Hong kong got a lot of stuff that was very similar to Singapore and Malaysia such as the building and the road, all are quite similar. When we got to the hotel, I was very shocked. There are a lot wushu participants over there, not all of them are Chinese, some of them come from Japan and even Iran and Italy. After checking in, we got out and eat the dinner. I tell you, the food over there, even though they are the same, but it taste a lot better than the one in Singapore. I ate the curry rice, the curry fragrant and tasty, the spicy level are just at the correct level. In Singapore, a lot of the place got the curry that was so spicy that you can’t finish everything. One thing I don’t really like is the temperature. It is too damn cold over here(hong kong). It was like 10+ degree. The wind is chilling cold, no, freezing cold. When the wind hits your face, you feel the coldness. During the trip to here, it was that harsh. Why? 1) I sms-ed a very important person and talk quite some time, making me feel quite comfortable when coming here. 2) I was expecting everything over here, not everything surprise me except the number of participants. On the night, finally got to sleep, but something was not very right, a room-mate(i shall not mention the name, just say S) snored. It was so loud that the entire room only got his snoring sound. I turn around the bed and finally got to sleep at 3+am.

7+am, I was woke up by S and ask all the other room-mates to go to the 7th floor for breakfast. The hotel was a 6 star hotel, thus the 7th floor alone was restaruant. The queue was long like hell ans people started to cut queue. I finally got the food but the food was not up to the standard I expected to be. Then finally got to the competition ground with all the other members. There are a lot of people and the people from other country then china will compete in court 5. All the court were at the same stadium, so we can see the different standard of the wushu team from all over the world. There are from Iran and even south africa, quite surprising even there has chinese martial art school. The standard of the russians was the highest in my sense among the "non-china" group of contestants. The china's standard was over the top, even a kid can swing the cudgel faster than any one of us, too strong. After the competition for the first day, we went out and eat the lunch, it was basically not bad, but the fried rice that I ate was too many, I struggled to finished it. After that, me, wan ling, eileen, julie, bing long, wen-di and ren mao went out to have a stroll around the tsuen wan and shop a bit too. Some of the stuff were expensive but it was very good. The taste for the food, the design for fashion stuff. We bought cup noodles and went to wan ling's room for dinner. Yeah, we had cup noodles for the dinner. Finally went back to my room and prepare to sleep. Oh no, S started to snore again. It spells "no sleep" for me.

The third day, also the 2nd day of the competition. This time, eileen gave me a morning call and then me and the other room-mates went out to eat breakfast. The situation was the same as the first day, people rushing for food and everything. The competition was very competitive, all the competitors got very high standard. KJ, patrick and others are having broadsword and cudgel on that day. After that, we went out and to eat the lunch again. The curry paste taste like peanut sauce, not very nice. Then, we went back to the hotel to get prepare to go to 大屿山 to pray to the big buddha, ah keong also was to pray for his next day tai chi competiton. We took the train to tong chiung and then took the cable car to the top of the mountain. It was very foggy, we barely see anything on the way up and at one point, we practically can see nothing but the cable 1m in front of us and the rest is just fog. Finally we reached the top and start to venture to different shops and finally got to the staircase which will lead us to the big buddha. Wan ling and eileen went up first. When me, ah keong, ren mao, bing long and julie reached to the top, we can see only the lower body of the buddha, what a piece of shit. We go to a shop to buy something for gifts. Finally got to the cable car station to catch the almost last ride of the cable car. Ren mao lost the ticket and we was held there for about 20 mins. Finally got down and had the dinner at KFC. Even the KFC was so different from singapore, just cannot be described.

The 4th day, me and S went out first to catch the competition of ah keong's tai chi. In the 24th style, he had to compete with 7 people of the same age and him, 42th style had to compete with 4 other competitor. He still come out 2nd for both, that was awesome. Patick have monkey fist at the same day too, it seems pretty cool. After that, wan ling also got broadsword and her "劈手". That was a mistook routine as it was actually to be dagger, but something happened to the registration and thus she had to make do for that. Thank goodness she made it out alright. Then we go back to hotel for a while and we went out for dinner. The dinner was ok, but it was a bit weird that the waitress want to speak english. Finally got back to the hotel, went to wan ling's room and the others to chat and play a little. Got back to the hotel and rest for the next day, shopping time.

5th day, me, wan ling, eileen, juile, bing long and ren mao went to the woman's street for shopping. There are tons of stuff over there. Those are really nice designs and good price. To cut short, I bought a t-shirt, jeans, vest, a pair of shoe and a new wallet. After all the shopping, we went to central and find julie's friend to bring us to dinner and wood chips cake. THat wood chip cakes are some of the best ice-cream cakes I ever eaten. It was fantastic. Then we went back to the hotel and rest.

The last day of the trip, we went to yau ma tei for another shopping. But ultimately, we are going to the peak to take a look at the night view from the top of the mountain. But shit, it was very foggy and we see nothing. Then we got back to hotel and finally rest. The rest, picture will tell the story.

promise, meant to be broken?

A promise, everyone made. Couples made to make themselves attached even tighter, but why the promise I've with one person was broken within 23hours. We gave each other a promise, a promise that will make us together. But everything was over, all boils down to age, the promise don't mean shit any more. I love her, that will never change, hope she can find her happiness.

Updates, more like a series of review

Last time said I will do a review of donnie's movie, and now I dragged for a month. To cut short, I will do the review straight away. 3 movies, all starring donnie yen, all shown in 2008.



The empress and the warrior, shown in the mid 2008. I think should be around june, can't remember. So this movie is about the war era in china few thousand years ago. There is this small country(can't remember which one), always promote peace between countries, had to go to war to protect their own people. Donnie was one of the generals that committed many victories in the battle field. One day, the king died and the throne was passed to his daughter. Being a woman, it is not easy to rule a country, let alone during that war era. She picked up her sword and join the war, but in one of the most important battle, she convince the opposing country to stop the war and finally peace came between the 2 countries. But it don't last long, the empress fell in love with a shadow warrior that had been hiding for years, to avoid fighting. No matter what donnie said, she want to be with that shadown warrior, until one day. Another general wanted an revolution because the war had stopped, the soldiers can't stop fighting, he want to go to war again. Thus he sent assasins to kill the empress and the warrior. The empress escaped back to the kingdom, to settle things. Donnie helped, he faced thousands of soldiers alone and killed hundreds of them until he falls. The empress killed the rebelious general in a duel and unite the people back together. She returned to the warrior to find out that he is dead, she then vows to bring peace to the land until she falls dead.

This is a pretty average movie, the entire movie was too much about the love, the action part was a bit lagging. Yet, the 1 vs thousand of soldiers scene are cool. I mean, who can do that? I give it a 6 of 10.



Painted skin, shown in the september, somewhere after the chinese ghost fest. This movie was based one the famous ghost story novels. It is about love, again. Donnie, again, portrayed a general, but left the unit many years ago. He returned to the town he once stayed in, found out that his ex-lover married to his brother(not blood related). His brother saved a woman during the trip back to town after mission. His wife found out that woman has something weird, but can't describe what was wrong. The brother let her stay in his house, due to the fact that her parents are killed. After that woman came, many murder case started, the victims died in a hit, with the hearts being dug out. Donnie then met a demon slayer that claims there is a demon in town and the murder case somehow related to the demon she is after, thus help in the investigation. It was a demon's deed, a lizard demon. The girl that was saved, she was of no human, she is a fox demon. Disguised in a human skin, she had to eat humen's heart to maintain the skin. THe lizard demon then hunt for her, because he had a thing of her. Finally the wife found out this secret, in order to protect her husband, she agreed to drink a poison that was make her skin turned white, she had to claim that she is the demon, she is the murderer. The husband witness her saying those words in the town, to the citizens. He was stunned, donnie can't bear it any more, he brought her to a cave with the demon hunter. The whole army arrived, to get rid of the demon, which is the brother's wife, the fox demon tagged along. The brother can't make the decision, because he is the captain of the army, he had to kill his wife. But he can't kill his wife with him living, thus he committed suicide after killing her. Donnie's rage can't be controlled any more, he raised his blade and slash the fox demon. Seeing no blood spilled, not even a twitch on the face, proving her demon existence. The lizard appears and decide to kill everyone and then bring the fox demon away. Donnie and the demon hunter fought the lizard, finally killed it by using a very strong demon slaying sword to kill both demons, along with donnie. The blade shattered and revived everyone, the army, donnie, wife and the brother. Donnie then set on another journey to slay demons with the demon slayer.

This movie was actually better than the last one. I had to say that the action was still lagging in this movie, but the storyplot was interesting. Qi yu wu, an actor in singapore(chen xi in "little nonya") portray the lizard. The acting was pretty good, but still, the fight scene between him and donnie should be nice if donnie were to choreograph the action sequence. I'll give this movie an 7.5 of 10.



Ip man, shown in 19th december. Why I remember the date so correctly? BECAUSE THIS MOVIE WAS GREAT!!! I watched it 2 times in the cinema, 2 times on dvd and 3 times on my computer.

The story was based on the life story of grandmaster yip man(eep mun), the first martial artist to teach wing chun openly and make it all over the world. It was in 1930s, foshan of china. Foshan was said to be the home of martial arts, yip man practiced wing chun and love to spar with people. But he got no interest in opening a school. He spent his time with his wife, son, his good friend and the good old wooden dummy. Everything was ok until one day, some barbarians from the northern part came of foshan, to challenge every martial arts schools, all the masters lost. They finally headed to yip man's house, challenged yip man. With his wife approval, yip man accepted the challenged happily. He defeated the barbarians with no sweat broke. He then became a hero of foshan. Good things don't last, the Japanese invaded china and yip man's house was confiscated. He live a hard life with his wife and son, finally he found a job in a coal mine where he met many other martial arts masters. One of his friends went to a fighting ring, where people can challenge the Japanese karate black belts, win can get rice. But he lost and was killed in an accident. Yip man questioned and he went to the fighting ring, witness a shooting on a chinese martial artist who lost a fight against 3. He was pissed and went in the ring and request to challenge 10 karate black belts. He fought the 10 black belts and he almost cripple all of them, either they end up with a broken limbs or the face was beaten to a pulp where the mother can't even tell who he is. The Japanese general was impressed, hope he would be back for more fights, but yip mun refused. Yip mun's good friend, quan, was facing a trouble. His factory was threaten by robbers, who is the same barbarians that challenged many martial artists years ago. Yip mun was convinced to stay in the factory to work and teach wing chun to the workers at the same time. The robbers are back, not the factory workers fight with the robbers gang, yip mun arrived and beaten all of them. The barbarian was furious, he told the Japanese general about yip mun's location, yip mun was forced to go back with the Japanese to teach the Japanese wing chun. Yip mun refused but he want to fight with the General. Few days later, the arena was setted up, but the captain want yip mun to lose or he will shoot him, yip man just smiled. Yip mun appears in the arena and fought the general and defeated him. He was then shot, but not fatal. He was then brought away and finally stay in hong kong in 1940s, opened up a school that teaches wing chun and finally an assiociation. Many of his students are experts now, one of the most noted student of his, is bruce lee....

This movie is just simply great, I can't stop saying how good it is. The story was good, the story nicely brings out the feeling of the people, of course with the skills of the actors. The action, oh my god, the entire movie was action, fights here and there. Nice choreography by sammo hung! The music was by the same person who wrote music scores for death note, L change the world and dragon tiger gate, the music brings the tension to the maximum, cope with the action sequence and make it perfect. I give it 11 of 10, it is beyond any expectation. One thing I've heard is that there will be a sequel, about his life in HK, also introduced his student, bruce lee. Extra info, I'm learning wing chun too, my sifu was a student of yip zhun, son of yip mun.