Cruel to be Kind

I was having my lunch alone at KFC Komtar last Friday, ordered a snack plate and found an open air seat. Yeah, there's a new KFC opening in town, located at Pacific Komtar.

 

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a stranger appeared and stood beside my table. The stranger looked like a tomboy, or a pengkid to be exact. She was asking for food from me, specifically one chicken.

I was in a very good mood that time, kind of empathetic too, because I was doing a thesis on empathetic behaviour so there I was, trying to practice what I was basically preaching myself.  So as impulsive as I was during situations like these, I grabbed one of my two chickens, wrapped it in a tissue and handed it to her.

A few minutes later, out of the blue, the KFC Supervisor came out and asked her to leave, and told me that the stranger had been disturbing customers for a lot of times.

"That person is just 20 year old, still young," the supervisor told me, "and already disturbing people and doing this."

"We don't want to entertain her because it will show as if we are encouraging her," she added.

I was surprised, and a little guilty too.

The Supervisor came and handed me a new chicken which I didn't request for.

I guess sometimes, we must not let empathy gets the best of us. Sometimes, we gotta think in the long run. If we keep lending a hand to help this kind of person, when are they going to help themselves?

If they never stop getting help, they will never start to help themselves.

Notetoself: Gotta be selective when helping people in the future. If they are healthy and young, they should not this kind of sympathy from us. And don't feel guilty when you are being cruel for the sake of the person's own good.

Movie-Maddening Mode

Watching movies can be named as my main activities during these past few weeks starting from the beginning of Raya holidays. I've watched a mixture of newly-released movies and also old movies.

These are the list:
(Watched in cinema)
1) Paranorman (Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)
2) The Expendables (Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)
3) Premium Rush (Personal Rating: 3 thumbs up)
4) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (Personal Rating: 3 1/2 thumbs up)
5) The Dinosaur Project (No thumb up at all... :P)

(Watched in downloaded version in laptop)
6) Accepted  (3 1/2 thumbs up)
7) Batman Begins   (4 1/2 thumbs up)
8) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon  (4 thumbs up)
9) Doraemon movie  (4 thumbs up)

For this post, I am going to give my two cents about three movies, The Expendables 2, Batman Begins and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. These three movies are action movies but with different focuses and approaches.

 

First, I am going to talk about The Expendables which I watched at GSC cinema at Gurney Plaza. Honestly, I did not have any background knowledge about this movie as I did not follow the previous Expendables. However, it is quite easy to catch up with the plot as it wasn't that complicated. Overall, I think Expendables is a comedy action movie - light, fun to watch as you can see most of the familiar faces in action movies reunited in this movie. There's a new addition to the Expendables clan here though, if you noticed (of course you'll notice him cause he's the hottie in the clan) Liam Hemswroth who in actual life is the fiancee of lucky Miley Cyrus. However, when the movie ended, I am quite surprised to see a few of the audience in the cinema fell asleep. Either because the movie ended near midnight or because these audience are not into action movie. My guy friends who were with me said these audience were sleeping (which majority consisted of female) because girls are not really into action movies but they made me an exception because to them, I am like a guy to them (seriously?). A true lady (like me, ahem) can also actually accept the so-called guy movies. If you like The Avengers and X-Men, you will probably like this movie because of the genre it portrayed. It is action movie with comedy but not a really deep message compared to the Batman trilogy which I am going to talk about in the next paragraph.

(Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)

 

 

Although I have a crush on Christian Bale, that is not the main reason why I like Batman. I loveeee Batman trilogy because of the actions, the storyline and the brilliant message in it. The message was deep, the dialogue was brilliant, there were a few meaningful quotes that you can find in this movie. The one that I recently watched was Batman Begins. One of the quotes that was memorable and significant here was "It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you,"  a saying which I quoted from Rachel's character (played by Katie Holmes). It was a movie full of sarcasm and irony of life. I started my craze on this movie after watching The Dark Knight and more engaged to it after The Dark Knight Rises. Ironically, I watched Batman Begins last. Batman Begins's storyline is not depicted in a chronological manner. It was filled with flashbacks. Compared to Tim Burton's version of Batman, I prefer Christopher Nolan's Batman more as he gives more personality to Bruce Wayne - a true hero that doesn't really care about the fame of being one and really protective of his loved ones.

(Personal Rating: 4 1/2 thumbs up)

 

 

 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a movie rich in Chinese culture and martial arts. From my perspective, this movie focuses into the Chinese martial arts skill more than the storyline itself because for each of the kungfu action scene, the scene was shown for quite a long time in the movie. The message that I can get from this movie is the fight for freedom and equality for the women in the olden days as portrayed by Zhang Zi Yi's character - who was forced to be married to a man whom she doesn't love, and martial arts is not gender-based, whether you are a man or a lady, as long as you're determined enough to practice the skills, you will become good at it just like what was portrayed by Zi Yi and Michelle Yeoh's characters in this movie. However, I do not really get the real focus of this story, whether it is on Chow Yun Fatt's character or on Zhang Zi Yi but I personally guess the real main character of this story is Zhang Zi Yi. She is a mix between good and bad, she has a conflict within herself in deciding which is the right thing or the wrong thing, thus the stealing and returning of the sword. It is a movie worth watching especially if you're into martial arts and Chinese culture.

(Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)

 

 

Till then. Bye.

This Always Happened to Me...

Rage comic about kempunan waffles... (click on picture to enlarge)

Have this ever happened to you?

Oh by the way, you can make your own rage comic here.

This one was created during my last Chinese New Year holiday based on a true story. :(

Have fun creating your own rage comic ;)

Facing Reality

Jobs Vacancy. 

I'm sensitive to these two words nowadays. Oh, make it four.

 Part-time job vacancy. 

Initially, last semester, Matthlessa (not real name) and I vowed to find a part-time job to cover our daily expenses but here we are - still part-timeless. Erm, to be honest, I wasn't completely jobless the last semester - I did some translation work under my sister's supervisor but that was it. After that, nada. Due to the lack of motivation from myself and also the restriction from my faculty, I resorted to becoming a housewife whenever I have a free time because since the beginning of this year, my schedule is unpredictable. Seems like I have no control over my time at all. At the moment that I thought I would be free, suddenly assignments and tasks came running after me, and ironically, during the times that I thought I would be superbusy, I found myself lazing around the house - to the extent of taking a sweet long afternoon nap. 

  

 So last night, I got a call from Alvin (not real name) who is going to stay over for the semester break telling me that he got a feedback from a job he was looking for. He went to Starbucks at Komtar Area, got himself an interview on the spot, and voila,  and is now crossing fingers to get a positive feedback. After listening to his story, the desire to find a part-time job came gushing back at me and I am back putting this 'job-searching' radar on. I hope I have the motivation like him and Claire (not real name) to find a part-time job.

 However, I am not sure how my schedule would be this holiday so I think I would opt for finding a part-time job which can give me freedom to adjust the schedule or a part-time with a fixed schedule but only require me to work during the weekend. 

Ideally, I would like to work in places like a bakery especially King's Confectionery which is located at Tesco Sungai Dua because I am familiar with the cakes there. I can definitely attend to the customers' enqueries regarding the contents and flavours of the cakes mmmmmm...

My favourite cake from King's Bakery. Mango flavour with Vanilla cake. Mmmmm... Credits to Claire Marie for the photo.

 My other desire was to work at the Queensbay GSC cinema (for the sole purpose of getting free tickets and hopefully free popcorns too*winks*) but compared to the bakery, for this second desire, I have transport difficulty. Oh-ho! 

There goes my working desire.

But for now, what I need to do is to find the topic for my research, consult a supervisor, do something for another project, then after estimating how my schedule will be like, I can definitely start to activate my part-time job-hunting. And oh, I love Baskin Robbins too. If only they have vacancy during the 31st, huh? 

i beg to differ...

Do you agree or disagree with the message in the picture above? ;)

I bet most of you are familiar with the picture above. Let me guess... You've seen it from your facebook newsfeed shared by your friends or acquaintances, right? Or you might be one of them who had shared it?  Oh-ho! No offense, peeps. The first time I saw this picture, I didn't give it much thoughts. Was being oblivious to it back then. However, when I kept seeing this post on facebook, I began to spare a thought for the message in this picture. This picture is depicting that the big supermarket owners do not need your money as much as the fruit sellers on the street. How true is this notion?

It may be true in certain cases but not all. To me, this picture is spreading a generalized notion. And generalization is usually unfair. 

Back in my hometown, my neighbour is a fruit seller at the market - and he is not as pathetic as depicted on the picture above. He can afford to buy a car without government loan (unlike my parents who needed it) and his income exceeded RM3000 permonth. Yes, I am aware that he can afford to live this way because a lot of people buy from his stall. Hence, another reason that this picture is not needed - consumers need not have picture like this to tell them where they should shop for their groceries. If you sell something of quality, I do not think the consumers would prefer to buy second class quality from the supermarket with just a few ringgits or cents difference over your goods. I know I am using only one example but if you have a background check on the fruit sellers around, you might be surprised to find out the actual amount of money they earned. Oh, and don't get me wrong... I am not asking you guys to boycott the street sellers in reverse -  I am just pointing out that the message in this picture is unfair and generalized. 

"Hey, we need income too!" -->  the voices of the supermarket workers were silenced in the previous message picture.

 

Let's put it this way. If you want to boycott the big supermarket just because you want to channel your money as 'charity' to the needy as reckoned in the first picture above, you are being ignorant too because your act of charity may defeat its own purpose. Just so you know, the big supermarkets are the sources of incomes for the supermarkets' workers. These workers, I can assure you they are the neediest of all. Most of them do not own a farm, orchard, garden or even a backyard to plant the fruits and veggies like most of the fruit sellers do. They depend wholly on the supermarket to earn a living. So, just imagine... what will the future holds for them if you start boycotting the supermarket to help the street sellers? They could be sacked to save the company's budget! They will have to find a new job, or left on the streets - but without fruits and veggies to sell!

And another thing - what's up with the statement 'they spend their money on cars and trips abroad?' Sounds like an overstatement to me. Have it ever occur to you (this question is for the person who came up with the message) that the trips abroad are for business purposes, and not just merely for luxurious lifestyle? Well, I know, the rich and famous always spend a lot of money, but isn't it better that way than for them to keep that money to themselves and stop the cycle of money? Oh I know this previous statement is irrelevant to the issue at hand but.. Okay. Another question: What makes you think that these supermarket owners do not donate or contribute to any charitable organization? I do not deny the possibility of these people to spend their money unwisely, but not each and everyone of the rich businessman are like that. The thing is... I want to point out the generalized notion in the message of this first picture. The message in this picture is just too shallow for me to follow.

And most importantly, we are free to choose where our money goes. It's consumer's democracy no?