oscars

I couldn't watch the Oscars live at 8:00 am because of school, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch it replayed in the evening. But in the end, although I'd already read the results online, I decided to watch some of the Academy Awards. I'd only seen 2 of this year's nominated films -- "Babel" and "Little Miss Sunshine" (oh, and I guess "Borat" was nominated too, huh?) -- so didn't have many strong feelings about who I thought should win. I was quite pleased with most of the results (I liked Alan Arkin in LMS, and I think Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker are great actors, though I have yet to see the movies they were nominated for) and was very happy to see Ennio Morricone win an honorary Oscar (I've never grown tired of the music he wrote for"The Mission"). Then of course, there were other moments I'm glad I didn't miss, like the Will Ferrell/Jack Black/John C. Reilly musical number, and those crazy Oscar acrobats.

But probably the moment that will stand out most in my memory from the 79th Academy Awards was when "The Departed" won for best adapted screenplay, and a female announcer explained that it was based on the Japanese movie "Infernal Affairs." I was shocked that they would make such an error at the Oscars. Even a quick check on IMDB will tell you that it "Infernal Affairs" is 100% a Hong Kong movie. Didn't one of the Academy's writers have a minute to do a quick search on Google? Come on! But in spite of the magnitude of this mistake, somehow it doesn't surprise me. Instead, it just reminds me of the countless times I've been asked whether or not I ever picked up Japanese, or if I had a happy childhood in Japan. It was all I could do to restrain myself from screaming at the TV, "Hong Kong is NOT in Japan!!"

So it seems that the Oscars really hit a nerve with me this year... :)

"if you think women in prison are soft, think again."

This is one of the choice sentences I just heard on "Lockdown: Women in Prison." It's too bad that I'm not usually able to stay up late enough to watch such quality programs. Besides having a sensationalist bent and using cheesy dramatic effects (i.e. creepy music and camera zoom-ins), this show is getting on my nerves because the narrator keeps saying things like "and this make-shift plastic weapon was made by a woman," as if we should be surprised that women are capable of violence. But still, some of this stuff is very scary. Guess it adds up to one more reason not to commit a felony...

xin nian kuai le!

Happy year of the pig!... or technically, year of the golden pig, which apparently only comes around every 60 years (that's 5 cycles of the Chinese zodiac). It's supposed to be especially auspicious, so according to the BBC, there's been a rush of Chinese couples getting married and attempting to conceive so that they can have golden pig babies (piglets?).

If you're curious about the picture above, you can get more information here.

Continuing in the Chinese new year vein, today was the warmest new year's day in HK history... or at least the warmest on record. I wasn't surprised by the news... I knew it was the warmest new year day I'd experienced (turns out that today broke the record set in 1982 -- the year my family moved to HK) ... and the warmth was a big contrast to my memories of Chinese new year being the coldest part of the HK year.

****CORRECTION****

According to my mom, it's not the year of the golden pig after all... it's actually the year of the fire pig. I don't know what the significance of that is -- guess I have some research to do.

happy groundhog day!

I just found a site where you can check Punxsutawney Phil's prediction. It's part of a the Punxstawney Groundhog Club's official site -- www.groundhog.org! I didn't realize that the movie Groundhog Day was so accurate in its depiction of the ceremony. The site is definitely worth a look.
Unfortunately, due to time zone differences, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out how much more winter to expect...