You Are The Apple Of My Eye - a 九把刀 movie

I went to watch this movie after hearing so much about it. The movie is directed by Giddens Ko (real name Ko Ching Teng, 柯景騰) a Taiwan writer. I have heard my students mention his name before but since I am not Chinese educated, I am not familiar with what he writes. The movie is based on a novel of the same name, but of course I have not heard about the book before. When a girl student of mine asked me whether I have watched the movie, another student , a boy, tried to warn me by saying the movie has some "that kind of scenes" ! I answered that whatever scenes can pass the Malaysian censor board should be fine for everyone. (Thinking back, I wonder whether he was warning me or tempting me, haha!) But come to think of it, why should he warn or tempt me? After all , even though I'm their teacher , I wouldn't be shocked by whatever they can show on the Malaysian cinema screens. They even added that this movie is for 18 and above. I was also told the movie did very well at the box office in Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore. Not expecting anything but rather curious why this simple love story did so well and also why it deserves an 18SX rating, I went to have a look.

One good thing about my review is that I have not read the book (which is in Chinese) so my opinion is totally based on the movie and no comparison can be made with the book. My impression of the movie is that it is someone's story. It is simple and yet appealing. There are no syrupy love stories, misunderstandings, tragedies or heavy drama stuff. I suppose what the audience liked was its simplicity.It was something different from what we usually get in the Chinese movies. I guess the audience can relate to some part or another of the author's recollection. The growing up, the school life, hostel life and the goings on in the classroom and hostels.

The story is basically about a man , also named Ko Ching Teng(the author's real name) a mischevious boy who later becomes a write, recalling his school days, about how he and his friends were going after a pretty girl named Shen Jiayi. Incidently, the actor who portrayed this role got Best Newcomer Award at the 48th Golden Horse Awards this year.

The background narration throughout the movie sets the mood as though the narrator is telling you his story. The movie is very well directed as the audience is kept entertained with his interesting recollections. His description of his friends and school mates reminds each and everyone of us of our friends. His accounts of what boys talk about and what they do is entertaining to both male and female audiences. In the movie we see some scenes which we normally don't see in the movies. There are some gross things that we know people do but we seldom see this on screen. Things like sticking the pen caps in the nostrils in the classroom, girls shaving their armpits, boys urinating in bottles in hostels (and one of them continued the habit as an adult, urinating in bottles in the car).

The 18SX tag was probably necessary due to the synchronised masturbation scene in the classroom and also some scenes which suggest gay activities in the hostel bathrooms. Even though it was done in a funny and hilarious way, parents would have a hard time explaining to kids about the scenes. There was also a split second scene of a love-making act in the hostel.The original scene must have been longer, also hilarious I suppose. The scene with the little dog simulating the mating act on the Ko's foot was gross but had the audience in stitches. The scenes with Ko walking around in the nude (private parts hidden from the camera) in the house with his parents around , while studying, having dinner, is an eyebrow raiser. (haha!)

Overall, the movie is quite entertaining.

My Retirement

It has been almost 3 months since my official retirement and I still haven't updated my blog. So who says retirees have too much time and don't know what to do with their free time! Actually I do have much more free time now since my retirement, even though I'm not fully retired from working life. The thing is that I have used the free time for other "likes" and have neglected the blog as usual. With the academic year ending soon, I'll move from semi-retired status to maybe three quarter retired status if you wish to make a comparison. Hopefully, I'll make it a point to find something to blog about. So first, I'll recollect the month of my retirement. The month had been so memorable, I really should organize my thoughts and photos in this post to share with others as well as to read again some time later.

The first event held to celebrate my retirement was organized by the school St John Ambulance Divisions on 6 August even though my retirement starts on the 20th. I already knew that the students, ex-students and teachers were planning something grand but when the event unfolded it still touched me so much because it was really very grand indeed. This is the group photo taken in the hall where the ceremony was held.

First they took me to the school in a Toyota Camry decorated like a bridal car.

For the first time in my life I was treated like a VIP. There was an inspection of the guard of honour and all the invited guests including the school principal, senior assistants, teachers and even our Division Surgeon Dr Wong Kar Lin were there to receive me. But the thing that delighted me most is seeing my ex-members coming specially to attend. Some of them have actually left the school quite a few years already.

The students took great pains to decorate the school. As you can see from the photos, the yellow and golden hue made the hall look like a grand ballroom.

I didn't prepare my speech, I just spoke from my heart. But it was hard to speak from the heart because you would have to fight back the tears. Anyway I only spoke briefly, remembering to thank the people I want to thank and acknowledging the ones who still kept me in their hearts.

These are my four pillars of the Division. We went through so much together, we are like family.

Here are the people who have me in their hearts, who came specially to celebrate with me. I'm still touched by their attendance.

At the end of the function, I was given a grand send-off. It caused quite a traffic jam in front of the school with people slowing down to see what was happening.

Later in the evening it was party time when members and ex-members joined me at a buffet dinner at Coffee Island, Gurney Drive. From the photos you can see how everyone enjoyed themselves. It was so nice to ex-members from as far back as 1995 who remembered me and came to attend.

Besides the 2 events held by the St John members, there were other small gatherings held to celebrate my retirement. A session at Redbox with the karaoke gang, a dinner at Hard Rock Cafe with some colleagues, a karaoke dinner at Ocean Green organised by the Principal himself (what an honour). Then came the official retirement ceremony in school.

Since I only teach the upper six classes this year I only expected gifts from them but I was taken aback when so many students brought gifts.

No matter what gifts they brought its not the value that counts but the thought and gestures that make a difference. I really appeciate all the gifts , big or small. The most meaningful gift is the photo album with personal messages from the students, not forgetting this large expression of gratitude from the Lower Six students.

I thank the Principal for heaping so many praises for me. Even though he praises every teacher who retires, his speech was very long and painted such a glorious picture of me. When it was my turn to speak, I had to cut short what I planned to say. But I managed to sing all the songs I planned to sing. Of course the students were delighted. You don't always get to hear teachers singing in public. Many teachers can sing very well but getting enough guts to sing in front of more than a thousand people is another matter. It doesn't matter if you sing well or not, they will love it anyway. But after the event, some teachers told me they were very touched by the songs and almost cried and saw some girls wiping their tears. I guess if you sing from your heart, the music will bring your feelings to those who listen. Due to popular request, (maybe some teachers thought I could only sing this song, or maybe they liked my rendition, I don't know) I sang Moon Represents My Heart but I altered the first part of the lyrics to English to make it different from the usual version and also more appropriate.

you asked how much I love you dear

I love you oh so much

Yes my love is real and my feeling's true

the Moon says it all for me

the Sun that brings the morning light

the Stars that shine on you

it's a lovely world, you and I must know

the Moon says it all to you

You caught me by surprise, when you walked in to my life

It's sad for me to leave, but my heart is filled with a bliss

You asked how much I love you all

I love you all so much

All my love is real and my feeling's, too

the Moon says it all for me............

Next I sang George Benson's Greatest Love of All. The lyrics of the song is very meaningful to teachers. The students don't seem to have heard the song but I hope they understand the lyrics.

But when I sang David Tao's Ai Hen Jian Dan,

David Tao's Live Version

it really brought the house down. I took the music from the "live" version and it helped to set the "concert" mood getting all the students and some teachers to join me in the chorus. It was really something that the school had never witnessed before. A very nice ending to my retirement ceremony.

Heng Ee St John Ambulance 40th Anniversary Celebration

It's finally over. After months of preparation, the Heng Ee St John Ambulance Divisions celebrated their 40th Anniversary in a grand style. Five years ago, we did it in the school field and the large scale campfire style celebration stunned and fascinated many. This time we wanted to do something different. Formal dinner indoors. Very ambitious indeed. Target : 80 tables. The scariest part actually was that, except for the chairperson who attended the function five years ago as a form two member, none of the organising committee members actually knew about the mammoth task that lay ahead. With an inexperienced bunch of teenagers as the organising committee, I took up the insane decision to go ahead with the plans. Of course I had the confidence because of Thian Wooi. The guy in black on the left. He is our ex-member, now a professional doing decorations for large scale functions. With him helping with the main organising work, I knew I could count on him.
Meixue (centre) had seen the celebration five years ago but deep in her heart she knew this would be no easy job. Like me, she had no choice but to go along with the crazy idea. But she did her role very well as the main person running the whole show. She must have gone through very difficult times these few months. Well done, Meixue. I know how much you suffered. Looking back, don't you feel proud that you have done such a good job? And the handsome guy standing next to her? Minghan the vice-chairman, barely 17, is a fun-loving happy go lucky chap who didn't know the difficulty of the job entrusted to him because he was not around 5 years ago. But through the months of preparation you can see him and the rest of the committee members like Gheeyang, Yongming slowly growing in maturity in organisation work. There are many others which I will not name here, who really sacrificed so much of their time and effort to make this a success.
Among the other teacher advisors, only Ms Cheah and Sashi knew what an anniversary celebration was like. The rest are inexperienced and didn't really know what we were doing. I am very grateful for Ms Cheah's help. She took over a lot of supervision and made my work easier. After agreeing to my proposal of having a grand dress up dinner, the committee set up to discuss our budget. RM40K! I didn't want to say it out but for a school society to handle this large amount is a bit frightening. But with a very generous ex-member Dato Yeap supporting our efforts, Thian Wooi's ability to get me low costing, a bit of funds I accumulated in the Divisions throughout the years and most of all the experience of doing the past 3 anniversary celebrations, I knew we could do it. Of course, first I had to convince the boss to let us do it. Getting his approval was super easy. I don't know whether he knew what we were saying, he just confidently said go ahead! I thank him for the confidence he had in us. We have indeed made a name for ourselves of being able to do large scale functions. But his confidence in us made us even more pressured, to live up to his expectations. Our first task was to prepare TRACES VI our commemorative magazine and to collect funds build our base. Surprisingly our members did very well with the collection. Most of them managed to hit the target of RM50 to qualify for the dinner. To make sure that the function can achieve the target, we "encouraged" societies and clubs from the school to donate RM350 to book at least a table. At first, the response was rather slow and I had to request the school administration to allow me to get the students to use their own society fund to donate. Later when word got out that it was a dress-up function, the response was so overwhelming that we had to stop them coming because we wanted to keep more tables for RM500 donation from parents and ex-members. My prediction that students would rather pay RM35 for a dress-up, sit-down formal dinner than RM10 for a cheap meal in the school field came true. On that night they came dressed to kill!At first some of my committee members were actually sceptical that their friends would come but I had some support from some of them like Mingyie who knew and could visualize what I had in my plans. The response from ex-members were a bit slow but picked up later. A special thank you to Hangming who purposely made the trip back to help in the function. And to those who were away in other states and couldn't attend but sent donations, I can only say this. I'm really touched by your spirit and support. But I was disappointed with some ex-members who actually received monetary awards from Dato Yeap for their academic performance but refuse to donate or attend even though they are in Penang. Well, not all the members have this sense of belonging that I always instill in them. Clearly I have failed in my task.

Next came the important part of providing entertainment. Like the previous anniversary celebrations, we wanted items which appeal to the masses. Other than the cultural and classical performances shown during the School Concert, which not many people know how to appreciate, there are various ways our students can actually showcase their talents. We divided our entertainment into 3 parts. A Talent Search participated by St John members where the final judges are the dinner participants themselves. Shafei rendering the song "My heart will go on..."Siang Yue.......Ai Xiao De Yan Qing .......Shuen Wen and Shu Ning........with their own accompaniment........Yongming.....multi-talented....superb voice, self accompanied on the keyboard, emcee and model.....Yeat Siong ..our very own Jay Chou.... And the winners are........ Some items presented by our guests. And of course stunning performances from our very own St John members and ex-members .

Siew Hui with her professional style singing We were so lucky to have Lian Lian to lead the entertainment. She planned and choreographed the fashion show and dances and even danced so many items that night. The fashion show.... The dances.....The emcees............A St John Ambulance function would not be complete without HQ attendance. We were very honoured that the Area Commander brought along 9 SSO/ASO and MCAD also bought a table. Here is Dr Lee, HQ Area Commander giving his speech....The Reception....A lot of work needs to be put in to plan the seating arrangements and to seat 800 people is not easy.The Banquet Hall..........When the guests entered the hall, all of them just said "Wow! So grand!"The Highlight of the evening.........The Finale........The OC and the members enjoying themselves.........Photographers having a field day..........On the left is Vincent....most of these photos are taken from his album (without permission actually! But I don't think he minds. He is also from our Heng Ee St John Ambulance family)The smiles on their faces say it all.........................