Fandoms at Random: Doctor Who Ramblings

[It's been over a week since the Doctor Who New Series 5 finale, so I guess it's now safe to post this photo? There doesn't seem to be much context to it anyway....]

I seriously need to catch up on my Doctor Who viewing. So far, my partner and I have already seen all of the Ninth's episodes and most of the Tenth's - all the way up to "The Stolen Earth" / "Journey's End", anyway. After that we've the 2008 and 2009 specials and "The End of Time", and then we can start watching Eleventh's stuff.

At this rate I'm just hoping we can get caught up before Christmas, which is when New Series 6 kicks off.

Having already been spoiled for parts of "The Pandorica Opens" / "The Big Bang", I really just want to know what happens to the three people rumored to be Eleventh's major companions: Rory, Amy, and River (?).

And I'm torn on the speculation of River Song's identity. Is she the Doctor's girlfriend/wife? Daughter? [I hope not!] Some other type of blood relative? Is she the person who will wind up killing him? I'm leaning more toward the girlfriend/wife theory and I'm pretty much waiting for that to be Jossed hard - I mean, hello, people, this is Doctor Who, all theories are true and all theories are false.

On a slightly related note, it's kind of neat to be following Neil Gaiman on Twitter - except for the part where the poor man has been pretty much tearing his hair out over his New Series 6 script. Seven rewrites?! Gah! And as of the latest update the Beeb has accepted the seventh draft, but it still needs to lose ten pages. Holy crap. I really would not want to be in his shoes right now.

Aah, the pleasures and travails of fandom. And just you wait till I get a full head of steam about Inception - I still want to watch it and I'm still part of the fandom for it. My mind is the scene of a crime!

Leaving you all on this way-too-early Saturday morning with the Eleventh Doctor's theme:



This version is supposed to be called something like "Every Star, Every Planet".

Super Elisabeth smash! (It's super effective!)

[Right, yes, mixing fandoms and rather dizzily happy about it, thank you!]

Here is a song that I stumbled on tonight and it is a mighty song indeed. [Many thanks to the Facebook friend who found this first.]


The song is "Yami ga Hirogaru", performed by Shizuki Asato as Der Tod and Máté Kamarás as Prince Rudolf.

The original title of the song is "Die Schatten werden länger", translated into English as "The Shadows Grow Longer". The Japanese version, however, is rendered into English as "The Darkness is Falling" or something like that.

Anyone who's a fan of this musical will be able to know why this is an amazing and unique rendition: this is actually being performed by two very famous Der Tods! We have Shizuki from the 1998 Soragumi production of the Takarazuka Kagekidan, and Kamarás from the 2004-2005 Vienna Revival cast.

And to think that Kamarás learned part of the Japanese lyrics just to perform this song!

I think that it's one of the more powerful renditions I've heard - Shizuki's voice keeps going from strength to strength even though it's been nearly 10 years since she performed as Der Tod, and as for Kamarás, well, it's not too hard to imagine why he's such a star.

I'm deliberately going to Ear Worm myself with this song!

The Hero of Canton!

He robbed from the rich
And he gave to the poor
Stood up to the man
And gave him what for
Our love for him now
Ain't hard to explain
The hero of Canton
The man they call Jayne


After all that blatheration and a couple of weekends' noodling around with patterns, yarn weights, and crochet hooks, I think I've finally managed to create my very own tribute to the 'verse of Firefly and Serenity.

But first: a familiar ballad for all you mudders and Browncoats:


Love how silly Adam Baldwin is. Jayne Cobb is da man.

And now, here is my own take on that gorgeously, ridiculously, forever-geeky hat:



Sure, I haven't bothered with the earflaps and the pompom on top - but it's big enough to cover my ears anyway, and I'm not exactly a dab hand at pompoms so I've given that detail a pass. But here is something I can use to keep my head warm AND to proclaim my Browncoat allegiances. [Although the real Jayne was indifferent to that conflict....]

Hope y'all think it's shiny. I'm pretty happy with it my own self - not bad for a first attempt / original pattern.

Meal in the City: Toast Box, TriNoMa, Quezon City

The Kaya Toast Set at Toast Box: two soft-boiled eggs, two pieces of white bread toast spread with kaya and butter, and a cup of teh tarik [black tea with condensed milk].

It's always fun to venture forth and choose another place to eat at for the first time. On the other hand, there are days when one just wants to eat something familiar and soothing - you know, comfort food. Food that makes one feel inherently better just for its mere existence.

One of the places where I can get food like that is Toast Box in TriNoMa, Quezon City. Part of the Singaporean BreadTalk group, this place serves traditional Southeast Asian food, drinks, and coffee in minimalist settings livened up by a dash of retro charm.

I've been a semi-regular at this branch for more than a year now and I have to say it's really become one of those places that I go to because it's so damn comforting to sit there and eat delicious food done right, washed down with an assortment of hometown drinks.

I often host meetings with friends here, as I did today, when I hosted a mini stitch 'n' bitch session-slash-super happy fangirl times. And it is still a favored go-to destination when my partner and I are doing our shopping and want a snack, a hot drink, or an actual full-blown meal. Try their Hainanese chicken rice and their nasi lemak; the kaya toast and thick toast sets are also magnificent.

And their drinks! Oh, wow. Try the house bestsellers like teh tarik and Nanyang coffee, or indulge in a delicious blast from the past like Horlicks. [I never had this when I was a kid - now that I'm an adult, I try to get as much of it as I can, as it is no longer being retailed locally.] Their cold drinks selection also features something that puts a smile on many diners' faces: a Milo Dinosaur. Fantastic.

The funny thing is, why did it take me so long to actually write up a Meal in the City post on this place? I guess I just keep forgetting to take my camera with me when I go here for a dose of homey good food.

Do try to eat here or at its other branches when you can.

Inception, in on the ground floor

Related post:
Inception: Rapid Review, No Spoilers

And there are still no spoilers here because I love you all and I love this film too.



It's so exciting to get in on the ground floor of a fandom: you're there when it gets started, you watch the enthusiasm rocket up to astounding levels, you feel the boundless energy of fans and their love.

I'm not looking forward to the inevitable schisms and wank - it'll come, most fandoms go through those pangs periodically. But for now the sheer explosion of inspiration and creativity that's come - it's exactly as Eames tells Arthur:

You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.

And that is precisely what we're doing right now. Thanks, Christopher Nolan and the cast and crew. We're dreaming. And we're loving it.

From Boyzone to Take That

If you're on my Facebook or Twitter then you know that I was listening to a bunch of UK boy band songs over the past weekend or so. Specifically, I had been shuffling through the catalogue of Boyzone, with occasional side-tracks from Take That [specifically, "Back for Good"].

That weekend was also the first time I heard the songs "Love You Anyway" and "Gave It All Away".

I'm not ashamed to say I cried watching those two videos. "Love You Anyway" was supposed to be their comeback / reunion single - and then Stephen Gately died. So they did "Gave It All Away" as a tribute to him.

I have to admit I was unmoved by the boy bands craze in the nineties. I only ever bothered to listen to Boyzone - I liked the way they performed, I liked the way they sounded, and I quite liked the way they all looked - I mean, they didn't really stick much to the clean-cut good-boy stereotypes, did they?

And then there was that spirit of fun that they brought to many of their videos: "When the Going Gets Tough [The Tough Get Going]"; "Picture of You"; their cameo in U2's "The Sweetest Thing".

I was one of the many fans who was devastated when I found out that Stephen had died so suddenly last year. It was like a slap to the face. And when I read all over the world news that the remaining members of Boyzone reacted the way they did - I wonder how close to actual hysteria each one of them came - I had nothing to say but "I understand".

I miss them. And I miss my cassette tape of "By Request", one of their greatest hits compilations.

***

On the other hand, I don't know why the fans are staging a backlash against the return of Robbie Williams to Take That - especially when the band themselves are claiming to be enthusiastically happy about it. It's not really a fandom I participated in, though, so I've nothing more to say except, you know, hopefully "Back for Good".

Inception: Rapid Review, No Spoilers

Having rushed off to see Inception today with my partner, here are my notes and impressions:

- I want to stay at that hotel, hamster wheel corridor included.

- The way I'm thinking right now, my totem would either be a fountain pen or a crochet hook. [And I teased my partner that his would be a miniature figure of a panda.]

- Eames / the Forger [Tom Hardy] is my absolute favorite character in the movie.

- Nobody messes with Arthur / the Point Man [Joseph Gordon-Levitt].

- And Ariadne / the Architect [Ellen Page]? Rocks. End of discussion.

- As for actors: GODDAMN but Cillian Murphy can ACT. Whew. Bloody amazing that man.

After the movie? Best advice would be to engage friends in friendly but intense debate over the story, its themes, and its internal logic. Preferably over either alcohol or, if there are teetotalers, lots and lots of sweets [my partner and I did most of our critiques over dinner, which included a slice of Black Forest cake].

And, as I said over and over again on my Facebook and my Twitter: whatever the hell Christopher Nolan was on while writing and rewriting this damn movie - I WANT SOME AND I WANT IT NOW.

Go, watch, be amazed. I am an absolute newbie in the genre of mindfuck cinema, but I will be so presumptuous as to say that this movie is now on my list.

Crochet Second Commissioned Project: Watch Cap: COMPLETE!

Related posts:
Crochet First Commissioned Project: Watch Cap: COMPLETE! (Extra: Magazines!)
Inventory for a future little crafting shop
Crochet works: yarn for side projects

It took a lot of slow effort over a couple of days, but I'm happy to report that my crochet side projects are now complete and ready for delivery.


First up, the sleeve for my mother's Samsung i780 [also known as the Samsung Mirage]. I know, it looks a little misshapen, but it will look a heck of a lot better with the phone unit in.


And, as I joked in the previous entry, a very *colorful* watch cap. This is the actual commission of the post title. My sister specified that the purple bit be either multiple thin stripes or one wide stripe, and I ended up deciding on the first option. Who'd have thought that orange multi and purple multi yarns would look rather dashing together?

[As a joke, this hat will hopefully ensure my sister can never get lost in a crowd - the colors are too damn bright.]

And after a quick break and rest, back to the afghan.

Crochet works: yarn for side projects

I'm temporarily setting aside the afghan project to tackle a couple of interesting side projects of the commission type.

Wow, I talk about yarn A LOT on this blog, have you noticed?

And I'm going to talk about it some more with this post, in which I show off some recent acquisitions - each of which has already been earmarked for a specific project.


This dark green yarn is for a special request / commission from my mother. I'm going to try making a pouch for her smartphone, in the same general pattern as my RPG dice bag. The only difference will be the size of the project - she has one of those Samsung QWERTY-keypad phones, and it's kinda large, so I have to adapt accordingly.


This speckled purple yarn was originally intended to be made up into a pouch for my younger sister's external hard disk. [As you can probably guess - yeah, she likes purple. A LOT. The scarf I made for her is just ONE piece of evidence.]

Recently, though, my sister decided to do something else with this yarn instead: she wants it to be an insert in an orange beanie.

And how orange is orange? Well, how about this?


I found this variegated red-orange-yellow-shaded Red Heart yarn at Dreams Yarnshoppe today. It was pretty much the sort of thing I had in mind, so I bought two skeins' worth.


The two yarns for my sister's commission. I think it will be INTERESTING to see how these two opposing colors work up together. This was my sister's idea; I'm just executing it - but I'm pretty sure the resulting photos will be VERY bright. At least that. *snicker*

If I have any of that orange stuff left over I'll make my own version of Jayne Cobb's hat. Gorram it I finally found something that would suit. Shiny!

Meal in the City: Singaporean food at Orchard Road, SM Megamall

In the previous post I mentioned heading to SM Megamall in Pasig City - actually, we went there specifically because we'd heard that there was a Singaporean restaurant that just opened on one of its floors and we wanted to try the food there.

Me and my now-infamous Zombie Head hat, photographed by my partner at the entrance to the restaurant, named Orchard Road.

The ordering system at this place is supposed to be very simple: pick up a menu-slash-order-slip from the counter when you come in; walk around the enclosed/island kitchen to see what whets your appetite; tick off your choices on the order slip; turn in slip to cashier and pay up; wait for staff to bring your food.

There are so many ways this could go wrong....

Well, actually, there was only just the one: the place was so new. So green. The inexperienced cashiers themselves were the bottleneck for lines of hungry patrons who were gradually getting irritated at having to queue up to pay for their food. And the rapidly-overwhelmed kitchen staff got confused at the sheer number of orders coming in, meaning dishes were delayed or mixed up before getting delivered to the tables.

My partner and I split up and decided to order two entirely different things; here's my order:

In the foreground, my Hainanese chicken rice; that's a partially eaten order of kaya toast in the middle, and then the two drinks are my milk tea (with the straw) and my partner's peach iced tea.

The milk tea was excellent, but that was just about the only good thing about my meal. I've had better Hainanese chicken rice and kaya toast at Toast Box in Trinoma. The rice was too sticky for my tastes (and I wound up leaving quite a bit uneaten on my plate), the chicken was haphazardly chopped, and the toast only had just enough kaya spread on it to be detectable to the tongue - mostly I was eating butter, not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely not why I ordered it in the first place....

And as my partner noted as we got ready to leave the restaurant, you can tell that the folks behind the restaurant really spent for their ingredients - so then why was the cooking so damn indifferent?

So, yeah. We were disappointed and unimpressed by our lackluster food and the pointlessly held-up service. We're probably not coming back, and we don't recommend this place to you.

Getting stared at: WORTH IT.

Warning: Snark ahead!

Out and about today with the boyfriend: we visited the La Mesa Ecopark in Quezon City - not much going on there, but apparently it's a great hit with local families. Amenities include swimming, rowboating, trail riding, paintball. Unfortunately the one feature we wanted to try - fishing - is no longer on offer.

From there we went to SM Megamall in Pasig City. As we got on the escalators we found out that there was a mini-convention going on: "I Ai Anime" by OtakuZine. So we popped in for a quick look.

First off: PHP 100 for a ticket?! The con was a little bit of rip-off city: only took up one exhibit hall and didn't even fill it all up. One space was taken up by the merchants and fandom sellers, one corner by a cafe, one by a stage - and that was it.

Secondly, at the time we showed up the place was still deserted. Other cons I've been to were already standing-room-only by the time 12 noon rolled around, with lines snaking out the entrance and around the mall corridors. But there we were standing in the exhibit hall at a few minutes to noon and there was enough space for people to literally run around and chase each other.

Third: Who knows the rules for playing Jeopardy! any more? And worse, who ever heard of a Jeopardy! game where all the answers had to be written down? You only do that for the Final Jeopardy! round and then you've got to wager something to do it - but the con emcees were trying to get people to play Otaku Trivia Jeopardy!, and ... weren't doing such a hot job.

About the only thing that redeemed the con was the variety and richness of fandom sellers: accessories galore. Pins, silly hats, key chains, mobile phone charms - there was quite a lot to choose from.

And, oh, did I mention SILLY HATS?

BRAINZZZZ~!

We spotted one merchant selling all sorts of Plants vs Zombies stuff and after much deliberation, we wound up buying this lovely zombie-head hat. I would almost call it a helm a la Ragnarok Online - look at the size of that thing!

After we left the con I kept the hat on while we strolled around the mall corridors. Reactions varied, but yes, it was very satisfying to get stared at. After all, there was a zombie in the mall!

Slow progress is still progress.

Related posts:
Cross my fingers and hope for the best...
Ripples in my memory, lead me back to you



It turns out that this afghan project is of the "fills in lazy hours" kind. I've woken up at odd times during this week and I've found that spending an hour or so on each three-row stripe of the afghan is very...soothing.

[Of course, I am still not tout a fait happy because the bloody downstairs neighbors have NO concept of peace and quiet. I can hear their voices very clearly even when they are yammering away on the ground floor and I am trying to sleep on the third floor.

Were I a sorcerer, I would either Fireball the lot or, worse, drop a permanent Silence status effect on them. Yeah. And that's just for starters.]

Anyway, I'm not sure if I should be happy with the glacial pace of progress on this thing. I'm shooting for a length of about 60 inches, but have been creeping along so that today I estimated the finished length at about 17 in. Yeah, sure, one-fourth of the way through? At this point the afghan is already large enough to be a nice lap rug.

At least I can try to make up for lost time in the next few weeks.



Is it funny or weird that the more I work on this thing the more I want to give it away? Isn't the opposite more true for crafters - "I'm making this lovely thing for someone else - and I wish I could just keep it for myself"? I don't know. Oh well. Work, work, work!

All we need is love, each other...and gelato

The reason for the hiatus: my partner and I were celebrating eleven years together. We took time off from our respective jobs and spent the last four days running around the city together, exploring, eating, having fun. and delighting in each other's company.

The one thing that we tried to do was to do things for the first time. So we ate at restaurants we'd never tried before - there were hits and there were misses, but the experience was great all the same.

We stopped in at a photography studio and had our portraits taken. It was a simultaneously sad and funny experience: we were imagining what our photographer must feel like shooting all these people that he may or may not meet again; we were feeling our nerves because it was something we had never done before; he was fussing about his hair and I was unhappy with my scarred face.

[Some people even asked me afterwards if it was a pre-nup shoot.

In a word, no. Sorry to disappoint!]

We saw Toy Story 3. As we make a point out of seeing Disney/Pixar movies, no surprises there - except for the part where we splashed out for tickets to an IMAX 3D theater.

[One of the Barbie doll's final outfits made me gasp and point at the screen because I'd had that Barbie doll when I was a kid. Barbie and the Rockers...wow, that was a very long time ago.]

And yesterday's highlight: an eat-all-you-can gelato interlude, at a nice place called Gelatone in Greenbelt 4 [Ayala Center, Makati City]. Five hundred pesos gets two people all the gelato they can eat, provided they show up during all Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays of July, 2-5pm.

Let's let the pictures speak for themselves.

Starting off with my lemon sherbet and his peaches-and-lemon one.

His next two flavors: mint and chocolate, and mixed berries.

I tried the panna cotta-flavored gelato next.

My third scoop was mascarpone with candied figs.

My partner's final flavor was cheesecake.

And mine was dark Toblerone.

It was a great break from normal life. Yes, we only had eyes for each other. It was an occasion that needed to be remembered and commemorated. And that's precisely what we did.

Here's to us, my love.