New Blog Post with New Short Reviews!

Hello!

I haven't been writing for a pretty long time, eh? Actually, I've always wanted to write but I hadn't been watching films and reading books a lot over the past few weeks, so I had nothing to write about. I had to save my money for other important things and had limited internet access at home, so I couldn't go to the cinema or buy books or stream my favorite TV shows at home. This made me a little crazy... and lonely.

Life does feel a little lonely these days. Well, for me.

So I have just moved out from my parents' house and started living alone in a rented room again. This is not my first experience of living on my own, but it feels surprisingly different from the previous experience. When I was a student, I didn't feel lonely at all. I saw my friends every day and did everything together. We used to walk to the campus together, eat together, work on our assignments together, stay up all night together, etc. I used to have a double life as a student/teacher at that time, so I was super busy. At that time, life was so lively. I didn't have time to feel lonely.

But now everything is different.

I don't have my friends here. The other people who rent the rooms in my building don't seem like they are interested in making friends with me. Most of my co-workers at my current office are married with children, so they're all busy with their family lives. There are others who are still single like me, but they are super busy as well. I think I should make myself super busy too. Maybe I should get a side job...

But at least I get good internet connection here. So I can watch movies online again. I can finally catch up on The Flash, Teen Wolf, How to Get Away with Murder and Supergirl! And update my blog too, of course.

So I'm going to share my thoughts about several films and TV shows that I've recently seen. Here we go.

1. The 5th Wave

This movie is adapted from a series of novels which I heard is quite popular. It's about a teenage girl who tries her best to survive an alien invasion that happens on Earth. The aliens perform several waves of brutal actions in order to wipe out the humans and own the Earth. The fourth wave begins when the aliens start inhabiting human bodies, making it difficult to differentiate between the aliens and the humans. The surviving teenagers must fight for their planet before the final wave, which is the fifth one, starts.

For me, there is nothing special about this movie. The story is not new; it's quite similar to Stephenie Meyers's The Host. I expected great acting from the leading lady, Chloe Moretz, but her performance is just mediocre. There are no impressive special effects or cool action sequences either. My date even fell asleep during the movie. Sooo I'm not satisfied with this movie. The teen actors are good looking, though haha.

2. Supergirl

Supergirl was one of my most anticipated new TV shows last year and I have finally seen the pilot episode. I'm a little late though; the pilot was first aired in November last year. As I expected, it is very similar to the other superhero show, The Flash. I think the first episode is quite rushed. Like The Flash, Supergirl decides to wear her superhero suit and fight bad guys on the first episode. I've always thought it would be better if they give some time to these heroes to deal with their powers before they put on the suits, but they probably want to get everyhting settled quickly so that they can develop the story. However, I like the actors who are involved in this series. They're so lovable, especially Melissa Benoist (Kara/Supergirl) and Jeremy Jordan (Winn). I just hope they will slow down on the next episode and let the story and the characters grow. The Flash did it and I like it very much.

3. Kung Fu Panda 3

This movie is the third installment of the popular Panda saga haha. This time, Po the Panda has to come back to his home and learn how to be a real panda in order to get the ability to fight his latest enemy. I think the story is independent and not directly related to the previous films. I haven't even seen the second movie (I don't even remember that there is a second movie, actually), but I had no problem in following the story of the third movie.

I didn't expect it to be good, but it suprisingly is. The story is quite simple, but the message is very powerful. It reminds us that, in order to reach greatness, all that we have to do is be ourselves. We have to figure out what we can do best and develop it. We shouldn't try to be someone else. Just be... ourselves, the awesome version of us. I think this message is very heartwarming.

It is also surprsing to know that all the voice actors from the original film come back for this one. Those are well-known, busy actors like Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen, etc. It's really cool to know that they all come back for the third time. Maybe they just love the animal characters as much as we all do.

My Selfish Dead Heart

(I am in the middle of my long Christmas holiday and I'm just bored, so I decided to post another story. I've had this story for a long time. Hope you like it!)

                 Once upon a time, in a cold and grim city, there lived a young lady named Olivia. Olivia was breathtakingly beautiful. She was incredibly canny as well. But the one feature that was always associated with Olivia was that she always got what she wanted.

                “She always gets what she wants. Always,” her proud mother said. “But sometimes she becomes a little… aggressive in the process. Only a little,” she continued with a giggle.

People around Olivia did not really know how they felt about her. They admired her but were scared of her at the same time. They tried to avoid her as much as they could, leaving her with almost no friend at all. Almost, because she still had one friend: Joseph.

The calm boy met the avid girl when they both were very young and somehow found a way to keep up with her. Olivia loved how mysteriously silent Joseph was; her curiosity about him was insatiable. On the other hand, Joseph saw Olivia’s burning ambitions as something unique. He told her that he had never met any girl like her before. Years after their first meeting, they realized that they loved each other and decided to get married.

                Joseph’s and Olivia’s families were very busy preparing their wedding. They did everything that was necessary: inviting everyone they knew, ordering the best cooks to prepare the meals, designing a magnificent dress for the bride, and all other wedding stuff. The wedding would have been a perfect one if the horrifying thing had not happened two nights before the wedding day.

It was nearly midnight, and Olivia had to walk home alone. While she was rushing through the dark streets, two drunken men ambushed her.

“Where are you going, beautiful?” shouted one of the men while the other one was trying to hold Olivia’s arms. Olivia tried to push them away, but they started laughing. The man who was holding her tightened his grip and the other man ripped Olivia’s clothes. Olivia shrieked and cried desperately, so one of the men took a rock from the street and hit her head with it to silence her. The pain from the blow was the last thing she felt.

                Olivia turned into a ghost and flew to Joseph’s house. She found the man that she loved sitting on his own bed; his face looked vacuous.

“He must have found out about me,” Olivia thought. “Oh, my love, you must be devastated.”

She tried to reach Joseph’s shoulder with her hand, but she could not touch him. She tried again with both of her hands, but they were like smoke to Joseph’s solid flesh. Olivia was furious.

“Even though I can no longer touch your skin,” she swore in her rage, “I am not leaving you, my love. I am not letting you go.”

Olivia really did what she swore. She kept haunting Joseph wherever he went, not letting him forget about her. She made him see her shadow when he either closed or opened his eyes. She made him hear her voice when it was completely silent. She came to his darkest and most awful nightmares. She kept him mourning about her death. She tortured him.

                One day, the mournful Joseph went out drinking with his best friend, John. “You need to get your life back, my friend,” said John. “Let’s have some drink and forget your sorrow!”

The two men went to a pub that was owned by John’s friend, Gordon. While Gordon and John were chatting and drinking, Joseph’s eyes were locked to a girl behind the bar: Violet.

Violet was Gordon’s younger sister. Her hair was long and dark while her eyes were big and grey, reminded Joseph of his Olivia. However, unlike Olivia, who had fire burning in her eyes all the time, this girl had fragile beauty that longed for protection and tenderness. Joseph was stunned by Violet’s unusual beauty. For the first time since Olivia’s death, Joseph was able to forget his painful loss.

                As the two became closer and closer, love began to grow inside their young hearts. His new love allowed Joseph to forget his anguish and continue his life. “You are the cure for the bleeding wound in my heart,” said Joseph before he leaned to kiss Violet’s lips softly.

From a dark corner, Olivia saw Joseph and Violet’s first kiss. She was furious. However, she was not the only one who was unhappy about Joseph and Violet. John was also pissed to see the girl whom he had secretly loved and his best friend together.

                Olivia could smell John’s hatred and flew to the man’s house. She went to his ear and whispered a devilish suggestion.

“Kill him,” she whispered cruelly. “The girl is yours, but he steals her from you. He has betrayed you! You have the right to do it! Kill him!”

The resentful John could not use his mind to think clearly at that time. He took his gun and rushed to Joseph’s house. He knocked the door and, as soon as Joseph opened it for him, killed his best friend with a single shot.

Violet, who was also there in Joseph’s house, was down on her knees and cried next to Joseph’s dead body.

“How could you do this?” she asked John hysterically. “He was your best friend!”

John did not say anything for a moment. He stared at his hand and the gun it was holding. He fell on his knees and started crying. With tears pouring from his eyes, John took his gun again and shot his own head with it.

                Joseph turned into a ghost and was enthusiastically welcomed by Olivia. Knowing what Olivia had done, Joseph acted coldly towards her.

“You said you loved me,” said Joseph, “but now look at what you have done! This is not love. You do not love me. You are selfish!”

Olivia was startled to hear what Joseph said. She felt very irritated and was very angry at Joseph. While Olivia was still burned by her exasperation, Joseph flew away to find Violet.

                Joseph found Violet kneeling next to his grave. She was holding a bouquet in silence, but Joseph could see tears falling from her bright eyes. Even though he knew that Violet would not be able to actually hear his words, he approached her and went to her ear.

“I love you,” he whispered, “and even if you stop crying for me, I will always know that you feel the same.”

Violet sobbed and trembled, and then put the bouquet on the grave. After a long gaze to the tombstone, she stood up and slowly walked away.

Anna and the Alien

Anna has got her heart broken before. A few times, actually. The plot of her love stories is always the same one. She meets a guy. She lets her guards down. She falls in love with the guy, slowly but usually really, really hard. She lets the guy keep her hanging for so long. And then it ends. Just like that, before it even starts. And then, of course, her heart is broken.

            

When it happens, it feels like there is a baby alien in her chest, ready to tear her skin and burst, like in the movie Alien. She doesn’t know what the alien is made of. Anger? Hatred? Sadness? Disappointment? Regret? Sometimes the alien moves away from her chest to her eyes. It usually changes its form into teardrops and frees itself from a cage that is Anna’s body through her eyes. The latter one is easier for the alien; it’s usually hard for Anna to hold her tears.

            

Anna hates feeling heartbroken. She shouldn’t be worried because she knows exactly what she has to do to avoid it: don’t fall in love.

           

But can she do that? Hell, no.

           

It had been a year since the last time Anna saw Ray, the last guy. She had accepted the fact that she couldn’t be with him, that he didn’t feel the same way, that she was only a friend for him, that she was never his girlfriend anyway, that he wasn’t the right one for her, blah blah blah… The baby alien had come out. She had moved on. She had convinced herself that it was better for her to be on her own. She had promised to herself that she wouldn’t let herself fall in love again and that she would focus on other precious things in her life.

            

But then she met Jay.

            

When she first met him, she foolishly thought that things would be different with him. He created butterflies and let them fly around in her stomach. He whispered lovely words and sweet promises to her ears. He held her hands and made her feel safe and serene. He embraced her when she was cold and made her feel warm. Oh, this must be true love, she thought.

            

Four months later, the baby alien returned. Just like in the Alien movies.

Sometimes Anna wonders why this keeps happening. Why does that crazy little thing people call love keep coming to her and breaking her heart?  She doesn’t even want it to come to her; she doesn’t even look for it. She is perfectly fine being single and all she wants is to be happy. “Why?” she always asks the walls of her room, but no one has ever answered.

(I was just in the mood to write a story and happen to have something to write about, so I made this unusual blog post haha. It feels really good to turn your thoughts and feelings into a piece of writing! Hope you enjoy it!)

What I Got from My Last Outings

Since I graduated from university, I haven't been spending much time with my college friends. It's just so hard for us to meet because we all work in different places and have different schedules now. This is sad because we used to spend a lot of time together and have so much fun. I miss those days when I got to see my friends every day, attend classes with them, eat with them, complain about the tasks that the lecturers gave us together... I miss my college friends so much.

But, I got the chance to see some of my best friends over the last few weeks. Two weeks ago I went to see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 with my fangirling partner, Lia, and my super busy PE teacher friend (hahaha). Last week, I met my mentoring group members (I used to be a mentor for junior students when I was still a student). And yesterday I had an early Christmas lunch with my former co-workers, most of whom are my college friends too. Seeing them makes me really happy and I hope we all can do that more often.

My blog post is not complete if it does not include book and movie stuff haha. So, yeah, I am still going to review something here. As I said before, I saw The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 two weeks ago. I didn't just see it in the cinema, actually; I saw it with 499 other people who are diehard fans of the Hunger Games saga from the saga's fan community. It was really fun because everyone was so excited and passionate about the movie (they screamed a lot during the viewing event). We got some cool Hunger Games merchandises too.

Katniss and her star squad in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

For the movie itself, I think it's a good one. My favorite from the saga is still the second movie, Catching Fire, but Mockingjay Part 2 is still a great conclusion to the saga. My favorite thing about the movie is probably the acting. I don't know why I didn't realize this before, but Jennifer Lawrence's portrayal of Katniss is really good. She truly transforms herself into the character. When I saw the movie, I didn't see Jennifer at all because I only saw Katniss. I am always fascinated by actors who are able to do that. I think Josh Hutcherson does a great job too. Just seeing him and his traumatized expression makes me sad. My favorite character dies (in a horrible death scene that involves mutants with sharp teeth) in the movie, so I'm so broken-hearted haha.

When I was waiting for my mentoring friends to come last week, I strolled around a bookstore and found a novel that I had wanted to read. The novel is Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. Rainbow's other novel, Eleanor & Park, is one of my favorite books (read my review of it here). It is simply beautiful, easy to read and, like Park says in the book, really makes you feel something. So, I hope Fangirl is just as awesome as Eleanor & Park. I'm pretty sure I will be able to relate to the story because even the title is so... me haha.

Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl

That's all from me today. I'm sure it will take some time until I can write my review of Fangirl, but I'm definitely going to review it. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is coming to theaters in less than two weeks and I can assure you that I'm gonna watch and review it as soon as it is released. I hope I can see the movie on the first day because I just can't wait any longer haha.

Have a wonderful year-end holiday! :)

Is Studying Hard and Boring?

Although I've sworn not to watch An Education again after memorizing every single scene of the movie for my thesis (the movie is the medium of my thesis), I must admit that it is a great movie. It gives us a lot to think about and full of fantastic actors doing fantastic acting. The dialogues of the movie are quite quotable too. One of the most memorable ones, and the one that is related to what I want to talk about in this post, is this one below.

In the scene, Jenny, the main character of the movie, is so convinced that it is right for her to abandon education and career opportunities for marriage (Okay this sentence is SO like my thesis haha). Well she changes her mind later in the story, but, at one point, she thinks abandoning education will be liberating because, for her, studying is "hard and boring".

It's sad that a schoolgirl whose main job is studying thinks that studying is hard and boring. But another thing that is even more saddening than that for me is seeing that many people that I know agree with her.

As a student, I could see that most of my friends hated studying and working on assignments. They always complained when they had to face those two things. Well, it's not surprising that they hate doing those things because, for them, studying means reading textbooks and memorizing everything written there and working on assignments means staying up all night in front of our exercise books or laptops.

As a teacher, I can see that the same notion still lives in people's minds. When I teach, I am expected to keep my students quite and do nothing but reading or working on their tasks. When a student is noisy or moves around a lot, that student will be considered a naughty student by the others. When I disguise my lesson as games and play with my students during a lesson, people will think that we don't study anything in the class. When I give my students some fun activities during the lesson, my lesson will be considered as something that is "not worth it". When a student gets bad scores at school, the student will be considered as the one who deserves to be scolded.

So is studying really hard and boring? In my opinion, it's not.

I think the one that makes studying seem hard and boring is actually that notion that lives in people's minds; the notion that always associates studying with things that are hard and boring. I think studying shouldn't be hard and boring. It should be fun and enjoyable because it's way easier for students to grasp the knowledge when they're happy. I've experienced it as both a student and a teacher.

When I was homeschooled, the homeschooling institution liked to do gatherings and give projects to homeschoolers. The projects usually let us apply the knowledge that we had learnt. The projects were quite fun to do, more fun than I expected. Moreover, they made me realize that education can be considered as successful not when a student is able to get a good score during the final exam, but when a student is able to apply the knowledge that has been learnt to real situations. I also learned that learning doesn't always mean learning math or biology; learning things like friendship, love and team-work can also be considered as learning. When I realized that, I started learning with my heart. When I had to analyze literary works during my time as an English literature student, I absorbed all the things that I learned from them with my heart and felt very rich after that.

When I teach my students, I also like to keep my students as happy as possible. I love to disguise my lessons in games and play with my students. Another thing that I really love doing in the class is storytelling. Storytelling allows the students to relax and enjoy the story but also provides exposure to the target language (English), which means they study and have fun at the same time. And watching my students' jaws drop when they're so focused on the stories is the most fun thing ever (haha). I also like to make deals with my students to keep them happy and make sure that the learning outcomes are achieved. For example, I have a group of students who always ask to be given some time for drawing during the lesson. I grant their wish, but they have to promise that they would finish all the exercises that I give them before that. They keep their promises and I keep mine. Everyone is happy, right?

So I think we should stop associating studying and learning with hard and boring things and change the ways we see them. When I started seeing them in a different way, I found studying and learning very gratifying. 

Lesson Learned from a Korean

Two blog posts for today! I just have a lot of things to write about these days...

Well, this post is not about movies or books like usual; I would like to share something that I learned from a random conversation that I had last week with someone that I met at my office.

As I stated in my first post, I work at an English course in Jakarta. Even though I'm a teacher, my boss likes to use me as an emergency admin when the real admin is having her day-off every Friday (I've told him so many times that I SUCK at doing administration work, but he never seems to listen *sigh*). So last Friday I was sitting in the front office and then this Korean mom appeared with her two daughters. When the oldest daughter went into her class to start her lesson, the mom and the other daughter sat in front of me and my co-worker. And then we started chatting.

At first the conversation was all about the entertainment industry in Korea. My co-workers LOVE Korean dramas and Korean boybands and girlbands, but I don't, so I was not very interested at first (I don't hate K-Dramas and K-Pop, I'm just not very fanatic about them. Please don't kill me.). But when it was almost time for the daughter's class to finish, we were talking about our feelings as citizens whose countries were once colonized by Japan.

Okay, let's have a short history class now.

Korea was under the Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945. Meanwhile, Indonesia, my country, was colonized by the Japanese Empire for a shorter period of time, from 1942 to 1945. The occupation of both countries was ended in 1945, which was resulted by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki done by the Americans near the end of World War II. 

So this Korean mom stated that she and most of the Koreans are still very sensitive about the colonization. She said that the history about the colonization is used by the Koreans to remind them that they have to work hard, so that they can prove that they don't deserve to be colonized, that they are not lower than their former colonizer.

And what about us, the Indonesians? This Korean mom assumed that we don't feel the same. Well, maybe she made that conclusion because we can see a lot of Japanese things in Indonesia: Japanese restaurants, Japanese bakery, Japanese school, Japanese cartoons (that we all grew up watching), Japanese dance lessons, Japanese girl groups with Indonesian sister groups (hahaha), etc. This Korean lady stated that she saw a Japanese flag that was used by them during the time of the colonization in a mall. She was shocked to see that the Indonesians felt nothing about that, because the Koreans would feel emotional if they saw one.

Well, I think it is a good thing that the Indonesians have let it go and have peace with our former colonizer. But her statement about working hard to prove that we don't deserve to be oppressed really slapped me in the face. Work hard; that's what we, the Indonesians, must do. We usually just admire the Japanese and the Koreans for how great and tenacious they are. Her statement makes me realize that we shouldn't just do that; we must work hard and be great and tenacious like them. We must prove that we don't deserve to be oppressed, that we are not lower than other countries, that our country is great too.

So the lesson that I've learned from this is, we must use the bad experiences in our lives to remind us that we must fight harder.

That's all from me today. Have a great week ahead! :)