Coraline Movie Review

Bradley Farless1 Comment

Coraline isn’t going to be released in theaters in Singapore until September 17th, 2009, but I managed to get a copy early and my wife and I watched it tonight. I have to say I’m quite impressed with it. First of all, it’s visually stunning! These snapshots are a little fuzzy because I took them without pausing the video, but you’ll get the idea:

When I first saw advertisements for Coraline, the story sounded really interesting and I wasn’t disappointed in the least. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a kid’s movie or not, but it has a lot of deeper meanings and reminds me of classic fairy tales, where there’s always a lesson to be learned. Also in line with classic fairy tales the story has a dark, grim side to it.

Without spoiling the entire thing for a person who hasn’t seen it, the main character is named… Coraline of course! Coraline and her parents move to an old house for reasons that are never divulged. Shortly after moving in she encounters a strange young boy that lives nearby named Whirbie. The next day, he delivers a 100-year-old doll to her that mysteriously looks exactly like her. This doll will cause Coraline to open Pandora’s box (or in this case a tiny door) and send her on a wild and dangerous adventure.

Other things that I’d like to point out are that the characters in this movie are very well thought-out. They have depth and are all very entertaining. Also, I’m going to start looking for a way to get my hands on the original soundtrack. The music was spot-on and did a great job in setting the mood. Oh, and can I mention the great animation again? It really is fantastic. And it’s not just the animation quality either. The use of color and imagery will keep your eyes darting around the screen constantly.

This is a definite must see, whether you have kids or not!

Muslim Food

Bradley Farless11 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted an article about some Muslim food we’d tried. It was called Chicken Murtabak and it was pretty good. It took me almost a year to get up the courage to try out Muslim food. I think it was mostly because of paranoid fear over being poisoned or having my food spit on by Muslims because of where I’m from.  Not to mention I spent some time in Iraq.  Ya, sounds kinda silly and stupid right?  But, for years the US media has been pushing it down our throats that all Arabs/Muslims could potentially be dangerous, and I spent a long time in Iraq and Kuwait, worrying about whether a guy was going to say hello or blow himself (and me) up at any moment.  So, maybe the fear wasn’t so unfounded after all, but then again most people here ask me where I’m from.  They don’t seem to recognize the accent.

Anyhow, we enjoyed the murtabak and had decided we would go back for more, but we put it off because it messed up our stomachs a bit. Tonight we finally decided to eat there again. The stuff tasted so good we were willing to risk stomach problems! Plus, we think it was the curry that’s served with the dish that caused the problem, so we were careful about how much of it we ate this time around.

As we walked up to the “Indian Muslim” stall, the guy behind the counter had an amused look on his face. Maybe there aren’t too many white guys that order Muslim food in this area? Well, that probably goes without saying. Anyhow, we got another order of murtabak, mutton this time, and a cheese roti prata. I also went to the next stall called “Muslim Food” and got an order of chicken rice. It had another name in front of that, but I can’t remember what it was. So, we had a pretty good spread of food between the two of us.

The mutton murtabak was good, but my wife says she likes the chicken version better. The cheese roti prata was fantastic. I’m going to get more of those tomorrow at lunch time. They remind me of cheese sticks from the US, or like a slice of New York cheese pizza without tomato sauce. It’s not that big, but they’re only 1.50 apiece so it’s not too bad a deal. Plus, I think I can get them cheaper around the corner from there. As for the muslim version of chicken rice, it was surprisingly good. It tasted as if it had been grilled over a real fire, which is a plus for me. I love grilled food! It also had a nice sauce poured over it. The rice was seasoned with garlic, which I enjoyed. Plain rice usually doesn’t do it for me. There was also a cup of a clear broth. That’s typical with meals purchased from hawkers here in Singapore. I wasn’t expecting much from it. Usually it’s just a chicken broth. Again, I was surprised. It had been seasoned with onion and garlic and tasted great!

It’s hard to get over cultural stereotypes, but in this case it was a good thing I did because I’d have missed out on a lot of good food.

Sharing Sidewalks

Bradley Farless1 Comment

About a year ago when I first moved here I saw some advertisements about an initiative that the Tampines Town Council was starting that would allow bicyclists to share the sidewalk with pedestrians.

To the point of being a cliche, it’s common knowledge that in Asia, bicycles are used as a major form of transportation, regardless of income level, since it’s fast, convenient, doesn’t require gas, and you can get to places on your bicycle that you can’t get to in your car.  For example, you could ride up to the convenience store and park right outside it, rather than try to find a parking lot and walk to the convenience store.  Singapore is designed in a way that it looks like Atlanta, but has roads and parking areas like a big city.  Often you’ll find areas with no parking lots, meaning you have to drive quite a ways from your intended destination to find a parking garage and then walk the rest of the way.  In my mind that defeats the purpose.

The legalization of riding bicycles on sidewalks has been widely adopted in Singapore, so the test run must have met with positive results.  I think it’s a fantastic idea.  When I was younger and lived in New York City for a while, my mom told me that it was actually illegal to ride bicycles on the sidewalk there.  I was shocked then and I’m still shocked now.  I can’t imagine riding a bicycle in the city streets in New York.  The traffic isn’t as bad here, but still, who wants to share a lane with a double-decker bus or a semi-truck?

To further improve the city for bicycle use, many areas have had bike paths built alongside the sidewalks.  This makes it possible for cyclists to travel faster, since they have a dedicated lane just for them.  It also makes pedestrians feel safer, since they don’t have to constantly peer over their shoulder for oncoming bicycles.  Bicycles are supposed to all have bells on them, and riders are supposed to use them to alert pedestrians that they’re coming but it doesn’t always happen.

So, here’s where the problem comes in. The city has legalized the use of bicycles on sidewalks, and even made special paths for them, but people don’t seem to want to use them. What I mean is, even though there’s a bike path that parallels the sidewalk, riders often use the pedestrian sidewalk anyways. To make it worse they often don’t use their bells and then get angry when pedestrians don’t move out of their way. On one occasion a rider almost hit my wife with a bicycle, in the area seen in the picture above. I chewed him out and told him he had no right to be on the pedestrian sidewalk anyways, and asked him if he was blind, since the bicycle path is clearly right next to the sidewalk and is marked with big yellow bicycle symbols. On the other hand, I often see pedestrians walking on the bicycle paths. I also see cyclists still riding in the streets, disrupting traffic.

It seems like it would be obvious to people that they should use the appropriate areas for walking and riding, but it just doesn’t happen that way.  Is it a case of “I’m always right” or simply laziness?

Land of the Lost Review

Bradley Farless1 Comment

On Sunday afternoon my wife and I went to the Golden Village theater at Tampines Mall to see Land of the Lost (2009). We weren’t really expecting much from this movie, but it looked entertaining and we weren’t disappointed.

The movie has a fairly simple plot. Don’t go into this looking for a complicated story. This is a comedy. In fact, this movie is so packed with comedy that it’ll have you laughing the whole way through! I don’t recall going more than 5 minutes without at least chuckling at something. That was actually surprising to me. Will Ferrell typically stars in movies that push a certain type of comedy that doesn’t appeal to me.

This movie was fantastic though. The jokes were well thought out and right on schedule. You’ll see everything from trans-dimensional narcotic fruits to lizard people getting it on, to a relatively intelligent tyrannosaurus. A lot of the jokes in the movie seem to have a sexual theme to them though. It’s nothing serious but you may want to think twice about bringing your kid with you, unless they’re over the age of about 12. I kinda wondered how this movie got a PG rating.

One last thing worth noting is that I have an idea that this doesn’t follow along too well with the story-line from the old TV show. I vaguely remember watching it as a kid oh-so-long ago, and I think the family there (a real family, not a thrown together crew like in this film) was actually stuck in the past and lived in a treehouse.

Over-all it was well worth the money we spent to go see it. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time!

BBQ Chicken

Bradley Farless4 Comments

The first time my wife and I took a walk through the E-Hub mall at Downtown East in Pasir Ris, we saw a very nice looking restaurant on the entry level floor.  The name of the place is simply “BBQ Chicken”. I’ve been thinking about it ever since and we finally had the opportunity to go back.

The place is very clean and very comfortable.  We were seated in a nice booth in the corner.  We took a look through the menu.  It’s packed with a lot of great choices.  You can get everything from salads to sandwiches to stuff off the grill.  Looking at the posters on the wall, I think their “main attraction” dishes are made with chicken quarters that are cooked over charcoal, possibly using some sort of light olive oil.  They did look tasty, but we were in the mood for something a bit lighter than that, so my wife got a chicken salad and I got the chicken tortilla meal.  We also ordered an appetizer called koshi.

My chicken tortilla sandwich was pretty good.  It was nothing spectacular, but it was very satisfying.  The fries were a big greasy, but that’s ok.  The coleslaw was surprisingly good.  My wife’s salad was fantastic.  The vegetables were fresh and the chicken in it was surprisingly tasty.  I think it must be prepared the same way as the grilled chicken.  The koshi dish can be seen in the picture above.  It is 3 shish kebabs of chicken mixed with onion and red bell pepper.  They were very good.  My wife liked them a lot and said she could make a whole meal of them.

I can’t say much about the place.  The food wasn’t extraordinary or unique.  It was just good.  We’ll be going back though, and next I plan on trying one of the grilled chicken meals.

Using Swine Flu to Sell Your Product

Bradley Farless4 Comments

Swine Flu has to be the most covered and most talked about event in the last two years, and it’s not even that serious. From what I’ve read, the fatality rate is only 0.1%, which is less than the fatality rate of actual flu.

It’s a new disease though, and it’s in the media limelight, so everyone’s heard of it, and the more people hear about it and ask about it, the more the media covers it. I think it’s past the point of informing people and bordering on propaganda. Sure, people should be informed, but hasn’t it gone on long enough? I even question the extra scanners that have been set up at airports and such, if the swine flu isn’t even as bad as a regular flu.

Now, H1N1 is even being used to sell products! Dettol is a common cleaning agent company here, selling everything from hand soap to floor cleaner. The following pictures are from a can of disinfectant spray, similar to Lysol.

3 Days in Kuala Lumpur: Part 10: Heading Home

Bradley Farless6 Comments

Before we knew it, our short 3 day trip in Kuala Lumpur was coming to an end.

On the morning of the third day we were there, we got up at 9 am to make sure we wouldn’t be late.  We really had no idea how to get back to the airport.  On the way to Kuala Lumpur, the buses were in an obvious location, right along with the taxis and stuff, but it’s not as much of a “no-brainer” when going back to the airport.

The first thing we had to do though was… eat of course!  Since it was a day for traveling we didn’t want to risk eating something that might mess up our stomachs, so we went to McDonald’s.  My wife had the sausage biscuit again, which seemed fitting.  That’s what she had on the first morning, when we were at the Budget Terminal at Changi International in Singapore, waiting on our flight.

After eating, we went back to the hotel and checked with the lady at the front desk for directions.  We specifically wanted to know how to get on one of those cheap buses again.  Why pay more when you don’t have to?  She told us that the best way to get there would be to go back to the Pasar Seni train station and ride to K.L. Central.  She said there were buses there that would take us back to the airport for 8 ringgit each, which is what we paid the last time heading into the city.

That seemed simple enough, and it didn’t take us long to get to K.L. Central.  The place was bigger than we expected though so we had to stop for directions again.  Unfortunately, the guy behind the counter told us it would be “better for you to take fast train to airport.”  Of course… that’s what we didn’t want to do.  The fast train he was talking about is fast, but it’s also 35 ringgits per person.  I couldn’t see spending that much more just to shave 30 minutes or so off our trip.  We wound up getting the right directions from a guy working at a sales stand.  All we had to do was go downstairs.

When we got downstairs the bus we wanted was right in front of us.  It was yellow, just like the one we had taken from the airport, and just like the one we had taken from the airport it was indeed only 8 ringgit.  It was called Star Shuttle (see the ticket stub on the left, which was from our trip into the city on the 1st).  We double checked with the guy selling tickets to make sure it was going to the airport and then paid and got on board.  We got on the bus at about 11:30 am, and about 20 minutes later the bus pulled off from the curb and got on its way to the airport.  I dozed off for part of the trip again.  My wife was kind enough to let me know I was knocked out and had my mouth hanging open for quite a while.  Oops!

We left Kuala Lumpur early because we weren’t sure of the way back to the airport, so when we did get there, we got there early.  Really early in fact.  We had two hours to kill before we could even check in, so we went to the McDonald’s there and got some coffee.  I tried to log into the free wireless but either it was acting up or my phone was, because I kept getting a “no reply from gateway” error.  Thinking about it now, it had to be my phone if I got the same error in two different places.  Since we couldn’t get the internet to work, we found a bench to sit on.  My wife pulled out a book, and I fell back asleep for about an hour.

When the time came, we checked in, got our boarding passes and then went through the immigration and security checkpoints.  While in line we realized that we hadn’t taken the time to stop for Dunkin Donuts.  There aren’t any Dunkin Donuts stores in Singapore.  I have no idea why, because the donut stores that are in Singapore aren’t very good.  We were both kinda sad about the whole thing, because we love their donuts.  Fortunately for us, there’s a Dunkin Donuts just past the immigration checkpoint.

We had just enough ringgits left for four donuts, so we chowed down!

The rest of our trip home was fairly uneventful.  The gate was a bit crowded and the flight left a bit late, but we were back in Singapore by 5:45 pm.

3 Days in Kuala Lumpur: Part 9: Street Food

Bradley Farless4 Comments

It goes without saying that when you visit a place you have to try the local food, and you’re not going to find authentic local food in chain stores or fancy restaurants. Not typically anyways. We spent most of our 3 day trip looking around the Chinatown area and it has a fairly decent mix of tourist style restaurants, franchises (3 McDonald’s encircled the area… not surprised at all), and a nice assortment of “street food”. That’s what my wife says it’s called. She’s referring to the stand alone carts that sell food. She was insistent that we try eating at one of them before leaving and I love to eat, so I didn’t put up any argument.

So, the second night of our trip we found ourselves wandering down the road that runs along eastern edge of Chinatown and we saw a stall that was selling satay. I think satay is just a local word for shish kebabs, except they’re plain grilled meat on a stick, with a sauce applied to them during the grilling process. The stuff smelled fantastic and we couldn’t resist. We snagged their last beef satay, 3 chicken satay, 2 chicken liver & gizzard satay, and an order of rice cubes. It was served up fairly quickly and came with a dish of a spicy and sweet peanut sauce. We cleared the plate in about 3 minutes. The stuff was delicious and left us wanting more. I’m not a big fan of gizzard and liver, but even that tasted great coming off the grill there.

Here are some photos!

The other thing I can recommend is a stand called Air Mata Kucing. I have no clue what that means, but it’s located at one of the intersections along Jalang Petaling, near the center of the Chinatown area. They serve a drink that tastes like tea made with sugar cane. There were also bits of some fruit in it. My wife says she thinks it’s longan fruit. It’s very good, very sweet, and can be served with or without ice. We wound up going back for more of this stuff on our 3rd and last day there.

I would have liked to have had the opportunity to try out more of the local dishes, but our trip was a short one. There’s always next time!

3 Days in Kuala Lumpur: Part 8: Jalan Petaling’s Night Time Street Fair

Bradley Farless1 Comment

During the day, Jalan Petaling is already a busy place. It’s packed with tourists and locals as well as people trying to make sales on everything from PS3s to bootleg DVDs. As you walk down the street, you’ll hear “hey sir!” and “hey boss!” and “cheap deal here!” coming at you from every angle. At night, when the street is filled with portable, makeshift stalls, that madness is doubled.

As you can see from the picture, it’s a really big change. Almost every inch of space along the short stretch of Jalan Petaling is packed tight with street stalls. At these stalls, you can find all sorts of souvenirs, clothes, jewelry and toys. As you walk down the narrow paths the people running each shop will call out to you, making offers, and trying to pull you in.

The whole thing is loud, exciting, and fun, and if you know how to haggle you might be able to get a good deal. Before going, a friend of mine who’s been there before warned us that the initial prices being offered are meant to be a starting point. You can argue the price down a bit, and then if you’re not satisfied you can start to walk away from the stall and they will call out lower prices to you, hoping you’ll turn back and make a purchase. It happened exactly the way he said it would. The one time we stopped to look at something and asked how much it was, the guy’s opening price was 180 ringgit. We never intended to buy it and only asked out of curiosity, but as we smiled and walked away he called out “170! 150! Ok! 130, good deal for you!” Of course we kept going since we never intended to buy it in the first place, but it really illustrated my friend’s point perfectly. According to him, if you can get a price down to about 50-60% of the original asking price, you’re paying a reasonable price, or getting a good deal. If you’re not interested in making any purchases at all, the only thing I can say is look quick, keep moving, double back to look again if you have to, but don’t stop, and don’t make eye contact. Don’t Make Eye Contact! As soon as you do they come rushing towards you with offers, asking you what you want, asking if you’re interested in half a dozen things.  That can be very tiresome.

These stalls get set up around 6 pm and then get taken down around 11 pm, and I really recommend that anyone stopping by check it out at least once.

3 Days in Kuala Lumpur: Part 7: Petronas Twin Towers

Bradley Farless2 Comments

If you’re going to Kuala Lumpur, you of course have to go see the Petronas Twin Towers.  Missing them would be like going to New York City and not stopping by the Statue of Liberty.  If you’ve never been there, it’s just something you have to see!  Also, the Petronas Twin Towers were featured in a movie with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones called Entrapment.

Getting to the Petronas Twin Towers was very easy for us.  We left our hotel on Jalan Petaling and went to the Pasar Seni train station.  To get on the train, we first had to buy tickets.  Two one-way tickets cost us 3.20 ringgit.  We scanned the cards, went through the turn-style and hopped on the train.  Four stations later and we were at K.L.C.C. station.  From there we went up the stairs and the towers were right next to us.
 

We managed to get a few good shots of the towers before it started to rain.  You can see in the picture above how overcast it was.  Once it started raining we ran towards the entrance and went inside to check out the Suria Mall that’s between the two towers.  Also, just inside the doors there are signs that mention an orchestra or theater room?  I can’t really remember because we weren’t interested in it.

When we entered the mall we saw signs that prohibited video recording and photography.  I can only guess it’s a security measure that’s been implemented to prevent a repeat occurrence of what happened to the Twin Towers in New York City.  So, I didn’t take a lot of photos.

The only place where photography seemed to be ok was at a display set up in the center court of the mall, on the bottom floor, where a display was set up by Lego.  I think it was a competition, because there were quite a few different ‘exhibits’ of famous places from around the world.  The most interesting, and amusing, of them was… The Petronas Twin Towers!  Lego Style!

The Lego display was the most interesting thing in the mall.  All malls are basically the same right?  So, we stopped to have coffee and chat for a while at a San Francisco Coffee on the 2nd or 3rd floor.  I didn’t think the coffee there was very good, by the way.  It was too bitter for my taste.  After that we headed back to Jalan Petaling and took a nap so that we could be ready to explore the night-time street fair that evening.