This is no place for a girl on fire

I finally watched Catching Fire!!!

It was honestly so amazing, even better than the first! I love Francis Lawrence's directing in this and obviously the higher budget made it a lot better. The whole tone of the movie is really different to the first so I guess it's quite hard to compare the two, but seeing as I loved the second book I'm obviously more biased towards this film. I was so happy that they stayed pretty true to the books, especially because it meant a long 2.5 hours of watching Jennifer Lawrence! I loved her so much, the make up and costuming team were amazing and she looked so fantastic throughout the whole thing, as did the other actors. Everyone was so great; Sam Claflin didn't disappoint as Finnick Odair and I am absolutely in love with Jena Malone as Johanna Mason (my favourite character). The only thing I didn't really like was the way they directed the very last scene; it was quite anticlimactic especially since the second book ended on a really climactic note.

But other than that, this is definitely a must see! You get to look into the aftermath of the 74th Annual Hunger Games and the repercussions of Katniss' berry stunt, and see how everything is blown out of proportion as uprisings and riots occur throughout Panem. At the same time, you get to see this juxtaposed by the spoilt, well-off Capital, only to be thrown back into the arena in the most fast-paced and tense Hunger Games ever. It really is fantastic!


I also watched My Sister's Keeper (on DVD)

I really enjoyed the book but the movie wasn't that great when compared to it. The characters were a bit watered down, and a lot of the plot was removed. I suppose I didn't expect too much from it since every movie needs to change, add and remove certain things to avoid having a 50 hour film, but they changed the entire ending! I was really annoyed because I really thought that the ending was what made the book, and this ending made it such a mediocre film. But if you judge it separately from the book, I think it's still pretty good. The actors were really good and the plot itself is enough to make it a notable film.


Also, speaking of books, I updated my top ten book list that I did in this post to include authors, details (such as whether the book is a children's book, an easy read, etc.) and I also realised that I accidentally wrote The Little Bones instead of The Lovely Bones!


On a more disgusting note, the gum area from my wisdom tooth removal became infected! On Saturday I was pretty much drinking pus, and let me tell you, pus is not the most pleasant of things to swallow down! Lucky I was at home most of the time because I could just spit it out. My dad went to pick up a little pack that the dentist put together for me, including my antibiotics, so after taking that it's getting a bit better but I still get pus coming out of it every now and then. I have to rinse it with salt water all the time, which is quite hassling. They even gave me this syringe-like thing (without a needle) that lets you squirt the saltwater onto your gum area, and whenever I'm out I carry gauze around in case pus starts coming out and it's too inconvenient to spit out.

It's truly disgusting! To make matters worse, I still can't really eat much! I've advanced to soft foods and even started eating some meat, but I had to cut it up into extremely tiny pieces. I'm starting work tomorrow as well, so I hope it gets a lot better over night. The plus side is that I don't need to take Panadol any more since it doesn't hurt that much, it's just more of a constant discomfort.

Oh well, in due time. This just makes me extremely worried and hesitant about pulling out my other 3 wisdom teeth next year; I'm not sure if I want to do that any more!


Oh and I got my Hobbit postcards!

I got the Unexpected Journey ones instead of the Desolation of Smaug ones because I reckon they look better (even though there's no Legolas in Unexpected Journey =[). I'm soooooo excited, can't wait until the next Hobbit movie!


And that's all for today. I haven't really been doing much interesting stuff. I've only been catching up with friends, looking after my tooth and trying to tame this flood of relatives that have come over. I start work tomorrow as well, so there may not be a few interesting blogs for some time to come! Until then, enjoy your holidays =]

Numb start to the holidays

I watched Thor 2!!

It's set a bit after the events in The Avengers and it was pretty good, but personally I liked the first Thor better. I think the plot was a bit slow since the movie mainly focused on humour and action. It also seemed a bit cheap because there was a lot of stuff to do with dark matter, portals and black holes and at times these portals were just conveniently used for our heroes to escape or whatever. The actors are still great and the visual effects were simply amazing, so it was definitely a good film but I reckon they could have done a lot more with it.

And I saw it at this cool drive-in theatre in Blacktown. It's pretty cool because they make it all retro, with a diner and everything! And each car space has a hump at the end for you to hoist up your car on an angle so the screen looks better. It was pretty good quality (the sound comes from a radio station) except that it started raining halfway in and that was a bit bothersome. But yes, definitely worth a try, and it's only $20 per car!


Also, my brother bought me this card game called Top Trumps Disney Pixar. There are other themes for it, for example he also bought Top Trumps Simpsons and Plop Trumps, a version specifically on different animals'...fecal matters... (ew).

But yeah I really like the Disney Pixar version. The Top Trumps idea is basically they get a theme and they have all these stats on it. So for Disney Pixar they have stuff like Size and Strength, Hero Rating, etc. and the Simpsons one has IQ, Prone to Mayhem, etc. while the Plop Trumps has stuff like Smell and Yuck Factor. It's pretty cool because you get to compare stats between players and all that and I'm even thinking of getting the Disney Classics version so I can have all the princesses and heroes hehe.


And speaking of games, there's another card game called Oz Fluxx which is my favourite game so far!

It's similar to Top Trumps in that the original idea is Fluxx, and there are a lot of variants on it with different themes, like Pirate Fluxx, Star Fluxx, etc. The Oz Fluxx has a Wizard of Oz theme and since I love the Wizard of Oz, I really love this theme. And the artwork is really fantastic too!

But the reason it's my favourite game is because it's so chaotic and unique. The rules and goals of the game are always changing (hence the flux) so much so that at any one point in time there's probably a 0% chance that you can say for sure whether you are winning or losing. You absolutely can't keep tabs on what's going on and, to add to the chaos, new players can join at ANY TIME during the game. It's so chaotic that sometimes you put a card down and you don't even realise that you've won!


I also just got my wisdom tooth removed today!

I was quite nervous going in but it was all nice and dandy, no major issues except there wasn't much space so the dental specialist had to keep dividing the tooth up. I think normally they divide it in four pieces, but here they divided it into about 6 or 8.

Since it was only one tooth I just had local anaesthetic, not general so I didn't go crazy and high haha! But I did have problems drinking afterwards since stuff kept dribbling out of the right side of my mouth and I looked so silly since half my mouth was drooping!

And now the anaesthetic's wearing off so it's getting a bit sore but I suppose not that bad...


Anyway, more updates to come!

Until next time and happy holidays!

The onset of holidays

I just watched Thor at long last!

For some reason I've never seen it, but since I'm going to be watching Thor 2 (and since my mum bought the DVD) I decided to watch it today and I was pretty impressed! From The Avengers, I seriously thought Loki was the most incapable villain ever, but he seemed much better in this movie. The plot was quite good too, and the special effects were great as well. For the actors, Chris Hemsworth was great at making himself look like an idiot in the film haha I laughed so much at his ignorant smile! I love Natalie Portman as well, she's so amazing and was so great in this!

Anyway, after the end credits scene, I really needed to find some sort of Avengers Timeline so that I could place everything together, and with a quick google search, I found one!

(Click to enlarge in a new tab)
It's pretty cool and I suppose it helps with your understanding of what happens during all the films (plus, timelines are always cool).

What else is there...

I picked up my roster for The Body Shop and it's pretty jam packed from Wednesday the 27th of November until Tuesday the 24th of December. A lot of the shifts are like 3-4 hours long so I suppose it won't get too tiring, but they're at really inconvenient times so most of my days are being taken up, but as long as I'm getting money then 'sall good! =] Unfortunately I'm working on my birthday but it's only 3 hours so it's not too bad.


UHMMMMMMMMMM... Oh I finished my book!

As I said, it's a children's book but it's still quite deep. It's set during World War II and focuses on this young boy, William Beech after he is evacuated from London to a safer country town. Anyway, the story behind William is actually really sad, and you come to pity him a lot, but then when he comes to the country town it's all happy chappy fine and dandy.

I really liked it, as far as children's books go. I'd love to see a modern film adaptation of it, and I say modern because when I googled it, the guy that plays Mister Tom looks really creepy..


And my exams are all over now so I'm freer to do stuff yay! I started reading the book 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett but I've only started one chapter since I was studying so much! So far it's good; I heard a lot of good things about it and they even made a movie on it so I'm excited to finish reading it.


For a post-exams celebration, Diwan and I went to an icecream place at Darling Harbour (since I got a voucher for it at Groupon) and we had the most funky looking sundae!

It looks delicious but the wafer bowl thing was just like a normal cone and such a hassle because you couldn't just pick it up like a normal ice cream cone and we got three scoops that was impossible to finish! In the end I was left with an almost complete wafer bowl (minus two bites) plus a nasty soup of icecream in the middle. But it was still delicious!


And that's it!

I haven't really been doing much because of exams, and I've done some random stuff that isn't worth/I ceebs blogging about. Oh, but I recently decided to look at all the photos my mum and I took of our Singapore/Malaysia trip waaaaaaay back in January/February so maybe I'll do a blog on that.

Until next time and here's to enjoying our holidays!

I got a job and found out I was a genius

Wow I haven't blogged in over two weeks!

I got the flu two weeks ago and that killed me for an entire week because I just spent all my time sleeping and really couldn't do anything. But I had to go to NIB for a consultation on my wisdom tooth and I was so out of it, but long story short: I'm going to be getting a wisdom tooth removed after exams!

I'm so worried because I've heard all these stories of swollen cheeks and liquid meals and everything! And at that stage I was thinking of getting a job, so I really hoped that the wisdom tooth removal wouldn't interfere with that.

But yes, I did end up getting a job as a Christmas Casual at The Body Shop at Castle Towers! The Christmas Casual shift is really good because I don't have to work too much and it's mainly the last two weeks of Christmas. I get some shifts scattered before for training and maybe after until the end of January, but it's not that heavy or anything so the wisdom tooth removal shouldn't affect it too much.

Anyway, now I have to learn how to put on make-up! For the interview it took me like a few days to learn how to put on eye-liner but it was still quite a bit dodgy and now I have to learn how to put on even more make-up for when I actually start working! But it seems really fun putting on make-up and stuff and the job seems really fun too (not to mention I can get discounts for products) so I'm super excited!


Also I finished reading My Sister's Keeper!

I think somewhere in a previous post I explained what it was about but if I haven't, it's about a teenager, Anna, who was genetically chosen to be a donor for her sister, Kate, who suffered from leukaemia since she was 2 years old. The story deals with all the ethics behind these designer babies and stuff as we see Anna try to sue her parents to gain medical emancipation so she can make her own decisions about what she has to donate to her sister.

This is my first Jodi Picoult book and I really loved it. The plot is obviously the main feature here, because her language and stuff isn't amazing. There are a number of really good quotes and amazing parts, but some bits seemed like she was trying too hard or were just too cliche. I guess that's just because she had to write from the perspective of teenagers, but it was still a little off-putting.

Anyway, the ending was what made the book in my opinion (I was crying sooo much after I finished the book; I just couldn't believe what happened!). On some forums, a lot of people hated the ending and thought it was just so ridiculous and absurd, but I really liked it because I love interesting, different and unorthodox endings. Apparently they changed the ending in the movie though! I hate it when people do that, but then again I'm really picky when it comes to this stuff.

Oh well, hopefully the movie is good in it's own way (but, like with all book-turned-films, it probably won't be)...


And now I'm starting on a book that for some reason I never finished...

It's called Goodnight Mister Tom and we got it at pre-uni as one of our texts. I remember the first time we went through it I didn't get very far, then I picked it up again in maybe year 8 or 9 and I only got halfway through again. Well, now I've gotten past halfway point and hopefully I'll finish it within the next week or so!


It was also my brother's 23rd birthday on Wednesday and he bought a whole bunch of board games so I've been playing A LOT of them recently. I'll probably go through some of them in the next few blogs because I can't be bothered right now.

For his birthday I bought him this cool 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of the world map (the up-to-date one which includes South Sudan) and the Simpsons edition of Cluedo:

The Cluedo I bought was actually the Hasbro one which included plastic figurines of the characters, but for some reason the person got mixed up and sent me the Parker Brothers version which didn't have the plastic figurines! I was so annoyed because that was the only reason I bought it from her - to get the plastic figurines. But now it should be okay because she's sending us the plastic figurines soon.



And he also bought these 3D Mensa puzzles:

If you have no idea what Mensa is, it's basically some elitist group of geniuses. So if you get into Mensa, you're amazing. Anyway, they have these 3D puzzles that you need to take apart and put back together again. I'm sure you've seen some of them!

So the ones here in the picture go from "hard" to "hardest" and there are metal and wooden ones of each difficulty level. For some reason... I could do both of the hardest ones, but I can't do the others... The "easiest" wooden one seems possible to take apart, but I have no idea how I would approach putting it back together again.

For the hardest metal one, that was entirely a fluke. I wasn't even looking at it when it came apart and then when I tried putting it back together I couldn't do it so I watched an episode of Modern Family and then it randomly put itself together again, purely by magic.

But yes, here is the barrel that I did:

It was actually quite logical but it took me about an hour to try to fit back together again cuz it was so hard to hold everything in place! But in the end I got it all together again, so I suppose I'm just a genius.