Woke up early today morning for training. After that went for breakfast at mac's with Jasper and Junyang, then proceeded home.

Showered and went to Ten Mile Junction to check out the bicycle shop opposite it with Goon. But it was closed, and me and goon proccded to lunch at the Ten Mile food court. Tried the pig's organ soup, and it wasn't fantastic, just average. It was not salty enough imo, and had a little too much pepper. Not much to rave about. The shop had a few newspaper clippings extolling its tastiness, so it was pretty disappointing. Was really amused by goon's disparaging quips throughout the meal. One of the more memorable ones was about the flattering newspaper clippings that the shop signs boasted. I was musing how did ever manage to get such good reviews, and wondering whether the standard had dropped since the last reviewer tasted it. Then goon replied laconically "Photoshop" before correcting himself. "Don't think they know how to use, must be use Paint"

That really cracked me up. And then halfway through our dessert (ice kachang), out of the blue, Goon suddenly remarked "I hope this place close down" I was taken aback and couldn't stop laughing, cause I was just thinking the place wasn't that bad, since it wasn't too crowded and most of the food looked pretty decent.

After lunch we went shopping for snacks at Seng Song and went parted ways.

After I got home I changed out and headed for Funan, where I had the Gears of War interschool challenge. Me, yiliang and linus haven't been practising, and we were hoping for a miracle. We didn't get it. We reached there early, and proceeded to practise at 4 to 4.15. We were playing 3 v 2, whoever the 2 people were we don't know and don't really give a crap. We were actually losing to the 2 people for the first few rounds, but then started winning. Then our competitors arrived, from St Gabriel Sec. They were small in stature, and we were hoping for the best. We won the coin toss, thanks to my accurate calling. A good omen, I thought. Yiliang chose the clocktower map, which were just practising on. Bao jia, I thought. NOT!

The only thing we had going for us was the coin toss in our favour. So the game begin in the earnest and ... we lost. The first round we were all pumped up. Think I was on bloodlust and when one enemy came next to me my only thought was "I'm going to chainsaw this bitch!" And I proceeded to chase him, and though he didn't notice me at first he soon became aware of someone wanting to cut him to ribbons and proceeded to own me.

And as for the rest of the matches I sobered up but not enough evidently. There was a round where I ran my guy up the stairs to shotgun someone, then got my head taken off by a sniper, which I hadn't even noticed till my guy dropped.

The last round I remember quite vividly, cause I was the last man from my team. I fired 2 shotgun rounds at the enemy who was pretty close. He didn't die though, and he proceeded to roll towards me. Then he meleed me and I was wheeling around trying to bring my shotgun to bear against him, and he meleed me again and I died. I was displeased.

The opponents came over and shook our hands. We didn't know what to feel. Amusement at having lost to people half my size, or anger at not winning the prize.

I settled at bemusement. And we proceeded to Swensen's to eat our sorrows away. I had a fish baked rice and sticky chewy chocolate. It was good, and should have been for the money I was paying.

Then the 3 of us deliberated on whether or not to watch Rocky, as the next timing was at 7.20 and the time was around 5.45. In the end after a long and thoughtful process we decided to. Actually not much thinking but more of me playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 on yiliang's PSP and yiliang and linus arguing. And by the way I finally beat Adon with Ken Masters. Bloody fricking Thai crap took me so many bloody tries to beat him, and he's not even a boss. That cheap bastard, whenever I did a helicopter kick he would immediately counter with some shit kick of his whenever my helicopter kick ended. Piece of crap.

But I digress.

Let us talk more of Rocky Balboa!

The movie was rated PG, which I was thinking was absurd, since we all know boxing is such a mild and placid sport.

Rocky Balboa. After the humiliation dealt to us by the students of St Gabriel, we were looking for a inspirational movie. Something to get our adrenalin pumping, some good ol' feral violence. With people getting their socks knocked off. Boy did we pick the wrong movie!

Rocky would probably be classified in the Action genre. If you ask me though, I think it belongs more to the Comedy genre. It's old school humour at its best! The movie had me laughing for much of its duration, intentionally or not, it's pretty good at eliciting laughter. At least from me.


SPOILERS FOR ROCKY BALBOA

The start of the movie was pretty promising. Showed the blaik villian whooping some other blaik's ass. And then the crowd was booing the winner, due to him being too damn good and resulting in no kick from the matches. That's the way it should be! Dealers of violence should be condemned! Especially if he's a blaik villian.

Then the perspective moved to Rocky, showing him waking up at 5.30 and doing his morning routine. and then sitting by a grave(his wife's). From here on it's pretty much old Rocky going about his life, with his many repeated lines of "I appreciate it", "I understand" and describing his old fights to customers at his cafe.

Then old Rocky decides to take on the blaik villian, because some dumb commentator on some sports channel said that Rocky would be owned by the blaik villian. Oh, incidently, the blaik villian's name is Dixon, which I shall now use for convenience sake.

Actually not really. Rocky just decided to re-take up boxing (on a small scale he says, ie local fights) after hearing the not-too-kind comments. But Dixon, being too good and blaik, is unpopular. Which isn't really a surprise. Considering how he looks and acts. But this is a problem for his agents, because with him being unpopular, they don't rake in enough cash for their own liking. And since Rocky is popular and he's coming back to box, a simple solution presents itself. Set a match against Dixon and Rocky, which they think Dixon will obviously win, and help boost Dixon's popularity.

Oh I forgot to mention Rocky has a piece of crap as a son, who blames his dad for overshadowing his life. And then after a rousing lecture from Rocky, he decides that if you can't beat them, join them. And so he quits his job to be with his father after Rocky decided to accept the challenge from Dixon's agents.

Most of the movie is about old Rocky's struggle to get into the fight, and by the start of the fight you'll be thinking "Finally! Enough of the funny moments; here's what I paid the movie ticket price for!" And you would be wrong. The first round is basically Rocky taking jabs from Dixon and dropping twice only to miraculously pick himself up, and returning a few blows. The full 3 minutes of the first round was shown I think, and I was like YES they going to show all 10 rounds of 3 mins each of raw, unrestrained boxing action.

But after the first round, they just summarised each round with clips of the few hard punches from that round(which was really not all that impressive) and the moments at the corner where their suddenly-appeared cuts are being tended. And Rocky was just taking the shots that Dixon gave, which led to the undeniable conclusion that Dixon is a wuss. Either that, or Sly was still in-character for his previous movie Rambo. Sly just walked right into Dixon's shots, and then asked for more. It was more Rambo than Rocky, and though I prefer Rambo, this wasn't the right place for him!

I was thinking WTF what's wrong with them I didn't pay for this crap! What were the scriptwriters or whoever the crap involved thinking? The reason I paid for the ticket to a boxing movie is for the boxing ACTION, not for the soap opera crap that they generously dished out in the movie.

And the outcome of the fight took the cake. Nixon won, for goodness' sake. The BLAIK VILLIAN won. I went into the ROCKY movie expecting a ROCKY victory, as any other sane movie goer would have, and a good owning of the blaik's ass to show him who's boss.

But NoooooooOO, the scriptwriters had to give it to the blaik villian. Is this something about equal rights or crap? Cause seriously I don't give a shit for it. Everyone walks into a Rocky movie expecting Rocky to dish out some serious punishment to the unbeliever, and of course in the process winning the match.

It was highly disappointing, for I was expecting a cool KO of the blaik after 9 mild rounds. I was all ready to laugh at the blaik, all ready to point and chuckle. Then the bell rings and the fight is over. Seriously what the hell were the film makers thinking?

Call me shallow, but losing by a point is still losing. It doesn't matter that Rocky is old, he's a goddamn legend. And everyone knows a legend will always triumph over some upjumped blaik crap who doesn't pick on people his own size(or skill level for that matter).

I left the movie thinking that everyone working on the film had gone senile and soft from old age. The movie contained too many punch-lines and too little punches. I guess the people had just gone soft as they got older.

But if it's a light-hearted comedy you're looking for, by all means go for it. The combination of old school orchestral musik and his training routine is really quite comical. To me at least.