Here my list for fav books :
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The book that (in a rather obtuse way) got me interested in collecting vintage clothes. The decadence and glamour in this made me seek out completely unaffordable 1920s evening dresses on Ebay to collect. Of course I ended up with ONE piece, and of course I could only afford a torn, stained one, but still, it was my first “collection” piece.
Glamour, tragic love, a classic.
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4. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Every soliloquy moves me to tears. Period.
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5. Veronika Decides To Die by Paul Coelho
Current, immensely relevant to the youth of today, yet deeply philosophical and reflective. I always appreciate art in any form that makes the audience, the reader think.
Note: This was written in 2008.
Categorised in Bridge, Favourite of your Favourite (Her).
Here my list for fav books :
1. Tracy And Hepburn by Garson Kanin
An EXTREMELY intimate look at the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn relationship, but it wasn’t the relationship tidbits or juicy details of their romance that I was after, I was searching for anecdotes that could shed more light on the true Kate Hepburn, and I was right that Kanin would be able to provide some clues, given he was their close friend. Kanin himself writes very intelligently, with entertaining, witty ease. I couldn’t find this book to order online ANYWHERE, finally had to buy it off The Bay, it’s completely yellowed, dog-eared and ratty, but I love it.
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2. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
I actually bought it because of all the scandal and furore, so it was already classified as Fiction in my mind. However, his prose and style is pretty breathtaking. Have never read a author who was able to convey so much urgency and utter desperation as Frey. Very refreshing.
Note: This was written in 2008.
Categorised in Bridge, Favourite of your Favourite (Her).
(In no particular order)
1. Continuum – John Mayer
If there ever was an album that came close to being the soundtrack to my life, this is it.
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2. 我è¦å¿«æ¨‚? – å¼µæƒ å¦¹
She could sing a rubbish song, and I’d still adore it, for me, it’s her voice and the way she feels everything so INTENSELY, that moves me very, very much. I was very embarassingly and literally in tears in my seat at her concert here last year. I like all of her albums but I really liked the overall production and sound of this one, a lot more acoustic. It also contains one of my all-time favorite A Mei songs, “Hostageâ€.
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3. 將愛 – 王è²
Very hard to pick my favorite of all her albums, though I do much prefer her later work, the last few albums before she retired. However, I just had to pick this one because it has the song “旋木†which resonates very much with me, you guys go figure out why :)
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4. Indigo Girls – Indigo Girls
Probably one of their most acessible/â€commercial†albums. Their lyrics have helped me through many a dark night. Their lyrics are poetry.
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5. Taking The Long Way – Dixie Chicks
Music is about escape, no? Listening to this album, I can close my eyes and imagine that I’m on vacation, far far away from here. And. I’ve always had the tendency to take the longer way around.
Note: This was written in year 2008.
Categorised in Bridge, Favourite of your Favourite (Her).
CDs, DVDs, I LOVE these kinda questions. Too bad not that many reporters ask them. Will send the movies first cos am so exhausted the brain is not working properly. Here goes (in no particular order) :
6. A Very Long Engagement
Marion Cotillard. In ONE scene. Steals the entire two and a half hour-long movie from Audrey Tautou. I worship at the feet of the Goddess Cotillard. Some people are born with gifts. She was. Others, like me, have to work our asses off and still never come close to that mastery. Which is why she is Goddess Marion.
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7. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Watching this film literally makes my heart ache. As in, it’s so goddamn heart-wrenching that I literally have to keep my Ventolin on hand when I watch it. DiCaprio’s performance cannot be topped. This is the story – this was before he did Titanic and became a megastar. When I watched “Gilbert” I had no clue who he was, as was the case with the majority of the audience. But. I actually thought they casted a real autistic person in the film. I never once imagined that was an actor acting autistic/mentally-retarded. That was how seamless and COMPLETE his performance was.
Note: This was written in 2008.
Categorised in Bridge, Favourite of your Favourite (Her).
Curled up on a chair, cold, wrapped in a blanket. Instant coffee in a mug on the table. The Dixie Chicks on the Ipod.
The view’s not half as spectacular as our earlier stops, but the snow tipped mountains are everywhere you look. Here, you almost feel like you could just reach out and touch the clouds and the mountains. Everything’s so….close.
Everything’s bathed in a warm, soft, yellow candlelight.
It’s just a moment that fades as the sun rises higher in the sky.
But the moment is peace and contentment.
Categorised in Bridge.
CDs, DVDs, I LOVE these kinda questions. Too bad not that many reporters ask them. Will send the movies first cos am so exhausted the brain is not working properly. Here goes (in no particular order) :
3. Carlito’s Way
Al Pacino and Sean Penn at their finest. Two of my idols in the same movie. Period. And that voice-over in the last scene, perfection. Perfection. I died watching that last scene.
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4. Bride With The White Hair
I watched this on a rerun on TV when I was a girl/teenager, and realised that instead of the bubblegum, cutesy, flawless, girl-next-door, submissive and non-threatening (to men) idols that a girl of my age should be prostrate to, Lin Ching Hsia’s character in the film was MY idea of a real idol.
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5. The Assassination Of Richard Nixon
Sean Penn. Raw emotions to the point of being painful to watch. Very few actors can be that raw in front of the camera. He will be my idol now and forever. His performance was a masterpiece.
Note: This was written in 2008.
Categorised in Bridge, Favourite of your Favourite (Her).
Dearest Dang-ers,
Whatta year, huh? In many, many different ways.
Resolutions? I’ve never been one for resolutions – they always seemed to me primed for massive failure. Something you do just because your supposed to, but end up not committing to. And you know I’ve never been one for doing what I’m supposed to
Resolutions can and should be made any time. But of course we can’t escape the sentiment that comes hand-in-hand with holidays and important dates.
So let’s call this a “direction” rather than a resolution. I hope to do more for others, than myself, in the new year. I hope to learn to be less selfish and self-centred.
And I hope I grow as a person.
You guys were amazing last night at both venues. Your presence (and deranged screams) at all these things always, ALWAYS, matters to me. Thank you again for all the love. And looks like I owe you guys a lozenge factory now. I could go on and on about how much I’m grateful and thankful for you guys, like I always want to do everytime I write to you, but then, you already know, right?
The MVs will be out soon……………..
En
Categorised in Bridge.
CDs, DVDs, I LOVE these kinda questions. Too bad not that many reporters ask them. Will send the movies first cos am so exhausted the brain is not working properly. Here goes (in no particular order) :
1. Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind
Real. It’s real, it breathes. Love, without the cheese. It’s hard to do romance nowadays without succumbing to chick-flick cliches, no? And Kate Winslet has one of my all-time favorite lines in this movie, you guys go guess which one it is. Her character in the film, is the woman we all secretly wish we could be, but simply don’t dare to be.
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One of the very few movies in recent memory that had me literally in tears.
2. Rear Window
It’s Hitchcock, what else is there to say? One of the most fiercely intelligent thrillers that is a stark contrast to the cheap shock tactics blockbusters today love to employ. Not many people realise that the true horror in horror movies begin from inside OURSELVES, the audience. The dialogue is also one of the most cleverly crafted I’ve watched.
Note: This was written in year 2008.
Categorised in Bridge, Favourite of your Favourite (Her).
The Monday Interview with Rui En by Andy Chen
The Straits Times | 15 December 2008 | Life! People, Page C4
In the flesh, 27-year-old Singaporean actress-singer Rui En could pass for a junior college student. She is 1.68m tall and says she weighs about 52kg.
So it is disconcerting to hear this slip of a girl intone in all seriousness: “I’ve decided to reveal certain things that I’ve never revealed before. I’ve decided to be a lot more personal. So when I was preparing for this interview, I was thinking I have enough stories for three lifetimes.”
Her full name is Lu Rui En and she is usually tight-lipped about her personal life, especially about her broken family.
“You know how people are asked if they would change anything about their lives? Many say no, they wouldn’t change a thing. Well, I would change the first 24 years of my life.”
For instance, she would burn the photos from an FHM shoot she did during her modelling career. These days, she does not even wear revealing clothes on TV.
It would seem like this interview is the confessional she has been looking for. This is not because she needs to promote her recently released second album, United States, so called because she wrote the lyrics to many of the songs to unite her different states of mind.
It is because she has read The Monday Interview series in The Straits Times and has decided this is the “right platform”.
She says: “You’re not going to reveal things about your childhood in a magazine asking you about your new album or TV show. It is simply not appropriate.”
She also thinks she is ready to unload her tale. “I used to be really angsty. That’s the thing I like about getting older. You accept yourself a little bit more. I used to hate myself.”
Today, she is not the straight-talking non-conformist who used to fire take- no-prisoners barbs like: “I never set out to be a Zoe or Fann. I don’t like acting-acting. That’s Channel 8 acting.”
Instead, she is guarded and hesitant. “Petrified,” she says. Most likely, she has run through many times in her head what she is going to say here and does not want to deviate from the chronological order of her life, just in case she gets “mixed up”.
“I don’t want to hurt my parents because they’ve been through a lot. I told them I was doing this interview and cleared it with them so they won’t be shocked.”
She starts at the beginning with her childhood. She is the only child of a property agent and a housewife. By all accounts, she was “very quiet”. Unfortunately, her parents fought all the time.
“They were the most incompatible couple I have ever seen,” she says.
“From the time I could understand things as a child, I learnt to be very careful, so as not to set off a war between them. If you did something wrong, it would set them off. The instability and insecurity I felt would plague me and influence my decisions for the rest of my life.”
Her parents divorced when she was 17. Her father remarried three years later and her mother did the same a year ago.
She now lives with her dad, stepmother and grandmother in a flat in Clementi, and admits she is daddy’s girl. But she is also close to her mother, whom she calls her No 1 fan in the album notes of United States.
“It’s kind of squeezy at home but I like the fact that there are people around me, simply because I think things are a lot more stable at home now and I didn’t have that when I was a kid.”
On those tumultuous years, she says: “My career started when I was about 20 but I actually started acting when I was a child. I developed a very fertile imagination because I was lonely and I didn’t have anyone to share my loneliness and frustrations with.
“It’s irrational, but when your parents are fighting, you feel the need to take sides. And after you take sides, you feel a lot of guilt. You just blame yourself because, as a kid, you don’t know what else to do. When you have to be so careful around your parents, you end up withdrawing into yourself.”
It became a pattern: She felt like an outsider in her own home and everywhere she went subsequently.
During her primary and secondary school years in Singapore Chinese Girls’ School, she felt she was from the wrong socio-economic class. “If you go to SCGS and you’re not rich, it just makes it worse. From that point on, I was always an outsider looking in.”
At Raffles Junior College, she was from “the wrong side of the tracks, by RJC standards”, flunking her first-year exams. At Nanyang Technological University, she was a fish out of water–a literature lover studying banking and finance because it was “practical”.
At MediaCorp now, she is also an outsider of sorts, trying not to be the average vacuous Channel 8 star. “Well, I try my best not to be,” she says, and this has led to accusations that she is cold and unfriendly.
Her decision at Primary 5 to take up ballet, which she loves, deepened her feelings of rejection because the world of pirouettes in SCGS largely comprised “socialites’ daughters” whose “mums knew one another and went for high tea”.
She says: “Eventually, the whole not fitting in and feeling like an outsider just got to me and I quit after Secondary 1. And that is something I regret till now because I really love dance.”
Without dance, there was a “hole in my heart”, she says in an exaggerated fashion, acknowledging the melodrama of the phrase. This was when she “was drawn” to a schoolmate who was from a worse background than hers and yet “seemed so strong, streetwise and cool”.
That started her period of delinquency during which she began to experiment with cigarettes and alcohol.
She says: “I hung out with the kind of people I shouldn’t have hung out with. I was also probably trying, in my own ridiculous way, to annoy my parents because I wanted their attention.”
Yet, she would always study at the last minute for her major exams and do well.
While waiting to enter university, she sent her photos to a modelling agency. “If somebody was going to pay me to take a picture, that was proof to myself that I was not unwanted, that I was pretty.”
The agency signed her on and in 2001, got her in a SingTel TV ad, which in turn landed her a contract with Hype Records. This was followed by her first album, Rui En Vol 1, in 2002.
“When I did that first album, I didn’t pay my dues. I was just given the opportunity,” she admits. Before that, the only musical training she had was two years of choir experience in Secondary 3 and 4.
“Again, I got into show business for the wrong reasons, thinking if someone wants to sign me, it means I’m not that unwanted, I’m not so ugly. It was just this stupid insecurity thing again.”
Until she was in her early 20s, she smoked and drank socially. “Smoking was something I did because I wanted to be cool,” she says.
But in 2004, she started an overhaul of her life. On her own, she realised how her teenage delinquency, which set off another war at home between her and her parents, and her modelling, singing and acting career were all symptoms of her insecurity.
“I was looking for ways to fill the emptiness that I felt. And I used everything, from hanging out with older people to partying to fame. I thought that fame was the ultimate answer to my problems.
“So from 2002 to 2004, it was just about that, about my ego. That part of my career is completely regrettable. During that time, I did a couple of Chinese shows, including My Mighty In-Laws, but the worst was Achar!.”
In 2004, in the second season of the Channel 5 sitcom about an Indian- Chinese couple, she replaced actress Steph Song and turned in a performance that disgusted herself.
“I remember watching Achar! and thinking that I didn’t recognise myself. I was doing kissing scenes and all this annoying behaviour. I watched the show and thought that was not me. All I saw in my eyes was the hunger for fame and popularity. I really hated what I had become.
“So I decided to sit down and take stock of my whole life. I realised that I was just allowing myself to be a victim.”
She adds: “I didn’t want to be a victim anymore. I didn’t want to use my broken family as an excuse for my behaviour anymore. I had to grow up.”
So she quit smoking and drinking. She quit wanting to be famous and popular. And most significantly for her career, she quit doing kissing and intimate scenes.
Ironically, in that same year, she was nominated for Best Newcomer at MediaCorp’s Star Awards. Effectively, she stuck a knife in her own career when it was just starting to blossom.
She says: “The result of my decision is that my opportunities now are very much limited, because generally, such kissing scenes are required.”
Since 2005, she has played variations of the feisty, young woman in shows such as A Promise For Tomorrow (2005), Love At 0 Deg C (2006), Honour And Passion (2007) and Metamorphosis (2008).
Earlier this year, she rejected a role in the Channel 8 drama The Defining Moment because of a rape scene in the script. The high-profile part of a go-getting businesswoman struggling with mental illness went to Fann Wong instead.
It has also been reported that there are influential TV producers who will not cast her in their shows. This does not concern her, not when she is finally at peace with herself. She says she is in a good place in her life because she is not fighting with herself anymore.
When she is filming–her current project is The Dreamcatchers where her character is stuck in a love triangle with Shaun Chen and Elvin Ng–she mostly keeps to herself in between takes by reading and listening to her iPod. When she is not working, she watches DVDs, reads, surfs the Internet and goes running.
She says she does not have any good friends in the industry. She does not have many good friends, period.
“I don’t understand why people are so fearful of being alone. I love being alone.”
As impressive as her Wolverine-like self-healing ability is, a counsellor or therapist might say she still has some things to work on. For one thing, she seems a little too thin, although she says her negative body image days are behind her.
Also, she seems to have a fear of relationships. Currently single, she says she regrets all the romantic relationships she has had till now and admits she might never get married.
“My mother is quite upset and has said to me, ‘Please don’t use us as an example’. But when you grow up in that environment, you become careful. I would rather not put my welfare or my fate in the hands of somebody else.”
Then why did she do this heart-to-heart interview, which certainly requires a great amount of trust?
“I am hoping that kids who read this might realise that no matter how bad your family situation is, you have a choice not to be a victim,” she says.
Source: asianewsnet.net
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Categorised in asianewsnet.net, Bridge, The Straits Times.
