Cinderella III: A Twist in Time

After watching The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, I found a link to this movie. I heard about the first sequel being bad. I actually have it on my DVD rack, but never had the chance to watch it. When I saw the link, I thought, why not.


Although Cinderella is the most popular and famous Disney character of all, I personally am not so fond of it. Maybe it is because she is so helpless and portrays the image that a woman's life solely depends on the guy she meets. I know that the first Cinderella movie was made in 1950, but this sequel was made in 2007, way after Ariel and Belle came along. Maybe that is why I expected Cinderella to be more active and independent, seeking some personal development.

Well, the movie did the exact opposite.


Here goes my very sarcastic summary and review of the movie.




The movie starts with Fairy Godmother trying to throw a nice dinner party(?) for the newly wedded couple. In the middle of her usual 'Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo," she somehow manages to toss the wand. Yea, because she is that old and have shaky hands. And guess what, one of the sisters, Anastasia picks up the wand and bring it home.

Lady Tremaine: "Oh yes, the wand!! I'm the ultimate villain now!!!!"
Sisters: "Yay~"

Lady Tremaine: "Anastasia, since you brought the wand, I will let you get married to the prince."
(Here, she is being reasonable and kind to let Anastasia be the one instead of Drizella, because she is the one who found the wand.)

Anastasia: "Thanks mom!! Will the prince really love me? I always wanted someone to love me."

(Here, we see that she is a helplessly romantic person.)

Cinderella: "You can't do that. Prince will know that I am the one he wants to marry as soon as he sees me. And my shoe size is 4 and 1/2."
(She is being very confident that her beauty captured the prince's heart entirely. She is implying that she shall marry no one but the prince.)

Cinderella: "Sister, let me handle this with this wand our mother stole from my fairy godmother. Obviously, you have no right to have happily ever after because I will get married to the prince and be a princess."

Cinderella: "Now I finally will have Prince Charming!! I knew it would end like this."
Prince: "You are so beautiful...unlike your ugly sister that I did not feel anything by touching hands. I will marry you though I didn't even know your name two minutes ago."
(Here, if you look carefully in the picture, Cinderella is smirking. As if to say, I've won the battle b***h. And also, you can tell Prince Charming obviously wants her as a trophy wife.)

Well, at the end, Prince Charming and Cinderella get married and live happily ever after again. One question about the picture below: I thought Cinderella was the main character in the movie? Why did she turn her head to the right to kiss? She should have turned left to show more of her face? I don't know. I'm weird.

I understand that the whole theme is supposed to be "true love is the greatest thing of all." But what I don't understand is, why does Cinderella have to act like a gold digger? And other thing, why did Disney have to draw her as a blonde with blue eyes? I guess the original movie was indeed made in 1950.

In my view, her sister Anastasia is more genuine and considerate. She believes in true love and have a heart to yield and wish Cinderella the happiness. From what I have read, the Cinderella II is about Anastasia finding her true love. I am kind of glad that I watched this sequel first, because it would be more chronologically correct.


I have read this line from somewhere (it is not exactly how it was worded):
Rich, smart and good-looking men do not want girls with pretty face, sexy body and an empty brain. They would rather get married to smart, ugly girls and spend a small part of their fortune to make them beautiful. You can hide and improve your looks, but an empty brain cannot be hidden in any way.

What I am saying is, if you dream about fairy tale and the prince coming to rescue you from all misery of life, you probably won't get it. It is not likely to happen in real life, anyways. Why do you think Disney and other TV shows make so much money out of "happily ever after"?



My final comment is, I am just glad that Ariel and Belle came along to change the image and role of heroines, and hope that the trend continues.

And here is one thing that Cinderella got right in the entire movie (there is a reason why 'fantasy' is called 'fantasy').

"I've always dreamed, that my life could be like a fairy tale, a perfect fantasy. 

But it was nothing more than a dream."

-Cinderella in Cinderella III: A Twist in Time -

The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning

Wondering around YouTube, you can find a lot of "weird" stuff. Anyways.

I love corny Disney movies. I love their princess stories and fairy tales. What I really love, however, is not how they meet their Prince, fall in love and live happily ever after. What I really enjoy watching is their life. What really goes on besides the pursuit of true love.

Well, until today, I never realized that this prequel to one of my favorite Disney movies was even made. I was so excited and started watching right away!!....although I really shouldn't have....



The movie starts when all princesses were only little kids. Queen Athena who is King Triton's wife and Ariel's mother appears in the movie. She looks very much like grown-up Ariel, except for the hair and tail color, I guess.

Here are the baby mermaid princesses!!! But I have one question: how did brownish-haired King and auburn-haired Queen have children with seven different hair colors?? Hm...maybe it's the fish thing??

 

Anyways, this is what they grew up to be. You can see more of each sister's personality and character in this movie, which I enjoyed a lot. I think they are all kinda cute. :]

 

I didn't realize that they have rainbow color coded tails.... Now that I think about the tail color, both King and Queen's tails were deep blue..... Only Ariel and Aquata appear reasonable to be their daughters. Maybe other five different merman unknowingly fertilized eggs that Queen laid? They are fish, after all. (Sorry, nerd joke)

By the way, do you know what their names are?(hint: all names start with 'A')

Highlight to reveal the answer: from the left, in the grown-up version, Arista, Attina, Adella, Ariel, Alana, Andrina, and Aquata.

Anyways, what is the fun without one bad person? Her name is Marina Del Rey. Her tail is purple and so is her hair and outfit. Well, her hair...kinda can change colors depending on what she feels like. You will understand her hair secret if you watch the movie. :]

Obviously, Marina was jealous that Ariel got to have some fantastic scenes like this in the original movie: 

So as a diva she is, she had to have a dramatic "I'm on a rock with my mouth open and the peacock tail made out of water is behind me" moment.

Another new character in this movie: the green blob(?) massaging Marina is Benjamin. He is a manatee. Well, my favorite little mermaid character has been, undoubtedly, Ariel. After watching this prequel, now cute green Benjamin is my new favorite.

Oh my gosh, look at that round body and cute eyes..... The voice actor did a wonderful job of portraying his character. 

And this is Benjamin in real life... The tail looks exactly the same as in the movie.

Anyways, this movie is really great. I kind of wished that they added in more stories, like how Ariel got to meet Scuttle or how she started to have interest in the human world, etc. But overall, the movie is well-made and fun. Now I need to go watch The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.

After thought: Now that I watched the prequel, I wonder if they can add in Benjamin to the other movies as well.... He makes the movie so much cuter and better!! Oh, and he kindly gives us what the main lesson in the movie was. :]

"Let's think about what we've learned here. 

You just can't hurt people. Hurting is mean. We don't wanna be mean, do we?"

- Benjamin in The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning -

My Vegetable and Fruit Garden

This posting is about "my" little garden.

There is a small area behind the house. My grandma was visiting my house because we moved, and she took charge to transform the land into fertile vegetable garden. She basically took care of everything. Now that she has gone back, I water them, sort and organize them, pull out weeds, talk and sing to them. It is quite fun work.

At the beginning, since the quality of the soil was so bad, we had to add a lot of fertilized soil. After pouring and mixing soil, we kind of sectioned the area to plant different vegetables.

We only planted seeds. No baby plants were used. We bought lettuce, tomato, bell pepper, broccoli, sweet basil and perilla(a leaf of perilla, which is kind of another species of sesame plant whose leaves are edible vegetable). We planted those seeds. Well, more like we "sprinkled" them. No one thought that all those seeds would actually sprout and grow, I guess.


My grandma loves mango, so we had a box of mango from Costco. I thought, 'oh well why not?'So the mango seeds were saved to be planted. The melon seeds from the melon fruit were saved, as well.


It has been about a month since the seeds were planted. Here are some pictures of the garden now.




The lettuce section. Since we simply "sprinkled" the seeds instead of sowing them individually, it is quite crowded. We already plucked and ate some of the bigger leaves and they were delicious. :]

The basil. I planted them in this pot that says, 'Basil' on its side. Apparently I put too many seeds so I had to transplant some of them. It is still a bit crowded though.....
 

These are the ones I transplanted.

Tomatoes! They have grown so much in a month!! They already flowered and producing nice, round tomatoes!!!

This is the perilla plant. They are also crowded. I need to separate and plant them in a nicely organized way. In case you do not know what these are, perilla leaves are used mostly in Asian foods. One example is that you use these leaves, along with lettuce, to wrap the Korean Barbeque. Mmm.... Hungry.....

This is the huge lane of melon plant. They grew so big and started to invade other plant sections. I had to guide them towards the back because they started grabbing onto neighboring plants with their vines.

The Melon started producing the fruit. They grow very quickly. If you see a fruit growing, you should trim the budding flowers to direct the nutrition toward producing a nice sweet fruit.

This is a big one. :]

Look who is hiding behind the leaves~ Oh, and as you can see, I trimmed the stem on the left side because a lot of flower buds were starting to grow.

As you can see, all those small round things will grow to be a fruit. I can't wait to see all those melons.

This one is the mango. I was a bit surprised when they emerged, because planting the mango seed was kind of an experiment/joke. But they are all healthy and growing "Lightning-McQueen-fast." :]

The aerial view of the baby mango trees.

I planted more mango seeds in a pot. I mean, we ate a whole box of mangoes. They are doing very well and I am proud of them.

I started growing avocados as well, from the seed. I planted them but it will take a very long time for them to come out of their hard shell. One of the avocado seeds are being germinated in water, as I have seen in many YouTube videos. No progress yet, but I will post how it is doing when something happens.


Anyways, it is really fun watering them every evening and observing them growing. It is kind of exciting when you realize they have grown or started producing fruits.

Besides these vegetable and fruit plants, I do have some flowering plants. I recently sow Aubrieta seeds in a beautiful flower-shaped pot. My peace lily and orchids are a bit sad because I have been putting so much effort into vegetables and fruits. I gave my mini rose, which I got as a gift a while ago, some rose plant food today, hoping it would have enough energy to make flower buds again.


Hm... I actually didn't realize that I had so much plants in my care.....

Regardless, with some time for watering and lots of love, I hope these plants grow to be healthy and gorgeous.

"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth,

and no culture comparable to that of the garden."

-Thomas Jefferson

Stop talking

Some people like to talk a lot about their inspiration, dream and plans: "That movie inspired me to live my life to the fullest" or "I want to become a professor" or "I am going to study so hard for this test."

I'm not saying it is bad to vocalize your thoughts. Saying things out loud can assure and remind you of the current goal and task you should focus on. However, it is very easy to be caught up in the words themselves and not realize that they are merely empty self-satisfaction.

Let's say there is this guy named Bob. He has a test coming up next month. His friends ask him to go to a movie and he responds, "I can't go 'cause I need to study for this exam." He stays home and watches TV. Next week, his parents want him to join them to go grocery shopping and he replies, "I can't go 'cause I need to study for this exam." He remains home and memorize some vocabulary for the day. One day, he wakes up late in the morning. As he feeds his cute pooch, he murmurs, "I'm sorry I can't take you out for a walk. I have the exam coming up." He goes to the kitchen to get the food and start watching TV shows he missed on his computer.

Ok. Now, what do you think about Bob? I mean, he says that he can't do all these because he needs to study. Is he studying hard enough? Well, I don't think I can agree. He is not utilizing the time wisely enough. Even if he went to the park with the dog, he would have enough time to study. It may just be more efficient to take a walk, shower, and start studying with fresh feeling, instead of stuffing down his stomach and giving into food coma.

Well, so, those excuses for not doing something for the exam do not really make sense at all. He stayed home to study but ended up not studying. Why is that?

In my opinion, most people with this problem tend to view the thought of studying, for example, as if it counts for studying hours. Basically they assume that they studied just because they thought about studying. I am not saying that people do it intentionally. Regardless, this type of behavior is unhealthy for the active, happy life.

There may be a way to prevent this. Micro-planning. Before you go to sleep at night, take out your planner and write down what you will be doing for tomorrow in 30 minute increments. You need to make sure to write down everything that will happen tomorrow. However, do not make a plan that is impossible to keep. You need to know your ability and limit. When you wake up in the morning, check the planner. Every half an hour, check the planner for the tasks you should be doing.

Here is an example. Let's say Bob planned to study from 2-6pm tomorrow. He writes down Math for 2-4pm and English for 4-6pm. He opens the Math book he will be studying and decides to finish Chapter 3 tomorrow. He writes, "2-2:30pm Math page 43-50, 2:30-3pm Math page 51-60, 3-4pm Math Chapter test 3 and review." The next day, as he studies Math, he realizes that he is not able to finish the test and review in an hour. He only finishes the test and move onto studying English. After dinner, using the time scheduled as 'free time,' Bob finishes the review promptly and enjoys watching TV peacefully.

Doesn't that sound nice? Watching TV peacefully knowing that you have done every task for the day? Even if Bob had test next month, he is able to use his time wisely and relax fully after his study.

Micro-planning should also be accompanied by Macro-planning. Basically you are picturing the general layout of a month at the beginning of each month. It helps you guide through the month and help you keep focused on what is important and imminent.

For Bob, since the exam is next month, he would write something like, "Study Math everyday except Mondays and Fridays. Study English everyday except Tuesdays and Sundays. Memorize 20 vocabulary everyday. Take Wilson out for a walk every Saturday mornings. No going out with friends except 15th (Susan's Birthday)."

With this, Bob will have some exercise taking the pooch out to the park. He will be able to organize his studying schedule. He will not have to give excuses every time. One task should not be an excuse for not doing another task.

We are given only 24 hours a day. It is up to us to use that time wisely. Some people use 24 hours like 12 hours, and some use 24 hours as if 48 hours had passed. Using the given time efficiently is the most difficult and the most rewarding task of all.

Let's live life to the fullest: stop talking and start doing!

"It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck.
Even while waiting for it."

- inside a fortune cookie -

Tofu's Hike

Today I write another adventure that Tofu and I had. I felt bad that Tofu was being kept in the apartment with almost no form of exercise except chasing his own tail or throwing around his dolls. Therefore, I decided to give him a little treat and take him out to a day in the dog park. Surprisingly, there are not many dog parks near my area and the nearest one I went to was not so good. So, on Sunday I found a park that was about 25 minutes away from my house called Runyon Canyon Park.

I went to this Runyon Canyon Park only to find that the parking here is impossible. There is no designated parking for the dog park or any park enthusiasts. After about a good 15 minutes of searching for parking, I had parked. Unfortunately, this guy couldn't wait and went poopy in my car and I shall not disclose the picture because it is just disturbing. So, after I parked and cleaned up his poop, we walked to the entrance of the park.

Now at this entrance, there was no sign that said, "Welcome to Runyon Canyon Dog Park." Instead, all I see is a dirt road going uphill. Therefore, Tofu and I hiked up this trail until I finally saw a sign that said, "Off-Leash Area," but there was no fence and it was just dirt with a trail leading again upward. I was so confused, but it said no dog leash and so I unleash Tofu wondering what is going on. After a few seconds, I realize that this isn't a dog park but it was a hike trail where dogs could be unleashed to follow their trainers. So, though I was wearing sandals and had no hiking material, Tofu and I decided to hike for about half an hour and come back. It was great opportunity for him to be unleashed and still follow me. We were still weary of other dogs as they are way bigger than he is. Yet, he enjoyed his freedom in the blazing sun and that made me happy as well.

The Entrance to Runyon Canyon Park

Uh oh... is this park safe?!

The OK for unleashing the Tofu

Tofu likes smelling anything... even rocks

The bigger dog

Tofu and the scenery... can you find Tofu?

P.S. Today, I was printing out a lot of documents when I happened to see Tofu freaking out over my printer spitting out pages.... I hope the video is in working condition

"Dogs are better than human beings because they know and do no tell."

- Emily Dickinson

Vegas, Vegas, Vegas!

Vegas the destination of every 21 year old's dream. This was my 3rd visit to Vegas after I turned 21 and it has always been a blast. It's not about the drinking, clubbing, or gambling that makes going to Vegas really fun (even though it definitely helps) but it's about the people and the atmosphere that Vegas creates. Therefore, if you ever have a chance you should always go there at least once after you turn 21.

I went with one of my good friends, John, and we stayed at his hotel called the M Resort. The M is a four star hotel with great food and the newest slot machines. However, a downside to this resort is that it is 10 minutes off the Vegas strip, so if you want to get into the Vegas mood and see bunch of people walking down the streets of Vegas with drinks flying around everywhere then you should think about different hotel.

How the M Resort looks like

On the first day, we drove in and we started off right away with the slot machines while we were waiting for our rooms to be ready. Then around 4 we went to the pool for a quick swim and let me tell you it was great because it was 102 degrees outside. After that we played some more slots and then it was the long awaited M resort buffet. This buffet has one of the greatest food ever and also the best beer.

This was my first plate: slice of pizza, mac & cheese, creamed corn and spinach, tortellini, cocktail shrimps, ribs, prime rib, and salad

Second plate: tri tip, mussels, creamed spinach and corn, cream of broccoli, and tacquitos

Desert: Fruit tart, Cream puff, Red Velvet Cupcake, and gelatto

Then afterward, I played some blackjack and then slept for the night. The next day, we just had some Jack in the Box and went to Serendipity. Now Serendipity has the best frozen hot chocolate ever located in front of Caesar's Palace. They also have a great food too, which I tried on my last trip to Vegas.

Frozen Hot Chocolate

Then, we played some slots for a while and swam afterward too. Then again, we ate at the wonderful, oh so wonderful buffet. It was great.

The Swimming pool

Won a $100.21 with my last golden monkey :]

Overall, I didn't make any profit but it was great vacation. There are a lot more things to do in Vegas, such as shopping or catching a show (I personally recommend Love). It's just a fun place to be and I hope you can go sometime soon as well.

The view of Vegas from my room

"The worst thing that can happen to a man who gambles is to win."

- Charles H. Spurgeon

Free

Yay~ I'm finally free~!!!!!!























.....................

Or am I...?

Peggy Sue Restaurant

For some random lunch in San Jose, I went to Peggy Sue.

It is kind of casual, 1950s-inspired restaurant that serves burgers, shakes, and many other wide range of good eats. If you are a San Jose Sharks fan, this place is for you.

The people are very friendly and the food is great.

This is the Peggy Sue's Hamburger. Tomatoes, lettuce and a patty.

This is the "Blue Hawaiian" Pineapple Bacon Burger. The name pretty much says it all. I made mine a meal combo with a side of sweet potato fries and a soda.

Currently, Peggy Sue Restaurant is having a promotion that you can get the burger combo meal with a price of a burger every Wednesday. I am not sure how long this would last, but regardless, the burger is pretty big and filling.

It seems like they have two locations in San Jose. Visit their website if you are interested.


http://www.peggysues.com/index.html

"You can find your way across this country using burger joints,

the way a navigator uses stars."

Charles Kuralt