I went to see The Dark Knight last night !! it was awesome !! better than Batman Begins which was great also! I preferred Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal as the love interest though, but the movie was great!! Heath Ledger’s performance was insanely good ! 
but enough about that.. I’m this movie will break some box office records and you should all see it !
I just finished watching another Indonesian movie on youtube :p It’s called LOVE… the title is LOVE, an English title… it was released last Valentine’s day, of course it’s a love story :p .. The style of the movie is similar to Love Actually.. 5 separate love stories.. somehow connected to each other.. I think it’s a decent movie.. pretty good actually for an Indonesian product hehehe The 10 main casts are I think all quite famous actors / actresses.. so it can be considered a star-studded movie 
here’s the trailer.. I like the soundtrack
I think I will watch another Indonesian movie tonight or tomorrow.. probably “Love is Cinta” hmm or maybe “Nagabonar Jadi 2″… also saw a trailer for a new movie called “Lost in Love”, supposedly a sequel to “Eiffel I’m in Love”, a successful 2003 movie, which looks cute. I will definitely watch it if it’s available on youtube later hehe
Anyways.. while watching LOVE I noticed an interesting video in the “Related Videos” bar … it’s a tv trailer for “Xin Xin Xiang Yin” — which is the Chinese title for the Indonesian sinetron Heart… it’s so unusual to watch an Indonesian film, dubbed in Chinese, and not the other way round.. Watch here : link and link
I’m back to watching k-dramas ;D hehehe It’s been a while since I watched a whole series.. I think I didn’t watch any kdrama for almost a year?? I just didn’t have time anymore since I went back to school. The thing is once I started watching, I can’t stop :p It’s too addictive hehe It’s bad.. so I better not start all, or else kdramas would consume all of my free time
After I was done with finals, I had some free time and finished The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince
I know that Coffee Prince was one of the top kdramas of 2007, and definitely one of the most talked about… and actually I already watched 2 episodes of it last year when I went back to Indonesia during the summer and it was quite interesting.. so I thought I should pick it back up before watching a different one.
Hmmm I thought it was alright. It’s good, fresh storyline, but nothing sensational hehe it’s not enough to keep me glued to the TV / laptop. And for me personally it was quite forgettable afterwards. Probably because I don’t like the actors and actresses. I don’t even remember the characters’ names right now… that means it’s really not memorable for me. I stilll remember some characters’ names from kdramas that I watched 3-4 years ago
So I planned to catch up watching more kdramas this summer.. and I brought my collection with me hehe a big stack of DVDs that I haven’t watched yet. So far I already watched 2 of them now…Since I’ve been out of the loop for a while, I have to depend on reviews now to decide what to watch. In the past there was a time when I actually was watching a drama that was still airing in Korea hahaha and I would be so unpatient waiting for the English subtitles to come out. What would we do without those amazing fansubbers :p ??I remember that was during My Girl and Goong time .. that was early 2005? gosh it’s been that long.
A few weeks ago (in San Jose) I finished Dalja’s Springs –another drama that has great reviews; it’s supposed to be funny and cute. After My Girl, my expectation is quite high.
I actually love ChaeRim the actress in her previous roles – and she’s good in this drama, but I don’t like the guys!!! So Dalja’s Springs also is just so-so in my book. .. is there no more good kdramas out there?? I think after My Girl really raised the bar high for me, and it’s so hard to find one that’s good.. that I can actually recommend to others to watch..
I finally found one this weekend that I would recommend to others .. it’s Queen of The Game This one is actually not on the -highly rated drama- list, but I’ve been wanting to watch it because of the actress – Lee Bo Young. I loved her in her previous dramas!! In fact I read some reviews that didn’t think too highly of this drama.. but I’m glad I ignore those reviews and watch this anyways.. because I love it love it love it!!!
The story is quite heavy :p it’s about family, business, revenge, and of course love. It’s quite sad too – lots of tearjerking moments – which I love hahaha.. I always love movies that can make me cry So it’s probably not for everyone hehe Oh btw, I just fast forwarded (can’t help it :p) the parts I am not interested in :p so maybe that helped too cus I may just skipped the boring subplots.
I absolutely love the couple. They have great chemistry and they’re both gorgeous!!!! Haha while watching this drama everytime Hendrik called me, I always said “oOhh cakeeeep bangettt” and he thought I’m just crazy to behave like that at this age hahahaha but seriously though, this guy Joo Jin Mo is just HOTness !!! but these pictures don’t do him justice — got to watch the drama!
ayat-ayat Cinta (literal translation: Verses of Love) — youtube link to part1
I found this movie accidentally on youtube the other day. After a quick Google to read what it’s about, I decided to watch it. I read that this movie broke the box office record in Indonesia. The official genre of this movie is actually religious; it’s an Islamic love story
So I gave it a try (in youtube it’s divided into 13 parts), it was already very late but I kept watching it until the end, I think until 2AM :p because it’s good !! I liked it! I think it’s one of the best Indonesian movies I’ve seen. The 2 main actresses are so pretty.
It’s a novel adaptation and as usual fans of the novel seem to not like it because they have really high expectation and kept comparing the movie to the novel. Just like Harry Potter movies, I love everyone of them, but I know people who read the books think the movies didn’t live up the the novels.
The one thing that bothered me though, is the fact that they all speak Indonesian in the movie. Some conversations were started in Arabic (first few sentences), and then usually they continue speaking in Indonesian.. I think that’s supposed to mean that they’re conversing in Arabic???? I don’t know if that’s the intention, it’s just my interpretation.. isn’t it unrealistic for the Egyptian characters to be able to speak Indonesian fluently ?? I read some viewer comments on youtube that said the actors’ Arabic were really bad hahahaha… I guess that would disturb the enjoyment of the movie for people who actually understand Arabic. Lucky for me that I don’t. I can imagine if they made this movie in Chinese and have lots of Chinese conversations in them; Bad pronunciations (by the characters that are supposedly native speakers) would totally ruin the movie for me.
Anyways… here’s the music video of the OST… I like the song
I also found the electronic version of the novel.. I might read it this weekend, hopefully it doesn’t have too much Arabic
I didn’t have the intention to create a new blog.. but l’ve been tired of friendster blog’s very limited features and theme. What I don’t like most about it though is the fact that friendster sends out notifications to all my fs friends everytime I posted a new entry :p I know that everyone probably just ignore or delete all fs notification emails anyways.. but still I just don’t like the feeling.
so.. the domain name is virgotarrius.. everybody could guess the meaning, virgo (hendrik) + sagittarius (me). This also wasn’t planned hahaha.. the name just came to me last night around midnight. I first checked if vera.wordpress.com is still available or not…haha of course not! I wanted a pretty word for my domain name .. and found a list such as epiphany, evanescent, serendipity, amaryllis, bliss, rhapsody, etc… well all taken. Then I thought of using december, december18 (my birthday), and then I thought of my zodiac.. and ta daaa.. virgotarrius… hahaha.. Since the meaning is a combination of hendrik and me, maybe he can start blogging here too We can make this a joint blog hehe. He’s mentioned to me quite a few times in the past that he wants to try blogging, but never really did it.
And I successfully imported all of my previous entries from fs blog to here.. the process was quite simple !! took me less than 5 minutes ! seriously !
So anyways.. first post on wordpress today.. I want to share some web goodies that I’ve found
mysoju.com : must visit if you’re a kdrama / jdorama / taiwanese drama lovers… tons of subbed dramas, all streaming links. I finished watching a complete series of My Lucky Star (taiwanese series starring Jimmy Lin!) in one weekend last month kekekeke after my final exams. It’s my first taiwanese drama since…hmm I don’t even remember. I would recommend it ! Jimmy Lin is such a babyface!! Can’t believe that he hasn’t changed much in 15 years! He was so popular when I was in junior high.. so that’s like a gazillion years ago.. He’s born in 1974 which makes him 34 this years but he looks at least 10 years younger. Oh, I feel so old…even though I’m younger
A similar site of this is http://aznv.tv. I haven’t watched anything there yet, but I saw the list and it looks like a pretty good list too. Another one which has been there quite a while is http://www.crunchyroll.com/
For American tv series.. try hulu.com .. highly recommended by my coworker here. It has complete episodes of a lot of american tv series (my fave The Office is available there) and some movies too. And they’re legally free to watch if you don’t mind some ads !!
With all those sites around, I don’t really need tv this summer
Time really flies.. I’ve been a bum for more than 3 months now.. some friends have been asking how come they don’t see me online anymore :p and what have i been doing really everyday since i don’t have a job ? hehe
Hmm pretty much watching tv day after day :p .. mostly Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order :Criminal Intent, or Monk … hehehe I’m a little obssesed with L&O these days.. the only new show that I wait for each week is So You Think You Can Dance.. other than that, I just watch reruns of old sitcoms..
I never watch L&O when I was in Indiana (the whole 8 years!).. well I used to catch a couple episodes with Hendrik whenever I came to visit Austin.. there seems to be always an episode on some station when we’re in front on the TV and we would just watch it .. it’s never planned. But now.. I know the schedules.. I can watch 3-5 episodes a day.. and pretty soon, I’m afraid I’m going to start seeing the episodes that I’ve seen before..:p humm
each day goes pretty fast…
I still download movies/dramas at night.. same old, same old hehe..
I’m always looking forward to the weekend because I don’t get to spend much time with Hendrik on the weekdays.. he comes home late and always very tired.. on top of that, he has Kendo practice 2-3 times a week.. and when he does, he doesn’t get home until around 11-11.30PM… almost midnight !!
and oh yeah.. we’ve picked up golf.. we signed up for a class last month… 4 meetings for 4 weeks, and outside the classes we tried to practice at a nearby driving range once a week.. Hendrik now really wants to buy me my first iron sets.. but I’m still not into it that much, I’m fine using the loaner club each time :p I don’t have the desire to own my own clubs yet :p
We kinda picked up gardening too a few weeks ago.. we made our first flower bed.. hehehe just a small one for now.. the rest of our backyard is still empty.. it’s so rewarding to see the flowers bloom ..and my favorite is the morning glory vines that I planted from seeds.. they’re growing so fast and I checked on it several times a day hehe it’s different when you plant it yourself.. Yesterday I just put out a wild bird feeder, and this afternoon I had fun watching so may birds feeding on it from the window hehehehehe.. now I’m thinking I should put out a bird bath too…
But in a couple of days I have to leave my daily routine for 4 weeks because ….
I’M GOING HOME !!! I’m leaving Saturday night and should be home in Bandung by Monday ! And this time I won’t have to stop by at the US Embassy anymore because….. We finally got our GREENCARDS !!! YAAAAAY ! We UNEXPECTEDLY got our plastic cards in the mail last Monday (last week) and that same afternoon I purchased my air ticket !!
Filed under: music & film
Last weekend we started watching The Office (courtesy of bittorrent, of course) .. we did a marathon.. started with the very first episode of Season 1.. and now I’m already halfway through Season 3 hehehe It’s just so hilarious.. probably the best comedy on TV right now.. well I haven’t been watching much TV these days.. but for sure next season I’ll be tuning in to NBC again every Thursday night 
It’s different from other sitcoms that we’re used to.. and it does takes a couple of episodes to get used to it but afterwards we just couldn’t stop laughing hehe
ok this is totally random.. I made a note to blog about this a few weeks ago :p and I just came across that note.
Have you ever heard of the term “first cousin twice removed”, or “second cousin once removed”, etc. Do you know what they mean? I’ve been wondering about what the “Once Removed” really means everytime I heard or read about it but I didn’t find out until recently during one of those days when I felt bored and I just googled random stuffs.. I don’t remember what made me look this term up..
And wikipedia as usual provides the information I was looking for. ..
So… the cute kids I’ve been referring to as my nephews and nieces (they are my first cousins’ children) are actually my first cousins once removed! And so is Meggie who is actually my mom’s first cousin…. she’s also my first cousin once removed! hehehe .. the Removed part is used to describe a different in generation…
I bet a lot of people reading this blog didn’t know about this before :p there.. now you learn something new about Genealogy.
Filed under: music & film
Just finished watching Jomblo on youtube. It’s good ! I like the style of the story telling, made me feel like I was reading a comic. Their punch lines are funny too !
Read about JOMBLOlogy here hehe .. lumayan buat bacaan kalo lagi bosen .. lucu !
Filed under: music & film
currently watching Medical Mysteries on ABC … interesting stuffs hehe don’t know why I like watching this kind of shows .. anyways today they were showing this unusual condition that some unfortunate people have called face blind.. where they just can’t recognize faces.. not even those of their own family, their own spouses or children .. how baffling .. nothing wrong with their memory, their brain just can’t process facial features and put faces with names. They can know people by voice, by the way they walk and others.. but not by face.
so How Good Are You at Face Recognition ? – take the test
I got 92% for the unfamiliar faces.. and 100% for celebrity faces hahaha
Filed under: music & film
ok.. enough of that last post…
I’m now watching my fave TV show of the season.. actually it’s pretty much the only show on TV that I wait for these days It’s like American Idol but about dancing… it’s amazing to see all these young dancers learn and master a new dance style each week. Each one of them had their own specialty, so it must be hard for a hip-hop dancer to dance ballroom and the other way round.
This is different fron Dancing with The Stars ( i’m definitely gonna watch the new season ) because of the variation in the styles… Hip-hop, Pop, Krumps, Jazz, Contemporary, Lyrical, instead of the regular set of ballroom Swing, Waltz, Mambo, Tango, Paso Doble, Cha-cha, etc.. I didn’t even know that are sub-categories of each style : Argentina Tango, Vienesse Waltz, Afro Pop, etc.
They’re eliminating 2 people out of the Top 6 tonight.. ehe I contributed about 30 votes to the 12 million votes received last night (first time voting hahahaha ) and next week is the Finale.. ..
I’ve been re-watching some of the dances on youtube, but a lot of the videos have been removed because of copyright issues 
bummer…
oow.. apparently my 30 votes was not enough to keep Natalie in.. she just got voted off
