watching tv now

london 5.37pm 7C dry sunday 2019

its dark out there now, and i had to look out of the window to see if it is raining or not. the shops will be closed now, at least the normal big supermarkets,so its too late for me to get the reduced foods. i dont need any reduced foods  really. 

 the so called  convenience shops are still open in case anyone needs to buy anything urgently. not that i am in need of anything. with a freezer of food it is rare that i dont have anything to make a meal at a moment’s notice.

so i have eaten fried rice with prawns,mixed with scambled eggs  and lettuce. its quick and filling. now i am waiting for a cartoon to start, it is another version of the christmas scrooge story, called a christmas carol, but this time voiced by jim carrey, doing all the voices for scrooge as well as the 3 ghosts of christmas. i dont think i have seen it before.

i have discovered that in my chromebook i can get the tv programs to show live over the internet. so even though simon is now seeing a program on the tv screen, if he is still on it, i can see my program on my chromebook.

no wonder there is no need for a big tv screen in the house anymore since anyone can see tv on their laptops. people can by- pass the tv license as they dont need a tv screen anymore. i hope that the bbc tv license is on the way out. they will have to find another alternative. the cartoon is starting now, and i can watch it over the big screen as simon can watch his snooker on his laptop. 

movies

london 5.34pm 23C cloudy friday 2019

today is the 2nd day of the film festival in leicester square. i saw the incredibles 2 was going to be shown after moana, and wanted to see it, so decided to go and see moana first, just so i can chose a nice seat… it will be difficult to find a nice seat empty after the moana film is shown, as there will be lots of people allready there.

as it was i got a central seat on the bean bags, so it was an uninterrupted view. the deck chairs where i sat yesterday was not only uncomfortable, but the front row was all taken.  it is not good to sit on any deckchairs behind the front row, as the back of the chairs were quite high and block the bottom half of the screen.

i did enjoy the film, moana, mainly because of the graphics, every blade of grass and flower seem to be so clearly and sharply drawn, and the water was just really beautifully depicted, so that it was like watching the real thing, and so i was able to pretend and just enjoy the sun bleached sandy beaches and waves washing over the sand. it was so realistic. and during the whole movie i can pretend to be lying on the sunny beach.

the 2nd film the incredibles 2 was not as interesting as i thought. i had enjoyed the first ‘incredible’ film of the series, but this follow up was quite dull. and after the beautiful graphics of moana, this one looks even duller , just being plain colour washes over the outlines of the characters. it was so dull and boring that i left before it finished and gave up my bean bag. so this film which was the reason why i went , turned out to be a disappointment and it was the first film moana, which i had not intended to see, but it so happened to be first, which turned out to be the more enjoyable one. 

added. 10.23pm 19C i read in the online news that there is a power cut in london at about 6.45pm today. how strange, i live here and i was totally unaware of this power cut. i guess it is because it is still light, so i dont have any need to switch on the lights, and that is the only way we can tell if there is a power cut. and i use my chromebook on its battery power, so not connected to the mains. the only time i would connect to the mains is if i want to charge the chromebook. so this power cut whcih seems to affect the transport system, trains not running, and tubes and the stations were dark because there is no electricity. and so they are the ones noticing it. i was just recently commenting on how new york gets these outage, but not london, and this happens to make me eat my words. haha. but it must be over very quick, at least when i switched on the lights at about 8.30pm, when the sun has set and it gets dark, everything works. ah well, i suppose it is too good to last, that we did not suffer an outage more often. in fact, come to think of it, we should be surprised that we dont suffer more of these outages more often. maybe in the future we shall get these interruptions to our power supply… who knows really and we might look back on these years as the golden years when we are so free of power outages. 

added i thought it was a small local power outage, but it seems to have hit a large part of the country according to this news report. but it seems to be only for a short time the power went off.oh well, i am not affected so i dont care haha. if it does not affect me i dont care. there is no point being worried or scared or anxious about it, if it doesnot affect me. that is my philosophy otherwise you can be a nervous wreck, anxious about anything and everything. 

 

 

peter rabbit film

london 2.46pm 23C cloudy thursday 2019

i wanted to watch this free film in leicester square. it is the first film of the free film festival held there over the next 4days, it is peter rabbit, beatrix potters creation. this one is mixing live actors with animation of the rabbits and animals. and stretching out the basic plot of the rabbit raiding the vegetable garden and his escapades with the farmer. but obviously u cannot build a whole film on such a flimsy plot, so they expanded it to a feud between the rabbit and the farmer’s heir, his nephew and a romance with the next door girl neighbour. the original story is for young children with the fear factor being peter caught and ending up in a stew pie, like his father. that was only vaguely alluded to in the film. i suppose it was too gory for the little children.

there are 4 films shown each day, i wasnt interested in seeing the others so i left after this film. the books are quite old, the first one appeared in 1902. i did not read them when i was a kid. they were not in the school library in the Muar (a small estuary town in johor state) school where i grew up and had my primary and secondary education. perhaps because they are for young kids… the stories are simply told and i think i would find them too simple. 

i have been enjoying eating the bean sprouts i bought yesterday, i made a stir fried char kuey teoh, using the dried vermicelli noodles that i have soaked in hot water yesterday. they have all night to dry out in the fridge so when stir fried their dry texture makes for a good fried dish. and i used some of the polish kabanos sausages which gives it a nice flavour. there are lots of different ways of cooking, so that it is a very pleasant pastime to decide what to eat and how to cook it. and then there is the actual eating it, another pleasure.

london 7.31pm 9C dry sunny thursday 2019

i had thought of going to tesco again for the bargains , it is that time to go if i want to go, but i decided i shall not. there is the danger of buying stuff i dont want just because it is reduced. you can waste money that way.

instead i am watching snow white and the huntsman. it is another remake of the old snow white fairy tale, but this one is quite a big variation of the old story.  i have seen it before, but not to completion. i find i dont sit still enough to make it to the end. that is the trouble with tv movies, it makes those of us with short attention spans, and impatient nature to skip and change channels. anyway it is a nice thing to watch, lots of action, and the colours and scenery and costumes all make for a good viewing. 

free film preview

london 4.56pm sunny 30.2C saturday 2018

i tend to enter free offers even though i am not too bothered if i win or not. and i put my name down for a free viewing of translyvania 3, the movie, and was put on their waiting list. i knew it was fully booked allready, so i dont know why i bothered to put myself down for the waiting list. its not something i am very keen on seeing. but today i got an email from them just now, saying there has been a cancellation and they have added me and sent me a ticket. it is for tomorrow at 10am.

maybe the holiday exodus is making them think there will be a lot of no shows… because it seems they give out more tickets than there is seats, just to allow for no shows and to make sure it is a full house. they want ID too, but i think that is to make sure you are not too young. it has a PG rating.

i went looking for something with my name on it, but found i dont have any with my christian name. i used my chinese name for credit cards and stuff. eventually i found a European health card with my full name on it, so i shall bring that along.

its a nice way of spending the time seeing a movie in a movie theatre with its big screen. usually i would watch films on tv. and in fact right now i am waiting to see one , actually two, they are shown at the same time about 6pm today and so clash. minions on itv, and wreck -it ralph on bbc 1. most probably i shall see ralph first and then the minion on the itv+1 slot, when it is shown again one hour later. i like this one hour delay function on tv. very useful when programs clash. 

added 8.14pm. in the end, i did not see them separately, the two tv films i mean. i flipped between them instead. that is the thing i find when i watch it on tv. i could not stay all the way with one film. it encourages this short attention span. or u can look at it another way, that we can flip to the other when we get to the boring or slow bits. it may not be a good thing, just because it gets a bit slow we might miss the director’s plot.  slow films can be very good if u patiently go through it. but in our haste we might miss out. 

the weather website says it is over 30C now, but i am indoors so dont feel the heat. looking outside the window i see dark storm clouds above me, but they are not a lot of it, so it might not rain. i wonder whether there are any one out and about in this now. i wonder if they too had just woken up from a nap like i did. it is lovely to sleep when it is this kind of weather.

quite a appropriate theme, vacations… though those on vacation will miss seeing it. haha. so geared for us who are stay at home.

star wars last jedi

london 9.03am 12.9C rain. sunday 2017

yesterday, my friend came to stay at my place. he is from bournemouth. i thought he came by train, but he came by express coach. he bought a £35 ticket and was charged an extra £5 as a holiday surcharge when he boarded it. the train would have cost him £48. so it just goes to confirm that it is not really wise to travel on a public holiday weekend.

he said he got 2 guest tickets from the manager as he is such a long time member of the odean club. so we went at about 5.30pm to the odean leicester square and got circle seats, plus free 3D glasses. it was a premier night it seems, but we never did see any celebrities. it will be the first time i get to go inside this cinema, and to see a film in 3D. 

we got time to kill before the film starts, so my friend said he wanted to eat something so we went to wong kei, and went upstairs, where they were putting people in shared tables. the wait was short which shows how efficient they are at rapid turnovers of the tables. my friend ordered ‘prawn’ crackers, had a soup, £3.50, and we shared a plate of ho fun noodles with seafood/pork £6.80. my friend said his soup was very salty. the bill came to £12.70. and i entertained myself by watching what the others who shared the table were ordering and how they ate it.

i think they charge more for upstairs diners. the menu they show outside in the shop window do not have the same price as the ones we got upstairs, which makes me think it is the price they charge if u are on the ground floor, which they reserve for lone diners. unless today is the new year weekend, and so prices rise for it. 

so now for the film… star wars the last jedi. my first impression of the cinema is that the screen is not very big. that surprised me. and the 3D glasses are tinted so it dims the picture for the viewer. and i noticed it is very dramatic , the 3D effect, but it means if u take off the glasses and watch the film without, it is blurred… so u have to watch it with glasses. it costs £1 to buy one, but we got it free with the guest pass. 

i have read this film grossed worldwide the 2nd highest of the year after beauty and the beast, and may well surpass it at the year’s end. but what surprised me was to find that it  only opened on 14 dec. and today 30dec is it premier. i must have missed something… how did it manage to gross so much on such a short time? well, someone left their tickets on the chair  and i saw it cost them £25.60 for one ticket….! so that is how… haha. but maybe this is a 3D ticket so it is unusually highpriced. the normal price for a ticket in this cinema according to the list outside the door is £13.50 for an adult.

but what about the film, is it any good? it is very confusing and very loud. there are lots of side plots. all the characters do not appear in the same scene to act against each other… instead they all have their own set, in stories where they interact with only one other or two other of the characters.

i have not seen the previous ones, so may not know the underlying story to the characters. the chinese girl is a mystery to me. what is that about? maybe they want to bring in all the races to be represented  and she is not even the same girl who sacrificed herself; being the sister instead.

it was nice to see carrie fisher, with a sense of sorrow as we know she had died before the film came out. this is her last film. though i suspect the producers will bring her up in future films resurrecting her image and cleverly photoshopping her in with the latest actors…

in fact, it just brings to mind how much i miss hans solo…that character pulls the first star war film together. and without him , it kind of lost the plot. to think this is the 8th film rendition of the franchise. disney has bought it and we will be getting a few more out and by the look of it the public seem to want to see it. there are a lot of die hard fans of the series. added. 10.32am, it seems i am not the only one who yearn for the hans solo character to be resurrected. it seems they are making a movie about him , coming out in 25may 2018.

added. oh , we were walking back from the cinema to the bus stop and we saw a £5 note on the sidewalk. it had been raining, and the pavement was wet, but the note being plastic was intact. the plastic note is very springy and so it is easy for it to be sprung out of the wallet when u pull another note out.  that might explain why it is lying on the pavement… we might see more such plastic notes on the ground in future. .

my friend have a talent in drawing to him money lying around for him to find. anyway i gave it to him, to offset the costs he incurred with the meal.

he found an oyster card too, which he used for the bus trip to leicester square.  it had £2.80 on it, so £1.50 was used for one journey, but on the return he got a free ticket, because the buses have this policy of allowing you a free ride if the balance is not enough to pay full fare , you are supposed to pay it off when u top it up. 

added 4.59pm. i found this link that gives a bit of the back story and makes a bit more sense of the story. it is a bit of spoiler alert so if u dont want to know skip it. 

a film called nymphomaniac vol 1 and 2

london 10.42am 7C sunny tuesday 2017

such a bright sunny morning today. with blue sky . and according to the weather website for my area it was -0.2c at about 8am. i woke at about 9am, but did not feel cold in the flat. we still did not need to switch on the portable heaters. i dont have central heating. we must be getting heat from downstairs. because normally we would feel the cold by now. in fact, simon cooked bacon and eggs for his breakfast and i opened the kitchen windows and the wc window just to get ventilation in the flat to remove the cooking smells. and it was not that cold.

i was up late last night, and saw a film on tv, nymphomaniac vol 1, vol 2 followed after it , at about 1am, but i was too sleepy, not to mention i was a bit bored by it . it is a strange film, made by a mainstream director, and starring some famous actors (shia la boef, uma thurman, , at least i have heard of them, which means they are really famous . but it is a movie filmed like a porno film, very explicit sex scenes. normally films never show the actual sex, but this one does, and involve famous actors too…though shia la beuf did not follow up in vol 2, and they have to use another actor to replace him.

so unusual for a mainstream director and actors to act in this sex film. no wonder it was shown so late at night. it was such a long film that they have to cut it in two parts. in between the sex scenes it was all arty farty… bringing in philosophy and even fly fishing to explain the actions of the main character…

tintin

london 12.17pm 20.1C sunny thursday 2017

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i really felt like having veg, so i bought these two at sainsburys. it is only £1. and made with a egg sauce, it is delicious. i use half a stock cube, so that it gives it that slight salty ness.

celery and brocolli are local veg, so wont be affected by the £ exchange rate. we should eat more of them really instead of buying imported veg.

brocolli also have calcium, which is not something that we can guess. it is counter intuitive, a green veg that is also calcium rich, when we associate calcium with dairy products. the reason why i thought i should have more calcium in my diet is because the doctor’s note , which was sent to me, (it is part of their policy of sending to patients what the doctor wrote), says the fracture in my foot might be due to a lack of calcium, and that they should keep that in mind. it is quite possible of course that due to a lack of calcium, the bones in my foot are less strong, and so fracture easily… so i thought i better increase my calcium and do a lot more exercise… exercise is the best medicine. really.

its really a beautiful day out there, blue sky , sunny… and i want to stay in to see this tv film tintin ,secret of the unicorn.2011.

sigh, torn between two desires. i guess the outdoors will have to wait. dr seuss, cat with a hat, is also on in another channel and at first i was torn between the two, but after seeing the dr seuss for a bit, i realise it is too childish for me. both are animation movies, but the tintin one is really very realistic. this film is very british, with british turn of phrase and pronounciation, which is unusual, because the original tintin is belgium.

lose money first … it is the new way of doing business now.

london 6.40am 17.5C cloudy thursday 2017 added. 7.56am raining. i went to the kitchen to make porridge and so happened to look out of the window at the road, and see it is wet. it has been raining. i did not notice it earlier because sitting by the window in my living room i can only see the sky, so did not see the pavement. i dont know if it is raining by just looking at the sky… the rain dont seem to show up. it is so fine, that there are no rain drops to see.

i usually wake up about this time, 6am . its cloudy out there. this one caught my eye, an article about a start up moviepass in america, where u can pay $10 a month and can see all the movies you want, one a day, from any movie house that take mastercard. the startup pays the cinema its usual price. it will lose money, but hope to get some money back from the movie chains once they see more people coming to their cinemas and also from advertising. or so they hope.

 its a strange way to do business. but seem to mimic the internet businesses like amazon, who started by losing money, but got so many followers it is a huge force. and one comment said amazon is making money not from selling stuff , but from its webs services to companies based on the cloud.

what puzzles me is that moviepass has been bought and  owned by the chap who founded netflix. netflix is the one that is making inroads into the movie chains business by producing its own films shown only in its own website, and thus making people watch films on tv. so why is the owner doing this, seeming to muscle in to the cinema business? is it to build up such a strong numbers of punters, that he can control the cinema chains with his followers.

here in london, there is one chain of cinemas, empire , that is offering £10 a month to see any number of films a month. but it is not scaling it up with a online presence.  or maybe it is, once  i were to subscribe, it would effectively build up their web presence, they would know me as a subscriber in their books.  

other chains are doing it for £20 a month. i got notified of it via email, even me who dont go to the cinemas except once, when i was given a free ticket to see a pride sponsored film.

 i can see how tempting it is to join for just £10 a month, it was advertised on the front of the cinema in huge letters… that is how i got to know of it.  and u can see all the films in that chain, not only once but many times too. which is what film fans do, right? it will bring people back to the habit of going to cinemas. it has not got me to subscribe, because i dont really like seeing movies without the subtitles… haha. so tend to see movies on tv. but i do know i miss out on the big screen experience.

i googled empire cinema to see what films they are showing, and it is quite a good selection of films actually. 

added. 9.37pm 19.7C night .

i see from the empire cinema films being shown that there are quite a number of sci fiction films adapted from books. i like sci fiction, but i think it is quite impossible to adapt them to films. i prefer to read them. i know a lot of people like to live these fantasy worlds and immerse themselves in it, but i dont. all the immersion i can take is limited to novels and that is fine by me.

i like living a real life… even ordinary things like doing the shopping can be interesting to me, because i make it like i am hunting gathering. looking to see what is reduced and become bargains. and it is entirely depandant on luck, because i happen to be there at the right time.

take for eg yesterday, i was at the tesco and at first there dont seem to be anything reduced , the bargain shelves were quite empty of stuff. then i was walking further inside the store, at the back and came across a group of men surrounding a cart pushed by one of the staffers. they were taking stuff from the cart, reduced priced, and the staffer was bringing them to the bargain shelves but was waylaid by these bunch of guys. so i took a carton of 10 big eggs, for 45p, and another man took two packs of minced beef, but returned one of them and i saw it was 45p for 500mg  and so i took it. its a nice price. in fact another man said it when the guy returned the pack to the trolley. haha.

today, i saw two packs of halal minced beef, 500mg for 60p so not as good a price drop,(though their original price is £4, such a high price) but they look very dry, which is a good thing. the other one last night was a bit wet. i wonder if they add a bit of water to it to increase the weight. anyway i bought the two and frozed them.

but the bargain surprise tonight was coming across reduced ginger, a 1kg pack of loose fresh ginger, for 82p. that was lucky. i know the supermarket would have left over ginger not sold before a fresh load arrives, so they tend to bundle all the old ginger and sell it off cheap. it is rare to come across it. you have to be there at the right time and day. this is the first time i come across it. and all in one bag. usually they would split it into a few 250mg bags . most people dont really have much call to use a lot of ginger before it goes bad. 

this morning i went to brixton and bought ginger for 50p. so now i got a glut of ginger. haha. added 18.8.17 i thought i should weigh it, and it is 210mg, £2.38/kg. the supermarket’s usually  £3.40/kg

i wonder if i can freeze ginger and will it affect its taste if i do. maybe it will. i find freezing veg is not so good , when they thaw out they are wet and soggy. so unlike the commercial packs  of frozen veg. in fact, if u do freeze veg, cook it from frozen, dont thaw it out first. 

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film

london 1.39pm 21.4C cloudy sunday 2017

it was very quiet on the streets round chinatown…i went there to see the film , jungle book 2016 version. the boy was played by an actor, whilst all the animals were cgi images and voiced by people like bill murray, idris elba, etc .

its actually quite a nice film and with lots of shock effects that made me jump. i enjoyed it, but there were very few people in the cinema room even though it is free. the seats are very comfy and can be tilted back, and it was such that the people in front never obstructs your view. and the screen is big. 

it is a pity that there were so few people seeing it..maybe they did not advertise it much, or it was a spur of the moment inclusion in the pride events, as it was not mentioned at all in the pride events website.added. i see they have added it in now but too late to get people to the cinema to see the film.

pity , because it is a nice film. when i got out, after the film, i saw there is quite a big public space in that cinema complex…bars, and lounge rooms and eating places. i never knew it has such a lot of space inside there.

 in fact when u first walk in, i thought i got into a restaurant, and walked out again to go round the corner thinking that is the entrance to the cinema. but it was the entrance, but u have to go up stairs to the box office. there did not seem to be any lifts, but i suspect it must be somewhere at the back, but it was not obvious.

its strange that they dont make it obvious that there was a cinema there. no posters of films or anything like that. at least not that i notice.

there was a westend live show featuring all or almost all the theatres in trafalgar square going on for the whole day which might explain why there were so few tourists on the streets round leicester square. it must cut down the footfalls to all the businesses round that area, as the people seeing the shows are trapped inside the square and not likely to be out and about buying things or eating.

oh, i was early for the film show so i went to wait in leicester square, and saw there is some kind of premiere showing of despicable 3 and lots of kids with their parents queueing up to see it. so that might explain why so few went to see this film, they are all there to see that other one. i cannot say why the despicable films get so much popularity with viewers. but i am just an old fart and so not the target of the film makers of that francise. haha. 

added. 7.20pm 21.4C. it occurred to me whilst i was seeing the end credits, that there are a lot of backroom boys for these films. it was so long listing them all, that it took considerable amount of time to go through the list of people involved in the process. must provide a lot of work and jobs for people.