Demmit. I knew it, I didn't actually lose anything last time.
This morning's weigh-in session revealed that I'm back to square one after six days - 60.1kg.
Every day I'll be sabotaging The Great Diet Plan with one yummy item or another - a karipap or four (this is my BIGGEST vice), a breakfast danish, a couple of cheese crossaints, the handfuls of dhal marukku, extra servings of ikan masak lemak, those irresistible multiple helpings of begedil, well, etcetera etcetera.
For a short person like Ted, 60kg is quite overweight as she's supposed to be around the 48kg vicinity. Please don't ask what her height is - that's classified information. Even Sheila Majid is taller than her, k. And if you've known Ted for quite sometime, you're gonna notice that she has gained significant kgs in the past three years.
(Now why am I writing in the third-person viewpoint nih?)
3. The Why?
1) Being overweight is plainly, NOT HEALTHY. Gaining 16kgs in 3 years is another point under the NOT HEALTHY files. Believe it or not, I was 44kg in 2003. Hehe gua sendiri pun macam tak percaya.
2) I have a whole cupboard section and drawer with all the cute tops, kebayas and jeans that I can't fit into anymore. Even my baju kurungs are ketat now, ya'know.
3. The Plan
Erm, well, anyhoo this ain't one of them strict high-protein-low-carb, three-hour-daily-fat-burning-cardio-regime, no-fat-high-fibre or whatever stuff. Mati la kalau aku kena buat macam tu. I'm gonna do it pretty low-key, like, with proper nutritions and actual meals. Chewah. Plus exercise, of course. (Now THAT's another part that's worth a whole post on its own.)
And I'm doing it all with the aid of - (drumroll please) - Herbalife.
How could I not? I've been reading about the wonders of this thing online for a couple of months and I've gone for it line, hook and sinker. I've succumbed to their sweet promises of delicious shakes, lose weight though you still eat quite normally, nutritionally complete meal replacements and the oh-so-wonderful testimonials.
Call me a sucker, heh. But we'll see lah how.
The product is kinda expensive, so that will motivate me, I hope. For RM365 I get a box (cutesynamed 'Start Now Pack') with 3 containers of whey protein powder, nutritionally-complete strawberry shake powder and a tea-mix. Don't forget the scoop and the shake-mixer!
5. The How
Actually, I've a suspicion that simply by controlling my makan and exercising three times a week, one really COULD lose weight just fine, but I don't have strong-enough willpower to work on that alone. Now that I've spent some cold, hard RM on this, supposedly it'll motivate me to tahan myself from reaching out for yet another of those yummy karipaps at the cafeteria. Man I'm real partial to ALL kinds of karipaps - be it beef, chicken, sardine or simply plain kentang.
So here's how it's supposed to work : I'll be replacing my breakfasts and dinners with a concoction of the shake and whey protein, while for lunches I'm supposed to have one as usual. That's what really hooked me in, since it's perhaps the first time I've heard of a losing-weight plan that actually ALLOWS you to have a meal AS USUAL. I looveeeee delicious food with a capital F, wait, no, make it caps all the way, FOOD, and there's no way I'm gonna forgo enjoying them daily. Yeay for Food, glorious Food!
Then on course there's that need to exercise. Which I must, MUST find time to do. I'll be hitting the treadmill hopefully at least 2 times a week, and there's that yoga video that Leed has conveniently put in together with the shake-stuff. Oh yeah, she's the one that sold me the Herbalife product. She's lost 9kg and showed me her before-and-after pictures.
6. The Progress
Anyways, here I am now 4 days into The Plan.
Day 1 (morning) : 60.1kg Day 4 (morning) : 59.3kg
Well actually I'm not sure whether I've really lost some weight or it's simply water and, erm, ahh, you know, that thing that goes swoosh into the toilet. Tee-hee.
Let's see how we do later after a month. Or two. Hmmm.
In the meantime, see me psyching myself :
(I soooooo gotta lose some weight, malu la if not, iye-iye je dah announce kat sini)
Scheduled for national release in March (08/03/2007), Yasmin Ahmad's latest film, Mukhsin, has been selected by the 57th Berlin International Film Festival as well as nominated for Best Asian Film at the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival.
Not bad for a movie about two young kids befriending each other during a school holiday. Not bad at all, ma'am.
Having had the opportunity to watch the movie sometime ago courtesy of the director, for me Mukhsin feels a bit like a mix of the feelings that Yasmin's earlier works - Rabun and Sepet - a match of the lighter comedic notes and nostalgics of Rabun (although actually there's dark unpleasantness in it) peppered within the very much Malaysian-ness (for some quarters like though others beg to differ - it's a FREE country after all) feel of Sepet, compared to the darker Gubra with its more blatant and louder dish of ideologies (sufism, HIV-positive awareness and girl power feminism). (very mild spoilers ahead)
Mukhsin revolves around the idea of a first love - bringing various firsts in a young person's life - first boyfriend / girlfriend, first moment of an adult voice, talks about first period and first bra, experiencing first death of the immediate family and first heartbreak. It's an interesting note that the actor who played Mukhsin's character, Syafie Naswip actually 'broke' his voice during the filming, and in one of the scenes you can detect it quite clearly ("You look ve-ry nice today!).
Sharifah Aryana is Orked this time (her big sister, Sharifah Amani played the teenager & adult Orked characters in Yasmin's earlier films Sepet and Gubra), and she totally rocked as the tomboy-ish gutsy girl who's being brought up differently from her counterparts and knows the fact very well. Adibah Noor reprises her role as Yam the orang-gaji-yang-tak-macam-orang-gaji while Sharifah Aleya (bigger sister of both S.Amani and S.Aryana) is Mak Inom. For those who have seen her previous movies, Yasmin Ahmad challenges the audience to recast the face-name relation of Pak Atan : in Rabun it was M. Rajoli; in Sepet and Gubra it was Harith Iskander; and this time around it's more 'unsettling' as the younger Pak Atan is Irwan Iskandar - the perasan and backdealing Yem character in Rabun. Other notable role-shuffles in Yasmin's films would involve Noorkhiriah (Orked in Rabun, Mas in Gubra, extra in Mukhsin) and Rozie Rashid (Cik Nor in Rabun, Temah in Gubra, Orked's neighbor in Mukhsin).
But fret not, Mukhsin is far from mind-boggles of any kind. The only time one might go 'HUhhh??' would probably be at a weird scene which is actually a dream, so it's okay since everyone is very much allowed to have weird dreams from time to time (or even all the time, come to think of it). As usual Yasmin Ahmad-style, Mukhsin may not answer all the questions that you'd have at the end and again it'll be up to the audience to lay down their interpretation or two themselves.
With Mukhsin's simple and ordinary subject matters of growing up, friendships and family ties, the general feeling throughout the movie is one of melancholy and nostalgia - 'ahem, we'll go inside ourselves, been there, done that'. The beautiful shots taken at a serene and idyllic rural location (Kuala Selangor) evokes a wistful yearning to be there. Mozart strains adorns a kite-flying scene, and Nina Simone's rendition of the French song Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me) is just so heart-wrenching that I dare say there's nobody who won't be touched by its respective scenes. I also loved the bonus footage after the end credits where Yasmin and the crew got together with the theme keroncong song, Hujan being sang by Yasmin's mother - it'll put a smile on your face.
And seeing the young stars - makes me want to be kids like them again. To have that innocence, that ignorance, to own a fresh canvas of perceptions that's still being painted and added on with new colors and patterns everyday. Sigh.
man, time sure flies by when you're having so much *fun*.
it's new year by the roman calendar, but since our financial year starts in september, for me it's already one-third into the year.
meaning i have only about 8 months left to achieve all those KPIs. really need to get them EEs this year to get my promotion. my GM and also the the finance dept. GM both are firing me up to get promoted, coz I've been in the same place for quite some time now and it's about right for me to go somewhere else soon.
While the government lambasted people for using rojak language even in TV dramas, we have our own supposedly national newspaper proclaiming the above when lokasi and gelanggang would've been perfectly okay as the choice of words in that context.
I was wondering if the article was originally written in English, or what?
Disclaimer : I'm usually partial towards indie and experimental movies, so I'm biased that way.
Khairil M. Bahar's CIPLAK should get every film student and filmmaker wannabes to think something along the line, "Hey, if he could do this with less than RM10k and a bunch of friends, I could too!"
While Ciplak is definitely a movie made by a self-professed film geek (it was made known none-too-subtly at least five times throughout the movie), for fellow film geeks, non-film geeks who like things done differently could also get a kick out of it. Ciplak might just do it for you what Lips to Lips (Amir Muhammad) did to me - got me sucked into the vortex that is indie films, with special mention to local fare. When the girlfriend was telling us the roots of ciggie-flicking and red sneakers persona it was fine, but the malookitmeaiyemafilmgeek factor did go overboard when one of the characters was made to mention Back to The Future at a particular scene - that made me cringe a bit. Probably Khai was too intent on getting the audience to 'get' it. Looking at the subject matter, you'd be pardoned to think "How the heck did he get away with it?" I did too, and let me tell you how - on that level, Ciplak may explain and scratch the surface on why it happens and how the 'industry' works, but it definitely didn't show that it condones it or that it's cool and it's okay, in fact it was almost as blatant as those government-sponsored infomercial with the skeletonhead pirate in saying that piracy is bad, Bad, BAD.
I am easily amused, and bearing in mind the circumstances under which Ciplak was finally fit for fruition, I enjoyed it as it is. Yeah there were some draggy moments in the middle, Khai spews various cuss words and seposen sedozen, some of the acting could've done better and all that, but the quirky TV-pendidikan style start on Piracy 101 lessons, Khai's effortless transition to-and-from 'acting' - 'narrating' and the potong stim ending (after a rather la-di-da 'kembang tekak motivational talk' deus ex machina) which was such a brilliant surprise plus last but not least the witty laughfest before the end credits all more than made up for it.
There were about 10 of us in the international screen hall at GSC that night but everybody sure sounded like they enjoyed it. Oh, thereason it's being shown only at the international screen hall is solely due to the fact that it's the only one that's equipped for digital media movies - Ciplak was filmed with DV tapes and digitally edited on Khai's home PC - a pure labor of love.
So would I recommend this?
YES, if I know you are the type who either a) has a love for films or film-making b) dig quirky stuff c) partial with against-the-machine sort of things d) always open to new experience e) a dvd pirate; and NO if you are none of the above.
Ciplak official site is recommended for amusing info and tid-bits on the making of the movie
Last time I checked here, Ciplak is still being screened at GSC Midvalley, GSC One Utama (New Wing) and GSC Gurney Plaza. GSC Midvalley will run shows until at least 20th December 2006.
[As usual credit for all images goes to the movie's oficial site, setelah sedikit editing sesuka hatiku]
