Git the Halfwit

Now, I normally don't say too much against NMK ( aka - not by me, but otherwise popularly - Git) , because like most people who know him, I understand that our normal expectations of a human being don't apply to him. You can't really trust him to cover up for you with your parents or remember to wake up in time for a debate session, but he's reliable enough when it comes to having done enough random reading to get us through a weird debate and doing an excellent second speech. But today, I must speak out, because this is the Last Straw.

The inter-schools debating championships are on in NTU and both he and I have been denied the honour of winning it on one pretext or the other throughout our years in NTU. This year was to be the final comeback - for the both of us at least. We make a pretty good team, Karthik the funny man, NMK and I, even if I say so myself. We could have won this one.

But it was not to be. On the day of the semi finals, my students (whom I coach for debates - secondary school kids) turned up in hope of watching a reasonable debate and cheering for me. I bought them dinner for being so sweet, and while they were eating, called up my teammate to see where we should meet before the debate.

Turned out, he was asleep - with half an hour to go to the release of the motion. I told him, in a bit of a panic, to wake up and get his butt to the spine ( which is where the tutorial rooms etc are). It was then that he deigned to inform me that he was sick and wasn't planning to turn up at all.

What else is there to say? My other teammate and I and quite a few others spent the next half hour frantically looking for people to take his place, but no avail. We had one guy convinced finally, but it was too late. If only NMKie had informed us earlier... So much for responsibility, no?

And here's the icing on the cake: we had a dummy debate anyway, with one of my students standing in for second speaker - him as complete and utterly a rookie as you can imagine - and we still managed to have an exceedingly decent debate. I even thought we won that one.

Let's hope the flu bug doesn't get NMK during the Asians or the Australs or something.

The Pride of the Bagginses

Interesting article.

I never did realise this, but Juliet is right on almost all counts: In the LotR movies, moments in the book depicting Frodo's heroism are almost always passed up in favour of yet another "trance scene", as I have come to call them. The article gives some really good examples, including the standoff at the Ford, where Frodo summons up literally the last dredges of his courage and will to resist the Black Riders, and all we saw in the movie was comatose!Frodo. At Weathertop, he is the last to quaver and fall; and of course he never ever listens to Gollum and sends Sam away.

In the first two examples, at least, the movie could have stayed true to Tolkien without compromising on the nail-bite factor - quite the opposite actually. Imagine this scene: we've just witnessed a spectacular scene as Arwen rides to the Ford, dodging the wraiths at every turn. She crosses the Ford, and Frodo holds his sword aloft, swaying - his stand against the Black Riders. Just as the white water horses make their entrance, his eyeballs roll up, he slides off the horse and crumples in a heap on the ground. Scene continues as before, Arwen cradling Frodo in her arms. Wouldn't that have been awesome?

But the other changes I'm quite happy to live with - even, to a certain extent, the whole Gollum brainwashing thing. Someone on The One Ring.Net made an excellent point that Frodo, Sam and Smeagol form this sexless sort of love triangle, and their storyline is exactly that of any stock romance novel. A love story wouldn't be complete if at some point, love wasn't overcome by suspicion and jealousy and shadow. I, for one, don't think this is a bad thing at all. There are many emotions and nuances one can easily convey in a book that are close to impossible to translate onto a screen, after all. The love-story parallel is just a way of bringing the true nature of Frodo and Sam's relationship to light.*

Same goes for the Osgiliath sequence in TTT (and numerous other trance scenes) where Frodo attacks Sam. The book can afford to give just understated flashes of Frodo's protectiveness of the Ring, but to effectively foreshadow the final scene at Sammath Naur, the movie is forced to amplify it all. I am definitely not complaining. I think these scenes brought out some of the finest bits of acting in the movies. Elijah Wood was fantastic in them.

But the fact remains that this could have been done without the cost to Frodo's heroic nature. As Juliet says, we never do realise in the movies why Frodo is such a hero, why he truly 'bows to noone'. The movies took away the initiative and the daring in his nature. In a sense, PJ does with Frodo what Chris Columbus and Daniel Radcliffe (mostly the latter) do with Harry Potter, only in the latter case, the contrast is that much more visible, because Harry's character is so defined by his initiative and daring, and that's exactly what Dan Radcliffe fails dismally in portraying.

So yeah. That's what I mean. At the end of the movies, people could be forgiven for coming out thinking "Frodo failed!" rather than "Frodo lives!"

* I will personally dismember the people who draw the usual "Oh, so they are gay!" conclusion from this sentence. :P

HP blues

My cell phone got stolen, and I haven't been in the mood to update my blog ever since. I was on 179 - the bus that loops through NTU and goes to Jurong Point - asleep with my bag on my lap. Some horrible git fished my phone out of the side pocket of my bag with what can only be described as pure evil recklessness.

And now I can't even get a new phone, because I've gone and left my IC at home and I can't make the trip home for ages and ages (weekend at least). So I'm in the market for nice Singaporeans willing to let me get a line in their name.

Updates will resume after I sort this whole measly affair out.

Reco

Mood: sentimental about Sirius and Remus.

This one's for Artanis: on the condition that you bring your blog back, girl.

Latitude problem

It's summertime in Singapore. As usual. It's summer here in February and June and August and December. But that's an old rant, so let's say something new here. It's been a long time since I came to Singapore. I've lived in Woodlands for all but 1.5 years of the time I've stayed here. That makes it the longest I've ever stayed in one place in my life - 2 years in Bangalore, 1.5 years in Delhi, 1 year in Bangalore, 3 years in Delhi, 5 years in Bangalore - then wham! - 9 years in Singapore. How utterly boring.

My problem is that I'm getting old. I can remember the day I turned 13 (significant because that's when I came to Singapore) like it was yesterday and time has no business letting me remember it like that and still be this old now. And the problem boils down to the weather: it's always boiling here. It gives you no sense of the passage of time - you can't remember things by saying, "I went to KL last summer not winter..."

Oh never mind, I'm just in a boring, ranty mood. It's not near my birthday or anything either, don't know why I'm feeling old all of a sudden.

Meanwhile, no valentine's day wishes on this blog, as a protest against blatant mindless consumerism in the world today. Happy Friday the 13th, tho!

More Viggo

The Globe has this article on The Amazing Viggo Mortensen. Can't get enough of him, man!

Grim Defeat *

How freaky is this: when I reached ACS (Barker Rd) for the first round of Julia Gabriel debates Friday evening, I had to dodge a big black dog to cross the road and get into the school. And then my team goes and loses the debate.

Right now, I don't care about that. Now that I've implemented a new password system to get into by bedroom, I'm painting a portrait of the Fat Lady to hang on the door and hoping it gets ripped really soon. Anything, anything for Sirius Black.

Incidentally, I just realised we only have less than two months of happy time before Gary "horribly mustachioed" Oldman shatters our personal image of Sirius for good. My Sirius looks a lot like Viggo Mortensen playing Strider, just a little more handsome. Sigh. But then again, my Harry looks (and behaves, thank God) NOTHING like Daniel "the moron" Radcliffe. There may still be hope.

* See chapter by same title in Prisoner of Azkaban.

Late News

Alright, so I should have known in March last year. But better late than never, right? Here's the heartstopping, earthshaking news of the century - literally!

The word "Muggle" (created by Joanne Rowling, meaning non-magic folk) was added in March 2003 to the Oxford English Dictionary. This is crazy stuff, guys, because in the last 146 years, the OED has only been updated thrice. It's the first time in more than a century and a half that a word created by a writer has been added to the dictionary while the writer is still alive!

The good news gets better: the last two updates have both added words created by fantasy writers. Guess who got his 'Hobbits' in in 1976! Sad, though, coz he was dead by then, but an honour nonetheless.

My question: does this mean that the word 'muggle' is now in public domain? The author does not have sole rights over it and stuff?

Which actually leads me to the question - do writers even own the words they create? We never use 'doublethink', for example, without making an actual reference to Orwell, explicit or implicit. Is that legally required, or it just the way things work?

ISC Symposium

Cross fingers and hope I make it to Switzerland again. Allow me to indulge myself by counting some chickens.

I think I'll go to Prague this time. It's sounds like a dreamy place, plus it's cheap... I can't afford another tour around Switzerland like last time.. that, though unbelievably beautiful, was a financial disaster. :) Seriously.. hostels costing a minimum of S$35-40 a night is too much.

But the question of the year is: will England prove to be too tempting? Coz no matter how fabulous the Alps look, if I had to pick one spot in Europe that I'm most curious to see, it's London. Even if I probably won't like it as much as I liked the Alps. Hmm. See what lor.

Meanwhile, forgive me if blog updates don't come as often as before.. I am *so* swamped with work you won't believe it. :(