Love of the Life

I finally found a copy of one of my favorite movies. Actually, it's not like an oscar-winning production or anything but I like it mainly because of its chinese theme song. I love it so much and I just can't get tired of listening to it. It would be great if I can somehow compose my own lyrics to match the melody and sing it on my wedding day (if ever that day happens). I got the DVD. It may have been in that store all the other times I've been in there but I didn't notice. Anyway I'm so happy I found it!! Too bad my winDVD that somebody sent me a few years ago only allowed 5 minutes of playtime. Maybe I can find a crack for it? And I don't know how to get the DVDPlayer that comes with Windows to play the movie. In the meantime I'll just enjoy it in the living room (much better system anyway) rather than watch it from the computer. Cracks are not a good idea anyway. Here's a clip that I found long ago (RealPlayer format).

A minor reason why I like the movie is because it talks about three friends matching up together so well even unto death. And then, of course, half of it took place in San Francisco which for some reason I feel attracted to. There were a couple of scenes that stick to me in particular. One can be seen in the clip where Alan&Olive are looking out into the ocean with the sun shining on the waters before them. That matched up so well to what I remember seeing back in like 1990 or so when I went to Canada Place in the summertime. Standing outside on the decks with the sun on the white masts and enjoying the fresh summer breeze while looking at the waters and reminiscing of Expo86 when Canada Place was the Canada Pavillion. It was wicked! That reminds me of a Canada song that I heard during Expo86 and I still remember some of the melody too. It'd be great if I could find the song again! And the other scenery of the movie that I particularly appreciated was at the very end when Alan&Olive were on the grassy hill in the sunshine after a short bout of rain and the view in front of them featured a row of Victorian houses as well as skyscrapers further out. Nice scene. I wonder if I have actually seen this movie when it first came out in 1991. So many things seemed to come together in my mind and fit so well - so many images and sceneries. All that imagery is played in my mind along with the music of the song and it is so soothing. The movie also reminds me that I should always treasure friendship because there are some things that were never done that should've been done but you can never turn back the clock

A&B Sound will be bought out soon...

Bought an Alpine CDA9826 mp3 deck [sale for $240 incl. install], Clarion SRR1685 6½" speakers for the back [$123], and Clarion SRR1027 4" speakers for the front [$55]. The CDA9827 has blue buttons which I think looks more cool and techie whereas mine has green buttons. But mine was about a hundred bucks cheaper and it only offers 1 preout of 4v which is all I want. I won't go for a unit that offers, for example, 3 preouts of like 2.2 volts if I only plan on getting a single multi-channel amp. I rather get less preouts and focus on power and accuracy for that one amp. While I never looked extensively, Alpine was the only make that offered a single high-voltage preout. I can't believe installation for the front speakers is $49... so expensive... thought it was maybe $30 or so. It's actually $45 labor + $4 materials. I will try to install the rear ones myself. I am to get it installed tomorrow evening (Monday 6-9pm) at the A&B Sound on Barnet Hwy, Port Moody. Perhaps I should've simply bought the Kenwood speakers that are on sale for $50? I mean, I could probably get Alpine for $123. Hopefully my next car (could be as early as next year) uses 6½" too! :-P

But the truth still holds... You get what you pay for.

Annual cruise... (not me)

Today is Thanksgiving Day and I drove my parents to the airport for the #493 Lufthansa to Barcelona in Spain. They will be there for about 5 days before boarding Royal Caribbean's Brilliance of the Seas for a 12-night cruise around the Med Sea with stops including Rome. I reminded my dad to take pics especially when he gets to the Vatican. He buys another 256mb card for his cam and now he has 3 pieces altogether. Should be enough for most purposes. They'll be back on the 31st. Talk is already existing about going to a cruise in S.E. Asia in late October 2005. It would be a 16-day journey on the Diamond Princess starting from Beijing and ending up at Bangkok. My parents would like to stop by HongKong first before heading up to Beijing. So I would like to go to HK with them and then from there they continue on to Beijing while I hang around. Maybe I can go on a little trip to Singapore myself or something. There's a friend I met online who lives in Malaysia and I won't mind going over there and get her to take me around. It would be nice to see the Twin Towers @ Kuala Lumpur! I'm not so enthusiastic about going on the cruise because only the aunts/uncles are going and also I rather stick around on land where I can go anywhere as I please. Even though the ship makes stops every 1 or 2 days, I'm still on it. But there are quite a lot of things to do and see onboard anyway. But it's also more expensive.

No brain or social pressure for this event!

I went to a "Noah Fellowship" which was for adults from the Vancouver Chinese Baptist Church. I have a coworker who goes there and earlier on in June she showed me some topics that they talk about in the upcoming gatherings and one of them was on different denominations. But it was postponed because the speaker had to go to a wedding or something. Her name is Dr. Joyce Chan from Carey Baptist Theological College at the VST in UBC. The talk was mostly focusing on a historical account of how the various Protestant denominations came to exist. She was quite fair and I was glad. The information was, of course, quite general given the time limits and the audience but it matched up quite well to what little I still remember from my own readings that I used to do back in Victoria. As I suspected, many of the people in the fellowship didn't seem to know much about the history. I hope they can gain a better understanding of their own religious beliefs from the perspective of history because I think it's important for not only a better appreciation of Christianity but it may also help prevent some misconceptions of Catholicism. Not surprisingly, however, there was a stir and murmur around the room as people nodded when the speaker mentioned the abuse of indulgences that prompted Luther to nail his thing on the door. I mentally shook my head as I thought how people can be familiar with these historical facts but miss out on so many other important historical occurances.