facial expressions

Over lunch at Menotti's yesterday, Colin and I talked about body language and he told me how to differentiate a real from a put on smile. This led us to read up on stuff concerning facial expressions which is amazing, cos apparently so much information can be picked up from the face, only most of the time we miss this crucial info. And when we do, the visual clues flash by so quickly that we don't even consciously register them, and hence dismiss our interpretation of what are termed "microexpressions" as mere hunches. We tend not to lend too much weight to hunches because we aren't entirely sure what these are based on-which could be a big mistake as far as communication goes.

About the real and fake smile thing, here's the explanation from http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm

"Perhaps the most famous involuntary expression is what Ekman has dubbed the Duchenne smile, in honor of the nineteenth-century French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne, who first attempted to document the workings of the muscles of the face with the camera. If I ask you to smile, you' ll flex your zygomatic major. By contrast, if you smile spontaneously, in the presence of genuine emotion, you' ll not only flex your zygomatic but also tighten the orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis, which is the muscle that encircles the eye. It is almost impossible to tighten the orbicularis oculi, pars lateralis, on demand, and it is equally difficult to stop it from tightening when we smile at something genuinely pleasurable. This kind of smile "does not obey the will," Duchenne wrote. "Its absence unmasks the false friend."

musings on metal

Metal is more than just a genre of music. Metal is a way of life. It permeates and extends its influence into so many facets of the metalhead's life. It's hard to faze a metalhead. Any misfortune that befalls him is generally considered very 'metal'. They thrive on feelings of anguish, fear, hatred. It doesn't matter if the said misfortune is something as trivial as getting screwed by your boss or something as grave as breaking your little finger (which is an essential appendage, especially on the fretting hand)- these are all THE METAL THING TO DO. And besides, if nothing else, a metalhead always has the option of going home to spin a lil' Pantera or Anthrax and headbang/air guitar/break stuff to it.

Perhaps the only thing that would ever screw with a metalhead's mind is happy stuff. Happy just not equals metal. Because happy equals gay equals incompatible with metal. To be truly metal is to be homophobic.

Most unfortunately, closely linked to Metal are the Emos, which happen to be public enemies no. 1 of all of metaldom. They share the spandex, piercings, facepaint, the equipment and even the subject matter of their lyrics. But the resemblance stops right there. Emos sound so inexplicably happy despite all that angst. It is for all their similiarities that metalheads hate emos so much. They just cannot fathom how as sacred a subject matter as fear, anger, hatred etc. can be made to sound so frickin upbeat and HAPPY. And what metalheads cannot understand, they seek to destroy.

While I'm on the topic, I was at HMV the other day and saw this really nerdy-looking girl clad in a baby blue t-shirt and berms. Nerdier looking than I am. (and that's really nerdy-looking) She was at the metal section while I was, I am ashamed to say, entertaining myself at the R&B/Pop section. I approached her with the intention to help this poor lost soul find what she really was looking for. Surely it wasn't metal. She couldn't possibly have been ever exposed to the foul, contaminating influence of metal before. Boy was I ever wrong. Not only was she picking up CDs and reading the tracklists, she later picked up a pair of headphones and listened to a band whose band name I cannot even bear to reproduce on this blog. It wasn't just your average metal she was going for, it was BRUTAL DEATH METAL. Stuff like Mortician and..uh goodness knows what else there is out there. The face of metal may be evolving as I speak o_o

On a side note, I'm wondering whether to attend the Megadeth or Linkin Park (oh how we love to hate them) concert. Depends on who's going for which I guess.

To end off,
Don't just listen to metal. Be metal. \m/

Ratatouille

Ah Hui did the subtitles for this movie! At least he'd better have, cos I'd be really peeved if he had been lying to us on Monday!

It was the most pleasant movie I'd seen in a long time! Chock full of memorable quotes too. My favourite one was Anton Ego's monologue near the end:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

Some people do nothing but criticise. And defend their meaningless drivel with a feeble "but it's true" or "I'm only telling it as I see it" Well if the negative is all they see then sucks for them.

The monologue ended off with this little gem:
"Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

toto's birthday/traffic jam/dave's birthday party

I'm no good with words. Cos if I were, I'd be able to sum up yesterday's events in one brief, succint, eye-catching title. But I'm not, so bear with this one lah.

Just like 364 days ago, the band (same people!) gathered to celebrate Tovya's birthday, this time it was at Changing Appetites. I got her this Stitch plushy that doubled as a set of speakers, which was an exceedingly cute concept! The music came out from his feet. Tov didn't seem as surprised this year that we were celebrating her birthday though!

She had to leave sooner than expected, so it was just Jem, Lari and myself left debating among ourselves over whether or not to change out for the party tonight. A li'l background info - Dave, Electrico's frontman, was throwing a birthday bash at Blue Jaz bar which had a uniform theme to it. Jem and Lari knew the band, so they got invites to the bash and tickets to the Traffic Jam street party that preceded it.

We eventually decided to get changed, and soon Orchard Rd saw three figures clad in SC, MJ and RJ uniforms. I swear it was history in the making. We made perfectly convincing students, but our youthful exterior ensured that we wouldn't make it into the street party without an ID check first. And once we got in, I think we got heads turning. But I wasn't sure. Any last sliver of obscurity was soon taken away, however, when Daniel Sassoon pointed us out mid-performance.

It was rather unfortunate that a class act like Electrico was the opening act, because the crowd was agonizingly sparse and low-energy. The hired hip hop dancers didn't help one bit. After Electrico we were feeling a bit bored, so we headed out to do some camwhoring. Thankfully, the crowd had swelled in numbers by the time we returned. There was this pretty okay band playing Jamaican music (I need things like these to remind myself occasionally just how much I enjoy the genre (:)

Jem and Lari made small talk with a number of people, (members of Electrico and their friends) each time opening with a little anecdote of how the security guard wouldn't believe Lari was over eighteen :/ For the most part, I was pretty psyched and dancing away. But halfway through Arrested Development's set (which was really long) fatigue crept in and we sat there, subdued and hoping for the set to end soon. So much for our youth..

After the party ended, those who were supposed to show up at the party scooted off, leaving us three poor souls in their wake. what's the meaning of this man. so we had to take bus to Blue Jaz Bar. Our costumed friends were all there and talking among themselves, essentially stonewalling us out =/ We sat ourselves down at a table with two other ladies. A bit of awkward silence followed. It was so darned difficult to connect with these people, all in their mid-to-late twenties. I tried to engage one of them in what was probably the most painful conversation I'd had in a while, before the two ladies wandered off to another table, relieving us of the tension but also of their company, which meant we were now well and properly isolated from the rest of the crowd. Well at least we had the table to ourselves (:

After a while of sitting there and wondering how on earth we would ever fit in, we wondered if we should just leave. It got better though. Electrico soon came, save for Daniel, who'd gotten piss-drunk back at Traffic Jam and had to call it a night. So did a lot of cross-dressers. At last count, there were two convent girls, one SCGS girl and a maid-only they were guys. I don't know how many more came to swell their ranks after we had left. There was a teacher too, complete with a huge metal ruler with which he spanked many a backside that night. And then out of the blue the maid (Benny) came over and lap-danced and humped me before dismounting and asked in genuine concern:
"Are you okay? Are you still a virgin?"
"Not any more!"
So that was more or less how the entire night went with the others as well. As Larissa so aptly put it, the three of us were getting "education". (:

As we were leaving the place, I overheard this parting shot: "When I saw them at the street party I thought they were real students!"