My First Night Out!

First of all, this show is a must watch. Definitely a must watch.

Review

This basically is about a small-town girl, Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) who applies to work as an assistant for the Runway fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). It tells about her demanding and i-don't-care-about-your-life-just-get-it-done attitude of her boss and how she managed to cope with it and how work spoiled her life etc etc etc etc. What's cool about it (the movie) is how fashion is described/portrayed as an art in the movie. Anne Hathaway is just oh-my-god unimaginably pretty in all the styles. It's a good show basically because of the number of fashion styles and designers involved, and etc etc etc.

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My rating : 8.5/10

Anne Hathaway is just gorgeous! :d..

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Not to mention, it's my first time since I've been to the UK that I'm out at night! Yay! :) Took a taxi (with Jun, Steph and Mich) from college to town at 12.20pm then we walked around and got some cash out from the banks, went shopping, ate at Art. Here's the funny thing, you should have seen me at the restaurant. First I ordered espresso. Looked at the price -- hmm.. £1.50, that should be fine considering it's already around 1 something in the afternoon and according to the Italians, having cappuccino after 10 in the morning is rather an insult (all that milk). So I figured, since I was going to have a pizza, espresso might go down well. So it came, and guess how big the cup was. It was like, you know a crucible, that you use for burning stuff in Chemistry? Yep it's slightly larger than that. At first I thought, maybe that's like the thick coffee to add to my cup of mild coffee or something like that, then when the waiter put it in front of me I was :0 speechless. The 3 of them were laughing. The second thing was the pizza I ordered, I figured since I'm spending like £7 at least on that pizza, might as well just try some new tastes, so I ordered Four Seasons. It really is four seasons, there's the normal flat pizza, with tomatoes, cheese, sprinkles of pepper, normal mushrooms, and then there's olives, some small green thing that excretes bitter juices when you chew it, some weird layer-ish thing that feels like mushroom (it's so sour!!), and salty bacon, and some kinda thin leave that tastes sour. So tongue bending and taste challenging.. I swear, pizza hut tastes so much better. After that we walked to Cineworld to catch a movie and after watching The Devil Wears Prada, we hopped over to another movie (which we didn't pay for) The History Boys, omgness that was the suckiest movie ever. It was a movie, made by BBC, about some A-Level students studying History who were shortlisted to go to Oxford/Cambridge due to their exceptionality, problem is the time was set in 1983. We stayed for about 20 minutes then we just scootered off. I was like -- What the fock.. Then we went over to ASDA, it was about 6.++ by then, bought some stuff, walked to Burger King, ate, laughed and then we took a taxi back to college.

Woohooo! My first time in Shrewsbury on a Saturday evening!!

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Cash spent : ~£30

Satisfaction level : Woohoooo~!!

Urban Legends

Now Friday came, you old wives say, Of all the week's the unluckiest day." (1656)

Although this superstition has survived centuries in Western civilisation, it's quite diminished in the modern era. People tend to make jokes about Friday the 13th (I'll call it F13), advise loved ones to take extra care, or just brush it off. Personally I'll just brush the superstition off, but retain the careful bit of it. Just for my sake :)

However, there are certain people who suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th). It's hard to understand but generally on that day, symptoms range from slight anxiety to full blown panic attacks.

Tracing Friday the 13th back to it's roots
An ancient Norse mythology tells about 12 gods having their dinner party at their heaven, Valhalla. A 13th uninvited guest walked in who happened to be Loki. Once there, Loki arranged for Hoder, the blind god of darkness, to shoot Balder the Beautiful, the god of joy and gladness, with a mistletoe-tipped arrow. Balder died, and the whole Earth got dark and mourned.
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Biblical reference shows the Last Supper, at which Judas Iscariot the apostle was said to have been the 13th guest to sit at the table. (Judas later betrayed Jesus, leading to His crucifixion, and then took his own life.) This Christian symbolism is reflected in early Western references to thirteen as an omen of bad fortune, which generally started to appear in the early 18th century and warned that thirteen people sitting down to a meal together presaged that one of them would die within the year:
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Some historians suggest the Christian distrust of Fridays is actually linked to the early Catholic Church's overall suppression of pagan religions and women. In the Roman calendar, Friday was devoted to Venus, the goddess of love. When Norsemen adapted the calendar, they named the day after Freyr, or Freyja (anglicised as Freya), Norse goddesses connected to love and sex. Both of these strong female figures once posed a threat to male-dominated Christianity, the theory goes, so the Christian church vilified the day named after them. This characterization may also have played a part in the fear of the number 13. It was said that Freyr would often join a coven of witches, normally a group of 12, bringing the total to 13. This idea may have originated with the Christian Church itself; it's impossible to verify the exact origins of most folklore. A similar Christian legend holds that 13 is unholy because it signifies the gathering of 12 witches and the devil.

-HowStuffWorks.com
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There is a folklore remedy though, it suggests that one climbs to the top of a mountain or hill and burn all the socks that has holes in them to cleanse off the bad luck due to Friday the 13th.

So, on a final note, Happy Friday 13th people~

Weaken the Trade Unions!

The private sector should follow the Government's lead in declaring Oct 23 a public holiday, the MTUC said. Its president Syed Sharir Syed Mahmud said employers should give their workers a paid holiday as part of their corporate social responsibility. “Do not force them to take annual leave or deduct their salaries for the day as it will defeat the purpose. To many workers, the day’s salary is important for their survival,” he said. “In the spirit of Hari Raya and Deepavali, I hope private sector employers will give the workers this gift.” He added that the long festival was similar to the Christmas and New Year holiday breaks in Britain and the United States. Syed Sharir said a long uninterrupted break would help boost local tourism. Meanwhile, the Malaysian Employers Federation said the private sector should be given a choice to decide whether to treat Oct 23 as a holiday.

What I feel that the nation is in currently, is an inflation cycle. Which when explained by a newbie like me, is when demand exceeds supply and output prices soar. The simple solutions usually are:

1. Increase central bank interest rates (which has been raised meagrely in the last quarter of the year, but estimated to be raised again by the end of the year)

2. Weaken trade unions. Although this is a hot issue widely debated, I'm on this side of the argument.

Here's what the UK government thought in the 1990s:

Recent research shows that trade unions have used their powers in ways which adversely affected labour costs, productivity and jobs. Managements who recognised and negotiated with trade unions were more likely to suffer job losses than managements which did not. In general trade unions tended to push up the earnings of people they represented while blocking the improvements in productivity which are needed to pay for these higher earnings.

--White Paper on Employment for the 1990s, CM. 540

3. Reduce government spending.


IMO, (note the bold) , Pak Lah's administration are doing 1 and 3 but although number 2 seems somewhat risky to control, (politically risky), CUEPACS and MTUC have made some press releases lately, which seem to have grabbed the headlines, given the current inflationary crisis. This affects workers' productivity as (you know, mentality and the sort of things, I'm not going further into it)

Conclusion, (although radical and unpopular), introduce anti-union laws (law is always a dirty and boring tool in the modern world), and take more aggressive stances to reduce government budget deficit and expenditure.

:) Signing out, till next time.