2009 will be a great year to watch movies in the cinemas...

...unless you happen to be living in my hometown, where the latest movies always have the word "pocong" or "hantu" in them, and the latest Hollywood flick to be watched here are Hellboy II and... Dragonball Evolution. *shivers*

Recession bites, and weirdly enough, this is one of the places where I felt it bit the deepest. No new movies. Nada. After I got back from the US in September, the newest movie was Sex and the City. And oh, about a month ago, 27 Dresses was finally playing in cinemas! Uh... yay? So what do I do? There are movies, and there are movies that I simply must watch in cinemas. Doubt was among them. I stubbornly waited for it to be played here, but then realized I just might as well wait for humanity to proceed to the next step of evolution and developed supernatural abilities, so I submit to the inevitable: buy the bootlegged DVD. Oh, wait. The DVD's not out yet! Ergo, bootlegged.

What can one poor man do?

Well, I'll just put up a list of movies that I want to watch in 2009 here. Hopefully, at least #1 will make it to the theaters here...

1. Up (May). Pixar's upcoming movie. 'Nuff said.
2. Where The Wild Things Are (October). Directed by the ever whimsical Spike Jonze. And since I love his works, (except his last movie The Fall, which seriously fell flat on its own rapture) I simply have to watch it. The trailer reminds me so much of The Neverending Story, another favorite childhood movie of mine.
3. Away We Go (June). Directed by Sam Mendes, who directed American Beauty, personally the best movie yet I've ever seen in my life.
4. Terminator Salvation (May). Under such stressful times today, I bet a lot of people feel they could just blow stuffs up. I'll just watch this movie.
5. Drag Me to Hell (May). I've been having a bad case of horror movie itch lately. I hope Sam Raimi can scratch it with this.

And... that's that! For now, at least.

Why, thank you!

Staring half-sleepily into my monitor last night, I was basking in the ether of Enya's Isobella while browsing Amazon.com, looking at stuffs that I don't have the money for nor need. The sound quality of this file isn't too good, I thought to myself. Too bad for one of Enya's best. So I looked up Isobella in the "mp3 download" section of Amazon and was surprised that the rare track's actually there for download for $0.99. Not that I can purchase it, I said. My bank account's absolutely dried up. Minus, even. So absent-mindedly I hovered my cursor to the "Buy Now" button and clicked on it. All of a sudden a window popped up asking me where I would like to save the file to. I stared at my screen in disbelief. Is this for real? I was hesitant for a moment, but then, ah, what the heck. So I just saved the file to my hard drive... and the song was immediately downloaded. Before I could recover from my confusion and amazement, my laptop made that cheery 'ding!' indicative of the file done being downloaded. I'll probably get in trouble for this, I thought, and sure enough, today I got an email from Amazon asking me that my card's been declined and that I need to update my method of payment. I borrowed my Pa's credit card to settle this, ("I'm a fraud! I have made an illegal transaction!" I laughed all the while) and inquired Amazon how I could pay up for the song. Not long after that, they sent me an email saying that they could not charge me because of "accounting and security reasons", so finally they said (grudgingly, I assume) :

"...you can keep the downloaded track as free gift from Amazon.com."

Wow. If I had known this would happen, I would have bought a whole album!

What are ya tryin' ta pull?

At night. I was alone. My cellphone rang. I picked it up and saw an unknown number on the screen. Could be something important.

'Halo?'
'Halo Bang, ini aku.' said a woman's voice at the other end.
'Apa?' I didn't recognize that voice.
'Ini aku loh, Bang. Bang aku kasihan lah sama si Enny, dia lagi dalam masalah...' and she proceeds to talk in a very concerned voice about someone named Enny who seemed to be in trouble. I just sat there listening incredulously, frowning, but my fuse had already been lit.
'Ini siapa?' I demanded, cutting her short.
There was a reluctant pause at the other end.
'Ini aku Bang.' she said.
'Ya SIAPA? Mau cari SIAPA?' I raised my voice. By this time I was already completely annoyed.
'...Cari Enny, Bang.' Wasn't this Enny the name of the person she was talking about? And now she said she was looking for her? Then why did she talk to me all this time? Oh, what, so I'm a woman now?
'Aku kasihan lah sama dia...'
'Salah sambung.' I said as coldly as humanely possible, and slammed my cellphone down.
Ten seconds later it rang again. Same number. I should've just ignored it, but I think I needed to make it clear to the idiot at the other end that her call is unwanted. And part of me was enjoying this. So I answered.
'Halo.'
'Tapi nomornya kayaknya betul lah Bang...' The same woman.
'MAU CARI SIAPA.' I bellowed.
'Cari Enny, Bang... '
'ENNY SIAPA?!'
'Enny, Bang. Aku kasihan lah sama dia...' Now this woman sounded like a broken record and an idiot. But I didn't need to hear anymore. A flood of profanities swelled to the tip of my tongue, but I am a person with the unfortunate tendency of losing his words when in fury. So I just hanged up.
The same number called me again twice after that, but I ignored it.

What an absolute idiot. Did she think I would fall for that? But I suppose you gotta hand it to these tele-frauds, they sure don't give up easily. Good thing, too, that I read that piece of article in Waspada (see? I read newspapers!) about this new kind of modus operandi. These people would call you, blurted out one name that they hoped by one huge miracle happened to be the name of a person that you do happen to know, then they would say this person was in trouble and need money quickly, and then they would ask you to send that money. Riiiight...

What mystifies me is, why do these phone-scammers always have a lot of trouble distinguishing people's sexes from their voice? My friend, who was having a cold at the time, one day received one such call. The person at the other end kept on and on blabbering about someone in trouble, and all the while he kept addressing my friend as "Bang".

My friend is female.

Needless to say, she was pissed.

Like I said, what an absolute idiot.