munsta ramblings

War and beauty

I know....pathetic...but to my credit, I hardly am hooked on any TVB serials nowadays....normal week night Astro selections have veered more towards one-hour English serials (i.e. CSI/ House) with independent plots contained in each episode therein...so there is no urgent need to "chase" for sake of continuity nor tendancies to schedule my life around the idiot box (so I like to think)

Of course, with the luxury of only one Astro decoder in the house and living with the other half who not only does not have the patience for long drawn complicated story lines, but also requires BM subtitles whilst watching chinese movies ...well you get the idea....as it is, should thank my lucky stars that we are not tuned to EPL only the whole week through! :)

So with all the hype on War and Beauty, coupled with discovering that bro conveniently had the entire 30 episodes sitting in his computer hard drive, mum and I decided to attempt to marathon through the entire series in the past week.

Yes...TVB serials can be extremely addictive, particularly if you are watching it with another enthusiastic junkie (read: mum)...for me, watching it alone does not quite feel the same.

My second uncle prohibits his children from watching these serials. His rationale being that such plots take up memory, and may hamper his kids' study skills. My opinion - pure bull shit

During my childhood in Penang, I've grown up watching TVB serials. Back when we bought our first coloured television and our first video machine, we also began to rent TVB serials...though strictly it was to help occupy grandma's time in the evenings...the entire family gladly sat in to watch these serials together.

It took a couple of years after before TV2 first introduced the 5:30 - 6:30p.m. Chinese belt. That hardly was sufficient to feed us serials junkies....and I remember doing all my primary school homework in front of the TV after dinner (i.e. from 7:30 - 10:00p.m.)

In retrospect, TVB serials were good in that it ironically meant we did spend quite some time together as a family (although, some would say that this could hardly qualify as quality time spent, I beg to differ as there was still interaction/ comments in between - particularly pertinent when as kids we sometimes did not understand what was going on).

TVB serials also tended to have a lot of "good vs bad" plots, peppered with a lot of street wise stuff therein... but more importantly, through these serials, bro and I learnt and spoke Cantonese at home almost effortlessly...absolutely essential as that was also the main language used to communicate with our grandparents and our extended family.

Back to the present...all my cousins have not had the experience of sitting through TVB serials...mainly due to supposedly stricter parenting (my uncles consider it a waste of time) plus other distractions such as Buffy and PS2...and with little command of Cantonese (it's the in thing to speak only English at home...no?) - boy, interaction during extended family functions are often limited due to communication difficulties

Anyways...am on episode 22 now....hmmmm...8 more to go tonight before am back at work tomorrow?

munsta ramblings @ 7:52 pm