Gubra

On Friday night, while I was watching Fun with Dick & Jane in my room, Shawn rang me up asking if I’d like to go for a yamcha and that he was right in front of my house.

Last minute heroes. <_<

Only Esther, Shawn and I were at the Syed Ariff mamak. That was around 11pm plus, and after some long chit-chat we only went back at 1am.

Then earlier yesterday I went to Kelly Services with Ding and Kai Tzin to collect my pay.. that was around 11am. We headed for Pyramid after that, walked around, bought 5 tickets for Gubra (Teck Seng and Asa joined us at 12pm plus), ate lunch at Pizza Hut.. then went immediately for the 1.35pm movie. We were about 5 minutes late so we missed the opening I suppose.

I love the tagline: Why do we hurt the most, the ones we love the most?

Gubra (it means ‘anxiety’) isn’t really your typical Malay movie, but gawd, some scenes are so unnecessarily dragged it can bore you to tears. If I did not read at the newspapers the rough synopsis of the movie, I wouldn’t even know there were prostitutes (one of them afflicted with HIV) in the show.

MORE INTERRACIAL LOVE SCENES PLOX.

SPOILERS FROM SEPET AND GUBRA AHEAD

Maybe I had expected too much of this Sepet follow-up. Was slightly hoping for some explanation to the sudden death of Jason and that mysterious phone-call which I thought was the best way to end that tragi-movie.

Cute pic.

Gubra is indeed slightly complex than its predecessor, but would have preferred Sepet’s linear storyline. Huhu. And right after the credits (thank god we stayed), there was a short, sweet scene of Orked and Jason sleeping together (literally, you dirty handbag you). Ahh.

Acting out the after end-credits scene I suppose.

My rants include how Alan’s acting (and a few others) was stiffer than the Statue of Liberty, and how the dialogue of “I like this country - you can listen to Chinese, Malay, Indian songs!” sounded a little corny. Some things don’t need to be said in order for the message to be conveyed. I also disliked how there are only very few comical scenes compared to Sepet.

Temah and her son.

As expected, Asa slept for a while while the movie was screening while Ding was throwing a litany of complaints to me.. only Kai Tzin and I - even Teck Seng - thought it was nice.

I realised too the significance of the quote at the end after showing the characters of various religions praying.

“The lamps are different, but the light is the same.” - Jalaluldin Rumi (13th century)

All in all.. it’s an enjoyable, poignant movie all the same.

There was also some fashion show we watched before the movie began.

Gorgeous model.

The men’s attire was a bit bland.. and the models were parading clothes from Polo.

Lining up in the end.

We went back home at about 6pm, after dropping the rest at Summit while Teck Seng wanted to go back home. I ate my dinner, got online for a short while while waiting Shawn to pick me up at 8pm. The rain was severely ferocious.. thunder, lightning and all and it was a spectacle to watch.

We picked up Esther, Sarah and Adrian, and we all went off to Pyramid to the Magical Theatre Restaurant, which is a misnomer because it really is a bar. We reached there at 9pm, waited for Justine (Jess’ sis) to go off safely in their parents’ car at about 9.15pm before we headed to MTR.

Julien and Heng.. Julien went home early at 9.30pm. >_>

Esther macam menggatal.

Heng had booked the lounge/room thingy on top (wasn’t really that big, but it was really something different - circular-shaped, had curtains if you want privacy, it has a nice view of the stage, etc) for his birthday celebration for free (exclusive of drinks of course), so we enjoyed the night away.

A view of the two-person band from the top - Bryan and the girl whom we don’t know the name.

And another view.

Group pic!

The guys.. Heng posing with his birthday presents.

Pimpin’.

Huge group pic, but Adrian’s face was cut off at the right.

Now mine got cut off too, haha.

Birthday cake!

Random candid.

Geok Leng and Edmund.

The Heinekens we drank. I had two bottles.

Esther was progressively high.

Group pic outside the toilets. >_>

It was an excellent night, because of the unplugged performance (they can perform any songs you request at all, which I thought was brilliant - both English and Chinese). You gotta love Bryan’s voice, and that girl’s.

There was also magic tricks and stuff, and some real audience interaction when birthday people were invited on stage to be this magic-performing dude’s victim.

This 5-minute long video depicts Heng’s hilarious ‘torture’.

The girl also sang many lovely songs, among them a hard-to-perform Zombie by The Cranberries. Just listen to her voice!

She also sang Happy Birthday to Heng, in English at first followed by Chinese.

Then Bryan sang what Shawn called “Andy’s jiwang song”. Two parts follow, because I was distracted to go to have a group photo snapped.

I was slightly intoxicated with my two bottles, enough to make me feel heady and sleepy. IIRC, we went off at about 12am, headed off to Asia Cafe where the rest ate/drank and I slept the entire time we were there. Finally reached home at 2am.

Excellent night, thanks to Heng. The bill for MTR was about RM300 supposedly. @___@

Off to Tioman in 5 hours.