Out of all the shows I watch, only Merlin has me reaching for my keyboard everytime. I suppose it's the way I got into the show in the first place. Mostly I get introduced to a new series by the mainstream media (entertainment news sites, magazines, ST) or by friends' recommendations, or I watch it because everyone keeps talking about it. Merlin I stumbled on quite by accident while LJ hopping. Back then it was only halfway through the first season, barely spreading out from UK, and the fandom hadn't yet exploded, but I was itching for something to do after the exams and by judging from the BNFs from other fandoms that I recognised that were into it, watching the show should be worthwhile. It meant that I didn't know anyone else who was watching it here though, so I turned to blogging it. Now it's on local cable, but lagging weeks behind, so still not many people to discuss it with huh.

After much procrastinating, I have finally gotten round to the last trio of episodes in season 2. An improvement. Maybe it's because there's a lot more Arthur/Merlin action going on, and isn't that why everyone watches the show? ;) And more Morgana. And Mordred. And Morgause. All the Ms. It means epicness. Here's to more plot and less stupidity in the next season. Not forgetting Lancelot. We need Lancelot.

On a slight tangent, I just realised that my favourite Merlin episodes are those that Howard Overman wrote. Definitely no coincidence there.

On a bigger tangent, I finished watching the remaining Glee episodes today too. IMHO it's the best new comedy this year -- I'm glad it's getting many nods in the category for several awards.

However! I am ashamed to admit that The Vampire Diaries is my personal favourite among the new shows this year. (Flashforward? Getting disappointing.) Seriously. It's the show I look forward to watching every week, even ahead of shows I already like such as Supernatural. I find it excellent eye and brain candy. It's sorta like why I keep reading genre books with near-identical plots -- there's a certain comfort in predictability and yet there are just enough variations to keep it from becoming repetitive. Plus TVD has pretty decent characterisation! The girl isn't an idiot like Bella Swan -- she's quite intelligent and realises things much faster! Then you have Ian Somerhalder's morally grey vampire who switches from good to bad every episode because that's how he's like, as opposed to bad writing. And I like it that they kill off major characters for real. It's always fun to try to guess who've been turned into a vampire out of blue.

Show to try to keep up with while in the US:
- Heroes (4/1 okay that's sooner than I expected I can watch that here)
- American Idol 9 (12/1 it boggles me that I can actually vote)
- Leverage (13/1)
- White Collar (19/1)
- The Vampire Diaries (21/1)
- Supernatural (21/1)
- Survivor 20 (11/2 OH YEAH HEROES VS VILLIAINS)
- Flashforward (4/3 I think...)
- Glee (13/4)

And uh find some way to watch the Eleventh Doctor. Okay, that's quite a lot of shows, will probably dump or postpone watching some of them.

Next: movie round-up plus notes on ESTAMOD, especially on Avatar.

See, thanks to LJ I can track my whole Trekkie journey. Right from 2007 when they announced that Chris Pine would play Kirk and I was all dubious, to last year when the first teasers came out and I thought, should I bother watching Heroes to find out more about this Zachary Quinto guy, to now when I'm plotting nu!Trek marathons. T______T

On hindsight, it seems like I'm destined to get sucked into Trek. It's always hovering there on the periphery, a milestone in the history of fandom, an important pop culture text in its own right and one of the most high-profile works of science fiction (one of my favourite genres). J.J. Abram's shiny lensflare-y universe of pretty people came along and poof. I protested plenty on the way into the fandom; now I guess I'm in it for good. The older TV shows and movies weird me out, but Trek '09 has a strong enough following on its own and even though it's just 6 months old, there's a very rich subfandom to mess around in.

One thing I learnt from my Trekkie conversion: never believe the hype, judge for yourself. I didn't like the trailer. I ignored reviews and other opinions. It was enough that it was Trek -- what kind of sci-fi junkie would I be without watching it?

So this is what I'm taking to watch Avatar this Tuesday, which is part of our Epic Star Trek (2009) Actor Marathon of Doom ©. Let's dub it ESTAMOD for short. More on it later. Avatar is Zoe's contribution to The Cause, but even if I didn't manage to pull the ESTAMOD off, I'd have dragged people to watch it anyway because it's James Cameron, the auteur behind Terminator and Titanic. And that's enough for me. Never mind the 3D, which is wasted on me, or whatever SFX -- I'd never watch a show just for that. I like cheesy, I like pretty, and above all, I treasure the fan experience, geeking out over a shared love, be it mainstream or esoteric. That's why I try for opening day screenings whenever I can.

Back to ESTAMOD. For my own reference:

Chris Pine Blind Dating / Princess Diaries 2 / Just My Luck (haven't decided yet)
Zachary Quinto Selected Heroes episode(s)
Zoe Saldana Avatar
John Cho Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
Karl Urban Doom (he is hott stuff ♥ anivad, shall we watch this on Tuesday morning at your place?)

Not 100% confirmed yet:

Anton Yelchin Terminator Salvation
Simon Pegg Hot Fuzz
Eric Bana Munich? Black Hawk Down?

I wish this was an ontd_startrek thing, then we would have something on behalf of Singapore for the Monday Meetup post! Sometimes I think we should have our own comm...

Once again, our dear national newspaper spotlights a show that anyone who's serious about their TV fix would have seen already -- Merlin. Okay, I guess they have to keep it all legal and above-board, and Starhub is just SLOW in importing shows, hello have you seen Singtel's model?

I guess I shouldn't be complaining about the lack of same-week telecasts because I haven't been regular in watching Merlin! Exams and other things get in the way, plus this season is wildly inconsistent as compared to the previous one. Maybe I'm pampered by the final third of the first series, which was great and I expected that to carry over, but it didn't and somehow this year's episodes lack the same hook that made me marathon the show last year in a hardcore way. The writing is weaker, characterisations all over the place, where is Morgana, strange continuity -- whatever they did the previous week seems to have zero effect on the episode -- and the laundry list goes on.

Then I got up to "The Sins of the Father" and omg show you have redeemed yourself. Well if I rewatched "Excalibur" and started nitpicking on the retcon I might think differently, but I'm such a sucker for those crazy intense moments and my heart just bleeds for Arthur. ;_;



This ep is all Arthur's, really. His sense of honour, desire to know more about his mother (nice Arthur/Merlin bonding moment there about missing parents), and the whole showdown with Uther over Igraine was painful and angst-riddled in best way. What hurts more is that you see how vulnerable Arthur is to outside influences, that people are pushing him around and he doesn't see it, so when Merlin has to persuade Arthur that magic is bad, that was one nasty double-whammy.

I think I babbled something about the bourgeoisie and the separation of work and leisure and possibly mind control. Obviously, I was smoking. Anyway it's such a relief that the exams are all over now and tears welled up in my eyes while I was sitting in the exam hall yesterday waiting for the profs to dismiss us -- I kid you not. It's a great load off my chest.

And as usual, many things to run after that. I swear, people are just waiting for students to finish their exams so they can exploit their cheap/free labour. Even before I could collect my bag, my phone was already ringing away, and not in the wanna-go-out-to-celebrate way. It's especially bad this round because The Parents are off in China attending some distant relative's wedding so running the household time, yippee. Had to do groceries on my own just now and it sucks carrying it all back home on the train. And we were out of eggs, so I had to be extra careful while doing the usual bump-and-shove at Jurong Point.

Went to collect my new passport yesterday and wow, the process is extremely efficient if you do everything online -- in and out within 15 minutes, tops. The people I jumped ahead of must be pretty annoyed but hey, the tech is available to you too. Have some faith in online application systems, guys. If only my experience at the US embassy today was like that, but thankfully my interview went well and I can get my passport back next week.

HOWEVER THAT ALSO MEANS I CAN'T GO FOR THE YOUTH CAMP MY OWN SISTER IS HELPING TO PLAN SINCE WITHOUT A PASSPORT I'M STUCK IN SINGAPORE DAMMIT.

While freedom means many errands which needs to be done, at least I get to indulge in my oldest hobby! I could have gone to the book fair at the Expo, but omg, I'm taking the train from Pioneer, how many of my brain cells do you want to kill? National Library it was, since I was going to ICA anyway and it's a walkable distance. Took out the couple of books -- Jennifer Fallon is an author I can foresee myself liking very much -- but where is


I want it NOW. ;_; Maybe I should just read it off the Internet...

Meanwhile, Brandon Sanderson(mistborn), the hot new fantasy writer who's been selected to complete the Wheel of Time saga*, has a new book out: Warbreaker. I am ashamed to confess that I can't get past the second chapter. Fortunately, he is a very nice chap and willingly put the whole novel online for free (!) so I can take my time if I ever do decide to tackle it. But I really want to get a hold of Elantris by next week.

* If you've read the Mistborn trilogy, you'd expect good stuff from this guy. While it's not the most impressive writing or even plotting -- deus ex machina, much? -- Sanderson is fantastic at world-building, and he developed a very imaginative magic system. Somehow I got sucked in bad -- during term break I swallowed up the trilogy in 5 days? Elend Venture from his Mistborn trilogy will forever and ever remain my #1 book crush of the year though. He's like, my dream guy.

So, the 36 hours that have passed since the end of my exams have been busy and quite filled with adventurous experiences! I have spent hours queueing at Fairprice/Watson's/the post office/immigration/the American Embassy/public transport! I have waded through 600 pages of generic fantasy! I have gone shopping with my sister! I have baked pie! (It smells fabulous; just waiting for felly to come home so we can pig out on it while watching the telly.)Still the highlight of it so far is


GO GO GO GO GO

(Oh felly just came back! Pieeeeeee~)

But this is how I feel: