Wow. Finally a decent blog entry from both D and J. Definitely kudos to J though, I've missed your social commentaries. I shan't post my looong replies to your blogouts. but I will give my response here :-p kinda like a email thread except online huh?

On Singaporeans:
Yeah, I definitely see the big gap, but then I think I've always known it because my family actually has people in both sides of the Singaporean population: to be politically correct, the cosmopolatian and the heartlanders. I found myself explaining this in Japanese to my host family in Japan. That I wasn't really one of the "typical" Singaporeans. What disturbs me more than that though, is that I'm beginning to feel that not only do I not fit in with the heartlanders, I don't even fit in in the elite here anymore. It's really hard to keep a grip on being Singaporean and belonging somewhere when that happens.
Most of my friends back in brown aren't singaporean. Met up with A today who said the same thing, that most of her friends weren't singaporean and she didn't understand why so many singaporeans came so far only to hang out and talk only to other singaporeans. So J, you're in good company there, at least we're meeting new people. At the same time, Ay this morning commented to me that I always intrigued her because I had such a broad worldview. I guess what I'm really trying to bring across is that I'm beginning to feel more and more a global citizen rather than a local one and that has both good and bad points.
Since the good is obvious, well, the bad is that I feel more and more out of place everytime I go home. Met up with old classmates the other day and began to realize that even though they were "elite", I felt decidedly out of place. So far, I think I was the happiest in Japan, but then I didn't really had to "live" in Japan. I got to hang out with Jp, B and C. Americans in an asian world. And not American Americans either, but ones with a broad liberal world view. I guess for now I have a year or so yet to decide where I belong.
So J, maybe we can form a classification of our own? :-p I have a number of friends that fall under that catergory and they're my better friends.

On anime:
Not all anime is good. I'd be the first to admit that. I like and admire what can be done with the medium but I think of anime as that, a medium and not a genre. The difference? a genre is like horror, or fantasy. A catergory wheras a medium is more like watercolour, film, text. So Anime for me is precisely that, a medium. What comes out of it depends on how good the director, the artist, is. I really like the Utena movie. I really like certain animes and what are done with them. and what I really like I guess are the adult animes. the ones that deal with humans, with what might be dark in human nature, with serious issues :-p

on LOTR 3:
loved the scenery and landscape. advertisment for new zealand really. I really must go see Jd sometime in New Zealand. More thoughts on this later got to go.