week of fun

P's finals end on Tuesday, thus we had a fun-filled week before heading off to New York for 5 days, in fact, he was so confident of his papers that we watched Hero on the Friday before his exams... (well, what do you expect from a guy that says "I don't need it" to "good luck" before his paper?!)...he saw the trailer when we caught the Manchurian Candidate and was amazed by the graphics. This is my second time on seeing it and I definitely enjoyed it more... the first time I went in looking for a story and was kinda disappointed by the simplistic plot. This time, I sat back and appreciated the cinematic beauty of the show itself and wow-ed along with P

Tuesday and Wednesday was devoted to Ingmar Bergman, a Swedish director that I'm starting to be converted to...The two films were similar in their theme of love, but couldn't be more different otherwise. A Lesson in Love (En lektion i karlek) was a romantic comedy about how a husband plotted to get his wife back after she decided to divorce him over his infidelity. It was humorous starting from the opening scene where the good doctor broke it off with his mistress, the train scene where he flirted with the woman we didn't know was his wife was the highlight. The film was interposed with scenes of the couple's history, how they met and fell in love, and a particularly tender scene of the couple strolling through the forest together, rays of lights shining down between the canopy of trees, she turning back to look at him... there was several good scenes of their tomboyish daughter as well... turning it all into more than a comedy...into a film that made one reflect, how does one fall in and out of love...

Monika (Sommaren med Monika) documents the trials and tribulations of young love, of a very young couple, sharing one lovely summer together, before the wanting nature of Monika and the troubles of life drove the once-so-very-in-love couple apart and destroying their dreams...I loved Harriet Anderson as Monika, but somehow, Lars Ekborg's Harry touched me more, the way he tried so hard to keep their dreams alive... the way he said "at least we had a good summer" before the couple gave up living by themselves and headed for home...the way he kissed Monika before turning away when he discovered her infidelity, the way insisted on taking care of their daughter by himself when Monika left him, the way he stood in front of the shop window after selling all his possessions and recalled the summer they once had together...

We also caught Shear Madness, a hilarious whodunit play on Friday. It was one of the funniest plays I've watched in awhile...P was amazed by the fact that the play had ran for more than 3k shows. We tried to guess the murderer, and thus felt cheated when it was revealed that the murderer of the night actually was decided by the number of votes taken before the last act. But still, it was a fun night out :)

Other notable fun events includes Legal's on Tuesday and JL fulfilling his promise to cook paper-wrapped chicken on Thursday. It took so much work! From chopping the chicken, making the marinade and wrapping the chicken... it took most of the afternoon but it tasted wonderful :) We also went to Minado's for dinner on Thursday, a scrumptious Japanese buffet with free-flowing raw oysters and sashimi and a wide array of other dishes like crabmeat peach, lobsters, crepe, crab tempera, various sushi... yumm.....the best meals I've had in awhile...

I also went for two concerts showcasing pieces P wrote for his music class, the first one was a composition to a poem that I picked and the second was a minuet. We actually had a lot of fun when P was composing the music to the poem, he asked me for a melody and I hummed one that I liked but he said it was too "happy" and "contemporary"! Outraged, I hummed another tune that was basically all flats and he actually used that ultra-boring tune!!!! Ha...

I also met Shufen for lunch at Union Square, a Korean corner she discovered once when walking in the wrong direction... We had bimbimbap for lunch and discovered quite a large Korean/Japanese supermarket! A very good find, must better than the one at Porter... Another place to look for tasty goodies!

All in all, a wonderful week before we headed for New York...