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5 Things I Dislike About Cinemas

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1. Girls who squirm.

We have annoying people, very annoying people, very, very annoying people, and then we have the girls who squirm when something deemed as “cute, cuddly and lovable pops up on the screen. These bunch of torturous brand of homosapiens just can’t keep their mouth shut. Does a gerbil with those “I’m innocent” puppy-dog eyes or a baby who makes weird pre-puberty sound effects motivate you to, well, act like a baby? And guess what, these species usually hang out in cliques of 4 to 5, so basically, if you’re looking to wind down after a long, hard day, leave after the trailers. Why do we need Guantanamo Bay and all the tacky interrogation techniques when you can put prisoners in a room with squealing teenage girls. They would be begging for mercy when a baby hamster appears. Obtaining sensitive information from a seasoned, hardened, bullheaded criminal? Oh, you mean counting from 1 to 3?

2. Crying babies.
I do not have anything against babies believe me, but really, you expect me to behave like a sane person when a comedy is playing and a baby is acting like Mr Bean’s Vacation is a tragic war story. I mean it is understandable why babies do what they do, like breaking out in tears and pissing everyone off, but I believe that parents have enough maturity to not bring their precious young ones into a theatre if they know they’re going to cry. Unless you have amazing and delicate time-measuring skills, chances are they’re going to wail and flail at some point during the film. Which brings me to my next point. What are babies doing in cinemas? If they can’t comprehend simple instructions like “Don’t cry because Wen Kai’s going to rant about us on his stupid obnoxious blog”, I’m pretty sure he can’t understand something as perplexing as “May the force be with you”. All the baby cares about is his milk and sleep, not some weird beings with glow-in-the-dark sticks. So I suggest next time when you desperately want to watch the movie, do it at a dairy farm. Downside, the movie’s probably going to be black and white. (get it?)

3. Not-on-silent electronic devices.
A few sentences ago we were talking about babies not listening to instructions and guess who decides to crash in and fight for a place on my “stupid and obnoxious” blog. Has 25 years of Earthly experience not teach you the common sense necessary to turn off your phone before the start of a movie. Do you have any idea how irritating it is when Bella and Edward are about to kiss and RING goes your phone, re-enacting the classic “interrupting a kiss” scene. And some people actually have the intellect to pick up their phones and converse so loudly that the patrons from next door can actually hear about your adventures in Geylang last night. If your phone rings, you jolly well burn it or jackhammer thru it and make sure nobody calls you for the next 120 mins, because if someone does, I hope you have a speed dial for 999.

4. Cinema Food
If some random three-letter agency made a chart of food prices in the world, cinema food will occupy the first three places. For your information, popcorn sells for an outrageous 1000% mark up than normal cost. We’re paying 7 dollars for something that costs 70 cents, all for the sake of convenience. And I personally don’t understand why people consume popcorn during movies. If you need a better synonym of “monkey-see, monkey-do”, there you go. And not only that, hotdogs go for a mind-boggling 5 dollars. Really, I’m expected to pay 4.50 for bread, chili and mustard. The quality of the food isn’t that nice anyway. I feel like a five-star Michelin chef when I purchase food from the cinema. We have a perfect match of pipping hot nacho chips coupled with ice cold cheese sauce, and then we have melted vanilla ice cream that makes you look like you’ve just watched an intense R-rated film. To top that we don’t even know if the food’s safe. Whenever the counter staff goes back to make the food I’ll always hear them shouting random numbers. Maybe 0 is for mustard, 1 is for chilli, and 2 is for ” too bad you’re going to f***ing die”. For some peace of mind, I will appreciate if the bread, chili and mustard comes free.

5. Long Queues
In Singapore, a long queue translates to an eventual free gift. Hence, it actually feels kind of weird to see people queueing up for stuff that is way overpriced. When stuff is free, people don’t think, they just go for it. But since movie tickets are a lot more expensive, they tend to think, well, a lot more. Women choose seats like they’re choosing handbags. Just like how LV and Prada looks similar in our eyes, there’s not much difference between J13 and H15 either. And by extremely unlucky coincidence, these people usually happen to be the same group of people who squeals and squirms inside the cinema. So, after 5 minutes when the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ‘member’ finally agree to their seating arrangement, the 4th one will gatecrash the payment ceremony. Just hurry up and scram, because to me, the feature itself is more entertaining than 4 girls fighting for a peek at a 10 inch LCD screen which has a resolution from 200BC.

What was your most unpleasant experience at the cinema? Tell me in the comments below!

—
Lhu Wen Kai

How Unpunctual Teachers Screw Up My Life

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With teachers gradually losing their grasp on the concept of punctuality and abilities to keep track of time, the painful sight of long queues that greet you after climbing down 10 blocks of stairs has become more prevalent as the year goes on.

Recess was supposed to be a time of relaxation. It’s supposed to be a time when we catch up with our friends, find out what nonsense they were up to, and how screwed up their lives are etc. Nowadays, most students spend the majority of this rare period of freedom, queueing up for (in my case), excessively overpriced, immensely undersized food.

It is extremely heartbreaking to see how our dear recesses are being eaten up (no pun intended) by various teachers whose “Let me finish this question” requires a severely underestimated 10 mins. A simple “What’s 1+1?” question can lead to this huge amazing miraculous life story on how Tom-worked-so-hard-and-finally-achieved-his dreams. I mean, don’t get me wrong I feel great for whoever Tom-guy this teacher’s talking about, but with all due repsect, you releasing the class on time for once is more miraculous than what Tom will ever achieve in his entire lifetime.

Not to mention horrible time planning. As much as we appreciate your kind generosity, allocating 40 mins to complete a fill-in-the-blank worksheet and 10 mins to teach a major topic that constitutes most of the marks in the finals isn’t exactly… efficient? On the other hand, we have some really passionate teachers. Really, really passionate and enthusiastic about teaching. Till the point whereby we’re forced to complete our homework in class or we’re not allowed to be dismissed. The ‘home’ in homework obviously means nothing right?

And the funny bit is that teachers seem to have this ironic habit of stressing how important punctuality is. They may argue that their phones ran out of battery, but don’t you find it fascinating how they always seem to have a fully charged tablet, a MacBook, a smartphone, and another smartphone on their desks everytime you conduct their lessons? Maybe I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. After all, tablets, laptops, and smartphones can’t tell time right?

You may argue that hey, I have so much work to mark and I lost track of the time. If you have been paying attention in class, 15 years of education would have taught you that teachers follow a standard procedure and protocol when they’re dishing out this excuse. They’ll start of by saying how much work they have that needed to be marked, followed by rambling on how horribly atrocious some of your classmates’ work are, then proceed by telling you that setting worksheets require humongous amounts of time, and finally end off by rehearsing to you the mindset that since we teachers have worked so hard to provide for you, you should respect our hard work and hand in quality assignments. If you haven’t noticed, what they are saying plays nearly no relevance to them explaining why they’re late, and also, if you haven’t noticed, it’s already 15 mins past your recess.

When you came late and dismiss us late, you affect us more than you can imagine. Toilet breaks becomes a luxury, having quick chats with friends become extinct, and now I have no time to style my hair because I have to rush to the next class. The teacher would be expectedly angry since ‘we were not punctual’, and lashes out at us, vent their frustrations, voice their displeasures etc. The lesson would be dragged on and on till it overshoots, again, the next teacher would be enraged as well, and this vicious cycle just cruelly repeats itself.

At the end of the day, teachers have an equal part to play in ensuring that punctuality is not a forgotten virtue. Students make the effort to run up flights of stairs to ensure they’re early for lessons, and similarly you teachers should uphold this value too. Like what my teacher (who is always late) tells me, “It’s never nice to wait for people”, it’s really inconvenient when we have to force fit our schedules and adapt into yours. The staff room may prohibit food and drinks, but I’m pretty sure they allow alarm clocks.

And a smartphone.

—
Lhu Wen Kai