Tonight, I was inspired to track down the song “We’ll Meet Again” which was played in the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

I found it on Amazon.com thanks to a customer review I found here. It’s on a compilation called “Fabulous Fifties Divas Sing Their Hard-To-Find Hits” from Hit Parade records, 2006.

There is a compilation called “Dr. Strangelove: Music From The Films Of Stanley Kubrick (Film Score Anthology)” but a huge gripe on Amazon.com is that the version of “We’ll Meet Again” is not the same version as in the movie.

If you go to the iTunes site you won’t find the film-version of the song (as of today’s posting). I listened to the different versions of the track done by Vera Lynn on iTunes, but they all sounded different from the film, and from the snippets I could tell they wouldn’t be as good or satisfying to listen to. The film’s version is beautifully done and fits the movie so well…

If you haven’t seen Dr. Strangelove yet, and plan to, you may not want to watch the linked youtube video below:

Happy New Year! It’s been a while since my last post, and I skipped the holidays, unlike last year. It’s now 13 days into the new year and it’s been OK so far.

The guy I was dating, who later became my boyfriend in August 2007… is no longer my boyfriend – but we’re still dating. We still hang out but things would get difficult and somehow I think I know that we don’t have a great chance of ending up together in holy matrimony. It’s a feeling, I guess. Though nothing is absolute until it happens… or doesn’t.

Here is what went down (more or less) today – Sunday, January 13th, 2008.

Woke up at 5:20 AM
Participated in the Great Aloha Run running clinic where we ran 6 miles, and it was my first time moving up to the run / walk group that runs one minute, then walks one minute. It’s been a long time since I ran 6 miles, and I was surprisingly not winded, so I might move up to the running group within the next couple of sessions.

11:45 AM – Kapolei Subway: Had one of the worst-ever customer service experiences in there where a woman was trying to overcharge me, and wouldn’t even look at the huge sign on the wall behind her until I pointed at it and said – it’s on the sign right there… and then she sauntered over to it, and said “must be new” and that was it. No apologies, nothing. And she was the manager. And she’d just messed up the order before us by giving the wrong sandwich to the lady in front of me, and the guy before her… and then she proceeded to start arguing with the next set of customers while we were finishing our meal. She’s gotta be related to someone cause there’s no other way she should be managing anything.

12:30 – Went to see Juno at Kapolei theaters with the guy I’m dating. It was kinda a disappointment since there was all this buzz about it. On NetFlix i’d give it 3 stars… or a little less, actually… but enough to round-up to a 3 since they don’t let you leave portions of a star in your rating. (I think it was a 2.8 or 2.9 actually).

14:30 – Famous Footwear in Waikele. I went to try and find a replacement pair of running shoes but they didn’t have my size. Decided to try sticking with the recent pair I got. This morning when I got home I noticed my right toe – the 2nd toe.. the nail on it was pretty sore when I touched it so my shoes might be too tight. Not sure. My left foot’s fine though. These shoes cost me $100 and I rarely spend that much on anything, so I’m thinking I’ll try it another weekend. (I cut my toenails really short to be sure).

16:45 – in the car, on the phone, on the way to see my friend. My best friend, who is also my ex-boyfriend- and we aren’t dating. We’re both hip hop djs in our spare time, and both get along really well and make best friends… but after 3 years of going out we broke up about 3 years ago and I don’t know that we would ever get back together. But it’s cool and no stress, and we just cruise and do simple stuff for fun like go walking around and taking pictures of stuff, or walking through Don Quijote store. Nope – I didn’t spell that wrong – it’s a japan store which was formerly Daiei, and formerly Holiday Mart, but now calledDon Quijote. The Kaheka street location has the best alcohol selection of any grocery store I’ve been in here on Oahu. But hit me up with a comment if you know a place better! ha ha! Though my drinking days have been over a while

17:00 – Arrive at my best friend’s house and cruise with the bunnies. One belonged to me and he agreed to take her in when I was having a hard time with college and keeping up with her. Living in central Oahu makes commuting super difficult for college students. Not near as difficult as it must be for West-siders, and North Shore people though. The second bunny was purchased since I had originally gave him 2 bunnies to watch, but one passed away and the other seemed very lonely. Rabbits are very social creatures and she’s bonded to the new bunny even stronger than the last one. I’ve loved rabbits since I was a kid. They are the pet of choice for me.

17:30 – Cruise. We drive around Waialae, Kaimuki, Kahala, Diamond Head, and just look at the houses and talk about whatevers. We don’t know where to go and don’t mind cruising. Cause that’s what we do sometimes. We decide to eat at St. Louis Drive-In. We both order the Autumn special (BBQ Cheeseburger deluxe, fries, and large cokes).

19:00 – The Amazing Race is on TV and we arrived with the food in time to watch it. I like TK and Rachel, and Christina and Ron. I think ultimately I want TK and Rachel to win. I was glad Nathan and Jennifer were eliminated tonight. Though they make great antagonists! This is the first time I watched the show all season, and I’m pretty sure I’ll tune in for the finale next week.

20:00 – driving in my car towards home. And I drive a lot listening to the radio. Actually, listening to a recording of a show I subbed last week at the nameless radio station I used to be a dj at. It wasn’t as bad as I was thinking it was, but not as good as I’d have liked.

21:30 – home. On my bed surfing the interweb… then i start writing this blog on my macbook pro, which is part of the older generation that gets extremely hot.

22:17 – finishing the blog, and debating going to bed early since i have to wake up at 5 in order to get to work by 7 since traffic sucks that much here. Also about to write in my little running journal how far I ran today, how long it took, etc. I think I’m also signing up for the marathon this year. Pretty sure… more than 50% sure anyhow… And feeling lucky because I have a decent life and good friends. It’s been a good year so far.

I recently jumped onto Netflix, and am somewhat happy I did. When I was a kid and all through high school, I was a total movie person. Wanted to make them, and enjoyed reading about movies and watching all kinds of stuff. After my stint in the Army National Guard, where I couldn’t watch much TV or movies for about 8 months straight, I stopped watching movies and television. Just didn’t feel like it anymore.

I had a boyfriend who really got me into independent cinema in 1997, but we had a terrible relationship and breakup. (He and I were both aquarians). Since Hawaii is such a small place, seeing him at the HIFF, HUFF, and other showcases of foreign and independent film was unavoidable, so I stopped going to those since seeing him always made me feel like crap.

I finally started going to the movies on a semi-regular basis in 2005. Meaning, I’d only go when there was something I really really wanted to see since the casual trip to the movies for 2 people costs approximately $30 if you want moderate snacks with your movie. The $9 price tag of a movie ticket makes me feel like the movie has to be pretty damn satisfying, or I wasted $9. Maybe I would feel different if I was going to the movie and trying to Hook-up, but I already have a boyfriend (Virgo) so it’s not the same when you see a crappy movie with your boyfriend, as opposed to some new person you’re trying to hook-up with. Because when you’re trying to hook up, it’s not the movie that matters. (To me, anyway.)

But anyway, I got Netflix. My first movie rental was “Little Buddha” and I loved it (5-stars on Netflix). I opted for the unlimited-2-movies-at-a-time plan. I am still not thoroughly into watching movies like I used to be, so I’m starting off slow. My next 2 rentals are “Grand Canyon” and “Waiting for Guffman.” Basically, I’m catching up on a lot of movies I missed out on in the 90’s.

“Little Buddha” was a beautifully shot film. I appreciate cinematography a lot. I’m intrigued with Tibet, Nepal, and Buddhism. I’ve never practiced buddhism, but it always seems very cool to me. Currently I am in limbo about any religious beliefs. I thought Lama Norbu was played so well, and the child actor, Alex Wiesendanger was also very good. Keanu gets dissed so much for his acting, but I really thought he did fine in the role of Siddhartha. I think a lot of people just like hating on the him for whatever reason. No one else could be Neo. Nobody. But back to Little Buddha – really enjoyed it. Chris Isaak was surprisingly good. I’d never seen him act before. Every time I see movies about Tibet or Nepal, I want to go there.

I signed up last week, and I get 2 weeks for free. Too bad I didn’t wait since a friend of mine got an offer to get him hooked up with an additional movie a month and my first month would have been free if he’d referred me. Shucks. Sorry J!

Yesterday I saw The Pursuit of Happyness with the guy I’m dating. We used the coupons we got for Christmas to go to the movies, get popcorn, and a medium drink. We went to the Pearlridge West theaters, and watched the 5:05 showing. We both enjoyed it a lot. It was very different from Letters From Iwo Jima– that’s for sure! In all honesty, I enjoyed myself more watching the Pursuit of Happyness. It left me feeling good for the main characters, and wistful, I suppose. I really admired how he took such risks. He took gambles that I probably would not have had the guts to take myself in all honesty. And I’m sure a lot of people fail when they take chances like these, but I still admire people for trying. It was kind of funny seeing the Rubick’s cube. I kind of remember when those first came out as a kid, and I believe we had 1. I never could do it though.

We also studied a bit after the movie. I have my OS portion of the A+ certification I have to take, and he is studying for a couple of certs himself. I enjoy his company a lot. It’s very relaxing.

Today, it was back to work. We managed to grab lunch together at the restaurant inside the YWCA downtown. It was a nice atmosphere. It felt good to be away from the office.

I met up with him after work, and we went to Coffee Talk for a little bit, walked over and found this new store that sells urban vinyl figures and I bought 2 nano spores, and then we picked up his car and drove separately to my house. He was so tired, he ended up falling asleep on the couch during Battlestar Galactica (which he loves) and I let him sleep for about 1.5 hours til about 10:30PM.

Before he’d crashed, we ate Hickory Farms sausage, sweet hot mustard, and gouda cheese on crackers. As a kid I always loved those Hickory Farms sets. I mentioned it to him once in December, and he bought me one for Xmas. We ate some of it today. It was pretty fun, and reminded me a little of being a kid again. We had one of those sets just once when I was little.

There is something about watching him sleep that is almost heartbreakingly sweet. He truly is a nice person, and I hope he has a good life. I know there’s a great chance we’ll drift apart in time, and go out with other people, but I really enjoy his company for now. And whatever happens, he deserves a lot of great things out of life. I really believe he is one of the nicest people I know. Heh. This post is more for my memory than anything.

Yesterday, I went to the movies with the guy I’m dating. We were trying to decide between 3 movies: The Pursuit of Happyness, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Letters From Iwo Jima. Overall, it was a good movie, but admittedly it felt like some of it was a little disjointed, but perhaps that was the idea? My date brought up a good point when he told me he was disappointed they didn’t mention the fact that they held the island for a few months. Time is hard to distinguish in the film, and as someone who doesn’t know much about the history, I got the impression they only held the island a few weeks from watching the movie. When he told me they held off the American attack for that long, I was really surprised.
Ken Watanabe was really good in the film as Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. Tsuyoshi Ihara was also great as Baron Nishi. I was glad they shot the film in Japanese, and subtitled it. There were some moments that were difficult to watch, but not because they weren’t good. I don’t like to give spoilers, so I’ll just say that overall, I liked the movie. I wished they did some things differently, and went into more detail with Ken Watanabe’s character, because he was interesting. They did show a lot of conflict within the Japanese military and its people, and I thought that was one of the facets that are probably not touched upon much when people make movies about wars. Instead of a pure “us against them” type of film, you can see that the enemy is not always what you think they are, and that your own team can cause you more pain than any enemy could.

Yesterday I went to the movies with the guy I’m dating, and we saw Children of Men. The director, Alfonso Curaon, is the same one who did Y Tu Mama Tambien. I’d heard only good things about this movie, and I’m glad we went. It was a really good movie. Lots of unexpected things, and visually one of the most believeable possible futures I’ve seen in a movie. They didn’t make everything look like The Island, or any of those other futuristic movies. It was believeable. And I was expecting to see extremely dark settings, but in fact a lot of the scenes were full of light, and there was beauty in it, despite how messed up some of the situations were. There were some things I wish they’d given more detail about, but in some ways movies spoil themselves by trying to explain too much, so perhaps its for the best that they didn’t explain it all. I enjoyed it a lot, and at the risk of writing any spoilers, will leave it at that. I should mention I thought it was cool how Michael Caine played some “zen” music for Clive Owen. Many subtle and small things were very cool, and when you see them all together on the screen, it makes a great big-picture. I really like this director’s work on this film.

We took a drive to Down to Earth in Pearlridge, ate some sandwiches, and then went back to my house and watched Little Miss Sunshine on DVD. The music for this movie caught my attention. Alan Arkin was great, and so was the rest of the cast. Every character was interesting, and the most interesting were the men: Grandfather, Frank, Dwayne, and Greg Kinnear’s character. Every character was cool though. It was not as amazing as I thought it would be, but there were some great lines in this movie, and something very sweet and yet not too sappy about it. It left me feeling good in the end. Grandpa’s advice to Dwayne was great. I love Alan Arkin. He’s awesome.

It was a nice day because I got to spend some time with someone I like a lot. He’s oncall this weekend, and I was scared I might get paged as well since I have a new Saturday shift person working unsupervised and I thought there might be questions for me, but thankfully, neither of us got paged the whole time we hung out. I really enjoyed myself, and am thankful for days like the one I just had.

Its about 2 AM here. When I finish posting this, I’m going to sleep, wake up and go running, and then try to study some more for the A+ exam coming up for me on Friday. It’s already Sunday, and man am I tired. I hope I pass. I’m only taking the hardware portion and will schedule the OS part for a few months afterwards if I make it through this first part.

Yesterday, was the kind of day that makes up for a lot of crap I’ve been dealing with. A really good day can keep me going for a long time. Thankfully I had one this weekend. I needed it!

New Year’s Eve was fun. I went to the beach in the morning with the guy I’ve been dating. He picked me up around 8, and we both did some running, and went swimming. It was a really nice day to be at the beach. He had to be home for a party in the evening so we left after a couple of hours and stopped at my house so I could shower before catching a movie. We ate at Genki sushi together for the first time. (I’ve gone with other people, but never him). It’s not a place I’ve been to often so it was still exciting to go. It’s one of those sushi places where a conveyer belt winds along and carries the sushi on different colored plates in front of all the seats so people can pick stuff off it. At the end you get charged by the amount, and different colors of, empty plates you have stacked next to you. There’s something cool about having to grab your food as it passes by. He paid for lunch. It was about $35 with tip. The spicy tuna was awesome.

Then we went to see Curse of the Golden Flower. Gong Li is always great, and beautiful. The movie had some really cool fight scenes, and the palace was visually so colorful and detailed. The story was tragic and I thought it was an OK movie overall. I paid for all the movie stuff since he picked up the lunch bill.

Then he dropped me off at home. My mom went, but I decided to pass on going to my aunty’s luau and spent a lot of time on the phone with my guru, and invited my friend Justin to come over and hang out. Rich also came over for a little while, and we cruised and watched the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Rich left to go to his family party in Hawaii Kai, and ran into my sister there. She decided to hang out with her boyfriend instead of staying home with her dogs this year.

Justin and I got into my car at about 11:50pm. I drove along the freeway from Mililani all the way to Paoa valley (where he lives) and backso we could see all the fireworks going off at midnight, and just to be outside. I went to bed around 2AM.

Overall I had lots of fun on New Year’s Eve: I got to see my 3 closest friends, and received Happy New Year’s text messages from 2 other friends around midnight. (Palani and Terri). And I spent some time talking with my mom and sister inbetween.

This morning I woke up and my achilles tendon was really hurting. I’d noticed some pain yesterday, but today I can’t walk without limping. I must’ve strained it at the beach yesterday – probably when I was swimming. On Friday and Saturday I ran about 3 miles each day, and then yesterday ran about 1.5 before swimming. Hopefully it gets better. I spent a lot of time sleeping today and trying to stay off it. Kinda bums me out since I’d wanted to go running again today. I’ve been trying to get more in-shape lately, and don’t have as much time once the work week starts.

I saw Rich a little bit today. He stopped by to check out my foot. My sister and her boyfriend spent the day together. They also bought a replacement DVD player for the broken one in our home and are currently watching Thank You for Smoking. My mom went to a movie with a friend of hers today. She saw the Pursuit of Happyness.

I spoke a lot to Rich on the phone before he stopped by my house, and came to some conclusions about my uncertainty towards the guy I’m dating. I do get spooked sometimes and try to run away before relationships go bad. Right now, I like him enough to see how things work out instead of walking away from things out of a fear of rejection. Since I can’t see the future, I shouldn’t try to prepare for it in this case. I should just enjoy the good times we have when we hang out and be happy.

So I had a pretty good Christmas, and an overall cool New Year’s, though I must admit I was bummed to wake up with a sore left tendon. It’s pretty painful and walking is a bit slow.

Hopefully 2007 is a good year and I learn new things. Also hopeful that I continue to have good friends and I’m thankful to have my family. Also hoping my job interview on Thursday goes well. And lastly hoping that the guy I’m dating has a great year too, cause I do care a lot about him– Even if it turns out that I’m not dating him anymore. Though I won’t worry about that unless it happens. But I wish him the best no matter what.

I’m thankful for my family, friends, and the opportunity to see another year come and go. Aloha!