In a nutshell, Love Cuts is about the journey of a woman and her family as she battles breast cancer. It stars Zoe Tay as Sissy, a talented seamstress, Hong Kong actor Kenny Ho as her restaurant manager husband and local young talents Regene Lim and Edwin Goh as their children. One day, while showering, Sissy discovers a lump in her breast, and thus the emotional rollercoaster begins.

A scene from "Love Cuts".

I have to say that as a first effort by the newly set up Clover Films, this movie is a commendable effort. The actors are convincing in their roles, even the wooden Christy Yow who does a fine job playing a wooden model who befriends Sissy, and Allan Wu, who can’t speak Mandarin to save his life but who redeems himself just by acting like the beefcake that he is. I particularly enjoyed Regene Lim’s portrayal of a child struggling to understand and cope with her mother’s illness, as well as Edwin Goh’s awkward teenager who learns some important growing-up lessons from his mother, surgically-attached Lomo camera and iPhone in hand.

There were a couple of weird moments in the movie (think zombies with IV poles), a couple of continuity issues and some rather bizarre digital work, but overall, the movie’s messages alone – that early detection saves lives and that you still have plenty to live for, even as you live with cancer – make it worth watching. To illustrate the power of the film medium – when he saw me in the bathroom this morning, K asked, “您要检查您的 ně né?” (“Hast thou checked thy tits today?”)

The softies among you will do well to take along a packet of tissue or two to the cinema. I didn’t cry, but plenty of people in the cinema sure did!

Love Cuts is showing exclusively at Golden Village cinemas.

If you are aged above 40, please check out BreastScreen Singapore for more information on mammography screening.

We headed to Joo Hing for dinner after ballet, Kindermusik and dropping by the house to check on the renovations. Had to wait almost 40 minutes for the grub to arrive, and we were so famished we polished everything off in under 20 minutes, I think. Poor K had to walk all the way to Katong Shopping Centre to withdraw money to pay for dinner because Joo Hing only takes cash payment, but on the way he discovered a cheesecake cafe called Chezcake Bistro just down the road from Joo Hing, so we adjourned there after dinner to satisfy Alison’s craving for cheesecake.

I really like Chezcake Bistro. The place is very cosy and welcoming, and the wait staff are super polite and attentive. I asked them for a candle to stick on a cake, and they obliged, even paying attention to the exact moment when they should bring out the cake for K! They also did things like pull up a low stool for Zoe so she could sit more comfortably, and offer to take a group photo for us. And let’s not forget the cheesecake – we tried the durian, cherry brandy and New York flavours, and all were pretty darn good. The coffee was nice, too. Despite being stuffed from dinner, we managed to scarf down all three slices of cake and finish our drinks. Good stuff.

I think the celebrations will continue tomorrow because the extended family dinner should be going on as scheduled, and knowing K’s mom, there will be cake. Happy birthday, husband. Love you and hope this birthday’s been a good one!

The happy daddy.

I once told a colleague that I am generally not a fan of local theatre because the productions are either too slapstick, too poorly produced or directed, or too pretentious. She was rather peeved by that statement, being a staunch supporter, and probably thought me traitorous for uttering such a statement since I took Theatre Studies as a subject in university.

After a year of trying to cram theories by the likes of Stanislavsky, Brecht and Grotowski into my steadfastly un-theatrical head, I dropped the subject like a hot potato, but have continued to patronise local productions from time to time, mostly because many of my former classmates have gone on to become full-time actors. I nevertheless choose the productions that I watch carefully – they have to be neither too high-brow nor too low, and they have to be reasonably priced so I don’t come away feeling like I’ve been bilked. On average, I watch two to three productions a year, and I count them successes if I leave without a migraine each time.

This year, however, hasn’t been too busy on the theatre-going front. So when K suggested that we watch Boeing Boeing, which I think caught his eye because of the marketing collaterals showing Emma Yong, Wendy Kweh and Chermaine Ang flying about in skimpy lingerie and not because of stellar reviews, I said, “why not”?

Within the first five minutes of the show, it became patently clear that I should have said the opposite instead and that I was in for two hours of torture filled with tasteless cultural jokes, cringe-inducing physical comedy, shouting, screaming and exaggerated accents. It got so bad at times that I could barely understand what was being said. As Junko the Japanese stewardess, Emma grated on my nerves the least, but then Emma is always fabulous. Siti Khalijah, who played Minah the maid, was also marginally entertaining. Adrian Pang and Daniel York? Downright awful, the pair of them.

This is the second time that Wild Rice have staged Boeing Boeing and I really have to wonder at the sophistication of local theatre audiences. And mind you, supporting local theatre isn’t cheap. K coughed up more than $100 for our circle seats, but I didn’t complain because any closer to the stage, and I might have whipped my Mulberry bag at Adrian Pang’s head to make him stop talking in that atrocious British?American?Singaporean? accent of his.

I really hope the next production we watch will redeem this painful experience. That’s two hours of my life I can never get back.

Frankly, I can never understand why some people feel the need to pity people who choose not to have kids, or to denigrate their decision to be childless. Having children is not fun. In fact, it is a downright pain in the ass punctuated occasionally by happy and proud moments. From the time you find out you are pregnant, you go through a whole host of discomforts – from having ultrasound wands, forceps, speculums and a whole host of medieval torture implements shoved up your hoo-hoo in the name of making sure the baby is OK, to putting up with night feeds and colics, tantrums, mouthing-off and attitude-showing. It really is no walk in the park, and it makes me wonder why I chose to have not one but two, TWO, kids. Whose arrivals, by the way, put me in worlds of pain because they had to be cut from my belly.

Children are not a necessity. If you think about it, we have nearly seven billion people on this earth. Maybe one couple adding one or two won’t make a difference, but if all seven billion of us procreate, there’s sure to be problems. And don’t even get me started about people like the Duggars who apparently have never heard of birth control. You can trot out your Bible and other religious or philosophical texts to substantiate the view the children are a blessing, are needed for continuity of the human race, for economic purposes etc, but when you really think about it, we no longer farm our land, the planet is going to hell in a hand basket, and prices are shooting up so rapidly that at the end of the day, children are more of a burden than anything else.

So I get why some people don’t want to have kids. I really do. I love my children to bits, but they are not essential in defining my worth as a human being. In fact, with them, I stumble more than I succeed because I have to try so hard to be a good mother, worker, wife and all the other roles that I have to play, when sometimes the world pisses me off so much that I just want to fling things around and scream and shout and stamp my feet.  It’s amazing to me that other parents – who presumably have gone through the same travails that I have as a parent – don’t seem to feel the same way. Worse, they feel the need to proselytise parenting to people who have already decided that having children is an option, not a compulsion.

Anyway, given my general feeling of blahness, I really needed a pick-me-up, and I got it. In the form of hair products. I’ve been experimenting with shampoos and conditioners for some time now, trying to find the right combination for my oily scalp and super-dry hair. My shampoo girl keeps telling me that I should use the professional products that the salon sells, but I’m not about to pay $40 for a conditioner, so I’ve been hunting in drugstores.

Original Source Mint and Tea Tree shower gel, shampoo and conditioner.

And I think I’ve found my Holy Grail of drugstore-price shampoo and conditioner (shower gel, too) in Original Source’s mint and tea tree series. It’s pretty reasonably priced, and the zing you get from the mint is really shiok, whether you’re washing your hair in the morning, or after a really sweaty session in the gym. Some people on the beauty forums have said that the shampoo is quite drying, but after trying Phyto’s Phytopanama shampoo for oily hair which made my hair feel like straw, I have no complaints.

I might not be willing to fork out good money for shampoos and conditioners, but I’ve decided that the money is well spent on makeup from better cosmetic brands. My skin has been really horrendous of late and I blame it on cheap drugstore makeup. I used to be a Bobbi Brown and MAC girl, until I decided to see if I could save some money by buying makeup from Guardian instead. No can do. I’m so done with zits, so I hope this solves the problem. The Maybelline Angelfit two-way cake I’ve been using has been easy on my pocket, but I think it’s killing my skin, so yesterday I popped into Tangs and renewed my loyalty to MAC. Here’s hoping for better skin.