New year, new addiction

This is a public admission of guilt. 

Yes, I’m guilty. I’m hooked…on Coffee Prince, that is.  It’s a funny K-drama starring Yoon Eun Hye as the cute and bubbly Go Eun Chan and Gong Yoo as the externally obnoxious but internally sweet Choi Han Kyul. (side note: in the local channel that airs this K-drama dubbed in the local language, Eun Chan’s name was changed to Andy Go while Han Kyul’s name was changed to Arthur Choi, most probably because these new names can be pronounced and remembered more easily)

One doesn’t have to be a shrink to know the cause of my addiction. Like a new dish that everyone wants to taste again and again, Coffee Prince gives the viewers a new kind of story that keeps them wanting to know what happens episode after episode. Its plot is not the usual girl-meets-boy-boy-meets-girl-romantic-comedy, where the girl is a “girly” girl and the boy is, well, a “boy-ly” boy.  Neither is it one of those heavily dramatic Korean soaps with the usual elements of unrequited love, scheming antagonist/s trying to break apart the protagonists, revenge, dying lover, reincarnation, time warp, or a combination of any of those.

WARNING: The next paragraphs will mostly contain spoilers. Continue reading at your own risk.

Coffee Prince is about how Eun Chan,  a boyish girl who worked different odd jobs to help her family, was first mistaken by Han Kyul as a delivery-boy-slash-conman who was out to trick his lady love into giving her reward/favor for a good deed. Instead of having the girl of his dreams give Eun Chan her calling card, he gave his instead, adding that Eun Chan call him if she is ready to confess that she was indeed a conman. Since Eun Chan was desperate for money as her multiple jobs was not enough to help the family’s finances, she swallowed her pride and went to see Han Kyul, asking for a job. Han Kyul, still thinking that Eun Chan was a boy, gave her an unusual job: she was to act as his boyfriend so that the girls that his grandmother kept setting him up with would be turned off. Eun Chan agreed.

Eventually, the two became friends. When Han Kyul’s grandmother blackmailed Han Kyul to either run a coffee shop or be thrown out of his apartment, it was Eun Chan who convinced him that it was not such a bad idea. If Han Kyul would be successful in running a coffee shop, he would be able to have something to be proud of. Plus, if he would become the coffee shop manager, he can give Eun Chan a job which will enable her to save more to pay her family debts as well as her personal debts to Han Kyul. Han Kyul bought the idea, and it was then that the Coffee Prince cafe was born. The opening of Coffee Prince did not just mean the start of a new business. This was where the story really began. As Han Kyul got to know Eun Chan more because they worked in the cafe everyday, he began to doubt his sexuality as he was slowly feeling more than platonic affection for this childish 24-year-old “boy” whom he once mistook as a thief but was actually a hard-working breadwinner. How will he be able to live with himself if he *gasp* can’t help falling for someone of his own gender? How will he be able to work with Eun Chan and the rest of his crew without exposing his perceived homosexuality?

Meanwhile, unknown to Han Kyul, Eun Chan was also falling for him. How will she admit this to him without revealing that she allowed him to think that she was a “boy” (note that my noun-pronoun agreement is going out of whack) so that she can get a job? How will Han Kyul react when he finally discovers the truth?

Such interesting questions… whose equally interesting answers I will let you discover for yourself.

If you’re dying to know the ending, try reading the excellent episode-by-episode summary/spoiler in the Dramabeans blog (I will add this blog to my blogroll later).

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[1] Photo credits: The Coffee Prince photo above was taken from Dramabeans.

[2] While writing this entry, I tried to think of using the English equivalent of “makulit” (“makulit” in a good way) to describe Eun Chan. However, I couldn’t think of any. The five other people whom I consulted about this also couldn’t come up with an English word that can precisely capture the meaning of being “makulit” in a good way. Any more ideas, anyone? Feel free to drop me a note.

Holidays 2007

- Went home for the holidays :)

- Went to a few computer stores to check out prices for CPU
   After I got a few hours of rest at home, my brother and I wasted no time in going to some computer stores in my hometown to compare prices for computer parts (processor, hard disk, RAM, video card, etc.). We went to Dataworld, TechnoMart, CompuSource, and Gaisano Interpace. Gaisano Interpace (yes, it is spelled with a “p”, not an “f” :p) gave us the best deal so we decided to buy our CPU from that store. Plus, the store offered good and quick service–the people there were patient in answering our questions about the prices of the different parts, readily suggested alternatives if the brand we wanted was not available, and they also gave us a discount.

- Bought a new CPU
   After two days of price canvassing and decision-making, we finally decided to buy our new CPU. Her name is Greenpeas. Sounds like Greenpeace? Yup, that was my intention. I named her after the lime green border on the upper part of the white casing. The lime green color reminded me of Greenpeace. Hence, the name that sounded like the organization.

   Well, the color combination of her current casing is not what I really wanted, but it was the only one available.  If I had to insist on a black casing, I had to wait until the new year to get the CPU. I couldn’t wait until the new year so I decided to just go with the white casing. Anyway, I’m not the type who’s so particular with exteriors. It’s what inside that matters. Here’s what’s inside my CPU:

     > 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor    
     > ECS motherboard 
     > 160 GB SATA hard disk
     > 1 GB RAM
     > 256 MB Inno3D 7300 GT video card 
     > CD-ROM writer

    Initially, I wanted a 2-GB RAM, a 512-MB video card and a DVD writer but my budget wouldn’t allow it. I’ll just have to wait until I have extra money to buy these stuff. The important thing is I got a fast processor, large disk space, and a large enough virtual memory.  And my brothers were happy with our new CPU, too.

- Watched Batanes
   My best friend, a fan of F4 ever since their Meteor Garden days, asked me if I wanted to watch  Batanes with her. The movie stars Ken Zhu of the F4 fame and Iza Calzado of Sigaw the movie and Impostora, the relatively recently concluded GMA teleseries. Even before her invitation, I was already interested in the film for the following reasons:

1. I heard it was an indie film (am I correct? is this really an indie film?). There’s just something about independent work that wants me to support them even in my own little way.

2  It was the first time that a Taiwanese actor was paired with a Filipina actor in a Filipino film.

2. I had been an F4 fan myself, too, during the height of the Meteor Garden craze. I was more into Vic than Ken, though.

3. I wanted to find out if Ken could really act. During my days as an MG fan, I regarded Ken as the second cutest in the group (next to Vic, of course) and I had not really paid attention to his acting skills. Now, I wanted to see if he can act roles that are different from the usual cute-boy roles that he plays.

4.  I also wanted to return a favor to my best friend who had once accompanied me to watch Harry Potter when I could not ask anyone else (of course, what are friends for?).

   So with these reasons in mind, I went to the cinema with my best friend to watch Batanes the movie.

   The verdict? Batanes was  a breathtaking background to a love story; physically, Ken had successfully transformed from a cute Asian heartthrob to a convincing Taiwanese fisherman ( physically… sorry, Ken. I just didn’t feel your emotions come across as a scorned husband who found a second chance at love as Iza’s lover. Could it be that his being a foreigner became a factor in his performance?); Iza Calzado and newcomer Joem Basco (did I get the name right?) played convincingly enough, just convincingly enough…  but er, I was not that satisfied.

   I couldn’t exactly put my finger on to why I was not that satisfied. Maybe it was because I had hoped there would be more drama. I was  hoping they would put some more emphasis to their spiel “Love knows no boundaries”. Instead, the movie swayed to and fro from trying to emphasize man’s helplessness against the sea (as what people from Batanes constantly experience) while also trying to make something out of the “Love knows no boundaries” theme. Because of this, the story seemed like two pieces of different puzzles that were forced to fit together… I dunno… I’m not a movie critic so I’m not an expert on what makes and what doesn’t make a movie artistically “good”. The point is, as a viewer, I was not satisfied. I felt the movie had more to give, had more sides to the story that should have been explored… I wanted more but was left wanting even I watched the film unblinkingly from start to finish.

- Went to Ate Wax’s get-together
   Ate Wax invited us, her housemates, and her friends for a little get-together on the beach near her house. It was heartwarming to be with some people that I haven’t seen for a long time–a batchmate who works in Manila but went home for the holidays, a former teacher who works in Japan but also went home for the holidays, and some former schoolmates and former colleagues in our course organization. We had fun eating food, sharing jokes (well, actually they did most of the sharing and I did most of the listening), reminiscing old times (again, I was more on the listening part, hehehe), and simply enjoying each other’s company.

- Watched the pilot episode of Coffee Prince… and liked it
   What better way to spend the holidays than eating, reading your favorite book, and watching TV? I especially enjoyed doing the last one since I spend very little time doing this thing during working days.

   During the days that I spent as a couch potato, I was able to watch the pilot episode of the South Korean drama Coffee Prince, which aired on the first evening of the year… and I liked it! The plot is interesting because it’s not like other love stories in the sense that the girl here is not the usual girly-girly type. Actually, the female lead here (Yoon Eun Hye, who also played the lead in Princess Hours) was mistaken for a guy by the male lead (Gong Yoo) in the story. Sounds like Hana-Kimi? Hmmm, it does sound like that but I think this K-drama has a different twist.

   For people who are too busy to follow the series or those who wouldn’t mind spoilers, you can find a very good episode-by-episode summary of the Coffee Prince here. The site pointed to by the link has a lot of screenshots of the drama, too. In fact, the summaries and screenshots were so engaging that I couldn’t resist reading until I reached the summary of the last episode.

    And since I’m so addicted to the story (I’m even planning to buy a DVD copy), expect more posts about the Coffee Prince in the coming days in this blog or in my blogspot blog.