very good movie, very suspenseful. sort of hit close to home because the setup of the story was about buying an apartment (4000+ square feet brickstone, sweet!), which happened in this case to contain a panic room with a secret safe filled with untold riches. a few great scenes spoilers like when jodie foster lit the gas that the robbers were trying to suffocate she and her daughter with, the scene where dwight yoakam gets his hand caught in the panic room door, and finally the scene when jodie foster smashes dwight in the head with a sledgehammer. the girl who played jodie foster's daughter was good, but for the life of me i couldn't tell whether she was a boy or a girl. why all the androgyny? i also thought the watch she was wearing was on internet time, didn't realize it was a special diabetic watch. the camerawork was amazing. you think martin scorsese is the master of the continuous shot? david fincher is the new master, with his cgi enhanced continuous shots going up and down the various floors of the house, it's quite breathtaking, like an out of body experience. the movie also uses the zombie color palette, how everything looks muted yet hidden danger can lurk just around the corner. though i am a lukewarm fan of jodie foster, i am just fascinated by her nose. nobody has a more pointed nose than jodie foster! i'm a bit of a closet nose fetishist myself, so whenever she's on the big screen, i am just mesmerized by her nose.

so at 12:30pm i went with my father to eustis street, where the real estate agent arrived with the set of keys to get into the house and the home inspector guy came with his bag of tricks. for the next two hours, the inspector went through every detail of the house, every single item that can go wrong, how to repair it, and whether this particular house was suffering from any such symptoms. we worked from the basement up to the first floor, the kitchen, the bedrooms, the bathroom, the living room, and finally checking the exterior of the house. overall no major issues, just a lot of little cosmetic ones. the one big thing was the first floor bathroom was leaking water down into the basement. easily remedied, i'm going to call the broker tomorrow and have the sellers fix that before i sign the purchase agreement. there was also a large unused oil tank sitting in the bathroom that needs to be contractually removed prior to me signing the deal. it was a very educational 2 hours, and i feel i have a better more intimate knowledge of the property. for $200, i figured i better get something out of it!

once i get the apartment, a few more things need to be taken care of: replace all the windows, sand the floors if not outright replace some of them in places, drywall the ceiling (right now it's this textured plaster, which i absolutely hate), and paint everything. the living room needs to be in a much lighter color to make it look more spacious. the spray gun in the bathroom sink needs to be replaced and likewise the showerhead (it has a weird design, comes out of the wall then bends in a 90 degrees angle).

i also finally got a chance to take some photos of the place. bear in mind that the furnitures and furnishings you see throughout the apartment aren't mine (they belong to the people currently living there, the sellers), but just try to visualize the space without the decorations if you can.

after work i rushed to the boston common theatre where i was meeting joel and dan for some chinatown dinner action and then go see panic room. when everyone arrived, we all got tickets and then headed to the taiwan cafe for some food. last time i was there was in september, when i went with laurie and her parents one auspicious night. i was the designated food orderer tonight, so i got a plate of chinese watercress, stinky tofu, spicy salted fried calamari, and bbq beef. the taiwanese streetside delicacy stinky tofu is an acquired taste, one that neither dan nor joel was able to acquire.

afterwards we went and watched the movie. when it was all over, joel drove dan back home and then drove me back home. during the ride back, i coined a hopefully hot new catchphrase:

mother may i!