Trip to the movies

Friend: I have not been in a relationship for four years!

Me: Er, okay.

Friend: I’ve been kissing frogs; frogs frogs frogs frogs frogs, just trying to find the one, the right girl.

Me: *looks at him skeptically* just how old are you exactly?

Friend: Fifteen.

Me: Huh?! And you’re already trying to find “the one”?!?! Isn’t that a bit too soon? A bit too mature for someone your age?

Friend: I’m mature; I can’t help it.

(we both went into the elevator. He kept on pressing the button for the same floor we were on instead of the ground floor and was thinking why the stupid machine didn’t respond. Quickly he realized his mistake, so laughingly he pressed the correct button… and surprised me when he pressed all the other ones on the lift; half out of fun, half out of frustration.)

Me: And how old are you again?

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(then in the MTR)

Me: People tolerate her because she’s pretty, in a conventional way. *stunned by own remark and frowns* I shouldn’t have said that. She’s pretty in a way that a lot of people appreciate… (Okay stop Jennifer.)

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Some background info:

1. The first time I went to see a horror film at a movie theater was The Amityville Horror with two other girls. The first five to ten minutes were basically commercials and about what not to do during the film. Finally the actual movie started. It had all the elements of a scary movie; sudden shots of horrible looking beings, the sound effects that give you heart attacks…

I basically got in and out of there 25 minutes later because I decided it wasn’t worth staying awake all night for the rest of the week.

2. I don’t look it, but I get sick very easily. I have a long list of things that give me strong headaches, breathing problems and the sensation of feeling nauseous – bright light (the sun, monitors…), car rides, turbulence on flights, non-stretchy thick heavy clothes, seatbelts and confined seating (basically cars and planes…)… to only name a Few.

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Elaine got Cass Matthew and me great seats to see Avatar in 3D on Monday. It was… a memorable experience.

I thought it strange that most of the things on the screen were fuzzy even after I wore the 3D glasses. I thought because I have slight astigmatism, so perhaps the glasses had somehow magnified my problem. After awhile I got dizzy. The vivid colors against the brightly lit screen didn’t help things either. Then to make matters worse, I couldn’t move and the seats were exactly the ones that made me incredibly uncomfortable at the neck… so needless to say I was plagued with headaches and was feeling a severe case of motion sickness.

I tried closing my eyes to rest for awhile before continuing to watch the movie but the loud sounds didn’t help my headache at all… so at a point I seriously felt my head was going to burst, or that I was going to embarrass myself by literally being sick… so I ended up leaving 45 minutes after the movie started. Despite how expensive the ticket was, I Had to get out. Sigh. It wasn’t exactly a record I wanted to keep; not being about to stay for barely one third of a movie.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t all to my night.

I guess the theater staff never thought people would leave in the middle of the film, so when I got out of the door with the “Exit” sign while trying to keep my balance (that’s how unwell I felt), I was in for a shock.

The theater was located on the ninth floor of a mall and the exit led to a white empty back staircase. So I walked down the stairs and found the doors leading outside to the mall were locked. I walked down another flight of stairs and saw another set of doors. Locked. I was already having problems breathing, so after the third set of locked doors I was thinking if I could call the mall and have someone to save me (which I found less and less ridiculous by the second), only to find there was no signal on my phone… at that moment I was seriously entertaining the idea of dialing 999… it never occurred to me to go back to the movie.

The fifth set of doors opened (thank God) and I dragged myself to the nearest washroom, extremely annoyed by how disgustingly little I could physically tolerate. If someone were out to torture me or to force me into do anything, forget water-boarding, a 3D movie would suffice.

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3. I went to an eye doctor once during primary school. After finishing those that involved big machinery the doctor pulled out some picture tests. I suppose they were stupidly easy and I was doing really well so far, because he was rushing through the questions, asking me to pick the correct picture. Then there was one answer which made him pause, asking if I was sure. Looking back, I think he said it was 3D related, because I remember thinking “erm… but isn’t everything I see in real life 3D? I don’t bang on walls… I may trip, but I don’t bang on walls…”

4. If I remember correctly, Pokemon didn’t get to air on schedule in a lot of places since it was reported that kids felt sick after watching it because of the brightness of the cartoon.

Mid-Autumn Festival morning – Watching District 9

I’m trying to find a way to categorize my posts better… or to even chop down my day’s entry into several short posts so it’s easier to categorize. Even thought most of the time I’m the one reading my own blog (ha), I like things neat, tidy and very organized.

 

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Today’s Mid-Autumn Festival. Friends too busy, brothers not around, parents couldn’t care less about festivals and stuff, and I only work five days a week anyways, so I expected it to be just another typical Saturday.

 

Even though I’ve gone to see a movie just the day before yesterday, I let myself go watch District 9, despite my empty bank account. It was after all a festival today and for some reason I was feeling the exact opposite of upbeat, so I thought I needed the distractions. (Haha after I told Nicole that she should definitely go watch District 9, she recommended The Time Traveler’s Wife cos it made her cry like a baby throughout the whole movie. I’ve read and loved the book but never thought of watching it on film… so maybe I will go see it next Saturday?!)

 

I caught the morning show (again) and was late for 10 minutes, missing the intro. I don’t usually watch Sci-Fi movies, or any movies that involve a lot of slimy flesh or bodies exploding into tiny pieces, and I guess that’s why ever so often I found myself pushing my back against the chair; not because I’m scared of blood or anything but I just don’t enjoy watching scenes involving violence. There were also scenes were painful to watch, in a different sort of way. There were so many examples…

 

One would be Wikus pulling the plugs from the alien fetuses while explaining excitedly what was going on in the shack… and when he finally gave orders to have the nest burned down, the babies’ shrieks and screams were thought to be “interesting” and “noisy”… (I was finding examples in my head of men doing the same to animals, or even to fellow men…)… or the way he was no longer treated as a human in the lab; the officers were shocking him with high volts of electricity even though he was more than willing to comply with their commands to operate the alien weaponry… or when Wikus begged them not to force him to test the gun on an alien.

 

There was one scene was where Christopher explained to Wikus that his kid liked him because he thought they were the same. The alien kid was stretching out his arm to compare with Wikus’, only to be met with Wikus’ apparent disgust by the mere idea that they were remotely similar (Why did I not think that this alien kid was a girl? What if its species didn’t have a gender?). Sometimes grown ups over complicate things; sometimes it takes a child’s innocent association and observation to really get the gist of things…

 

One particular scene that got me into tears (note: this isn’t one of those tear-jerking movies) was where Christopher was stunned at the sight of his fellow beings being tortured under the name of scientific discovery/education/analysis/defense, and he literally froze when he stood in front of one of the study subjects; that was burnt/skinned/gone through whatever inhumane treatment.

 

Usually I cry in movies when I sympathize with certain characters at a particular moment (which happens more often than I would have liked… I’m such a cry baby when it comes to watching movies), but what was different this time was that a big part of me wasn’t crying for what Christopher was feeling, but rather not emotionally understanding why; why on earth people (the supposedly sane ones) can treat a living creature like that. I pained for the alien, I pained for Christopher, but I also pained for the human race for their lack of empathy for those that are different and their capability to disregard life, especially when it comes to monetary gain.

 

Despite sympathizing with the aliens, I also understood where the government and the people were coming from. Although quite a number of them were obviously out for the money, most of the things mankind did was done out of fear and skepticism. There we were presented with a bunch of big scary creatures, whose technology was more advanced, and were seemingly equal if not more capable than human beings in terms of intelligence. It threatened mankind’s position as the superior living being… they felt their lives were threatened because of the existence of a stronger species.

 

At the back of our heads, it’s always the survival of the fittest; and history has shown that without intervention (law, economics… etc), the fittest has always devoured the weak. So before the aliens have a chance to hurt us, we hurt them first, know everything there was to know about them, isolate and prevent them from getting help. When it comes to “survival”, should we ignore our supposedly compassionate nature as humans? Where do you keep the balance between “self-defense” and “humanity” (I’ve come to see the word “humanity” is pretty ironic)? I remember reading something about the more intelligent a being, the more inclined it is to keep peace. Turns out the humans in the movie weren’t that intelligent after all.

 

It may seem that the movie didn’t have a good ending, but there was. Wikus, like most of mankind, was weak and scared. In spite of all that human weaknesses, he showed compassion in the end when he turned back to help Christopher and urged him to get back to the spaceship and fly home.

 

Even me as a newbie in sci-fi movies, knows this movie could be boring to people who were expecting loads of technological stuff (I loved those blue glowing projection buttons, which you can move around three dimensionally), lots of machinery action or a hyper exciting plot. So maybe they should stop show trailers with only flesh-exploding shots and humans fighting aliens in HK? District 9 was more about getting viewers to think about issues on racism and xenophobia, but instead of featuring an ethnic race which we are prone to have formed certain perceptions in our minds, we get to be free from stereotyping and see discrimination in its purest form.

 

I got out of the theater wondering how I and so many others, are so absorbed in our lives, finding joy over tiny things and fretting over petty stuff when there are so many bigger problems around us. How or should we make a balance between caring for the small things in our personal lives and the big ones that are so beyond our reach?

Fam(c)e

I was taking a shower yesterday when I heard kids singing the national anthem (I presumed that they were playing too, cos with the laughing and all). I know it shouldn’t have, but that freaked me out.

 

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I do understand; I have been warned and so have expected it to come… just not so soon. But I guess now is about time and that’s what made me blue…

 

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Today is National Day… other than a day off from work it meant nothing much to me. In certain ways I am patriotic but not feeling particularly close to China; I just didn’t necessarily want to celebrate. People’s birthday I buy a cake, but the birth of a republic, hmm… I bury a cake?

 

Instead of staying a couple more hours in bed, I decided to catch an early movie (because it’s a lot cheaper and I’m broke… why am I always broke?). There were two choices: either District 9 or Fame. Both I know would make me upset in different ways. The former, I expect after viewing would trigger a want for discussion; a heavier subject matter but somewhat less personal. The latter was more dependable on personal preference and experience; more about sharing than discussing. Woke up moody, I ended up watching Fame.

 

There weren’t many dancing scenes (unlike Step Up); singing scenes (Sister Act), musical ensemble (er… School of Rock?) There was a print-making scene which caught me by surprise… but essentially it has almost everything I love doing in it. Plot-wise Fame wasn’t brilliant in an obvious way; what made it special was that unlike many movies concerning Art, the messages were very realistic. I guess it was upsetting for a few reasons; one was that it reminded my not being able to concentrate on only one interest, therefore not being really good at any particular aspect… but it couldn’t be helped. Second was more of a hit of reality, that school life was really over; that kind of fun and hopefulness you get only while you’re still in school is lost. There were so many things I haven’t had the chance to experience in school… but I know I had to leave one day and I’m at a different stage right now, so… so… …

 

So after awhile of walking around stores and no luck in finding work clothes or bag, I went back home and played around my face a little bit more; that morning I decided to “make an effort”, i.e. put some make up on, before going out because it was such a long time since the last time I did (January for AP? For someone who rarely puts on make up, I’m surprisingly at ease sticking fake lashes on my eyelids…). There are times I caught myself wondering what happened, or what changed because I could remember distinctly a girl who got caught wearing “make up” to school (it was just brow liner…), perfume, skirt too short heels too high, and took an interest in clothes… actually, what happened That Year?!?? Anyway I simply missed the process of “drawing my face back on” and I missed my face with make up on.  

 

So from very basic eyeliner, to day make up and night make up… I put on a pair of big earrings and a dress, pulled up my hair and stared at the mirror (I sound so self obsessed, ha). The reason I was staring was because it’s literally the first time I saw myself as a sophisticated twenty-two-year-old (without wearing a suit) instead of a girl who’s still lingering at her early teenage stage. There’s a pretty queer reason why I don’t put on make up (I make the tiniest things such a big deal), and that’s because it makes me “unreachable”.

 

A made up face is like a mask; you’re accentuate the features and hiding the flaws, but (on other people) the flaws create character, it shows what a person has gone through; laugh lines, dark circles, freckles… everything. Somehow, making your face perfect, even though you can see your expressions and everything, is still an actual mask. It’s such a good and conventional way to hide. I also didn’t enjoy the plainness I felt after washing my face.

 

There’s also something about a face being untouchable after carefully putting make up. Your face has foundation, your eyes has eye shadow… I don’t even dare to touch my own face when I have all that on me. There is this thing my mom does only when she tugs me in bed (ages ago) or when I’m so sick that I have to stay in bed (rarely), is she slowly and gently brushes my face with the back of her hand, and I loved it because I could actually feel the tenderness and love she had for me (which wasn’t something I often felt when I was younger). The element of touch and feeling is thus very important to me. It’s like having a pretty doll that you cannot touch in case you break it… I don’t like thinking I risk ruining my face or I have to wash my hands every time after I touch my face.

 

Out of the subject… but anyway it’s been a nice quiet day; just nothing “national” about it.

Am I there?

I can’t believe I haven’t written this down, because it’s been quite awhile since I first formed this question: In your heaven, am I there?

 

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Talk about “heaven” and this imagery of a spectacularly beautiful garden with no black clouds nor rain comes to mind; talk about “hell” and there comes a sea of fire, with people screaming with agony and pain.

 

There is this movie “What Dreams May Come”, starring Robin Williams which I liked a lot, in particularly how Heaven and Hell were portrayed. Heaven – a place where you would want to stay forever; somewhere only dreams can reach. Hell – a place where you would suffer forever, in ways you can never imagine even in your worst nightmare. Every individual’s Heaven and Hell are tailor made, and few heaven or hell are absolutely identical.

 

Why are there so many religions? One interesting thought came to me was that, possibly, it’s because “Heaven” is different for everyone. For a monk who devoted his whole life to Buddhism, “heaven” would be him reaching to the highest achievable level in meditation and wisdom and become a Buddha. For an atheist, “heaven” is probably having an absolute complete end of life, no “afterlife”; let it be done with when “life” ends; A monk’s “hell” would be finding out he has dedicate his whole life to a lie. An atheist’s “hell”, would be suffering in the fiery pit described by religious fanatics, for eternity.

 

There’s this idea that I’ve never thought about before this movie about people who committed suicide: Taking your own life puts you in hell because supposedly no human has the right to end another human’s life, including his own. As in the movie, the woman who committed suicide was supposed to stay in hell and could not go to heaven to be with her husband. Those who killed themselves would probably prefer death and face the sea of fire, rather than to face what drove them to desperation at a particular moment/period in life. In their hell dimension, incidents they were hiding from would probably repeat themselves on and on. Since they couldn’t kill themselves again, they’d have to face what they were hiding from in the first place forever.

 

But here comes the formation of my question. Since everyone’s heaven is different; my heaven wouldn’t be like yours, and yours wouldn’t be like mine. I’ll take a wild guess and say most people wouldn’t want to spend time in heaven alone, so other people must exist in their part of heaven. What if I want you around in heaven, but in yours, I don’t exist i.e. you don’t want to have anything to do with me? Would that make the people you see in heaven “illusions”? What if my heaven would not be complete without you (like in the movie)? Because then, heaven wouldn’t be paradise anymore. So I ask, “In your heaven, am I there?”