It's Been A Week

It seems this blog experiment is going awry. It has been a whole week since I last said something. In my defence I did not stay away of my own volition. Somehow my notebook couldn't find the server every time I tried to sign in. The early days of dismissing it as a nebulous temporary bug soon elapsed despite my keenness to believe in that untruth. Better that, after all, than a setting or issue on my computer that I have to concede I am unable to fix. And no I have not dealt with that problem - I have merely relocated to another computer. How typical of me.

Friday was a good day - Thank God It was. Messing around, embarrassingly, in Toys R'Us apart, I managed to catch what I believe will become an influential movie in the years to come. Wall.E was not an ordinary "good movie" - excuse the oxymoron - with animated characters, for it demonstrated a technical finesse that beats a new path for moviemaking. In addition, its message seemed to challenge contemporary treatments and attitudes towards the future and easily differentiates itself from those of other pieces of dystopian fiction. It was sufficiently enthralling and captivating to prompt me to write a critique on it. (If you want to read it, ask me. I shall not post it here. i) I'd be a spoiler. ii) I'd be a nerd) And yes I have to apologise that I find meaning in doing such things. Call me what you will, but this is what my life is about. It cannot suffice for one to watch, enjoy and love a movie without trying to comprehend how one arrives at that conclusive sentiment. Similarly, it is also never enough to dismissively claim that one "enjoys" and "appreciates" a movie for each sentiment is a spectrum of numerous variants. No two enjoyments can be caused by, and hence entail, exactly the same things.

Friday was also good because I spent perhaps one of the best sixteen dollars ever. Catching the advertisement on Channel 8 told me "A Soft Touch of Asia" would be something really special. Needless to say it was one commercial within an entire sequence that I actually bothered remembering. In any case I really like the CD because it combines two aspects of music that I really enjoy. I hold that contemporary Chinese/Asian have amazing voices that are so sweet. I also hold that the best music must be Pop and Light & Easy from the 70s and 80s.Having them combined into a single collection featuring really nice songs and really good singers is worth all of the 1600 cents. I am also not going to deny that hearing Asians sing so competently and adeptly in English carries its own satisfaction and pride. It is some postcolonial syndrome. Don't make me go into the workings of that!

I am not alone in wondering why we IB students made the choice to get to university the hard way - filled with trials, IAs, tribulations, EEs, hurdles and IOCs. Why didn't we select the easier 'A' level route which only demands our focus in the last three or four months before the final examinations? I think I found my answer last night. As is typical with me I found it not by contemplation but by abstraction - it was a symbolic realisation. I was eating chilli crab when it hit me. There were also chicken wings, fish fillets and other things on the table, but why was the crab the highlight I saved till the end? Furthermore, those other things were more rewarding to eat - much easier and much higher what-you-eat : how-much-you-put-in-to-eat-it ratio. Perhaps you're thinking, well, you eat crab at the end because it's practical keeping your fingers and your eating space clean for as long as possible. But I am not a practical person. Ask anyone. Then it hit me. Easy meat is ordinary, mundane and unrewarding. The meat you work hard to get is always flavourful, succulent and gratifying, for it does not merely fulfil its function of subsistence but symbolises the endeavour and will that defines all humanity. Perhaps we made our choices knowing it would bring a great sense of fulfilment and accomplishment at the sweet end. Maybe I just love chilli crab, period.

My capacity to make symbolic sense of the world is quite remarkable. I just realised something, without really attemtping to, in the proecss of writing the last three paragraphs. Each of them reflect one of the three ways to my heart - intellect, music and food. People find it easiest to give me the third one. Oh well.