March 22, 2005

Cigarette?

I’ve been feeling like a smoke lately. Funny thing is, I don’t smoke. At all.

It’s strange, really. So many times these past few weeks I’ll go in my head ‘Damn, I need a cigarette’ only to realize two seconds later that a) I have none, b) I’m clinically allergic to smoke, c) I am personally against smoking for too many reasons I don’t want to list down here. It’s just that so many moments, so many situations these past few weeks warrant some form of instant tension-relief (or whatever it is that smokers get from these things) and I want to light up. Stuck in a traffic jam. Got ribbed by a lecturer. Lectured by the mothermonster. Typical cigarette-reaching moments. I don’t, and I won’t. But at the same time I want to.

Wierd.

March 13, 2005

The Moon Looks Beautiful Every Night

This being my fifth visit to Singapore in six months, it's starting to feel less and less like an escape, and for some reason, starting to feel more and more like home. I can't even begin to tell you how infinitely comfortable I am here. It's pure love, I tell you. Faruq and Farhan are by far the coolest two guys I know and just being around them every day makes every one of my days. If my heart was the size of a donut, my adoration for them is the size of Australia. I love them. I LOVE them. (did I say I love them?)


I'm here just to say that I'm alive. And Federico, if you're reading this, email me. Please.

March 03, 2005

This Is A Little Late But It Must Be Said

I am beyond angry at the fucking “Academy” for snubbing The Motorcycle Diaries at this year’s Oscar awards. They should have won for at the very very very least in the Foreign Film category and all they got was an award for Best Song? Come on. I’m not in any way condemning the nominees in the Foreign category or saying that the song they won for wasn’t any good, but it was so frustrating that the only thing that they came out on top for was in a category that didn’t have one of the biggest impacts on the story. Let me tell you, the movie is VERY good, in many ways. The story changed my life (to say the least), the cinematography and direction made you fall in love with Latin America and the actors portrayed their roles in such subtlely powerful ways that you forget that that they’re playing characters. A friend of mine has a probable theory that it was because the movie was on young Che Guevara’s life that it wasn’t nominated for anything more significant, since the US has long standing issues with Communism and all that. If that is so, then why should it matter? Isn’t the Oscars about celebrating the movie itself, the talents? So what if it was about Che? It was a moving, poignant tale of the travels of two young men in the search for self, nothing more. Nobody shot one gun, for any reason, in the entire movie. There were no direct (mind you) political references. Yet for some reason the same people who applaud ‘the selfless sacrifice of the armed forces in nations abroad’ can’t begin to appreciate a simple non-violent story about life in South America. Why be against just a very very mildly political movie and aggressively poke your soldiers noses in places that aren’t your business, completely uninvited and uncalled for? I don’t understand really. It just broke my heart to see how proud the Latin people in the crowd at the Oscars were when they won for the song because they knew it was the only award they could win that night. I should’ve watched the BAFTAs, at least Bernal and de la Serna were nominated. Ugh. Painful, I tell you.