Malaysia

So I'm sitting in the airport with a couple of hours to spare, waiting for my brother to fly in from Taiwan so we can catch a flight together to meet my dad (after I've spent a couple of days in pure shopping bliss in KL). Huzzah for internet cafes!

This is the first time I've been to KL alone, as an adult. It's a joyful experience. I don't know if it's because I'm happier than I've been in a long time and finding it all very blissful and carefree (oh, the joys of starting again! Student emails! Orientation week!) or if it's because I'm older and wiser. I actually think it's all to do with being alone. You notice things more. There's no-one to distract you from enjoying the bluey-purple sky as you wake up in the car, or the humidity that's so thick you feel like you're wading through moist, churning mud. Dragonflies like helicopters. There's a certain stillness to solitude, such that even my cousin's kid's braying barely penetrates it. You are alone, yet because of you are visiting you are not. It's a great way to travel.

On the other hand, unfettered joy only lasts so long. Malaysia is a great place to eat, shop and sleep, but after two days of exactly that one begins to wonder what else there is to do. Wandering around the big shopping complex under the Petronas towers yesterday made me stare wistfully at the Western tourists loping around in their cargo shorts and with their big cameras. There's something about Westerners that invokes the capitalist in me. I miss their tree-tall height. Everyone is so slight here it's nice to be reminded that in my own country I'm considered average!

In addition, when I am not eating, sleeping or shopping, it appears television is the only other hobby (other than being reclusive and burrowing my head into a book, which sometimes I find hard to resist - but merely because I'm a bit of a literary dork). When we come home from whatever adventure we've been engaged in throughout the day, my little cousins automatically switch on the television to watch some American cartoon or Taiwanese soap. I have to admit, I did quite enjoy Cinderella III: A Twist in the Tale (maybe because it was in English! And hey, actually put quite a spin on the original storyline...) but watching hot Taiwanese boys dupe princesses or get geeky girls pregnant (I'm not really sure of the plot) surely can't be the epitome of leisure. In truth, previous trips to Malaysia have been filled with pirate DVD-watching and endless MTV (when you don't have cable television at home, the idea of back to back music videos, with the bits at the beginning AND at the end in tact, is pure bliss), and I never really minded back then, but being on my lonesome has made me realise that this is a particularly abnormal activity (then again, I spend a lot of time on the Internet at home, whereas I don't watch a lot of TV. And come on, the Internet is much more educational - if not slightly less socially isolating - then television!).

I was also going to write something deep and meaningful on the nature of relationships, friendships and talent, but my Internet is running out. Also, I have just (re)discovered Jeff Buckley. Oh man, why did I not listen to his music before??

Until further internet time x

Leaving again

Yesterday I saw lightning shoot across the sky like white, bright roots.

A gash across the sky.  Roots dashing.

Today I'm heading to Kuala Lumpur.  When I return, I'm spending a day packing and then heading straight to Melbourne.  I received my welcome package from the school this afternoon.  I can't quite get my head around it.  Things are changing!

Slumdog Millionaire (and other thoughts)

Very sweet love story about a slumdog kid who wins Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Complete fantasy and unashamedly so, lots of cliches abound, but great fun.  There is absolutely no backstory behind Jamal's love for Latika, other than they were briefly in the slums together.  All their encounters are incredibly short and unjustified.  But some great performances by Dev Patel (Jamal) and Amir Kapoor (the show host) and nods to modern day India (call centre workers and the show, Millionaire the show itself) make it a sweet if operatic film.  I'm surprised it won the Best Dramatic Picture at the Golden Globes.  The middle third of the movie was a bit clumsy.  On the other hand, the honest and tender I-love-you-passionately stare that Dev Patel executes repeatedly throughout the film, especially in the last jumping over train tracks sequence is SO hot.  Graar!

Speaking of undressing-you-with-your-eyes stares, I was discussing how to generate sexual tension on screen with a fellow actor and friend the other day.  Apparently the way to do it is to imagine your partner naked, or think dirty thoughts when you look at them.  After this discussion I went to the movies and dirty-thought while ordering my frozen coke.  I'm not sure if it worked (he was a bit tired and it was the end of the day) but we did have amusing conversation and I went away giggling to myself.  It's very empowering I suppose - it's the best in-joke ever!

Also: at the cinema, the girl next to me ate her sushi under the light of her boyfriend's mobile phone.

On another note, I have been thinking a lot lately about my creative state of being, the next phase of life etc.

It's nearly the end of my six month break from study and I have done absolutely nothing.  Well, I got into drama school, I guess.  But the other five months that weren't spent agonising over monologues ever day (perhaps every other day instead)?  Nada.  I realised the other day that I spend a hell of a lot more time talking about wanting to write amazing, scintillating, leaping flame prose, but I never actually doing it.  And when I do sit down to write it's very prosaic.  Stories about affairs, kitchens, housewives.  So I'm a little jaded, ha.  But I don't even live that life so I don't know why I'm writing about it!

On the other hand, I do find writing very stable for me, it's the only thing I return to over and over again.  Other skills like photography are opportunistic and I have to develop techniques - writing I have studied for years and years (although not so much of late) and merely need to turn to a book or other writing for inspiration.  It is the epitome of solitude really...despite my need for social interaction (and boy, is drama full of it), I spend a lot of time alone.  All those lost crooks and crannies of time go into sitting in front of the computer.  The only issue is that it generally goes nowhere.

Have I peaked?  Surely not.  The short stories and other stuff I've written weren't amazing.  Good for their time but not transcendent pieces of work.  The best is so yet to come.  If only I could write it!  Perhaps I need a deadline or a competition or something.  I definitely need to be challenged and to push my words in a new direction.  Ahh, are you a writer if you've only written and published in very very small publications and competitions many years ago??  My acting woes are satisfied now as I look forward to my three glorious years to purge my demons, but writing, well I've yet to quell that urge...

Oh well. Perhaps I just need to wait.  My brilliant novel/play/screenplay will pour from the sky and bring delight and transformation to all who read it!  

Another ditty I wanted to jam on (that's not the word...is it scat?  Improvise...no, no...meditate but not quite...oh no - I haven't lost words just yet but I'm terrified of it happening again.  I can't go through another year not being able to speak proper sentences!) was that of travel...I can't remember if I've spoken about this before.  But travel, in all its forms, whether the visitor or the visited.  I've always had issue with travel because I always felt like it was all so transient, so unreal...the sense of the place is always a heightened fantasy, a traveller's perspective of the bars and tourist spots.  I've always felt like I needed to live in a place.  On the other hand, having lived in London for 6 weeks mid-last year I totally hated it.  So maybe that's not the way to go either.  

(Is the word rhapsodise?  No, it's not rhapsodise...)

Anyway, this is so not related, but I wanted to say that when you travel you live in this vacuum on your own.  Every experience becomes more intense because often there is only you to experience it. You're packing a million things into a day, being bombarded by new people and places, smells and tastes.  Relationships, of course, progress at a much faster speed.  You don't have the baggage or backstory or any sort of background to inhibit your new style and so you are free to present yourself any which way you can.  You collide with others as individual molecules when you travel, as you have so much spare time.  And yet, despite all the sensations and new experiences, brushing a hand accidentally down someone's back, or knocking your knees against the person next to you, will be the most intense experience of your life.

We all want to connect and to be touched.  And it's really just the nature of travel, but you can feel a very intense emotion with someone whom you may not normally be familiar with, just because for one moment, amongst a sea of foreign faces, someone has reached out to you.

In a way, travelling is like dying over and over again.  You know that you will never be in this situation again with this person in this environment.  So you push things, you speed things up, you juice every drop out of every minute.  And in doing so you create a million and one mini-deaths in which your soul dies and has to be reborn again.  Which is heartbreaking but ultimately life-affirming.

Perhaps the way to live a truly vivid life is to have short, intense experiences and die many times.  On the other hand those experiences will never be real.  They are not enough to sustain a life.

Nope, I still can't work out what word I want to use.  Rhapsodise is the closest.  I'll have to leave it at that.

To dine with more friends before the move!

Before Sunset sequel: After Dark

It's really hot down here and I'm procrastinating so I thought I'd write my version of a Before Sunset sequel...ha!

Short version:

Phillippe the taxi driver leaves.  Jesse and Celine make wild rabbit love for ten days straight.  On the eleventh day, Jesse's publishing company sends a second driver threatening that if he doesn't come with him back to New York they'll drop his contract.  Determined not to give up on romantic love a second time, Jesse and Celine promise to meet again in Paris in six months.  Jesse flies back to New York.  In the meantime, Celine's boyfriend comes back from the West Bank and decides to move out.  Jesse breaks up with his wife.  On Christmas Eve, Jesse and his son move in with Celine in her tiny apartment.  After spending another ten days straight in bed (Jesse's kid conveniently entertained by the other tenants in the apartment block and therefore is spared his dad's embarrassing appetite for sex), they celebrate the New Year in sensuous style and snow.  In the Spring they look for a new apartment and move in with Jesse's kid and the cat.  Jesse writes bestselling novels, Celine becomes an award winning photographer.  They adopt a child and have natural twins and they all live happily ever after!

Long version (with the actual movie inserted towards the end!):  

Taking up the narrative thread after looking for a new apartment...They find the new apartment and live happily for a while (having lots of sex).  However moving to Paris is not as easy as it seems. Jesse's kid (let's call him Ted) is not doing well at school and not adjusting to Parisian life.  Jesse also has issues with learning the language and thinks all Parisians are rude.  Celine suggests perhaps they try New York - she'll try and get humanitarian work there.  They pack up and head back to New York but this time Celine hates New York.  She can't find work there because she's not a citizen and the hustle and bustle of the city is too much to bear after the charm of Paris.  Jesse is stressed now because his ex-wife is trying to get custody of Ted.  Jesse's writing career on the other hand is doing really well, his book about their incident is flying off the shelves.  Everywhere they go he is stopped.  He becomes a bit of a dick with all the attention.  Celine is pissed off because she used to be a humanitarian worker with a good salary and a purpose in the world and now she's reduced to a helpless immigrant/wife.  They fight a lot, and get stopped in the street a lot because of the publicity.  One day Jesse goes on a promotional tour to Chicago to see a woman and while he's away Celine decides to leave.

Celine heads back to Paris and picks up her old job working for the humanitarian company Green Cross.  However she doesn't feel quite right and when they offer her the opportunity to go to Kosovo to see the work that they're doing there she takes that up.  Going to Kosovo to look at all their political struggles and so forth and their poor health system she sees things she wishes she'd never seen.  It's a dark time.  But slowly she works with the community and sees how her work is paying off.  It's a dangerous time and she wakes up to the sound of bombing all the time.  But it's rewarding, and the Kosovonian (? Kosovon??) men are cute and generally has her pick.  One day she sets up a school and the press come to interview her.  It makes international headlines.  

Jesse, who has now taken up post with the nanny he was having an affair with in Chicago, sees her on TV.  Wanting to make one last effort for romantic love, he flies over to Kosovo, even though he's scared shitless.  Dodging militia, he meets up with her at the orphanage.  Determined not to fall for his charms this time and unimpressed with the way he's been looking after himself, she rejects his advances.  Jesse explains to her that it's a lot for him to come here, he doesn't come to scary civil war countries for nothing.  Celine doesn't have a bar of it.  She sends Jesse back to the US with his tail between his legs and goes back to the orphanage.

Jesse returns to the US and back to Chicago.  The nanny gets pregnant, and, now being 38, he decides to face up to his responsibilities and marries her (oh dear this sounds a bit too familiar).  Ted is living in NY and is at high school being a jock.  Depressed and unhappy with his life, he fuels this into his writing career, which although is still healthy from sales of the book, is dwindling.  He writes and he writes but despite his writing nothing comes out.  He has an affair with an air hostess who promises to give him frequent flyer points.  She doesn't and he's devastated.  His father dies of liver cancer when he goes to visit him in Texas.  Jesse tries to get funding for a movie based on his relationship with his father in Texas.  He gets the money but it bombs and he becomes even more in debt.  He hits rock bottom, starts drinking and starts missing his child maintenance payments.  He can't pay.  Lawyers start coming after him suing for bankruptcy.  The nanny has run away a long time ago.  Jesse, with the last savings he has, buys a ticket to Europe for one last ditch at creative enlightenment.  He writes a memoir based on these years while living a monastic life in Geneva where his French improves greatly.  This memoir, finally takes off with his publisher in New York, and while it's not a major success, it's enough for them to commission him to write another one.

One evening, with his life vaguely back on track, he is walking down the street when he thinks he sees a blonde beautiful blonde woman walking with a black haired child.  

Celine, walking with her adopted Vietnamese daughter, sees him too.  They sit down at a restaurant at night where they proceed to have a two hour conversation that consists of the bulk of the movie (which moves from the restaurant to a wander by the river at night time to eventually, Celine's apartment.  Geez, that's exactly like Before Sunset).  It's been years since they've seen each other.  She talks about her life while they were apart.  While in Kosovo she'd fallen in love with a local guy and moved in with him.  They were looking after the orphanage together and she moved in with him.  However, after a couple of years of living with him she realised that her time in Kosovo was over. Leaving him she goes travelling through Vietnam and falls in love with a local girl at an orphanage.  She decides to adopt this girl and puts in her application for adoption.  While she's waiting she meets a humanitarian worker called Vince at the photography essay exhibition she's been helping curate and falls madly in love.  They swear to move to Geneva together to continue humanitarian work there.   While still waiting for the adoption application to come through Celine goes back to Paris to sort some things out.  While she's in Paris, Vince, who's on assignment in Afghanistan, is shot and killed.  Devastated, Celine flies to Vietnam to pick up her daughter.  After coming back to Paris and settling in, she decides to go to Geneva anyway, as a sort of tribute to Vince.  In Geneva she discovers that her photoessay exhibition was so successful she can make a career out of it.  After settling in with her daughter she takes up photography full-time and becomes a small success.

Jesse is delighted to see her.  After all these years he's finally realises that love is not a series of conversations wandering around Europe in beautiful light but a) being got b) recognising that there are only a few people who get you and therefore staying with the person who got you c) working at this got relationship and d) putting up with their shit and realising also that love is as much about timing and chance as it is about being right for each other.  Finally talking their shit out over the night, he gets down on one knee and proposes.  Celine's daughter, Nicolette (haha, what a great name) giggles away and eats her Genevian bread.  After a whole lot of darkness and ups and downs Celine finally says yes.  End of movie - but in the proposing the projected future is this:  With the savings that Jesse has from his memoirs and the money that Celine has from her photography they move with Nicolette into a castle (I don't know, what do Genevians have??).  They bring Jesse's son over from his second marriage (who conveniently doesn't mind Geneva since it's the city of peace and he goes to an international school) and settle into Genevian life.  They live happily writing novels and memoirs (Jesse) and teaching/exhibiting photography (Celine).  A couple of years later, at the age of 41, Celine and Jesse have twins.  Finally, they now live happily ever after.

Haha.  Well they have to have a happy ending surely!

Before Sunset

"I guess when you are young, you believe that you will meet many people with whom you'll connect with, but later in life you realise it only happens a few times." - Celine, on the boat.

SO true.

Flatmatefindering

Have signed up to a flatmate finding website.  Is pretty good, with profiles and requirements and so forth.  You can be quite specific with what you're looking for.  I didn't realise how much a creative household mattered until I started reading some profiles.  Automatically my mind ruled people out who said 'I work in HR and I love playing watersports' and went huzzah! at people who said 'I love literature and art and I'm a music/art/theatre student who has a degree in engineering'.  Didn't realise I was so prejudiced/creative lifestyle was so important to me.  Didn't realise how important it was to have people who are like you, even down to the previous degree bit.  It's important to have people who understand your lifestyles living around you I guess, even if they're not in the same field.

Note - while typing in a status update I accidentally wrote 'flatmatefingering' instead of 'flatmatefindering'...oh dear!

On another note, I watched Wall-E yesterday.  Incredibly moving.  Made me think about what I wanted in life.  And I felt very uncomfortable about the fat people ruling the Axiom space ship thing!  Oh no!  I started doing leg stretches in the seat.  Haha.  And although Wall-E was a bit wet, it made me think about getting off the computer and having some real interaction with people.  How much time do I spend with the people I love during the day?  Not enough.

And also - totes to Pixar for making Wall-E's solar charge sound the start-up tone for Mac!

Breast cancer free baby

Whoa...such an ethical minefield...I think this is definitely a form of eugenics:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/01/is-this-the-start-of-designer.html

but then again so is abortion and so are a million different things.  And then what difference does it make if it's by chance or by human selection than an embyro is chosen.  Either way, the rest of them are going to die.

I think as I get older I become more ethically conservative.  Yikes!

2009

YAY FOR 2009!!!

2008 Wrap up!

I'm a day late, but:

2008, The year of:

• CHANGE (Obama, med-acting switch, Syd-Melb switch)

• DEATH, especially of creative icons (Actors before their time - Heath Ledger, Brad Renfro, Guillaume Depardieu, Mark Priestley, Greats - Dorothy Porter, Michael Crichton, Anthony Minghella, Paul Newman, Harold Pinter, Rob Guest, Jorn Utzon, Personal - friend's father etc)

• TRAVEL AND INTERNATIONAL EVENTS (the Olympics, London)

• FRIENDS

• THE CREATIVE RETURN

And of course, best ofs this year:

Film

• I've Loved You So Long (Kristin Scott Thomas was incredible, as was the director-writer.)
  
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (amazing)
  
• In Bruges
• The Savages
• Mamma Mia! (purely because it was soo much fun!)
• Hunger (all gorgeous, but especially engrossing was the 20 minute long scene with the pastor)
• The Darjeeling Limited (something very charming about that movie)
• Juno (lots of fun)

DVD

• Pan's Labyrinth (very haunting)
  
• Letters from Iwo Jima (great story/direction)

Theatre (Commercial)

• A Disappearing Number (mind-boggling).
  
• Sid's Waltzing Masquerade (not all of it).
• The Makropoulos Secret (first opera I liked)
• Au Revoir La Parapluie
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (magical)
  
• The Revenger's Tragedy (need I say more?)
• Hamlet (David Tennant and Patrick Stewart)

Theatre (Independent)

• Stoning Mary
  
• Tender (Heather Mitchell, really)
  
• Ruhe (the men's choir mainly)
  
• Terminus (the poetry)
  
• Pornography (well directed)
• Big Shoot (Denis Lavant = incredible)
• The Angel and the Woodcutter

Wish I'd seen: Rock N Roll Highway, Hamlet (Bell Shakespeare), pool (no water), Billy Elliott, The Modern International Dead, Scorched, etc...oh well.

Books

• A Director Prepares (I live by this)
  
• The Kite Runner (heart-wrenching despite its occasional sentimentality)
  
• Wuthering Heights (I really liked this!)
• Josh Hartnett definitely wants to do this (re-read - but I love that man!)
• The Actor and the Text (I quite like this, it's very practical and I like the way Cicely Berry writes her thoughts and advice)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (of course)
• Nocturne (Adam Rapp's prose is beautiful. Shame it's a play!)

This is really very shocking. I have to improve my novel reading habits.

Performances/Actors

• Channing Tatum (Stop-Loss)
• Jason Schwartzmann (Darjeeling)
  
• Edward Norton (The Painted Veil)
• Laura Linney (everything)
• Yael Stone (Stoning Mary)
• Heather Mitchell (Tender)

Moments I was glad for this year:

• Getting into drama school :)
• Finding friends who were my creative and emotional equals.
• Cementing my creative and emotional friendships with the female friends who have always been there and will continue to be. This year has really highlighted it for me. I love you all.
• The Beijing Opening Ceremony. Oh my god.
• Doing classes at the Griffin, feeling petrified, and discovering Anne Bogart! I think that was the most life-advancing moment for me this year. So much self-doubt. And only two weeks!
• Crushing so badly on R, because it made me realise that's not what I wanted at all.

Moments I regret:

• Letting the Olympics go by me. Watching the Opening Ceremony, I was sad that I hadn't let myself enjoy being part of the global community. Especially in a country that is my heritage and pride. Oh well, next one.
• Letting most of Europe go by me. Oh well. Next time I'll have my head screwed on.
• That's probably about it.

Onto 2009!