Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Hey

"For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good"

Something Good from The Sound of Music (1965)

I've been gone far too long, I know, but just for the moment, I'm back. I have not written anything that's not a patient report or a discharge summary in an entire month, and I can't imagine that being very healthy for my psyche. Some people meditate or do yoga. Some hang out with friends. My thing is: I write.

I have a hundred specific things I want to write about but I fear I have neither the stamina nor drive to put them in words today. Today, I just want to talk in a vanilla Dear Diary kind of way about nothing.

Recently, I had a rather pernicious duty foisted on me by the boss - I was put in charge of the duty roster and my job is to distribute my department's manpower pool of half a hundred junior doctors to ensure that we remain smoothly operational. It's a much tougher job that it sounds. I receive complaints and demands in all hours of the day (and some hours at night) from the house officers I expected to herd and organise; all of them fighting over valuable operating theatre time which enables them to perform the required procedures which are prerequisites to graduating the posting. I receive a daily stream of complaints and demands ranging in tone from angry to weepy, and let me tell you: I find anyone in tears to be very off-putting. It throws me into traumatic flashbacks of my previous relationship with the Ex-Grrrfriend™.

Yesterday, a specialist texted me and asked me if I would like to participate in the research team of a study he was planning to launch, and I said "I do" and kissed the metaphorical bride. I don't fully know if I should have committed to it but research is something which I find far more fascinating than the care-giving facet of medicine - even if its in OB/GYN a specialty I'm not particularly fond of. But I certainly hunger for the experience. Tomorrow, I'll be meeting said specialist and be briefed on the details and all its devils. We'll see how it goes then.

Currently, I'm quite taken in by the soundtrack to Kari-gurashi no Arietti (or The Borrower Arrietty) which was written and performed by French French-Brettone singer and harper, Cécile Corbel, who sang in endearingly broken English and presumably broken Japanese as well. There are very warm and homey Celtic and Oriental fusion tones in the music and I couldn't stop listening to them. Also, after watching Arrietty, I'm increasingly convinced by the inherent advantage animated films have over their live-action counterparts. In live action movies, we see characters being played by recognisable stars we've seen in other works and in their usually very public lives, and the "reality baggage" can sometimes intrude into the performance. With animated films, particularly those voiced by obscure voice actors or seiyuu, the characters lives and breathes only within the movie's universe. In a way, I am far more likely to forget that they aren't real, and that makes me care more about them.

A couple of days ago, I discovered that there's a cineplex located a mere five minutes walk from where I live. I simply went to my fridge, grabbed a bottle of ice-cold ginger beer and a bag of crispy nori snack, walked a block down the street, and saw Warrior (because Tom Hardy ignites my latent homosexuality even more than Michael Fassbender). It's the next best thing to having my own private movie theatre. Sure, it's seedy and looks like one of those places which show nothing but skin flicks to half a dozen furiously-masturbating 40-something lonely dudes per screening, but it's still serviceable. Besides, it's on the 9th floor and has a romantic night view of the city and the river, and that's worth something. I daydreamed for a minute of buying the place, refurbishing it and turning it around - and then the beautiful madness passed.



Recapitulated,
k0k s3n w4i

6 comments:

a. said...

What you've said about being able to feel more for animated films is so true! I easily get emotional when characters voice their pleas for help. When the characters do not resemble ourselves so closely, you feel that their pleas are divorced from this cruel, unfair world that we live in. They exude a kind of purity that makes them even more undeserving of whatever injustice is heaped upon them. I surprised myself when the opening scenes of the Pixar film WALL.E brought me to tears. I never thought of myself of a bleeding heart and there I was shedding tears for a lonely robot...

Diyana said...

keep doing your thing. it's always a refreshing experience when i read your blog.

Anonymous said...

It's been so long. Glad that you're finally back for a crisp update.

yours,

reader ;)

Anonymous said...

It is also that an animated character can be thrown to the extremes of the character to let it express an emotion, unbiased and undisturbed by the errors of a real living human!

littlefaith said...

welcome back! this is my favourite kind of post to write...without a theme, or "vanilla Dear Diary" style, as you put it.

Have you seen "Hunger" a 2008 film in which Michael Fassbender acted? I haven't but I saw a youtube clip on what seems like a sort of monologue from part of the film and he was absolutely riveting in it. I know little about Fassbender except from the latest instalment of the X-Men films. I can't wait to watch Jane Eyre. He'll make an awesome Edward Rochester =)

k0k s3n w4i said...

a.: i get what you mean. i feel the same way when bad things happen to puppies or even grown dogs, because they can never understand why those things would happen to them.

Diyana: i promise i'll try my best to keep at it.

Anonymous #1: this is as crispy as it'll ever get ;)

Anonymous #2: never saw it that way personally :/

nicoletta: hunger is one of those movies i know i would love if i can ever summon up the will to sit through it. currently, i'm trying to mentally prepare myself to sit through blue valentine. these sort of films demand a lot out of me.