I had dinner at a restaurant with the family a few days ago. Because it was Chinese New Year, tables meant for ten sat fifteen, and they ran out of chairs. In situations like these, they should make the whole restaurant play musical chairs.

The food took forever to arrive but was well worth the wait. Though we over ordered, we were able to work our way through most of the seven dishes. I tell ya… nothing beats the variety of communal eating—there be no more pampered a palate than one treated to the array of dishes found at a Chinese family dinner.

I was stuffed by dinner’s end. Another morsel of food in me would have forced something else out from the other end.

There was some fish head curry left. Someone, I can’t remember who, was picking through it when she asked, “Who’d like to have the socket?”

A hand swooped in from across the table to claim the prize.

Being home sometimes disturbs me.

I wonder if anyone will get the picture.

I watched a very Hugh Grant movie a few days ago, only, the bumbling hero was a married sultry-lipped lass (an Anne Hathaway lookalike) who had fallen hopelessly for another woman, who I thought looked like a young Sharon Stone. Yes, there was kissing and all, but that wasn’t the reason why I liked it. In a nutshell, I think my affinity to the movie has to do with my present station in life. Imagine Me & You focuses on Rachel, a woman who follows her heart, despite her whole world and the world she’s known insisting that she shouldn’t.

In my blog article on Passion, I had written this line: Passion feels right, even though it feels wrong. After considering the weight of her actions, Rachel threw logic out the window and followed the voice within, allowed her passion to lead her. Morally, I have reservations on whether or not what she did was right.  That is a debate I’ll leave for another time.

For me, what set Imagine Me & You apart from other love stories (aside from the Lesbian factor), was that it was really well scripted, some bits rather intellectual. Also… just like Fuel, there was a reference to flowers, and the meaning behind them. Hahaha… they got me at Azaleas.

I thought the movie had several defining moments. These were my favourite:

Conversation about Rachel’s fave flower… the lily (Luce is Rachel’s inamorata)
Rachel : Alright. Well… umm… tell me about the lily.
Luce : You don’t want to know about the lily.
Rachel : It’s my favourite.
Luce : Ask me about the azalea.
Rachel : Oh, alright. What about the azalea?
Luce : The azalea means ‘may you achieve financial security’. See?
Rachel : [laughs] Lovely. Now, tell me about the lily.
Luce : The lily means… the lily means ‘I dare you to love me’.

Conversation at the very start of the movie where a little girl (H) poses this question
H: Heck, I’ve got a question.
Tessa : Not now.
Heck : What’s the question, H?
H : What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
Heck : [thinks for a few seconds, then replies] I haven’t got a bastard clue, I’m afraid.
Tessa : There you are, you see. Now we can let him get married in peace.
Luce : It never happens. If there’s a thing that can’t be stopped, it’s not possible for there to be something else which can’t be moved, and vice versa. They can’t both exist. You see, it’s a trick question is the answer.

I thought that was a very interesting question… met by a superb answer.

Conversation at the end of the movie between Rachel and her husband Heck, who despite loving Rachel to bits, was releasing her to pursue Luce

Heck: It’s not you leaving that’s going to kill me. It’s you loving someone more.
Rachel : No, you’re not walking way. Don’t… don’t walk away from me.
Heck : Yeah keep saying that. Pretend this is my choice.
Rachel : What do you MEAN?
Heck : Oh come on Rachel. We both know you’d have left me in the end.
Rachel : That’s not true.
Heck : YES IT IS!
Heck : [quieter]
Heck : Yes it is. I want you to be happy. More than anything else I wanted to be the cause of happiness in you. But if I’m not, then I can’t stand in the way, you see? Because what you’re feeling now, Rachel, is the unstoppable force. Which means that I’ve got to move.

Absolutely loved how they tied the young girl’s question about the unstoppable force at the beginning to the movie’s climax at the end. Brilliant.

I don’t care much for presents on my birthday, and my only requirement on 12.18 each year is that I be treated to a meal I enjoy, which Alhamdulillah, did materialise.

I received 2 gifts this year, both of which almost brought me to tears. The first was from Sophie, an iPod Nano, a replacement for my iPod which met its demise a month or so back. For those of you who don’t know me, I draw a tremendous amount of strength and comfort from music. Initially, I thought the break would do me some good, would allow me to find my own voice in the silence.  Find my own voice I did. It was cool at first, being able to hear myself think. But what I realised a little later was this. I just wouldn’t stop talking.

Incapable of just being blissfully lost in the silence, I’d been ‘clownily’ dragging my laptop everywhere with me… earphones attached. For me, the past month has been one big, oversized dildo in the ass.

The Nano, in my jurassic opinion anyway, is a technological marvel. Equipped with a touchscreen, and wafer thin, it warehouses 16GB of music or whatever else you may choose to throw into it.  ‘Sleek’… if I had to describe it in one word. Sophie chose the Hot Panty Red for me and inscribed this on the back, “What a Jem.”

The second gift I received came in the form of a birthday card. From my Dad. He is the only person I know on this planet who still buys cards. The card reads:

Parents seldom realize
Until their son is grown
The many ways
He’s touched their hearts
Or how the time has flown

He learns so much
Too fast, it seems
You can’t believe the pace!
Then suddenly the boy is gone
And who’s this in his place?

A young man
Filled with more than dreams,
But hope and promise, too
Facing life on his own terms,
With visions to pursue

And though we always trusted
You’d be second-best to none,
We never knew how proud we’d be
To say, “There goes our son.”