Innocent until investigated
April 01, 2006
It's been a few days since I last updated. I�ve been wondering lately if this diary is nearing its end.
Anyway, the past three weeks have been pretty crazy, culminating in last week which was pretty rough. Seriously, it may have been one of the worst weeks I've had in a really long time. The details are not important. The things that made it so difficult were officially over by Friday. Thanks, though, to Jing and Di who were a great help and support through it. I don't know if it was clear, but our conversations here and there really made all the difference to me.
In partially related news, my grandmother went back home on Thursday. It's been really strange adjusting to not having her in the house anymore. As stressful as it was, her more lucid and happy moments were something to look forward to. It�s also been weird adjusting to sleeping in my own bed again, as I�d been sleeping on the couch in her room for most of the time that she stayed with us.
Anyway, Friday was a full day. It started off with a near-breakdown on my part, then the completion and submission of a project I�ve been working on with Mini, and ended with a much-needed night out with friends. I hadn�t seen PG since he came back from attending his grandmother�s funeral in Greece (sad) earlier in the week. We thought we�d have a low-key night out, and went to see Syriana. Initially it was just supposed to be PG, Art-therapy Hoda , and me, but Mini and her boyfriend and a couple of other friends ended up joining us.
I�ve been wanting to see Syriana for a while now, and I can�t say I was impressed or disappointed. It was a solid, if slow, movie. I think I thought it would be more action-packed, but it�s alright that it wasn�t. More than anything I found myself salivating over the visuals. Though it doesn�t make much sense, there is a part of me that thinks of the Gulf region as home as much as anywhere else, and the sweeping shots of desert dunes and date palm groves, and even the shots of Gulf men in their crisp, white robes (which I always loved) left the taste of nostalgia in my mouth. Of course my rapture was broken by Mini�s amusingly spot-on narration in Kuwaiti dialect.
I also saw Munich last Saturday, and I have to say it's one of Spielberg's better films in recent times. I thought the casting was excellent, and the plot nicely laid out. And I think that all the so-called controversy over the representations of both Arabs and Jews in the movie is totally bogus. I think Spielberg did a pretty good job of making the movie as much of a Jewish story as possible. The friends I went to see it with were kind of disappointed that it seemed to ignore the Palestinians in the movie as much as possible, but I thought that was a pretty interesting move on Spielberg's part.
Anyway, if y�all have seen either of these movies, I�d be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Till next time...