My Blog

The best movies I’ve watched are the ones that really disturb you long after the credits have rolled. A good film provides you an escape from reality for an hour or two, a great one makes you think and ponder just how much it reflects reality.

The Constant Gardener is the latter kind.

I watched it a second time on Astro recently and I strongly urge you to see it if you haven’t already. It might be a wee bit slow for some - like my friend who claims to have slept through all of Ralph Fiennes’ movies. ("Can’t he just go and make some slapstick comedies," she moans.)

But then again, I’m partial to Fernando Meirelles because of City of God which is just about one of the most fucking brilliant movies ever. Meirelles has a gift for depicting both beauty and brutality on screen while retaining a gritty sense of realism that only makes the story all the more disturbing.

How disturbing? 

Well, after watching City of God, the president of Brazil told Meirelles that it changed his policies of public security.

And that’s the power of film.

On the other hand, The Constant Gardener conjures a conspiracy theory and makes some rather grandiose accusations against the pharmaceutical industry that seem a little too far-fetched for us to believe that kind of thing really does happen in the real world.

In the film, the wife of a British diplomat investigates the unethical practices of a Western drugs company by trying to expose its botched experimental trials on sick, unsuspecting Africans. Would a company whose products are supposed to save lives really engage in practices that would potentially kill people?

Well. Maybe it’s not so far-fetched after all, if you look at case history.

I can’t really remember the facts of the case but basically, several years ago, drugs giant Merck was sued by the family of some guy who died of a heart attack after taking the painkiller Vioxx.

Apparently, it emerged during the trial that internal e-mails showed that Merck was aware that its drug caused a higher rate of heart complications in patients but they chose to ignore the risks against the advice of their researchers. And continued selling Vioxx despite knowing the risks associated with the drug. "Oh, let me see, yes we forgot to mention one of the side effects: you drop dead."

Or what about Novo which tested its drugs on people in India without first completing the clinical studies on animals. They had to stop their human trials when it came out that tumours were growing on their animal test subjects.

Big Pharma is about making money at the end of the day. The drugs industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and you know who runs these companies? Not caring doctors in white lab coats, but businessmen. Let’s not fret until people die and their families hit us with a civil lawsuit, then we’ll just deny we were ever aware of the risks.

Because they’re all about saving people. Right.

If that’s so, why are we stil not getting universal access to affordable AIDS drugs? It’s unspeakable, with all the so-called advances in medical technology, that many in developing nations are still dying from AIDS because of high prices or complete inavailability of new drugs (because these companies choose not to market their drugs in such countries).

When share prices are more important than human life and ethics is just a section on the corporate website, that’s when you know that humanity has lost its conscience.

But they say that’s how the world turns. 

People keep asking me what I did on Valentine’s Day.

And I cheerfully tell them all the same thing: "Oh, I was playing video games at home."

I’m such a dork.

But I have to say that tossing bolts of electricity at minotaurs can be just as fun as a romantic candlelight dinner with a significant other. Christ, I’m sounding like such a lost cause now, haha…

I like being single but if there’s anything I miss about being in a relationship, it’s definitely the companionship. Suddenly, you realize that you have a lot more free time on your hands than you know what to do with.

And so I start taking up new hobbies and classes. Read all the books I never got around to reading. Watch all the DVDs I never got around to watching. Play more online poker. I’ve become such a well-rounded individual.

And then there’s the social life.

If I’m not drunk on liquor every other night, I’m hyperventilating from an overdose of coffee.

Since most of the girls I know are happily ensconced in domestic bliss, I’m usually with the boys. Because boys just never grow up. I swear, they could be respectable lawyers or engineers or whatever, but the stuff they get up to…One of my best friends looks like the consummate professional at work with his pinstriped Raoul shirts and natty cufflinks but on weekends, you could hardly recognize the guy. Out come the scuffed Converse kicks and the leisure threads I term his "drug dealer uniform": threadbare t-shirt that looks older than my floormat (it’s vintage, he argues) and jeans he hasn’t washed since mullets were in fashion.

But I’m just emphasizing the dressing because it shows that you can never really tell what a man is like on the surface, or at least during working hours.

It’s the nocturnal activities you should be concerned with, especially under the influence of alcohol and/or other substances.

I’ve seen some of my friends swapping spit with girls they’ve known for five minutes. Taking strange girls home. Telling their girlfriends on the phone how much they miss them, only to be groping the cocktail waitress forty minutes later.

Next you may ask, "Geez, Steph, what kind of guys do you hang out with?"

That question doesn’t even matter. Because it happens to the best of them. It could be a harmless flirtation that doesn’t necessarily result in a one-night-stand. But the conclusion is, if the temptation is there, then it doesn’t take very much for a man to succumb. Say, if the girl happens to be a real skank - and I have to say there are a lot of them around. Call me conservative but I’m always surprised at how easy it is for one of my friends to take girls he barely knows back to his place. I mean, hello, woman! What if my friend is actually a depraved psycho with a torture chamber under his bedroom? "But he can’t be a psycho because he’s got a great tan and a six-pack! *giggle* "

So in conclusion, I don’t totally blame the men. Hell, if I were a guy and there was a hot chick with a handkerchief for a dress throwing herself at me…

But at the end of the day, what goes around comes around. Infidelity will always come back to bite you in the ass. So watch the revolving door on your way out, folks.

And I’ll end with parting words from Jamie Foxx: "Don’t hate the player, hate the game."

There’s only so much you can learn in one place
The more that I wait, the more time that I waste

I haven’t got much time to waste, it’s time to make my way
I’m not afraid of what I’ll face, I’m afraid to stay
I’m going down my own road and I can make it alone
I’ll work and I’ll fight til I find a place of my own

Are you ready to jump?

- "Jump", Madonna

Met up with my friend for dinner some time ago and over tapas, she complains about her colleague who claims to be ignorant of her mother tongue and the Rukunegara because she considers herself “American”. Despite spending only a measly two years there for university.

“Tell her Americans are cocksuckers,” I say, making her burst into a fit of giggles.

I don’t know what’s the deal with people going abroad to study for a year or two, then coming back with an accent and this smug perception that mingling with white people have made them more cultured, worldly and better than the general population. I think it’s because Malaysians tend to have this national inferiority complex. My high school history teacher once said that countries that have a history of colonialisation tend to suffer from this complex. Everyone seems to think there’s nothing about our country to be truly proud of, other than two really tall towers.

Sure,  Malaysia’s full of pollution, corruption, appalling urban planning and many of the persistent problems plaguing any developing nation…Wait, what was my point again? Just kidding. Frankly, it’s really not a half bad place to live.

I grew up in the US, moving around a fair bit before my decidedly bohemian parents decided to settle down in a quiet, leafy suburb outside Washington DC. After spending my primary years there, we came back to Malaysia where I was enrolled into a British international school. And even then, my parents would send me overseas during the school holidays. Sydney was somewhat my second home. Being shuffled around like a hockey puck as I was, it’s no wonder I’m in the cultural limbo that I am now. (And yes, that also explains my quasi-American accent mangled with the occasional British pronunciation, with a modest smattering of lah’s and lor’s thrown in. So yeah, I know I talk funny, thankyouverymuch.)

After high school, my parents made me apply to a bunch of universities in the UK and Australia but as the acceptance letters started pouring in, I decided I wanted to get a taste of local education (go ahead and snigger). So I turned down a place in University of Manchester to study International Relations and a place in University of New South Wales to study commerce for a law school situated in Petaling Street, nestled between two seedy rumah tumpangan.

Of course, the really challenging thing about moving from place to place is learning and absorbing all the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the local culture. You can go to the same state in a different country and feel like you just crossed into alien territory. An ignorance of these disparities is why senior management in MNCs, usually foreigners, are often mocked by us locals as “clueless mat salleh”. I am appalled when I meet expatriates who have been in Malaysia for a decade or more and never bothered to pick up the local language, customs or cuisine.

How can you be in a foreign place and not soak up the culture, immerse yourself in the surroundings and just saturate yourself in the atmosphere?

How can one possibly cocoon oneself in the safety of the familiar without venturing forth and discovering all the diverse possibilities that the world has to offer?

But after having a rather nomadic childhood, it’s nice to finally be firmly rooted to a place I can call home. It’s nice to finally belong. I probably might not be here for the rest of my life. Like my parents before me who roamed the world in search of home? fortune? happiness? the meaning of life? who knows?, I might venture to other places in the future. But for now, this is the place I call home.

Malaysia negaraku indeed.