Still Thinking…

I didn’t know that it was going to be 99. Yes, 99 documentaries in 10 days. I had thought that it was going to be quite a headache to select the ’20’ documentaries I had thought would be screened at the Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto this May (www.hotdocs.ca) but noooooo….it had to be 99. Now I am dizzy.

I have been diligently trawling through each and every one of the synopsis to shortlist which screenings I would like to go. Hasben is supposed to make his selection too, but I am not sure if he has the patience to trawl the 99 synopses like I did. Well, I didn’t.

After synopsis 67 I realised that there were quite a sizeable number of docus on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I felt a lil bit fed-up, perhaps the after-effects of watching the 4-hour long Route 181 documentary twice, it finally crept on me that so many ‘little voices’ were trying to speak up about the border issues. All the docus listed on the conflict were about friendships, love, struggle and everything else anti-thetic to the violence, aggression and hostility we are all so accustomed to about the two neighbours. So I ask myself, why on earth did I like this genre. There’s so much responsibility in it! As if, driving safely was not a big enough responsibility on long, winding and oh-so-tempting-to-speed Canadian highways here.

So after an afternoon of tiresome self-reflection (that perhaps I should ditch non-fiction content and go for crafting fictional characters instead to relieve me of ‘some’ amount of responsibility..hah!), I was delightfully cheered up when Hasben came back and said, ‘Its going to snow tomorrow!’. Yes, in the middle of spring, when it has been sunny and warm, with all the tulips, daffodils and cherry blossoms in full bloom, the SNOW decided to fall. Welcome to Canada.

I had a brief moment of silence in respect of the bugs and the bees who now have to find shelter against the crystals falling on their heads, but a large part of the Singaporean me was leaping for joy. When I first arrived in Canada back in 2003, it was snowing. That was the beginning of winter, and I was told that I was lucky – because Vancouver only gets 5 or so days of snow a year as compared to freezing Toronto. So to get a snow day in Spring in BC is considered heaven. And so I relish and…err…waited with baited breath for the first powder to fall.

It was a loooonnng wait. I had a tosai with the extended in-laws and later fried chicken in the car while waiting for it. Hasben tried to console me and said,”Maybe it will fall in the middle of the night?”. I nearly opted for a camp-out on our driveway, just so I can watch the snow fall in Spring, when he said that.

I never saw it. I was grumpy and grouchy and so very frustrated that the snow did not happen. When we drove along the highway the next morning, we both realised that the mountains had a slight white dusting on the tree tops, which only meant that the snow did fall but only on the mountains the night before. And so my flaky, mindless snow-chasing mission popped.

Looks like it is back to the remaining 32 or so documentary synopses to read.
Now I am back to being dizzy again. Good thing someone gave me a koyok pack as a send-off gift.