One thing good about public holidays (today is Vesak Day, by the way) is that I can get to be online a little longer than usual. Or maybe a little too long like at the moment. I am aware how long I am online.
Speaking of being online, I can read a lot of those online articles which I want to read. Especially now with the anticipation of the release of The Da Vinci Code movie next week, I had already started to read those articles which are related to the movie adaptation and the novel. It reminded me on Wednesday night as I was watching the Arts Central's documentary of Is It Real? - The Da Vinci Code in the living room and my father and brother were nearby and they kept literally shooting me questions which were raised from the novel. For crying out loud, I only got the novel from my father (which he borrowed from his colleague) on that day when he returned from work! I kept giving them half-answers which meant in my context - stuff which I only knew that much from TV documentaries.
I am still not an expert in this yet. I mean, I think I'm going to do a Hermione (from the Harry Potter series, remember?) again this time. Whenever there's anything she does not know, she will go to the library. For me, it's online. LOL. I have exactly seven days left to find out, or should say six days because I will be off to the cinema in May 19. I have to watch even more documentaries which came out thanks to all the publicity and the buzz for the novel and the movie adaptation. I have to read even more online articles.
Maybe being a free-thinker has entitled me to be like that. You are not bounded by the religion you belong to and free to accept and reject whatever religious claims 'thrown' at you. Because (this is what I feel), I do know how the whole buzz has angered parts of Christian community who claimed whatever being raised in the novel is all - lies. I have friends and former classmates who are Christians. One secondary school good friend and the other from primary school days who are both devout Christians from what I noticed about them. I even once attended a missionary school in my primary school days and what I first know of Christianity is all from there. So naturally if anyone asks me how I feel of the novel (given how I have not read it yet as I first started on Angels & Demons), it can be kind of a surprise and a shock on some of things being raised but then being non-Christian myself, it's all up to me to judge what is right and wrong.
I don't even want to evoke any anger from anyone I know who are Christians themselves. You get the idea.
When I first told to my father that the Louvre was where the murder took place in the novel, he kind of beamed. Not because of the murder, I tell you first! Hey, what are you thinking?! LOL! Actually he had said that the Louvre (in reaction to what I knew and told him of The Da Vinci Code's opening scenes in the movie) was where one of the world's most famous paintings - the Mona Lisa, was located. And when he was in Paris then, he had purposely went to search for the painting when he was in the Louvre! My father had even talked about one of the most famous architects I. M. Pei, where the Louvre Pyramid is near the museum itself. I know of that name accidentally when researching for my CME group project about France (we had decided on that country as each group in the class has to pick a country outside Singapore) as part of the International Friendship Day in school in 2001.
If I tell my father that the Westminister Abbey in London is being mentioned in the novel, he is going to tell a whole lot of things when he was in London...again! Try him, I say. I always made a 'mistake' whenever we talked about London because he will talk endlessly on the places he went to when he's in London, other than for work purposes. Westminister Abbey is one of those buildings my father always mentioned whenever we talked about London because he said that he went there before. The place where many of the royals were buried (no kidding anyone there, it's true) and many of the kings and queens in the history of the UK were coronated.
The trailers has started showing on TV these few days, when it's currently Mission Impossible 3 dominating everywhere at the moment. I remembered once Dad was asking me if I saw the movie rating anywhere in the trailer and I said a 'No' bluntly. I even saw the movie's advertisement in ST's Life! today. Now it makes me more excited to go watch it next week. No one's going to stop me!
Coming back to the documentary I saw on Arts Central on Wednesday, my brother and I discussed about the movie's rating (it's NC-16, that means, not for children under 16), the people who may be affected by what is shown in The Da Vinci Code (that is when I first raised the possibility of my Christian friends not being happy about how some of the things in Christianity is being raised in the novel) movie and the novel.
There is a small statue of Guan Yin in the house and I always feel at ease whenever I look at that. But while I call myself a free-thinker (and even stated when applying for my IC then), I am being torn of whether being a Buddhist on the surface and free-thinker wholeheartedly. And yet, still also excited about whatever's being discussed in The Da Vinci Code movie where it's about Christianity. Growing up in a moderate and still kind of conservative family where the family's religion have some influence in a way or another, Christianity is still the one thing I had always want to explore.
Anyhow, happy Vesak Day to everyone out there, especially the Buddhists. Signing off here for now.
