MY NAME IS KHAN

I haven't seen a Shahrukh movie on screen for 2 years, the last one being the overly successful Chak de India in 2008 I think. However, it needs to be noted that this is not only because I can no longer cajol or force Husna or Zaid to watch with me, it's also because with the decrease in movie-goers' interest in Hindi films, less and less cineplexes show them now.

Therefore, it is somewhat of a personal triumph that I have managed to watch My Name Is Khan twice within five days of its worlwide release. Plus, I went with different people for both showing, and at different cinemas!! I rock, like Shahrock.. Hahaha.. Anyway, what made this film special are:

1. It's a Karan Johar project..!

2. The legendary pairing of Shah Rukh and Kajol..!!

3. It's a Shahrukh movie for crying out loud..!!!

The premise of the movie is simple enough. An autistic Muslim man is on a journey to see the President of the United States of America. You get to know why as the story unveils. The movie shows the after effects of the 9/11 tragedy, more so on the sufferings of the Muslim community after the collapse of the twin tower. It was really a shock for me in the scene where a husband asked his wife to remove her hijab in order to ensure her safety in public. Sikhs also had to remove their turbans in order not to be confused with Afghans. In some ways, it goes to show that no matter how technologically developed you are, people can be blind when it comes to well, people.

The chemistry between Shahrukh and Kajol is definitely palpable in MNIK, but not in huge gooey dollops like in KKHH or even K3G. As Shahrukh plays an autistic man (but sometimes a very playful, cute one) his expressions are limited but he portrays Rizwan beautifully. Still, I love scenes between them, and Kajol's entry totally lifted the first hour of the movie. I may be biased but Shahrukh seriously deserves a Best Actor Award for this. I could only see glimpses of Shahrukh in Rizwan, reflecting his immersion into the character so completely that he almost disappears. Rizwan's courting of Mandira is too cute, and how he is accepted by her and her son was definitely smile-inducing.

If I have one negative about MNIK is that it revels in its secularity (is that a word?), almost always stressing the similarities of different religions and basically the uniformity of human kind in that we are all the same, just that our beliefs may be different. Good people do good things, bad people do bad things and no other difference. Oh!! And being a KJo film, it is kinda cheesy and may require some leaving your brain at the front door. Like, how could the news crew find the little village in Wilhemina and what was the deal with this Dr. Rehman? And one more thing, (from all the years of CSI-viewing, ehem...) I think there would've been some epithelial on Sam's body and some sort of footprint of his attackers. If not, didn't the rest of the soccer team realize that only Sam and Reese were the only ones left on the field on that day? And Karan, not everybody in the South talks with the volume turned waaaay loud and aside from his interactions with Mama Jenny and Joel, Rizwan doesn't even talk to the other villagers in Wilhemina.

The message that I take from MNIK is it is better to LOVE and go on rather than being stuck on HATE. Because when you LOVE you open up the possibilities and although it still hurts, the wound will eventually heal. Who knows, you might even achieve the impossible if you just LOVE.

OBLIVIOUS

The sound of your laughter grates on my nerve

All your enthusiasm seems fake and forced

I can never seem to appreciate

Your thoughts and efforts

I fell sorry for you sometimes

But most of the time

I don't really give a d**n

I was ready to accept you

But the things that you do

Make it impossible for me

I can never understand

How someone can be so dense

With a massive dearth of common sense

Always doing things, you were not supposed to

Useless things over and again

Now I'm spent

But I know

I'll continue to be annoyed

And you'll stay

Oblivious

SAWASDEE!

Our first overseas familly trip.. It was the usual fun, bickering and just general enjoyment of all of us together... Love it..

28th January 2010

I had an early sleep in at 8.30pm the night before, which meant that I was bright eyed by 12am.. Yes, in the morning!.. I decided to watch Arashi's first ever SP drama, Saigo no Yakusoku (the Last Promise). It's about a group of terrorists that took over a building, demanding ransom to be delivered in 90 minutes. The story was a bit meh for me.. Only Jun showed some kind of passion and the rest of the members seem quite listless, but I'd give props to Nino and Sho since I quite liked their characters. Kurokitti also didn't really make an impact, but I love the struggling scene between her and Jun. The tension buildup was nice. All the characters kinda fits in and made sense. The story could've been developed a bit more, like the reason for the takeover was not CLEARLY stated and the antagonist crumbled a bit too fast for me. Still, the drama is the first where ALL the members worked together..

Then, I watched soome more Arashi videos and started packing. I had a one hour nap at 4am and was woken up by Huda's fake whining to Mama.. Time to move my butt! The six of us trudged in the van at 6.45am (Abah was already in Bangkok) and some of us slept on the way to the airport.

We had breakfast at McD (the hotcakes are NIIICE ) and checked in.. Due to some difficulties, our flight was delayed and they even changed the boarding gates, after we were properly scanned and everything!! That got Mama quite riled up for a while.. The flight was fully booked and we barely managed to select our seats. Unfortunately we had to sit separately.. However, Husna and me got side-by-side seats and I got window seats!! Yeayy!! I slept for the first hour and did some Sudoku in the second. Since the sun was just beginning to rise, you can kinda appreciate the view. Flying among the clouds is really an out-of-this-world experience. I mean, how cool is it that you can see shadows of the clouds on the ocean floor? That in itself is kinda beyond cool.. Imho laa..

They gave us Ferrero Roches with the in-flight breakfast and the roti canai was OK. After we landed and passed the customs and immigration, we quickly found Auntie Zawiah and the drivers and made our way to the hotel.. We stayed at the Majestic Grande Hotel, which is quite near the Bangkok city center and is situated nicely between two train stations (Ploenchit and Nana). We never did manage to take the trains, though.. Aakaptaa.. After unpacking, we decided to grab a bite to eat while waiting for the fathers to come back. So we walked around Nana square and just revel in the feeling of being in another country. As usual, finding food is a bit of an adventure when you're overseas so we settled with seafood pizzas from Pizza Hut which are quite yummy, although the spaghetti wasn't as good.. Then, we stopped by 7E for some water and munchies..

I immediately slept after reaching the hotel room and only woke up at about 11pm. Mama and Abah had gone out to have dinner with friends and they brought home some food for us. I had the prawn fried rice while reading my book (Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella), surfed the net quite a bit and continued with the sleeping.

29th January 2010

We had breakfast at the hotel, which is the usual breakfast fare for any hotel. I had some toasts (they had honey combs where the honey drips off into a bowl, which is just amazing) and pancakes (which are deeeelicious!). Then, I couldn't help but try the miso soup.. Oishii.. we got to the lobby later than the promised 9am but because of some misunderstandings, we only managed to take off to Pattaya by 11am. Our driver is Mr. Wan (I think that's how you spell his name) and is quite friendly.

The journey took two hours and our first destination was Nong Nooch Garden & Resort, a massive compound with a million photo op spots. Everywhere you look is a perfect backgroud for a picture.

After walking around for a while, we took the train (or tram) so that we could see the whole place. The train driver stopped at a few places so that we could take pictures, and it was kinda cute how he would give us only 6 minutes to take photos, until the next train arrives.

Then, we watched the elephant show. Before the elephants took the stage, there were some cultural performances and one of them was a drum performance. The dancers had hard rock abs, man.. Drools.. Then we were ushered to another place for a proper elephant show. There were drawings sessions, football matches, basketball and even some bowling. After each skit, the trainers would bring the elephants near the visitors so that they can feed bananas to them. And they would both bow. It was nice. I felt quite sad though to see these magnificent creatures being treated like that and felt kinda powerless to stop such treatment. On the other hand, I very much enjoyed the show.. Confused I am..

We quickly got back in the van to look for food. We must've searched the whole of Pattaya before finding a Muslim restaurant, and thankfully it is near a masjid. We ordered the usual Pattani course, tomyam, some fish, fried eggs and not forgetting fried drummets. Meats are so hard to come by that you kinda get what you can.. And it's just our second day here.. Just imagine!!

After we had our tummies' fill, we head back to Bangkok. We freshened up and went back out again. This time for some shopping! Where? The Suan Lum night market. It was already about 10.30pm by the time we got there, so we quickly got down and dirrrty. The place was huge and the prices were unbelievable. I didn't buy much. Just a few shirts, sandals and bags. Zaid bought a t-shirt that lights up with sound, which is kinda cool, but kinda dangerous if worn on a rainy day (I think). Zaim and me bought some cute little woven bags to be given as souvenirs. The place closes at midnight and we decided to head back when we saw the shop owners turning in for the night. We took three tuk-tuks back to Nana. The ride was absolutely thrilling!! It's like being a passenger to a (mostly law-abiding) mat rempit. Smoke filled our eyes but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

We had a late night supper at an Arab place that Uncle Malik brought us to. I had naan and others had rice. Huda and Zaim were obsessing about a Chipette miniature that I found on the table. Some poor girl must've left it there. The mothers took a cab to the hotel, while the rest of us walked. On the way, I bought three Mickey ears that light ups (Red for TVXQ, Blue for SuJu and Pink).. There's a special place I'm planning to wear the blue one to. As soon as we reached the hotel room, it's lights out.

30th January 2010

The adults said that today is shopping day.. (Yeayy!!?) We met a wonderful taxi driver last night, who gave us a great offer to bring us around Bangkok. His name is Mr. Ao and he drove a pink taxi!! Naturally, the children all wanted to take the pink one. (We had to take two taxis because there were nine of us). The other was a green-yellow taxi, hee~

First, he brought us to the Canal Tour. The boat sails along the Menam Chao Phraya and veers off to a smaller river. The river was a bit 'eeks' and I didn't think the boat ride was all that. We met with an old man who sells stuff on his boat (kinda like a one-man version of the floating market) and bought some fruits and souvenirs from him. We didn't have enough time to go to the famous floating market, but at least we had this lone ahjussi...

Then Mr. Ao brought us to Wat Pho. Because we were short of time and entrance to the inner temple costs quite a bit, he suggested that we just take pictures around the compound. We were very hungry by the time we got back in the taxi and headed straight to our next destination: Lunch! The place was on the other side of the city and with Bangkok's famous traffic jams, we got there after one hour. Luckily, Mr. Ao is quite the talker. He would point out various places to us and tell a story about it. Then, he'd share some shopping suggestions like where to get electronic goods and cheap shirts. He put on 2PM's song, Again & Again after Abah remarked that he looked like a Korean... Cute..

The restaurant's name is Sophia and we had quite a hard time finding it. The food was delicious though, partly because we were soo starving by then. We prayed at the Thailand Islamic Center near the restaurant, which is a massive place but quite deserted.

Next, we went to MBK, which imo is a Thai version of Sg. Wang. It even looks the same. We waved bye bye to Mr. Ao as we could make our way home ourselves. I got some new dresses.. I checked out some music stores but it turned out they only have Korean artists... I was hoping they had Arashi.. Nothing else was really eye-catching and the price were almost like in KL's so we decided to go to the night market (again..) We finished up our shopping (I only had about 2000 bahts at this time). We bought souvenirs, cute T-shirts and waited for the adults at the nearby cafe. The mothers were having a massage and because we couldn't stand the mosquitos, we decided to head back home first. And what else to do but sleep..

31st January 2010

Because we slept kinda early the night before, we were up by 8 that morning. I had my usual miso soup (it was cold though), toasts and waffles. I tried the banana-dragon fruit milkshake (smelled like puke) and it was yucky! We asked for two taxis to take us to the Chatuchak weekend market for some last minute shopping. The feel of the place was a lot like the night market, but a lot more things are sold here. You can get just about anything, from the staple t-shirts, souvenirs and dresses to mini sewing machines, artificial flowers and antique fans. It took us quite a while to regroup because the alleys kinda mesh together, easily making us lose our direction. I had some coconut icecream to hold me off until lunch. Here, I finished off most of my money buying shirts and tacky bracelets. On the plus side, I found a cute little snowglobe for Kak Maya, which coincidentally is the last thing I bought in Bangkok.

Lunch was at an Egyptian restaurant where just one serving of briyani is enough to feed three people. And we ordered six of those (yikes!!), resulting in some major wastage. But still, bapeun mashisseo.. We packed up and checked out of the hotel at about 3pm. I think most of us fell asleep on our way to the airport. Since Auntie Zawiah and Uncle Malik were taking a local flight we said goodbye to them first before going to our check in counter. The immigration line was quite long, but we won! Yeay!! Haha.. inside joke..

We looked at some perfumes before proceeding to the waiting lobby. I kept busy by reading my book, while waiting and also on the flight. I got a window seat again this time (I rock!!), and Husna is sitting with me again. The inflight dinner was a bit 'ugh' for everybody except Zaid who opted for the chicken curry instead of the fish. We landed at about 8.15pm and prayed at the nearby surau after we've retrieved all our things. Dinner was BK where I had Mozza sticks, Hersheys pie and Chicken tenders. Zaim was the only one who didn't sleep on our way back home. (I think because he was sitting at the front with the driver) but Zaid also said taht he didn't sleep throughout the journey home. And to our frustration, the gate was locked when we got there.. Grr.. After finally locating the keys, we let ourselves in and we're HOME!! Home sweet home.. Aaah, bliss..

Jae angers at the delay..