The Return of the King

Well, that was disappointing. I was expecting a documentary about Elvis.

Ba-bum-bum *crash*

Okay, okay. Seriously. I don't think I've ever trembled with excitement in a movie before. I didn't move from my seat until the credits had finished, despite the pressures of a bucket of popcorn and a large soda. I didn't want to miss a thing.

However, despite the greatness of the movie, there were a number of rather abrupt cuts in the movie. So for my readers' enjoyment, I now present to you...

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Secret Deleted Scenes!

Scene: Aragorn walks out into the night at the Golden Hall of Edoras. He notices Legolas standing over to his left, looking out into the night. He walks over and they stand together in silence for a moment.

Legolas: The stars are veiled. A shadow falls over the land.

Aragorn: Yes... I can see that for myself. Thanks for stating the obvious.

[Ed.: there really is an abrupt cut at the end of this dialogue. Go see for yourself]

*****

Scene: Frodo is sneaking out of Shelob's lair toward Cirith Ungol. Unbeknownst to him, Shelob has caught up with him and is sneaking up behind him.

Frodo: My spider sense is tingling...

*****

Scene: Eowyn stands over Theoden's body, facing the Witch-King, Lord of the Nazgul.

Witch-King: You fool, no mortal man may kill me!

Eowyn: I am no man! I am Eowyn daughter of Eomund!

(Merry stabs the Witch-King in his knee and Eowyn buries her blade between the crown and mantle. The Witch-King begins to disintegrate.)

Witch-King: Aiyeeee!!! I'm melting!!! I'm melting!!! Who ever thought a little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Ohhhhh...What a world! What a world!

Sauron: Damn @#$% loopholes!

*****

Scene: Gandalf, Aragorn, Eomer, Legolas and Gimli are holding counsel in the Great Hall of the Kings at Minas Tirith.

Aragorn: We must at all costs keep the Eye from his true peril. We cannot achieve victory by arms, but by arms we can give the Ring-Bearer his only chance, frail thought it be. We must push Sauron to his last throw. We must call out his hidden strength so that he must empty his land. We must march out to meet him at once, so that he does not turn his gaze upon Frodo.

Legolas: A distraction!

Aragorn: What did I tell you about stating the obvious?

*****

Scene: Gandalf, Aragorn, Eomer, Legolas, Gimli and Pippin are before The Black Gate.

Aragorn: Come forth! Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth! Justice shall be done upon him!

(No answer. Aragorn impatiently dismounts and walks up to the Black Gate and knocks. Still no answer. He knocks louder. A rectangular eye hole slides open. A pair of eyes belonging to the Mouth of Sauron peep out.)

Mouth of Sauron: We don't want any! Go away!

(The eye hole slides shut. Aragorn bangs angrily on the door. It slides open again.)

Mouth of Sauron: I told you-

Aragorn: We want to see your Lord! Tell him the King Elessar is here and will see justice done upon him on this day!

Mouth of Sauron: Alright, but he won't be happy.

(Eye hole slides shut. A long pause. A moment later, a French Uruk-hai pops up over the wall)

French Uruk-hai: Hellooo you pompous human k-nigg-hts!

Aragorn: Now this is just silly!

*****

Scene: Gollum has bitten off Frodo's finger and is dancing on the edge of the precipice with the Ring.

Gollum: My precious! It is mine again! (dances)

Sam: What's taking him so long? He's supposed to fall over the edge while dancing! It says so in the book!

Frodo: *sigh* Do I have to do everything? Alright, I'll go push him over.

Sam: As much as I approve, Mr. Frodo, you don't want to look bad to the audience.

Frodo: You're right. I'll make it look like I'm fighting him for the Ring.

*****

Galadriel: The war is ended. The Third Age is over. The Age of the Rings is past. The time of the Men shall continue.

Aragorn: What is it with Elves and stating the obvious?!

Legolas: Come on, none of us apart from Elrond and Arwen get any good lines in this movie.

Elrond: Good lines? I sound worse than that Agent Smith guy in The Matrix!

*****

Scene: Sam is walking home after having bid farewell to Frodo. He meets little Elanor and Rose at the gates of his home.

Sam: Well, I'm home.

Rose: Sam, it took you thirteen months, a journey fraught with danger, and unbelievable suffering before you realised as you lay on the slope of Mount Doom that you wanted to marry me. In the meantime I've been here waiting for you since you left. What does that tell you about men?

Sam: Alright, so we're stupid. But at least we're full of heroism and grand, albeit futile, gestures.

Rose: And you're pretty cute, too!

*****

Lastly, here's Ming's critical reaction to The Return of the King:

Hey, Big Spender

An article in the year-end issue of The Economist talks about something most of us already knew, but which science has just confirmed: a glimpse of a beautiful woman can change the way a man thinks- specifically, change him to lose his fiscal prudence and become more spendthrift.

Two researches at McMaster University performed tests evaluating how steeply people discounted the future, i.e., whether they would want a smaller sum of money now or a greater sum of money in the future. They did this before and after showing men and women different sets of pictures of attractive women or men, non-attractive women or men, beautiful cars and unimpressive cars.

... As predicted, men who had seen pictures of pretty women discounted the future more steeply than they had done before—in other words, they were more likely to take the lesser sum tomorrow. As Dr Wilson puts it, it was as though a special “I-want-that-now” pathway had been activated in their brains. After all, the money might come in handy immediately. ...

Dr Wilson and Dr Daly speculate that the simple act of regarding beautiful women is able to engage and manipulate the male brain's reward centres. This idea is supported by earlier brain-scanning studies which showed that looking at beautiful women, but not plain ones, arouses a man's nucleus acumbens, the part of the brain that evaluates rewards. That structure, in turn, is tightly linked to the orbitofrontal cortex, which has been shown to be activated by monetary rewards. So, ladies, it looks as though you were right. Men are just as gullible as you thought they were.

While this should have been obvious before, I now have a greater insight into my own behaviour- particularly, how I managed to blow so much money on women who aren't worth it. I shall have to be careful reaching for my wallet in the future! Not as much as one of my friends, though, who as I recall blew a couple of hundred bucks on a fantastically beautiful woman on their first date (she later became his girlfriend, and then two and a half years later broke his heart). Let this be a lesson to all of us.

Singapore's Stupidest Television Show Title

I was horrified to learn that there is a game show on Singapore Television now called Singapore's Brainiest Teenager, which ostensibly aims to find Singapore's smartest teenager by subjecting them to rounds of general and specific knowledge questions, eliminating the stragglers after each round.

The title makes me shudder. It is wholly inappropriate. Singapore is already one of the most highly pressurised places on earth to be if you are a teenager. From young (pre-school/Kindergarten), children here are graded, evaluated, examined, tracked, and screened. Children are taught that it if you aren't academically brilliant, you are nothing. Families and friends bring tremendous amounts of stress onto children to do well in their examinations. Success in Singapore society is entirely reliant on your examination results. One is relentlessly compared to one's peer and exalted or ridiculed depending on how one does. It is a system I completely abhor and thankfully escaped when I was 16. And now we have a game show that not only brings this to national television, but claims to find Singapore's brainiest teenager. What new ways can we find to humiliate our children, stunt their emotional development, and inculcate erroneous values?

Think about it. In this day and age when creativity and innovation are the watchwords of success, we have a gameshow which tells us that being brainy means knowing... lots of trivia. Before anyone claims that all other game shows work by awarding prizes to contestants on the same premise, let me remind you that no other game show (that I know of) purports to find the brainiest teenager in the entire country. "Who wants to be a millionaire!" screamed the most popular game show of the past year. Think Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, The XXX dollar Pyramid, The Weakest Link.

When it comes down to it, the declared aim of the show is what I'm annoyed at. It reflects our cultural values. In a nation obsessed with comparing, evaluating, grading and examining, that shows little mercy to those who do not fit into the system and those who do not conform, a show that reinforces these unhealthy ways is a show we do not need. What is worse, this is a show which takes advantage of the fact that we, as children and as teenagers, are relentlessly judged: society has come to expect this and no longer regards it as humiliating or unfair to judge them as such, so why not show it on television?

There are so many less destructive ways of naming a television game show, especially one which is seen in prime time by many of Singapore's families.

I wrote a long letter to the editor of the Straits Times, but my mother advised me that they would not publish something so openly critical and scathing (this is Singapore, after all) so I toned it down to a full bullet points and condensed my letter to three paragraphs:

Dear Sir,

Having recently returned to Singapore after a period of time abroad I saw a game show on TV called "Singapore's Brainiest Teenager", which ostensibly aims to find Singapore's smartest teenager by subjecting them to rounds of general and specific knowledge questions.

The title is wholly inappropriate. In a time when creativity and innovation are the watchwords of success, we have a gameshow which tells us that being intelligent means knowing trivia. As it is, Singapore already has many capable, intelligent children who are tremendously talented and have many contributions to make to Singapore who are going to be told they are failures because they are not academically outstanding. Academic success is but one form of intelligence. I doubt we need to remind people of this in a culture which is already obsessed with only this form of intelligence.

I call upon the producers of the show to rename the show something less starkly judgemental and more descriptive. Surely they can set an example for the teenagers on their show and demonstrate some creativity.

Well, I'll let you know whether it gets published.

UPDATE:

Thank you for your letter to the Forum Page, The Straits Times.

We regret to inform you that we are unable to publish your letter. The Forum Page receives a large number of letters daily and only a small number actually go into print. We seek your kind understanding in this matter.

Yours sincerely

Noor Aiza
for Forum Editor
The Straits Times

Non Events

Well, I guess I'm officially in my mid-twenties today. As my friends know, I have an aversion to celebrating my birthday. I won't violently object if my family or friends want to, but I won't make an effort to organise my own- nor will I remind anyone it's my birthday.

I've never really elucidated in my own mind the rationale behind my eccentricity, but after being asked why I decline to observe the day several times recently, I thought I'd write an entry discussing the issue.

I stopped celebrating my birthday during my undergraduate years, when ever additional year seemed like just another year of bitter failure. After getting into Harvard at 16 with all the world at my feet, I struggled and stumbled for the next two years, and each birthday was a mocking reminder that I had not yet met any of the goals I set myself when I entered Harvard. It was easier not to celebrate than to drag myself through a bittersweet celebration. I didn't feel I deserved to be the object of people's attention, nor receive their gifts or friendship; I was a miserable failure.

In recent times, of course, I have been doing quite well for myself and no longer face my birthday with quite so much dread. However, I have learnt to celebrate each and every achievement and now my birthday seems devoid of meaning. It's just an arbitrary date of the year, tied to the movement of the sun around the earth. Why celebrate when I can throw a party celebrating something much more significant? Life is filled with minor victories every day. Why bother with that one day when you didn't even have any control over its selection?

Furthermore, my birthday has the misfortune of falling after school closes for the winter break. I've never been able to celebrate my birthday with my friends during term time. If I were to celebrate, it would seem empty without the people who make the biggest difference to my life in the past year.

Finally, my father's birthday falls two days after mine. We used to celebrate our birthdays together. Now it is just a reminder that we can't do that any more. I light a candle every year on his birthday; that suffices for the both of us.

I know why the caged bird sings

There's always something inherently voyueristic about the arrival area of Changi Airport. Unlike other airports, the baggage claim area is seperated from the outside world by a large glass wall, merely 25 or 30 metres away. In between the baggage carousels and the wall are the customs checkpoints. These are placed a long intervals to funnel people through, so for long stretches it's just the glass wall. On the other side of the wall stand people waiting, stretching their necks and peering through the wall at the far end of the cavernous baggage claim area as people enter from the far side and approach, looking for the carousel with their bags.

I've always felt a bit self-conscious walking into that room when returning from a flight. Inevitably someone I know will be on the other side of that wall, and if I look at them I will be forced to wave and acknowledge their existence. I will then feel their eyes on me as I turn away and scan for my bags. It's like being inside a fishbowl; all you see are eyes, sweeping right, left, and looking eagerly for their target. Sometimes the eyes fix on you.

I've always felt also that seeing your family early makes it somewhat of an extended ordeal. You see then, wave happily, and want to go through and say hello; but no, first you must endure an interminable wait to get your bags. Finally, after all your excitement has worn off, you get your bags and go through. I prefer waiting until I can actually go up and speak to my family and reach out and hug them to make eye contact.

So I usually have a policy of not looking at all at the glass wall when I walk through the room, but looking immediately at my carousel and focusing on that. I feel the hairs prickling on the back of my neck and feel the weight of a thousand eyes on me, but it usually turns out to be my imagination.

When I'm on the other side of the glass, on the other hand, I try and have as much fun as possible. For example, when Ming was coming back from Penang after his swimming meet.