Going off schedule

Last evening was the first time this year I was in a movie theatre. I’d forgotten what it is like to truly immerse and lose yourself into something. It’s wonderful. For those two or so hours I am absolutely locked into the world the movie is presenting. No smartphone, no distractions. You can momentarily forget about whatever that is troubling you out in the real world. Oh right, I got to do that important thing for work next week…

The movie I saw was the fourth Spider-Man movie headlined by Tom Holland. Kudos to director Destin Daniel Cretton on a fantastic job. We always love seeing Asians representing and making an impact in the wider American culture.

A Saturday night out to the movies wouldn’t be my standard cup of coffee. Because the later show times affectively delay my beginning hours of sleep. When you’re a serial life optimizer like myself, deviation from the practice can lead to not only the initial pain of going off schedule, but also the anxiety of the cascading effects caused by the deviation. Any true gym-rat can attest that missing one workout session can feel like a regression of all the recent gains, and a ruiner of subsequent sessions.

Declining to see a late movie with your friend simply because you’ve got a sleep schedule to adhere to is a terrible way to live. Optimization in it of itself is fine because I think that’s how we get to consistency. Then the habit becomes a self-sustaining flywheel. So perhaps initially you should be rather strict about working out at a specific time - all the time, or an absolute ban on certain foods because you’ve got diet goals.

It is then difficult to get out of that mode because obviously the optimization has given you positive results. Otherwise it wouldn’t have grown to become habits. So you feel like you cannot deviate. But it is crucial that once the flywheel is achieved, we allow some randomness and serendipity back into the schedule. A compromised night of sleep will be forgotten in a few days. The time spent with friends enjoying a movie is a pleasant memory worth remembering.

That’s the central theme I got out of Spider-Man: Brand New Day: it’s fine to work on yourself and go at it alone for a while, but eventually you will need friends and human interaction to have a fulfilling life.

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Hydration break.

Perfect Days

It’s rare to watch a movie and have it resonate with me so profoundly.

On a usual browse through Reddit, a user turned me onto the movie called Perfect Days. It’s a Japanese language film set in Japan, directed by a German director (Wim Wenders). The movie details the daily routine of a public toilets janitor in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Perfect Days was nominated in the Best International Feature Film category at the 96th Academy Awards.

The main character Hirayama is a near mirror image of my proclivities. Toilet cleaner may be a mundane job, but it allows Hirayama leisure time to tend to his hobbies. Like my IT support role at a university, I put in my weekly 40 hours and never have to think about work outside it. I have great leisure to pursue hobbies such as photography, which also happens to be Hirayama’s passion. He enjoys listening to music too (on cassette tapes), which, don’t we all.

When he is on the job, though, Hirayama takes it very seriously - unlike his partner Takashi. There’s excellence to be had, high standards to achieve, even for cleaning toilets. You don’t give any less effort just because the job is low on societal perception, or the pay is horrible. I appreciate Hirayama taking immense pride in his work. Whether we’ve gave our best is something we innately know.

Hirayama is a man of routine, as am I. His workday and weekend never change. He does the same thing and goes to the same places. He wears the same clothes, too. That is all me in real life. Hirayama’s life is so routinized that he gets upset when life’s unforeseen happenstances interrupt the order. Something as simple as not having the same available seat/table at his usual restaurant. I too get upset when my usual parking spot in front of the home is taken by another.

I also get uncomfortable when my normal routine is interrupted with the necessities of social life. Don’t get me wrong: I greatly cherish my time with friends and family. However, there’s no denying that there is a trade-off. Having dim-sim on a Saturday morning means I can’t have my beloved coffee time lounging on the couch, by the window.

The key lesson of Perfect Days is there is sublime in the mundane. A mere toilet cleaner who enjoys photography can have a such a fulfilling and happy life. No matter how much we chase after novelty, most of our days are going to be the same, one after another. I think it serves us better to notice the beautiful and joy in that same boringness.

Evening blues.

Be careful why you strive for

The movie The Menu. Ralph Fiennes plays a renowned chef that serves an exclusive clientele on a private island. As the evening goes on, the guests’ past misdeeds come back to haunt them in devastating fashion. Of the many messages to garner from this film, the one that stuck with me is: Fiennes’ character was happiest when he was just a lowly cook making fast food cheeseburgers.

Imagine that: this famous chef, with patrons paying thousands for a table, a stable of cooks under him, is not happy. All the striving for money and recognition cannot compete with the complete satisfaction of cooking a good cheeseburger. Be cautious of the achievement treadmill! Much like the hedonic treadmill, the pitfall is the state of being unsatisfied until blank happens. What happens then is you’ll always be miserable, because there’s always something else to chase after achieving the current thing.

Look at car enthusiasts with vast collections, or the not-so-rich enthusiasts who can’t seem to keep the same car around (that’s me!). The endless desire for something new and different causes us to forget how much we wanted the thing we currently have, and how happy we were - momentarily, it would seem - when we first got it. If I could do it all over again, I probably would have kept the 2016 Mazda Miata I had until now.

There’s happiness to be found in stasis. There’s got to be a reasonable endpoint to all the striving. After which we chase after new goals for the sake of them alone, and not because they will bring additional units of happiness - because they won’t. Reflect on whether that new thing or achievement is really what you want. I think if Fiennes’ character can do it all over again, he would have kept making cheeseburgers as just another cook in a kitchen.

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Indeed it is.

On the 'Crazy Rich Asians' movie

As soon as I finished reading Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians, I immediately thought that it'd be great if it were adapted into a movie. Fast forward a few years later and it's the opening weekend of said movie this weekend. I've been eagerly waiting for it since the project was announced almost two years ago, and I cannot wait to completely obliterate the film for any deviation or omission from the book.

Kidding not kidding; what do you mean Astrid is a Young and not a Leong? 

Anticipation for a good nitpicking session aside, the Crazy Rich Asians movie is getting massive buzz for being the first major studio-backed film to star a majority Asian cast: 25 years since The Joy Luck Club. 25 years! If you thought African-Americans had it difficult with representation in Hollywood with the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Asian-Americans are might as well be invisible. I'm still waiting for the first Asian-American cast member to feature on Saturday Night Live, a show that's been airing for four decades.  

So it's a great occasion, and if you are any parts Asian at all we owe it to our culture to support the Crazy Rich Asian movie, because it must succeed: Hollywood simply won't tolerate its failure. We know the chance is high if Crazy Rich Asians bombs at the box office it'll be another 25 years until the next movie with an Asian cast. That's just how it works and has worked. 

I'm especially happy for the people who are moved to great emotion in seeing Asian representation on the silver screen. Personally I grew up watching Asian movies and television shows so the issue of "representation" was never a big deal for me, because I easily recognized myself in the media I was consuming. That said I greatly appreciate what Crazy Rich Asians symbolizes for many Asian-Americans, and I hope the movie opens the floodgates for many more art projects by Asians to come to the mainstream. 

A quick shoutout to Justin Lin and his seminal Better Luck Tomorrow. It wasn't a major studio film, but it was the first American movie that I saw proper representation: Asian characters as every day people I know, and not the usual kung-fu fighting or submissive damsel. Crazy Rich Asians bows its head to Lin's achievement. 

Early morning setups are always fun and drowsy. Good thing there's catered breakfast which means an abundance of coffee. 

It's on the list

Grand Budapest Hotel. If there’s one movie I’ve got to watch over spring break, that is it. Wes Anderson is the man.