Ponder

What is happiness?

Is it the presence of joy or merely an absence of sorrow.
Lately i wonder what really makes me happy or unsatisfied about my life & job.
Heheh long hours.. sure! As long as it pay the bills, I'm ok with it.

But having thought hard about it, it's the opportunity of getting know your patient as a human being rather than merely a case. So in our mind... "Mr liver failure behind curtain no.4" is no more just another patient, but has become a face with a pesona who turns out to be a loving husband who always put extra-hours at pasar malam to support his family. Or a novelist who failed twice in her marriage knowing that she will die of cancer in 2-3 days time... alone, with no offsprings.

It's the privilege and humility of being granted the access to another people's life and even intimate part of their history. Every patient who walks in has a 'journey' that could be learned from.

Not all of us docs feel the same, their contention being getting too close will end up taxing you emotionally when patient dies. Detachment may be a good thing, some sort of defense mechanism to our fragile heart. An overdose of ill patients & death could numb the mind of even a veteran doc.

You guys have any personal encounter with docs?... ones that inspires us to become better people... or ones that leave us in anger

5 love stories and a pirate of DVDs

Initially I plan to watch Happy Feet this weekend. However ended up watching 2 local movies instead. Phew! A record. Well folks Ciplak & Cinta prove that Malaysia can still produce good quality movies.


CIPLAK
(PULP FICTION meets SNATCH) A low budget indie movie yet an impressive 1st outing for this malay dude! The strength mostly come from clever editing, story development and fine acting. Sure there is some 'ciplak' directorial style from his idol K.smith & Tarantino, but the result is something to be proud of. The nonchalant humour works well with this guy.

The only thing is.. sometimes it's quite difficult for me to understand his thick UK accent/slang. English subtitle will be helpful though haha!
Very promising talent. Hopefully he'll get some $$ return for a bigger production next time


CINTA
LOVE ACTUALY meets 'nasi lemak' (surprisingly much better!!)
It has all the elements of great story telling & love that trancend all walk of life which works well with our multi-facet society. The idea of love can exist in many forms i.e sacrifice, unconditional, siblings, is rarely potrayed in modern malay films. Kudos to the great effort! The cinematography cleverly captured both urban and rural feel of KL.

However putting 5 stories may have put a toll on some plots and its character development. The ones that have better premise for more story-development are the married couple & siblings. Dato' Rahim, Fasha, Rashidi (eg. telling his story to Nanu at building site), and Nanu have all put up convincing performance.

Rita and Eizlan have shown their hidden talents in this movie, albeit not consistently shown in some scenes (i.e. press conference). Love the flashback scenes... Sadly I feel Amani didn't show her natural acting strength - previously seen in SEPET & GUBRA. ...

Oh btw, that little girl can really act huh!