A day with a friend

I met up with a dear married friend yesterday for a screening of Summer Snow, followed by a Q&A session with the director Ann Hui. Questions flowed and Ann Hui was asked: "If not films, then what?" Her reply was: "Well, I'm already 60!" She added that she was going to keep on making movies, one project after another. She wanted to make movies about social issues that people tended not to talk about but which she felt was important to bring attention to. I got to thinking about whether we will see more directors of her calibre and her social sensitivity in Asian cinema or whether directors like her were already a dying breed.


After the Q&A session, we drove and parked at a hotel opposite the Esplanade. We walked along the road and my friend pointed to a tree and said: "That's a bottle tree." She told me she had wanted to take up a course in horticulture when she had just finished her PhD. We crossed the road and headed to Glutton's Square, choosing a table facing the river. I noticed the couple beside us because they were Korean and they had just finished their stingray dinner. My friend had been craving for Milo even before the movie screening. Both of us drank Milo and mineral water. The night was cool and breezy. Although it was very crowded, I heard only her voice as she updated me on her life. We had not seen each other since Christmas, and it was a joy for me to sit there just listening to her and knowing that time has not distanced us. We got to talking about lots of things. We discussed Kawabata and how we both recently bought a book of his - The Sound of the Mountain. I was describing how I felt about Kawabata - that he was a beautiful writer and he said so much with so few words. She said: "Stripping away, right?" I said: "Right! It's like he just included only the essence." She then told me about Kawabata's Nobel Prize address and gave me the gist of it - he felt that the Western world viewed his writing as nihilism, but to him, it was Zen.


She then suggested a walk along the Esplanade. We got up and started walking. Not at a hurried pace, but a comfortable leisurely one. I hadn't done such a thing in a long while. It was fun and refreshing. We walked past drink stands, a band performance, some ("disturbing" to her, "ugly" to me) big-sized Chinese New Year dolls under the bridge, and finally surfacing above the bridge. She told me how much the area had changed, where the satay stalls used to be, where the old Esplanade used to be, where Lim Bo Seng's memorial stood and why she was familiar with the place because she had visited it quite a bit before she went abroad for her undergraduate studies. I told her that a building across us looked very nice lit up in red. She looked at me, and laughingly said: "That's the Supreme Court!".


We then walked back. I told her trees were underappreciated. And that whenever I took a cab along the Bukit Timah Expressway to work, I would look at the trees lining the road and think: "God, how wonderful is your creation," and "God, these trees will still be here even after I'm gone." She said my thoughts were a sign that I have aged. And that we now look at nature very differently than when we were young because the notion of mortality grows on us. Then we fell back to talking about the Japanese writers. She spoke about how they really "get it" - the fleeting moment, the transient, the ephemeral which come across very strongly in their writing. She attributed it to the seasons - how the seasons are a big thing in Japan, how restaurants changed their menus according to the seasons, how the seasons are celebrated differently as well. Changes and more changes.


We returned to the Esplanade and I told her that I had not been to the concert hall yet. She suggested that I check out this Chinese pianist Sa Chen who will be performing in March. So we went into the Esplanade and I got a flyer on Sa Chen and the Hua Yi booklet. We then walked back to the carpark at the hotel. Along the road, she stood up and walked along the raised ledge while I was walking on the pavement. I told her wryly that it's the only way for her to be taller than me. Then I asked her how tall she was and she said she was originally 1.53m tall but she's now 1.54m tall because of pilates. I said: "Wow, what a ringing endorsement for pilates!" She laughed. We crossed the road and headed into the carpark. I told her that I really enjoyed the evening because it was so wonderful and we didn't even spend a lot. And that to me, it was a perfect moment. She said we should do this more often.


We reached her car. I told her that I was going for an office gathering at Dempsey Road, and she gave me a lift there because it was near her home. When we reached Dempsey Road, I got out of her car and thanked her and told her to drive safely home. When I returned home after the office gathering, she e-mailed me and said she had a very nice evening and she had to simply blog about it - http://www.quietnotes.blogspot.com