000029 - questions and answers

when the first chapter was released, the promotion tag line was what is the matrix? it used curiosity and the inquisitiveness of movie going audience to find out for themselves what it was they were asking. of course like all things in life, many who watched the movie came out with more questions rather than answers. the sequel to this movie, matrix: reloaded was released around mid year and many critics thought it was a reharsh of the first movie; there was a sense of "seen that, done that already" feel and some complained there were a few unnecessary scenes that dragged on at the start. after watching matrix: revolutions, the finale to this movie trilogy today, those mentioned scenes were definitely necessary in order to setup the viewer to care about this made-believe world and it's inhabitants since there was a massive machine war/invasion in this part of the movie.

so what do i think the matrix is? the theme "choice" is driven pretty hard in all 3 movies, but i think if you read between the lines from all the philosophical questions and dialogue that these movies asked from neo, trinity, morpheus, agent smith, the architect and the oracle, it's really asking "what is life?" co-existance of humans with robots/programs requires the question to be asked, "what is humanity?" which leads to questions like: what is love? what is hate? how come we smile? how come we get hurt? what are feelings? why do we cry? why do we strife for things in life? every individual 'entity' is different in some way or the other whether by nature or nurture, so the answers for these questions will always vary.

to look at it more literally though, however, agent smith was a just virus that needed to be cleaned from the matrix mainframe/OS.

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satorare is a japanese tv drama comedy series that i'm currently addicted to. i really enjoy the characters and the underlying themes of loneliness, isolation and being treated differently from the crowd at that's something i empathize with sometimes. i know i have mentioned previously how i value companionship (both friendship and love) as the most important thing one should strife for in life, so i won't go into that topic this time especially after all the babble i typed at the start.

satorare means transparent in japanese. it's about a rare phenomenon where a person is born with the ability to project his inner most thoughts unknownly to anybody within a 10-12 meter radius of him/her. the interesting story in this series is that the lead character is a doctor and because he's a satorare, his patients gets to hear the *real* diagnosis instead of what comes out of his mouth. there's also an extra tension in the surgery because his thoughts are aloud and the family members waiting outside care hear the dread. so the hospital gives him really mundane task to keep him away from the real doctor/patient work. meanwhile no one wants to be his friend or girlfriend because people would get to hear all about their secrets if they ever got close or people would generally treat him as a freak...

i will be flying tomorrow. i'm quite nervous and really excited at the same time. i'm nervous about the uncertainties as there are no absolute guarantees in what tomorrow or the day after might bring; but i'm excited because i have hope and i have something or rather someone to look forward to!!