Darin & Maggie Visit the Cinema - Posted by Darin

Maggie's parents told us that "Little Miss Sunshine" is a must-see, so last night we met at the Plaza Singapura shopping center to our first movie here. Theaters in Singapore have assigned seating, so after we purchased our tickets, we were free to relax until the electronic sign-board indicated that the theater was ready for seating.
We wandered into the arcade see what it was all about and found it to have a distinctly different feel from American arcades. For one thing, the patrons were mostly in their 20s. Few teenagers were seen, and competitive fighting games far outnumbered the racing games that tend to dominate American arcades. Three games in particular caught my eye:
1. Photo Y2K. Two young men played this game on a large touchscreen. Two seemingly identical photos are shown side-by-side, and you must identify the diferences in the picture by touching them. I was shocked that two young men paid money to play this game.
2. Master Drummer - This game is similar to Dance Dance Revolution. A large screen displays six tracks of drum scores. The player sits in front of six drums and must play the exact arrangement for the song which is playing. For each drum beat on each of the six tracks, there is immediate feedback as to the accuracy of the player's rythm. The player's friend looked on as if anxious to take his turn.
3. Master Guitar - Yep, this game is almost identical to Master Drummer, except you play a guitar along with a soundtrack and get rated on the accuracy of your notes and rythm. An adoring girlfriend accompanied the man on this game. The man appeared to be in his early 30s, and was taking the game quite seriously. He was extremely accurate according to the display, and held himself with the confidence of a seasoned professional, playing yet another gig in another city on a long tour.
There were few patrons inside our theater. Partly because Little Miss Sunshine is not a new release; partly because it's not a horror film (The Sinking of Tokyo is big now); and partly because it's an English language film. When my colleague at work, Zhang Hua, asked about my weekend plans, she seemed excited when I told her we would see a movie. When I told her the name of the movie, her excitement waned and she said: "Oh, an English movie". Her favorite movies are those where it starts with about six main characters, and "each gets killed one by one".
The movie was great. There are some great actors and I recognized some of the scenery as being filmed in the desert of Southern California where I grew up. The family in the movie drives an old VW Van that winds up having two mechanical problems: a burned out clutch, and a horn that honks at random times. They have to travel from Arizona to California without a clutch, which means getting a rolling start and easing the van into 3rd gear.
This might have seemed a bit contrived to most of the movie patrons, but I distinctly remember our VW van having the same issues when I was growing up. The horn would honk randomly when the key was turned either on or off. Once, my dad was in his Los Angeles Deputy Marshal uniform and needed to serve a summons to a bar owner. The bar was on Dad's way home from work, so he drove our VW Van to the bar. As he parked the van, an old bar fly was walking from her car to the bar entrance. The VW horn honked just as she passed in front of the van, and the lady looked to see who was honking. When she saw the uniform, she perked up and gave Dad a very friendly smile. He was horrified by the episide and vowed never to work from his personal vehicle again.
Another time, Mom was driving the van when the clutch cable broke. She was so flustered that when she got a ride home, she told Dad that the brakes were out. Dad and I arrived at the van to find it with working brakes, but no clutch. Dad said we could push start it in first gear and I could drive it home in first. It was easy to start, but first gear was very slow, so I pushed my luck and attempted a shift to second (with no clutch). There was no grinding at all, and the shift went without a hitch. Believe it or not, I worked all the way up to 4th and back down to 1st by the time I reached the house. Those Germans know how to build a transmission. It was perfectly synchronized, as long as you kept the RPMs at the right level.
Anyway, we had planned to eat at our favorite Thai restaurant after the movie, but there was a long queue, so we went to the outdoor Vietnamese place. Our appetizer was shrimp ball on the end of the stick of sugar cane and some dipping sauce. It was fantastic. I ordered the chilli and lemongrass chicken for my main course, and found myself faced with chicken parts that I could not identify. They were all knurled and twisty bits of chicken, alternately chewy or melt-in-your-mouth fatty, with splinters of bone throughout. Meals like this one have forced me to eat largely vegetarian food during our stay here.