I'm fine with the malay food. "I'm loving it"...
I'm fine with communication. Haven't been able to speak my first malay sentences yet, but everybody speak at least a little english.
I'm not fine with public transportation. But I'm moving to another place in a week or so.

This is what's not fine: cinema, the apple of my eyes. And I don't mean films, I mean cinema as in the whole experience of going to the cinema to watch a movie, which Maximo Cannevacci, a brazilian anthropologist, described as
being a 'urban anthropological' experience. The sitting in the dark, the rays of light comming off the projector, reflected by the screen and comming back to our eyes in as pictures in movement. Even the candies and maybe the company you have at your side.

My father always tells me the story of a journalist colleague of his a long time ago. He was blind. But on sundays he got to the cinema, bought tickets worth the whole day of sessions and just sat there.

So, little pieces of my first cinema experience in Malaysia.

I am happy that the english language films are shown in original version here. I am happy they have good theatres with fist class sound and seats (though lacking mor arty and independent productions). I am not happy with the candy counter:

SO I go to a posh mall (easy to get to) buy my ticket and get really excited over the possibility of eating popcorn. Hooray!

ME (to the candy counter lady): Can I have a regular- size popcorn and a diet coke please.
CANDY COUNTER LADY (from now on referred simply as CCL): Sweet popcorn or caramel popcorn?
ME: Ahm... Savoury popcorn?
CCL: What?
ME: Salt popcorn!
CCL: We only have Sweet popcorn or caramel popcorn.
ME: Fine, give me one sweet popcorn and one coke light.
CCL: We don't have coke light.
ME: What diet soda do you have
CCL: None.
ME sigh...

later on, in the theatre

ME (thinking to myself) great! this is almost empty. no more than ten people inside, I can choose whatever seat I want!

So, as usual, I go for the middle seat in the fifth row.
The film is about to start. A couple entes the theatre.
The couple goes to my direction. THey look at their ticket, they look at me, they look at their ticket, they look at me...

MAN: sorry, the seats 9 and 10 are ours, look (ponting me to their ticket)
ME: wow, marked seats in the cinema???? all right.

I give them their seats. I look at my ticket, my seat is in one of the back rows, by the theatre side edge. Ewww. I hate seating in the back, and I hate sitting in the corner. It ruins everything.

SO I go for the middle seat again, but in the fourth row...

Then a couple enters the theatre. They come in my direction. They look at me, then they look at their tickets, they they come closer, then they look at me, then they look at the tickets, they they look at me then they say...

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