Yup, that’s about it. My lame excuse for writing about a cheesy Taiwanese romantic comedy.
Gross, right?
Even worse, the cheesiness actually worked on me.
Yuck.
With the slapstick comedy that only Asians make work, “Love in Disguise” is just as captivating as its title - aka only reason I chose to watch the film. (“Bruce Lee, My Brother” was a close second.). The movie focused on popstar named DMH, who, after accidentally hitting Song Xiaoqing, guzheng extraordinaire, in a comedic how-could-she-have-lived-through-that vehicular-pedestrian mishap, falls in love with her, Eventually, he decides to don a “probinsyano” costume to enroll in some musical academy (‘cause you know, music academicians totally go fangirl mode over KPop-ish artists) to get to know her better. And yes, exactly like you guessed – girl starts to fall in love with pretentious boy; secret gets revealed; girl gets hurt; guy goes back to fame, and girl wallows in self-pity, that’s if, of course, she’s not too busy throwing bitch fits in boy’s autograph-signing sessions.
Geez, it’s like Camp Rock with rice.
And of course, as it goes, we can’t leave the story on a sad note, can we? No. Cause eventually, DMH says sorry; Song forgives him; and they live forever happily in love.
Oh wait, sorry.
“It’s not love, it’s soulmates.” (DMH, 2011 - as seen in the English captions of EVA Airlines)
Psh, soulmates. What a silly term. And to add to the silliness is that, as if on cue, Train’s Marry Me plays through the earphones of the, again, in-flight entertainment system. Geez. Yet, no matter how silly I claim for it to be, there is some strange affinity between this terminology and my recent experiences.
Let’s see…
- Met at the right place, though wrong time, and yet eventually, things just went where they should have been? Check.
- Randomly passing by her house one day to find out she’s on her way out as well for no reason at all? Uh-huh.
- Catching both of you being isolated by your circle of friends thanks to a syntax and language that only you two seem to understand? Yep.
- Finding out more and more each day how she’s the penis-less version of you? Double check.
No. I don’t believe in soulmates. But with all these evidence right here, who am I to deny them, right? RIGHT?
Wrong. Cause if I start believing in the idea of having soulmates, then I may as well accept the concept of, prepare to shudder, meant-to-be’s.
*shudders*
Fate? Destiny? Serendipity? Psh. Please. If all of these exist, then why do we even bother to think about the things we do in our everyday lives? If there really is a Ms. X for me, they why do I have to waste time, money, and effort on Ms. A to Ms. W? And more importantly, why the need to endure 18 kinds of pain if everything is already mapped out helpless?
WAIT. STOP. SHUT UP RIGHT THERE.
I KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING NOW.
“But LJ, pain is part of everything. Pain is part of those mapped-out lans. There’s a lesson to be blah blah blah.”
Seriously. Shut up.
I’ve always believed that everything in this universe has its own specific purpose, a Laoist point of view, an ex-thing once told me. Pain, in this sense, serves a negative purpose, and should be treated only as such – no silver lining, no pots of gold, and, goddamnit, no lessons to be learned. After all, the lessons come after the pain, most often than not, even forcibly so. So the lessons, if such even exist, serves a different purpose. Pain is pain. It is supposed to hurt. And it’s part of life because we chose to make it part of our lives; not because the experiences of it were, ugh, meant to happen.
Two hours down and apparently, I am already somewhere above Tokyo. At the rate I’m going, I could make three more of these drawn our raitings.
But meh, there aren’t enough Asian rom-coms in this flight.
Perhaps I should ask what Bruce Lee’s brother what he thinks.
