glibberish.

Just got back home from meeting an old college classmate who is based here. We went to this small, quiet cozy coffee shop called “After School”, somewhere in the middle of Causeway Bay, which was soon populated by seemingly artsy-type locals. (As I do not understand Cantonese, I surmised this from their external fashion and affinity for coffee, cigarettes, conversation, and small, quiet cozy places.) The shop serves excellent coffee, too.

This classmate of mine now works in one of the most prominent banks in Hong Kong. He is assertive, and knows exactly what he is doing in his life. I would do well to take on some of those traits. At our age he has more or less got it made, while I am somehow still lost in my youth, barely just even catching up to things he has grown out of from years and years ago. We got to talk about Hong Kong and what it takes to succeed here (apparently getting into investment banks is the way to go – I’m definitely sending my CV to some with visible I.T. departments).

Being used to diescussions about comics, film, and time travel, it’s good to talk about the future (e.g. reality) for a change.

Before the meeting, I stumbled myself (with some difficulty) to Cinematheque and watched Juno. With not five minutes to spare before show starts, I had to take one of the only three seats available – all at the front row. Bad idea. The theater was small, or smaller than the usual ones (very arthouse, yes), and the screen hovers 10 feet above our heads. That left us front-row patrons staring up throughout the entire movie, ending up with the distorted images from a trapezoidal widescreen.

Upside: the hotdog sandwich from the concession was huge. Oh, and the movie was good. Juno is a bit of a tamed-down Enid, I think.

And the most unusual thing. Early in the film I got surprised by the way the audience reacts – unanimously – to the movie’s verbal gags. They found funny most of the stuff I did (good I thought, which means they are as American culture-aware as an actual American), some stuff they laughed at where I didn’t (hmm, might be that cultural difference, or I was just too dumb to get them), but most of all, the suprising speed at which they react. Soon, they would burst out laughing even before the sentence was finished! What the hell was going on? And then I realized: they were reading off the Chinese subtitles.

It was quite a pain at times, because I would miss punchlines drowned out by premeditated laughter. Fortunately, I was able to deduce some out of the context of conversations.

That reminds me of when I watch foreign films with English subtitles, especially in a theater. There always is an awkward conscious nudge, during funny moments, when I try to decide whether to laugh as soon as I comprehend the joke, or allow some delay, to let the foreign-speaking character finish the line. (The latter has the benefit of getting the tone of the joke.)

One thing’s for sure – I will have my revenge when I see a Chinese movie in English subtitles.

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