The Bucket List

picture from Warner Bros.
I've just finished watching The Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman - recommended watching if only for the concepts and the stars who carry this simply written movie.

The premise of the movie is an easy one - if you knew that you only had so long to live, what would you do with your life? And so these two terminally ill men go around making a list to things to do, literally - before they die, and then fulfilling every one of it.

I must say that my list would look a lot more different than theirs, but I actually haven't given it too much thought. I have gone skydiving (under The Perfect Day, check!) but that's pretty much it. I don't fancy the thought of travelling the world, although a trip to Anfield for a match would be a neccessary religious pilgrimage, I suspect!

I can list probably ten things, not 50:

The Top Ten Things To Do Before I Die

10. Write a book, or something of consequence. Even an e-mail would be nice, at the rate I'm going!

9. Write a love song for someone. I've only ever written one song for no one in particular, and let's just say that it's not going to top the charts, even in Taiping, Perak. I have only known how to sing other people's love songs, it would be nice to write one of my own.

8. Join Facebook. What a lame thing to be on this list. But for anyone who knows me, I am technologically resistant - I have a phone so old that it was the last remaining model in a series which was wiped out when the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs hit the earth. Seriously, my phone doesn't even have colour.

I don't MSN, I don't Facebook, and I don't blog often because I have to wait for someone to come home and turn on the computer for me. Hahaha!

7. One match in Anfield. Just among the deafening roar of the Kop. Hopefully in a Man United match. With a fully loaded sniper rifle aimed at a certain Portuguese player.

6. Go on a hot air balloon ride! I think that would be a really nice thing to do - to watch the world stir awake beneath you in the soft glow of sunrise - that would be nice!

5. Replace imaginary girlfriend with real one.

A really funny thing happened at the supermarket the other day - I was shopping with my housemate's girlfriend when I bumped into another friend. So I explained that I was in a supermarket with my housemate's girlfriend when this other friend burst into this wonderful smile and said "Why? Cannot get your own is it? Must go and borrow other people's girlfriend so that you don't look like such a loser is it?".

We laughed. I was hurting with every laugh. Hahaha! (Ouch!)

(No lah, for crying out loud, you know that it would take way more than that to ever get to me!)

4. Learn another language. It would be nice to be able to speak at least one other language apart from my very bad Malay and my Cantonese-that-has-other-Cantonese-people-laughing-so-hard-they have-Cantonese-tears-rolling-out-from-their-Cantonese-eyes-onto-their-Cantonese-cheeks.

Maybe I should just focus on improving the above two languages. Siu Je... lei ho mah? Lei jo meh siu to lei low ngan lui? (Hello, miss, how are you? Why are you laughing until you've got Cantonese tears rolling from your Cantonese eyes onto your Cantonese cheeks?)

3. Witness something truly majestic. Okay, this one I borrowed from the movie.

When I say majestic, I mean breathtakingly so. And this could be man-made (the view of Hong Kong island at night from Kowloon comes to mind - sure it's artificial neon lights, but it is beautiful!)

But I would love to see the NorthernLights or the Aurora just once in my lifetime. Although that means I would need to travel. And risk the wrath of the penguins and their machine guns.

2. Learn to scuba dive. Stupid scuba diving requires you to take a course so that you don't die while doing it. I didn't have to take a course to skydive, and I could have died from that, couldn't I? (although it did feel like dying!)

Anyway, rant aside... the ocean fascinates me no end - the eerie silence of the sea with swarms of living things submerged beyond the reach of the light of the sun - I would love to be able to swim next to a whale and be dwarfed by its majestic size in the absolute pitch blackness and solitude of the sea. Or swim next to a turtle older than time itself, or be passed by a school of fishes so exotic and beautiful you have to stop and stare as they stream past you.


picture from oceanphotos.com

1. Look at the stars again in a place unpolluted by light.

I have had only one chance to do that - I was seventeen and I followed two friends up Cameron Highlands - as chaperone if you will. They were two of my good friends, and they were starting out on a relationship and they wanted me there as chaperone - so that they wouldn't do Un-Christian things, you know (like share an ice-cream).

Anyway, so here I was the brightest lamp post of all times, the squeakiest third wheel of all times, the (hmm, I don't know any other analogies for someone who's not supposed to be at present when a couple is dating). It was quite fun, although it left me to be alone for long measures at a time, but I had the pleasure one night on my solitary walks of seeing the sky filled with stars.

Filled. In a way that you can only cock your head backwards and stare until your neck hurts. In a way that you can only watch mouth wide open and think about how each star is a planet, and how small and insignificant you are and how mind-blowing it is that God would take notice of you.

We only see 1/1 000 000th of the stars that are present at night in the city due to light pollution. The night sky is actually saturated with stars, with only bits of darkness in between. Millions of bright dots overwhelming a midnight sky, specks scattered by God's paintbrush across the silky black canvas of night.

I hope one day to see a night sky again filled with stars, to be inspired from the very core of my being and to know that I am loved.


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