And what better way to celebrate than traveling to Vietnam with your law school Frienemy and Co. So at 8 am, after repeated phone calls from my dear frienemy (THB), who was rightfully concerned about my ability to wake up, I rushed down to meet THB. Her roommate Erin drove us to the Halifax Airport, which is located 30 minutes inland because, I'm told, an airport in Halifax would be shut down constantly due to fog.
Trying to leave the Halifax airport was fairly straightforward, although our inability to find the check-in counter does not bode well for the more exotic segments of our trip.
It was a little awkward to have THB staring at me while I went out of my way to ignore her. But awkwardness is the price you pay when traveling with a frienemy. Fortunately, our wait in the airport was brief.
On the plane I finally got the chance to see Quantum of Solace. It didn't get great reviews, but I'm actually rather pleased with it. Sure, it lacked the gadgetry and sex inherent in every previous Bond film; but it had plenty of action and chases, weaved into a remarkably character driven story, especially for a Bond film.
At the risk of sounding like I have some kind of a Daniel Craig fetish, I decided to watch Defiance on the way over. It's the first I ever heard of this generally forgettable film.
The story is compelling: a pair of brothers in Belarus (there might be four of them, it's not clear, certainly there are two younger men from the same family floating around), are hiding in the woods following the Nazi actions in their villages. While out there they find many other survivors who have escaped being taken away by the Nazis, and end up building a camp to survive, raiding farmers for food, joining up with local Russian partisans, and periodically screwing around with the German forces to obtain weapons and supplies, as well as a dose of revenge.
It could have been awesome. But the execution was somewhat weak.
A cheap shot would be to note that Daniel Craig doesn't look even slightly Jewish, but the fact is that it's believable. First of all, they're in Belarus, so that's kind of believable. Second, he pulled off a decent acting job. In fact, all the acting is pretty good. But the plot plods along, putters really. It's strung together like multiple short stories about the same people, and there's no central theme beyond a mundane brotherly-love story that tries to extract its tension from the war around them. That's a shame, because it's based on a true story. Some people might see that as an excuse for poor editing.. I think it would have made a nice documentary.
My seatmate was an interesting fellow named Jay. A crane operator, we had a good chat about life and the like. I mentioned that my girlfriend loves ducks and alpacas, and since he grew up on a farm and liked to buy animals he discussed having raised a peacock in his garage briefly.
So where am I now? I'm at Narita Airport, in Tokyo. Unfortunately, there's not much time here. I would have loved to spend more time in Tokyo, but that's not in the cards. I head straight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in a little bit, where the weather is 30-40 degrees Celcius with humidity nearing 100%. I sure hope that Goretex investment pays off.
They have these interesting little internet rooms here. Little cubicles, power, every airport should have one. Hell, our libraries should have these... I like the layout. The prices are in Yen, so I think I'm spending a little over $6 on internet. But I'm not sure.
Ok, the malaria medication or something is giving me a mad headache.. or nausea.. time to go!
Now I want a peacock to go with my alpacas and ducks. Damnit.
ReplyDeleteMiss you.
-BGE