The city dark

I love trailers. I think i love trailers more than movies. That would be my ideal career option. Give me a movie. Let me watch the movie three times and i will give you the best possible trailer you can have.

So as you can imagine, apple trailers webpage, is one of the top 10 webpages i frequent. On my chrome, that is usually third or second most visited webpage, after facebook and gmail and possibly engadget.

I saw this beautiful trailer few days back. And immediately understood the movie and felt it is worthwhile to share it. I have attached the youtube video below, since i am yet to figure out how to embed quicktime videos. Apple runs a very tight ship.

I have not seen the movie yet. I havent read any reviews yet. But i must agree with what is said in this trailer. Some of the most beautiful moments in life are when you realize your life is immaterial. That is what always strikes me, every time i am confronted with nature. The 2 or 3% return on your investment or the bonus that you are missing out on or the promotion which you didnt get are all so immaterial. Every single time, i stand before an ocean, i am confronted with the depth and the secrets it holds. The vast nothingness hits you in the face every time. Maybe it is just a pessimistic view on life. We do lead a rather immaterial life. Little murmer from nature can simply wipe us out. But all that matters to us are the simple silly things.

It is astonishing how much people forget their place in life. It is astonishing to me how useless we have been and how short sighted we have been and still are. This movie to some extent reminds me of that. This trailer reminds me that people have forgotten what their place is. Us not seeing the sky at night does have a subtle effect in our thinking.

Leaving all the psychology, sky watching is just an amazing experience. I had a friend in school. We both loved astronomy. He once told me, all he wanted in life was the hubble telescope and he would happily spend the rest of his life watching stars. That sounded a bit far-fetched for me. But i admired his passion. My friend could plot the constellations and he could always differentiate the stars from the planets. To me it looked the same. There is no way of knowing if he was actually right, but i admired his conviction and his enthusiasm rubbed off a little bit on me. That is how i got interested in star gazing.

I rarely see stars in singapore. This place is easily one of the most-lit places in the world. I did an internship in an engineering company and was incharge of circuitry for an oil plant. As part of the job, i was asked to read through so many industry regulations. One thing that struck me is the lumen requirement in singapore standards. The govt here actually specifies how well-lit a place should be. There are minimum standards. A place has to have so much lumens of light. There are so many rules on avoiding and overcoming shadows and so many rules on the type and colour of lights to be used in public places. It is just overwhelming. Dont get me wrong here. These rules exist in every country. But singapore govt rules sounded a bit over the top. But in their defense, they are trying to be more secure and create a safe country.

My point is, i rarely see stars in singapore. That is one of the things i miss here in singapore. It is not just the inability to see due to light pollution, but also the lack of time and the hardships of a urban life. It is probably not worthwhile lamenting about this now. We cannot give up the busy lifestyle that we lead. We cannot just switch off the lights during nights. In places like india, entire country would be robbed if we live in darkness.

But one consolation is, there are still few places in the world, where you can still be lost in nature. There are few places in the world, which are still offline, so to speak. Laos is one of them. One reason why i love the country and why i keep going back there, even after facing life threatening problems.

My Laos experience was amazing. That is for some other time.