Another Grandpa

Me, my brother and our grandpa one afternoon at the Ｓｔａｒ　ｃｉｎｅｐｌｅｘ　cinema in kuching after watching Mission Impossible 3 a couple months back. We moved the big cardboard standee into position to get the correct light to take this picture as bemused cinema attendants look on...it's as if we were posing to celebrate some grand premiere... quick...where's Tom Cruise? ahhh...but we've got a bigger star in our midst...who needs tom cruise when you've got... grandpa. My grandpa...from my mother's side is the man who first made me fall in love with cinema and set me on the course to being a filmmaker.

As I had a working mother, my grandpa and grandma was given the task of babysitting me. As I was an overactive kid capable of climbing chairs and an assortment of misbehaviours.Let me give you an example...I once trashed a 'longan'(whitish flesh thumbsized rounded succulent fruit with a brown thin skin) can about hammering it with furniture, throwing it about and kicking it until it leaked because my grandma won't open it for me as she says I have not had lunch. I guess saying was not easy to babysit is an understatement...

Then my grandfather discovered something...in the cinema, i sat stone still watching movies...so every afternoon...babysitting time...it was off to the cinema and hence I grew to love the cinema. Ticket prices were cheap...and he never paid for me as I was supposedly going to sit on his lap...this went on for many years. When VCD came out I watched it at home with kung kung. He was wowed by the special effects of films like titanic and vertical limits swearing that people has to have died to make the film.It's always 'kung-kung kwa he!' (hokkien for Grandpa,lets watch a movie!)

So now when I come home to kuching it's always...I want to bring grandpa to the cinema.But of late, grandpa has been becoming more and more reluctant to go to the cinema...because his hearing and eyesight is failing slowly being 82+...so he doesn't enjoy it as much anymore...he comes up with excuses not to go...i can't drive...I say I will...he says the theatre is cold...I say I'll bring him a jacket and buy him a hot milo...he says he can't hear properly...i say the cinema's very loud and I've already bought the ticket. And so...he comes along...

There is a special something for me when I sit in a dimly lit air-conditioned room with my grandpa watching Mission Impossible 3. I just hope he enjoys it as much...so as we walked out of the cinema...I asked him...how's the movie?...to which he replied...'We've seen it before!

In my heart...i said to myself 'Yes grandpa...we've seen it before!'