Friday, November 30, 2012

End of an era: Twilight




I was hearing a lot about Twilight. I saw the books displayed proudly in every single bookstore I went into. It looked like a load of hogwash. After a visit back to the first place I would call home in Taiwan, a small town called LinKou, I was walking to the bus stop and thought I would wonder into the local bookstore for something to read on the bus ride back to Taipei.

There were about three English books available, two of which I had read. The only one that remained was Twilight. I thought why not, as I wanted to see what all the fuss was about but more importantly I didn’t want to be on a bus sans reading material. The queue for the bus was outrageous, it was late and I was tired, so I decided to take a cab back to the city.

I got in the back, gave the cab driver my address and removed the cellophane wrapping from the book. I read the first few pages and did a mental WTF. By page 23 I was hooked. Even though I had work the next day, I stayed up until 4am. I would have read more, but my eyes had decided otherwise.

I woke up and all I could think about was Twilight. I went to work and during each break I would wonder how the plot would unfold. Even during my lunch break, when I would go and practice piano for half an hour each day, I still had Twilight on my mind.

After work and on the MRT (subway) on my way to my evening Chinese class, I loved the fact that a) I found a seat and b) that I could read my book. I was rather embarrassed about the cover, but after five minutes I was too engrossed in the story to care.

It took me two weeks to read all four books in the Twilight series. I made the mistake of only purchasing the first book and at 2am I had finished the book and did not have the sequel. This would not happen again! The next day during lunch, I went to the bookstore and bought the rest of the series. When I read the last page of the final book, I felt empty. Now what? My literary meth extravaganza was over. The come down was not fun.

I needed more. Enter the movie. I watched it and immediately afterwards downloaded the sheet music to learn that song that Edward plays for Bella. I got the soundtrack and till this day most of those songs are still in Most Played. Muse, a band I never even considered liking back in the day, became my favourite band of the moment. I was Twilight whipped.

From that point on, Fi and I made it a tradition that we would watch the movie on the big screen. We enjoyed the second one, watched the third one when we were waiting for our all night 5 star  bus trip to a beach town called Kenting. Eclipse is where Jacob and Edward decide to get shirtless so the movie was scattered with high pitch shrills from all of the teenage girls in the cinema. Fi was in Australia, so I went with another friend, Candice and that was a real hoot. She provides the best commentary. 

For the final one Fi, my sibling and I headed off to the cinema and were surprised by the amount of children there. I mean some of those scenes are not kid friendly. We invited my sister's boyfriend but he thought the invite was a joke and declined. Edward would do it for Bella. My sister jokes that  Twilight had ruined relationships for her. I mean how can anyone be like Edward? 


So my final thoughts can be summed up in this conversation with my dear sibling:

"I watched Zookeeper, it really made me laugh out loud."
" And you thought Twilight was lame…"