Sound of Music

I think I must have watched The Sound of Music approximately 16000 times, but it's such a classic it's difficult not to love it.

It's such a wonderful film, so timeless and perfect. It's like George Orwell's Animal Farm, when you read or watch it for the first time in your childhood, it's just a book or film with fun and music, but as you grow older you start to realise that there're so many, many more levels to the book or movie to be explored.

The theme of love runs deep in The Sound of Music. The quality of emotion is strangely simplistic in modern terms, a governess falls for her impossible charges, then falls in love with their father, who strangely enough loves her too. But there's also patriotic love, because the story is set during the Nazi regime, and Captain von Trapp is dead loyal to his country, Austria.

But if I lived in a country as beautiful as Austria in those days I think I would be darn proud of her too.

I actually feel a little envious when I watch Captain von Trapp sing Edelweiss with such enormous emotion and affection. I know of course that he's just acting (he's Christopher Plummer by the way, and you might have caught him as Keanu Reeves' dad in The Lake House), but it makes me sad that I will probably never will have a national folk dance to be proud of, a beautiful national song that everyone can sing with pride and in unison, snowy mountains or luscious hills to remember my hometown by or even to have a ethnic costume boast of for that matter.

Not that there's anything about Singapore to complain about. In fact Singapore's a wonderful place. The roads are safe even at night, the air is fresh and clean (and I really do appreciate it after Hong Kong), and most people are innocent, kind and helpful.

Perhaps its because of globalisation - people can go anywhere they want to go, or disinterest, or even a greater disenchantment with life, people just don't feel all that charged with emotion when we talk about nationality anymore. t's sad, but I guess it's true to a certain that we'll probably never love our country as much as we love ourselves anymore.