Day 20: Documenting a documentary

By day 20, I started to get a bit slack at maintaining my Newember resolution. I was running out of new things to do or rather getting lazy about doing my new thing. Just as I was going to conveniently "forget" about my new task for the day just before mid night yesterday, a best friend came to do what best friends are best at - "keeping you on track". That's the most amazing thing about friends, they are there to keep you going, just when you are about to quit or "forget". I do get by with a little help of my friends.

Yesterday, this help came in the form of a documentary. When I was skyping with my ex roomie from Prague, she mentioned how she was going to watch a documentary on Singapore to further familiarize herself with the place that I will kinda be calling home for the next 3 months. She is a documentary buff and I, as much as I like learning about the world around me, would rather watch sitcoms to chill. She had linked me a couple of really good documentaries which I had added to my "to-watch" folder but never really got around to watching. Yesterday she reminded me of a critically acclaimed and well received documentary on North Korea, that she had recommended a few weeks ago. It was short. It was interesting. It was new. Definitely doable in an hour and added to the new things done in November.

I watched the hour long documentary, "Welcome to North Korea", directed by a Dutch director in 2001 which won him an Emmy for the Best Documentary. It gives a hard-hitting, factual, at the same time emotional insight into life in North Korea. The documentary not only educated me and introduced me to the finer details of the bigger picture I always had known about the country, but also made me feel grateful for what I had and helpless for what I couldn't change. As a freedom loving human rights advocate, I was saddened and appalled by the situation in the country.

It was interesting to see how easily malleable people are and how the way we think, act, behave is so totally governed by our realities. It made me wonder how sustainable their state of "Juche" is and whether there will ever be an uprising in the country, similar to the ones we have seen in the Middle East and North Africa this year. I'm not sure if the citizens are living in a state of "ignorance is bliss" or if they really do want a change. It's hard to crave for things that are unknown to you and often it's best to just exist or do whatever it takes to be alive, even if it feels like they are not really living according to our Western democratized ideals.

For someone with an insatiable to explore the world around them who finds being restricted to one place unbelievably suffocating, I really did sympathize with the people of North Korea. Not only because they are living in a be-all, end-all state of impoverishment and strict control but because they are not being able to achieve their full potential and broaden their horizons. It made me feel grateful for all those things that I normally take for granted. It may sound very American-ish but it really did make me value the freedom.

I'm glad I didn't just give up on new thing for the day. This documentary gave me provided me with a buffet of new food for thought! Something that's going to keep the fire of activism in me burning! Thanks Zizi for the new thing for the day! Day 20: done!