Hi everyone,

Just arrived in Beijing day before yesterday after an 11 hour flight from Vancouver. Flight was great – 3 movies – the first a tearjerker as usual, someone always dies at the end and good thing i brought hankies. The second was a kinda silly chinese film, overdubbed, about comical slapstick yoga masters grinning sheepishly while contorting themselves into weird physical positions and racing to get to the finish line. The last film was Ocean 11 or whatever with brad pitt and the gang – the film projector short-circuited halfway thru – yeah !

At the Vancouver airport an older gentleman and his wife came up to and almost hugged me, eyes sparkling, their 20 something son standing 3 metres away appearing a little embarassed, exclaiming how much they loved the film and what a great job. Nice. Then at gate D54 just before boarding over a bowl of noodles a young man of swarthy complexion comes up to me like he knows me, very familiar, sits down and says how he saw the film and it was ‘very impressing’. ‘Fantastic’. ‘To be able to sing other languages’, ‘travelling back and forth’ . I asked him, he was Iranian-Canadian, about 22 years old I think, very sincere, outgoing. He said he had called his friends to see the doc, but his friends told him ‘whats the use?’. On the spot I sang a few lines from Mikham Beram Koo, a traditional Persian folksong. He was very ‘impressing’. As he walked away, he said what i’ve heard so many other people say, that makes all this worthwhile, that gives this meaning, that makes me feel love: ‘Good work – keep going.’

And this I hear from complete strangers , never from the people around me.
I shall keep going.
George