Finding Gold Spontaneously... (Again!)

          You know what makes me content about living where I do?...
It's that art and its appreciation are definitely not dead in Bangkok. I've seen it - literally.
          Recently, I devoted my waking hours of three days in a row to watching European independent films at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Had it not been for a little complaint from the parents I would have gone the fourth and final day. Deep regrets. Even when I wasn't watching the movies, I was at the Centre admiring Thai art exhibitions, getting a charcoal portrait of myself done in 10 minutes (actually more like 15, but that's still impressive), and delighting on rare ice cream flavors. I have no idea why I did not know about this very assessible place before. Makes me feel like I've wasted a lot of leisure time in my life.
          Anyways, how I ventured upon this event is another one of my spontaneous experiences. (Funny isn't it that I tend to find museums this way and end up enjoying them so much!) The story is that I came back from the US, craving to play aikido (the martial arts I keep up with), so I went last Wednesday and was handed a flyer by a friend. To be honest, going to watch foreign films sounded very interesting, but at the time I felt like it was never going to happen. I would probably be busy with catching up in summer school. No one else would probably want to go with me. I'm not familiar with the venue...
         So then the next day, I showed up for my faculty's photography club at 4 pm. It was the first meet and I predicted that it would end late, but all we did was introduce ourselves to people we already know... (smirk). What made me take another look at the flyersitting at the bottom of my bag was a conversation I had with someone-I-already-knew during the meet. She was talking about her plans to watch the final Harry Potter movie. I had plans too, but listening to her more thought-out plans, I realized how impossible it would be to get tickets at that point during the long weekend.
          I guess I was still determined to watch a movie over the long weekend, so I looked at the flyer, saw that a movie was playing at that very moment, turned on the GPS map-app on my Blackberry, and navigated my way to the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre! And it was raining! Talk about doing things on a whim.
          When I walked into the theater, the French movie playing was already an hour in, but it still moved me. Then I caught all of the last film of the day, a witty documentary from the UK. A long applause from the audience on that one.
          I left the building, realizing I had struck gold.
[Photos & movie reviews to come. I'm off to take a midterm exam!]