Thoughts of the Day: "The Ramen Girl"

Today a fashion shop on Facebook has a thread asking their customers about their feeling when they first received their college entrance exam scores. I supposed they ask those kids who just went through this brutal and stressful test to graduate high school last month and were scared shitless when they typed their registration number on the website yesterday. But who cares? I could answer that question, right? No matter what, I was that kid 10 years ago. Just a decade away, that’s not so much.

Well, it’s quite a miracle and I was surprised by myself that I still have enough brain cells to remember it. So, I was lying on my bed, it was about 9 or 10 AM, my standard morning lazy sleeping time, then my friends texted me that we had our scores. My scores were alright. They weren’t greatly good but they weren't average either, even though I was disappointed a little bit because I thought I did better than that. Then again, I had a strong feeling that I will make it through.

This night, while my father and my brother-in-law were calculating my scores and the other contestants’ scores, you know, to know the “exactly” kids who had higher scores than I did, then anticipated my chance to pass the “lifetime test”, I and my sister were watching a movie on TV. I was bopping back and forth because my father and my brother kept calling me to tell that I didn’t have to worry a thing.

I wasn’t worry at all.

The significant part about this memory is I can’t even remember my true feeling or what I talked to my friends and my family or how I was happy/ bittersweet/relieved, but I do remember the heck out of the movie I was watching “The Ramen Girl”, starring the lovely actress Brittany Murphy. Such a weird choice to choose it to be a thumbnail for this turning point of my limited, little life.

Well, the movie is about a white girl who was moving to Japan with her boyfriend. Since he dumped her, she started to learn to cook ramen in a traditional ramen shop. I remember the movie so crystal and clear in a lot of parts and that I was so stunned in the end when she couldn’t pass a test to become a real ramen chef in Japanese’s standard. Her teacher/ the owner of this ramen shop had to close his shop because he bet everything of his 40 years hard work for her but she was too bold and too free to be that kind of master chef. Despite they showed the happy ending when the girl has her own ramen shop in New York and the teacher was living happily with his son in Paris, I was quite unsatisfied. The girl didn't win the the old man won't cook ramen again, I didn’t see that coming. The ending blew my stupid mind at that time for being so anti-cliché.

This movie is an important thing of my life, it was like a cement mark on the road of my own history, a thing that I always care because it happened to be there when something matter happened. When the time flies and I watch more and more movies, I realized the ending of “The Ramen Girl” makes sense and it’s better and more profound that way. The movie itself is just ordinarily fine and has so many flaws and despite I never watch it again because I’m scared to relive that part of my life, it is always holding an unshakeable place in my heart. That’s why when I heard that Brittany Murphy passed away, I felt pain and a deep melancholy for her, I really did.

The truth is I don't even know that this memory is my brain's work or my heart's work.  Either way, brain is a little weirdo and heart is a bitch, aren't they?