21

Damn. I hate when I watch a new movie and say, "This is the best movie I've ever watched."

I've just watched 21. OK, it is not the best movie I've ever watched. But I really liked it. And I had the same emotions when I watched Accepted. Maybe it is because of the college thing, it relates to me.

Yup, it relates to me. And this movie relates to me even closer. Only the early parts of it. First of all, the kid is from MIT. I don't know much about MIT, I don't know much about higher level education institutions, but I do know MIT is top ten in the world, and I would love to be there (I would love even better to be in Harvard, like that kid, but MIT is probably the best for engineering).

And that kid is portrayed as a genius. I have always believed that I'm a genius, even though I never am, but I love believing that way. It comforts me. Fact is, I've never really been number one, even in school. And definitely not in my university years. It has always been number two, three, four, or like now, I don't even know where the hell do I stand. And I'm not even in MIT.

I would like to be a genius. And I love grabbing the attention of my teacher like the kid did in class. And I've read that gameshow thing before, in my pre-calculus book (yeah, how lame, but that's life before computer). If you haven't watched the movie, read here, I'm too lazy too explain, sorry.

And I love maths. Maths is the thing that makes me feel like a genius. I score close to 100 in all my additional mathematics papers in secondary school. I can't boast how it feels like, denied outings on weekends because I failed add maths, or how one-digit is considered a real failure while a two-digit F grade is 'failing to fail', because I never did. It makes me feel good, though truth is, scoring a perfect score in add maths is not genius. It is very common. It was just uncommon in my school. Here in my university, probably two out of three can tell the same thing to me, that they scored close to 100 every add maths paper they took.

So maybe I am average. I kind of want to prove that, but my school never sent a team for Olympiad (understandably so). I won a book for my academic excellence in school (ironically, it wasn't add maths - some guy really got 100s, while I only scored near misses) which is about The Last Theorem. I don't read a lot of books, so the books that I do read, I remember them quite well. This book rocketed my fascination to maths, and made me thinking, "Do I want to be a chemical engineer, a neurologist or a mathematician?" The hero in the book (there were many mathematical heroes, but the ultimate hero in the book) is Andrew Wiles, a mathematician who finally revealed the solution for Fermat's 'last theorem'; a solution that has dodged many other brilliant mathematicians for 357 years. A mathematician is in fact a lecturer, who studies maths in deep detail and giving lectures (sometimes, out of the syllabus, like when he discovers something) and that's all. A very pathetic life. Probably you can watch the movie A Beautiful Mind, and that's probably the furthest a mathematician can go - winning a Nobel prize and gets acknowledged that your findings have made big breakthroughs in economics or code-breaking. But often, mathematical findings these days mean close to nothing. It's not like you're discovering negative numbers or square roots of negative numbers, those have all been discovered centuries ago. In this late age, it is very unlikely that we can find such important mathematical findings of such great importance and yet mankind have yet to discover.

OK I'm going really far now. The point I'm trying to say is, I always wanted to be like that kid, early in the movie, where you're very humble and shy, and yet you're a gem to be discovered (no, not the gem like American Idol). I don't wish to score 4.0 flat, I just wished I am a genius.

After 22 years of living, I'm probably consigned to the admittance that I'm the very fact average. If I am a genius, I would not be here. OK even if I insist to study locally, I would not be number n. And I will probably not win a Nobel. And I would probably not have an equation or a newly-discovered element named after me. That is the painful truth. In fact, I've read the past Olympiad questions before, and I was like, "Wtf is this?"

Back to the movie, gambling sucks. Thank God gambling is illegal in my religion. I don't in any way gambling can make a society any better. Las Vegas is named Sin City, and not just because of the gambling and sex; it is because of the overall operating mechanism of the city, I can't really describe. I would never ever lay my feet on that part of Earth.

And the movie was like, "Yeah, this movie is good, but it is not legendary," to me, but I am very easily swayed by other people's opinions. I thought The Dark Knight was a good movie, but when I checked imdb, it suddenly became one of my favourites. And I thought 21 was a good movie, but when I checked imdb, my likening suddenly plummeted.

Gotta sleep. I got class tomorrow. Average students go to class. Below-average students skip class.

Epilogue: Oh ya, by the way, there are quite a number of people who said I'm a genius even when I insist I'm not because they say I still score in my exams even with very little effort. There is this quote, one of my favourites, from Thomas Edison (although he might not be particularly a nice guy, as portrayed in The Prestige):

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."