Regine – A Moving Picture Says a Million Words

Well actually Regine is the start-flag waver, the one sending me to this crazy, exciting, earth-shattering journey, haha. She is the pioneer, she is the first answered my personal ad. We email each other like seven or eight times before we decide to send each other some text messages and then phone calls. And then we decide to meet. It’s on January 2, still in lethargic new year mood. We meet in Starbucks in Setiabudi Building in Kuningan area. She’s light-skinned as a Manadonese girl should be. A little chubby but cute. She’s a movie director, pretty cool. She directed tv movies that in Bahasa we call it “sinetron”. This sinetrons is very Bollywood-y, with overly dramatic plots and verrry slow-paced scenes. Well, I thought, who knows maybe Regine will tell me all the juicy stuff on this sinetron world, with its, mostly, kinky actor and actresses, ah it would be fun. And so we’re sitting together, enjoying our coffee. Regine is a little quiet. Well ok, I thought, maybe she’s just shy. So we start the conversation with light things and overall enjoy our coffee quietly. Ten minutes later… we’re still enjoying our coffee… quietly. Another ten minutes is passing… we’re still enjoying our coffee… quietly. I never really too comfortable with awkward quiet moments, so I start to tell her stories, mostly on hilarious things, I feel like jokes are the best ice breaker. She laughed at the stories and enjoying her coffee… quietly. After an hour or so being a sitting down-stand up comedian, I’m tired. She’s a good listener, really, and she’s so good at it that it’s all she’s doing. Ow, I thought, where are my celebrity gossips I expect to hear from her? Or anything about her? Finally at one point, she’s looking at me, about to say something. I wait excitedly, oh here it comes my celebrity gossips yahaha! But after a few minutes she lowers her eyes and enjoying her coffee again… quietly. Just when I about to deflate, she lifts her head, eyes gleaming.
“You sit like that, continue talking by moving your hands animatedly like that, the camera pans in a medium shot, in walking pace from outside this glass window, first capture your mimic and then moves in and gets you talking. Medium lighting, airy ambient scene,” Regine beams on me.

I’m enthralled.

Despite being not talking, Regine is cool. Maybe as a movie director she’s used to speak by creating moving pictures, she’s no longer keen on speaking verbally. Well that will do, I smile silently. I make this mental note to immediately watch a sinetron and observe its credit title to find Regine’s name. Only by being a Movie Director, you can be cool without much talking.