Matt Harding's Done It Again!

You must know Matt Harding. He's famous for dancing all over the world. He's travelled to more continents than possibly anybody else on the planet. Not only that, he's danced on more continents than possibly anybody else on the planet.

This was Matt in 2005. Stride Gum thought this was a brilliant idea, and gave him money for another trip. So he did another one in 2006. This, too, was brilliant.

Anyway, I would now like to hug this video.

The video starts out normally enough: Matt dancing his goofy goober dance in a few different places, all of which are more or less VERY different from each other.

Then at 0:51, something incredible happens -

People rush in, in several different locations, from either sides of the camera, rushing in, to dance with Matt on screen. The crowds are large, the cheers are loud, and the crowds aren't there to mob Matt; they all start dancing a goober dance too. In some locations, like Papua New Guinea and India, Matt's dancing with local dancers (the shot of him with the Indian dancers is rather fun as it looks pretty well choreographed!). As usual, he gets a number of children to dance with him.

It's a rush of humanity, and Matt's infamy has brought all these strangers together. Different continents, different countries, different shapes and sizes, different skin colours, different ages. Couple this with incredible music, and it's a killer recipe for wonderfulness.

As I said over at Shakespeare's Sister, everytime I see the Matt Dancing videos, I'm reminded that there's just one world, and it's got a wide variety of people, places, and civilizations, and it's all on one planet. It's awesome because he's practically bringing the whole world to us in one video, and fun because he's dancing in all of those places, no matter where.

In this video, it's one world, with so many people, DANCING. And everybody's happy and having fun. Matt's gone off to reach a HUGE variety of people to come dance with him on camera, wherever they are, whoever they are. In four minutes, there aren't boundaries, just, well, just PEOPLE, from all over the world. Dancing. It shows that no matter our differences, we're still people, living on the same planet. The backgrounds are different, the clothes are different, the skin colours are different - and yet we're all the same.

And I just can't express how awe-inspiring it is that this message is being communicated, even unintentionally, through a goofy dance, happening all over the world.


Oh, and another cool thing about the goober dance is that it's something he does naturally and comfortably. He knows it looks stupid, but he doesn't care. Isn't that neat? A person who doesn't feel the need to drink before he dances. How novel!

Musings on "The Day The Earth Stood Still"

It took me three days to watch this movie, yanno. ( Spoilers. Although, this movie is so darn old, they shouldn't be spoilers anymore. )

3rd Culture Kid Checklist

I stole this from divabat who got it from Facebook, and I found it interesting enough to respond to. It's basically a checklist of whether or not you're a "3rd culture kid", which means a child who was born one place, and spent a significant amount of time elsewhere. So it becomes hard for them to identify with a single culture.

Mind you, I have a difficult time identifying with both Canadian and Malaysian cultures not because I grew up one place and settled in another (I did have a one-year stint in Singapore, during which time I moved three times, and changed school thrice, and I ended up feeling like I was going to move again another time. Imagine my surprise when I finished high school and realized I hadn't moved at all during that time.) Most of my misfittiness comes from personality quirks which render me strange whether I'm in Malaysia or Canada. I would like to say something neat like "I'm too liberal for Malaysia and too conservative for Canada"; unfortunately, I'm still too liberal in my values for Canada. It's true when it comes to my peers, though. But again, that's more my personality than anything else: I'm too open for my Malaysian peers, and too serious for my Canadian peers. However, in both cases, I'm too serious, too uptight.

Anyways. ( Onwards to the checklist. )

Another funny.

And people think I don't have a sense of humour. My dad keeps telling me to "lighten up".

Here's a funny.

Mandalorian Dance
by PatrickBoivin