THE ASIAN AMENDMENT

No matter the distance, there is only one thing that I, and a lot of weary, worn-out travelers look forward to when flying out: plopping down on the seat, settling with any personal pre-flight rituals and requirements, and finally, bidding the world adieu from up in the air in what will hopefully be an uninterrupted sleep in a considerable amount of time. Most of the time, this fraction in transit will stretch on for a good hour, waiting for the in-flight meal to be served, which accords you time for some form of entertainment, perhaps reading a book or sifting through the selection of movies on the airline’s system.

There is nothing highly unusual about this scene, even if you are just barely recovering from the blur of preparations—from finding out you have to fly out to Los Angeles, California over an already up-to-your-neck working weekend and packing last minute (pedantically speaking, it was merely throwing things together last minute). However, once the tempest found a period of calm, and my vision got accustomed to the sudden stillness, it may just be coincidental but almost every screen in my periphery had the same film on in various increments of its running time, that film being Crazy Rich Asians.

And then it finally made sense, just as we were skidding off the glistening runways of the hotly-contested Hong Kong International Airport, this was an Asian airline with a passenger population of most, if not all, Asians. It will be criminal if this wasn’t the case, considering how much of a barrier-breaking success and necessary cultural shift the film has been, even a year after its premiere, something that would be remised of me if