Dear Hollywood, if you plan on making a movie based on the Saul Bellow novel , Seize the Day, please please please cast Russell Crowe as the troubles lead character.

I took a break from my mundane life and took an Air Asia flight to south east Asia's sin city.

I really have no reason why I did that

other than being sick of spending my annual leave in KL, JB or the north.

Northe
rn Boy text messaged me about his feeling of burn out with work. Yikes. Poor soul.

God knows I have felt like that many times. Personally, I wonder if all the burn out is becoming worthwhile.

I know, and some other people know there is something going on inside me- a kind of stagnation.

I suppose it comes once every decade. God knows I was feeling this confised back in 2000- a certain confusion about being neither here nor there.

I cannot help but to think that I feel like that character in the novel Seize the Day by Saul Bellow.

It's about this man in his 40s who is lost in life. He's a likeable man who turns bitter following his failure at getting a stable job and he's going through a separation with his wife and sons.He's feels pressured by his well off dad, distant wife and a talkative stock advisor. He's drifting aimlessly between jobs in the concrete jungle of New York City, circa 1930s? 40s?

I need to google it to refresh my memory. OK. Seize the Day is about...and this is in my own summary....a man in his 40s in America who has the looks, went to Hollywood during his 20s to be a star. But he fails in his bid and loiters around Hollywood for 7 years. Fast forward 20 years and this man, Tommy Wilhem, is constantly at loggerheads with a condescending father; is struggling with a separation with his wife and 3 kids. He is jobless and trying out stocks after being advised by a talkative acquantaince ( In my mind, this acquaintance looks like Stanley Tucci, and is constantly blabbering advice to Tommy, sounding like the biggest smart ass in the world). To cut a long story short, the novel is a day in the life of this dude, Tommy.

At the end of this "day", Tommy ends up accidentally inside a church at a stranger's funeral. He looks into the body in the coffin and breaks down and cries. That's it. That's how the novel ends.

No gempak plotline. But the details into character is excellent and well, I love it.

My interpretation of the ending? Tommy sees himself in the dead body i.e Tommy doesn't realise, until that moment that he has been dead inside.

Now how could I possibly relate to such a novel?

The New York Times

lambasted the TV movie

adaptation of "Seize the Day",

starring Robin Williams in

1987. (right)