The Proposal

The second week after Jing arrived in Manaus, she still hadn't really
gone out from the hotel during the day. This is mainly due to the fact
that, a) it is extremely hot during the day in Manaus, with temperatures
in the upper 30s (90s), and b) without knowing Portuguese, it is not so
easy to navigate your way around. The weekend before we had gone on the
Amazon boat tour, which was fun, and during the following week we went
out to both Suysei and Gaucho's for dinner with my colleagues, but I
wanted to go somewhere alone together. During one of my trips out to buy
equipment for work, I found that Millennium shopping center, not so far
from our hotel, had a movie theater. Later, I checked online and found
that they had a couple movies playing in English with Portuguese
subtitles. One of them was The Hangover, which Jing had already seen
with her friends, and the other was The Proposal, the summer comedy
starring Sandra Bullock that I'd seen posters for all over town in July
while I was in Chicago. So that Thursday, I got home as early as I could
and we quickly ate a nice dinner that Jing had prepared. Then we jumped
in a taxi and headed over to Millennium to see the movie.
The movie theater is up on the 3rd floor and looks pretty much like any
cinema you'd see in the U.S. We bought our tickets and selected our
seats from a screen, choosing two pretty much in the middle of the
theater. After buying some popcorn and soda, we walked into the theater
about five minutes before starting time and saw only two other people
sitting in there; two guys in their 40s. It was a small theater,
granted, but we were surprised when we realized the seats we had chosen
were exactly next to them. I thought of moving to different seats, but
thought that might be a little rude and decided to wait and see what
empty seats there were once the movie started.
Just before the trailers began, a steady stream of people came in and
took their seats, and although there were still plenty of open spots,
the seats were fairly expansive, and we had the armrest between us
pulled up so we could sit together in a sort-of love seat (and for those
who must know, the two guys next to us did have the armrest between
them). We got comfortable and began chomping on the over-salted, but
not-too-bad popcorn and sipping our sodas as the trailers began.
Although most of the audience, I presume, was reading the sub-titles,
there was laughter during the movie, not least of which was coming from
Jing sitting next to me, although I did my fair share of guffawing,
giggling and chortling.
At the end of the movie, we remained to watch the credits, which I've
grown accustomed to do since moving to Japan, where it is common for
people to remain seated with the house lights off until the very last
credits role past (I've been told this is "out of respect" for all the
people involved in making the movies). However, I was reminded that this
is not customary in other parts of the world when the house lights came
on after seconds and the entire room got up and exited promptly so that
only Jing and I sat there, feeling in the way since the staff were
immediately at the ready to clean up the theater, which was, indeed, a
big mess. We gathered ourselves together and exited the theater, threw
away half the bag of popcorn, washed up and headed back outside to catch
a taxi back to the hotel. A fun little date overall and a nice break
from the work week for me.