Interloper View

What occupies our thought most is what our mind will focus on and get good at. Recently I realized that I have allowed myself to get distracted and am no longer focusing on my goals. I used to ask myself the following question, “Is what you are doing useful?” I have allowed too many distractions into my life - movies and comic/manga, computer games which do not benefit me in any way. Some distractions may be good to help us relax but I just realized that many of these activities seem to occupy more and more of my waking hours. None of them help me achieve my goals. These are the goals myself back in 1999 but somehow along the way I got sidetracked. Faith in God Physical and Mental Health Financial Security Self Improvement Now that I have come to this realization, it is time to take charge of my life again and redirect my focus and control the things that occupy my mind most. 

Over the years I have been evaluating and evolving my approach to equity investment. Mutual Fund I started off by investing in mutual fund but closed out all my funds after following articles in www.fool.com . I was lucky because most of the funds I invested in made money. That is not true for everybody, the funds my wife invested in never made any money even though it is more than ten years. Most fund managers would like you to believe that if you invest in mutual fund for at least five years, you will at least be in the black but that is not always the case. It helps if you get help from someone who are familiar with the funds and are not just pushing the funds to earn commission from the sale. Capital Gain My parents approach to investment was to focus on capital gain and not on dividend. To them, capital loss and gain is a lot more significant compared to dividend. Consequently, they feel that dividend is not significant. I tried this approach for a while. I had some successe

I took my children to watch this movie last night. It is a Japanese live action version of a popular anime series (with English subtitles). I was surprised that both of them immediately agreed to watch the movie at night.  This is the first time my daughter has been to the movies at night. The poster for the movie is a picture of a person with a smiley face was not very impressive. However, after watching the movie, I found it funny and understand why my children wanted to watch the movie. The story is about an octopus-like creature threatening to destroy the world on March of the following year. The creature had just destroyed a large part of the moon leaving only a crescent. It is strange that such a powerful creature wants to be a teacher for 3-E of a prestigious Kunugigaoka Junior High School. It appears that the creature was fulfilling a promise to a former teacher to class 3-E. The students gave the teacher a  nickname Koro Sensei. As the movie progress, we get to learn

My son wanted to learn Aikido so I decided to accompany him in the class. Learning any kind of self defence is important. Learning self defence is more than just learning how to fight. It is about how to observe and beware of our surrounding. It is also knowing how to avoid getting into threatening situation and what to do when we are not able to avoid the situation. Sometimes I wonder if I could have avoided getting mugged had I taken up the lessons earlier. I learned how to position my body to avoid injury when falling. That knowledge might have helped save me from losing my teeth . In order for the training to be useful the movements need to become natural and be part of our instinct. This is the same like learning how to ride a bicycle. When we ride a bicycle, we do not need to think of how to balance or turn, we just focus on where we want to go and just go. In order for the movement to become natural (or second nature), frequent practice is necessary. It is also necessar

I learn to swim after I entered college. It seems strange that someone who lives on an island does not learn to swim but I believe many people who live in Penang island all their live still do not know how to swim. The first thing I learn about swimming is the fact that all of us have a natural buoyancy - we all float. However, the buoyancy differs from person to person. The lucky ones naturally float with either their nose or mouth above the water which allows them to learn to swim more easily. I float slightly below the water and have to hold my breath and need effort to push myself above water to get my breath. The key thing about learning to swim is to get comfortable being in the water. It is terrifying for first timers, you are in an environment without a solid support and everything is moving. Every gesture and movement you make changes your position in the water. I felt out of control the first time I went in the pool and was told to float. It is very easy to panic. I gues

Based on the previous Hitman movie, I expected a lot of action and I was not disappointed. There was a lot of action and killing throughout the movie. The first part was confusing with Agent 47 trying to kill Katia when they were to team up (based on the thriller). Later in the movie, he explained to Katia that he was only marking her but did not really explain why he needed to do that. The movie felt very much like Terminator 3 where two invincible killers try to kill each other in order to get their prize, first Katia and later her father. The purpose was pursuit is to create an army of agents similar to Agent 47 and Katia’s father, one of the founder of the original program was the key. The leader of the competing agency is an old acquaintance to Katia’s father and wants to create an army for his organization but his connection with the original project was never explained. Katia was one of the subject of the original project which created Agent 47. Apparently the agent numb

I went to this movie without any expectation - the thriller did not provide much details of the movie. I vaguely remember reading The Man from U.N.C.L.E. comics but do not remember much. It was refreshing to see that the movie using 1960s setting - so many remake of the old television and movies were modernized and did not really feel right. The cat and mouse chase between the two main characters (Solo, the American agent and Kuryakin, the KGB agent) would great, a well choreographed dance with each trying to kill the other but failed. It also sets a stage for the rivalry that is seen throughout the movie. This movie is about how The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was formed. I still do not understand why it is given that name since there is more than one person. While the original series had only two main characters, this movie had a third agent - Gaby, a female agent (revealed at the later part of the movie). The technology used in the movie appears exaggerated with the bugging devices

I was caught in a massive jam in Bayan Baru today. A colleague forwarded the following information to me. The closure is from Aug 15, 2015 until Jan 14, 2016. Attached is the proposal of alternate routes in the attached document takes effect from Monday to Friday. The Member of Parliament for Bayan Baru, Sim Tze Tzin is working alleviate the problem.

The latest Fantastic Four tried attracting younger audience by making them younger, probably due to the success of Amazing Spider Man. Based on the box office result, it is not successful. There are several problems with the movie. I realize that this is a movie about the origin of the Fantastic Four but feel that too much time was spent trying to explain and build up the characters and the final confrontation felt rush. Another problem was the characters. One of the attraction of Fantastic Four was the frequent bickering and fights between Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm but this was absent in the movie. We saw only a glimpse of that at the end of the movie. This was the comic relief that was in the first movie but missing in this movie. In the movie, Susan and Johnny Storm is almost as smart as Reed Richards; it just did not feel right. The tracking of Reed Richards after he escaped Area 51 felt out of place - much more suitable in a Hulk movie. The movie was too serious and l

Recently I heard on the radio an advertisement encouraging consumers to pay their Indah Water bill early with the promise that those who pay their bill in advance will be given a gift. For those who are unfamiliar with this company, it manages all the sewage in Malaysia. On the surface, this is very attractive, those who pay early will be awarded. However, when we checked with the company it seems that there are several conditions. First the gift is an umbrella but it will be given only on Mondays and only to the first seven paying customers. We think that the advertisement is extremely misleading. We had a similar experience with a promotion by the Chicken Rice Shop several years ago. The company advertised that they were giving away free lunches between noon to 1 pm. My parents brought my children to one of the outlets. They arrived early - around 11:30 and was told to come back at noon. However, when they returned at noon, they were told that all the free mails were already giv

Terminator Genisys and Jurassic World are two highly anticipated movies shown in 2015. Even though both are reboot and try to reclaim the success of their origin, only one was successful. This is my analysis of both movies and the reason why one was successful and the other was not. Terminator Genisys The movie attempts to use Arnold Schwarzenegger to draw the crowd in the movie that made him famous. Unfortunately, many of Arnold fans are action movie fans. The story is too confusing and puts off the very same fans drawn to the first movie. The story was predictable so part of the excitement found in the first movie is lost. After four movies and a television series, the story is stale. Also there is a lot more competing stories of android/cyborgs drawing attention of the fans - (example Robocop, Vision in Avengers). I tried to get my children interested in this show did not succeed. The title and the thriller was not compelling enough to get them interested. There lies the main prob

The banks are cutting back on the benefits of credit cards in Malaysia. These are the ones I know: OCBC Titanium card started with 5% for groceries, food and petrol but reduced it to 1% without limit. However, this year they changed the cash back to 0.1% for all purchases except for online purchases which still gets 1 %. UOB One card followed with by taking off the cap of the maximum cash back available for each month but reduced the cash back for week days to 2% (plus 1% UOBCash for BHPetrol).  Cash back were removed for spending at pharmacies. Breakdown of new cash rebates are as follow: Category Weekday Weekend Cap Note Petrol 2% 5% RM500.00 Additional 2% if pump at BHPetrol with cap of RM 400/- Cinema (GSC only) 2% 5% Groceries 1% 2% RM1,000.00 Aeon Big, Tesco, Cold Storage, Jaya Grocer and Giant Telecommunication 1% 2% RM300.00 Maxis, Digi and Celcom Others 0.20% 0.20% I was not able to confirm is there is reduction in UOB$ earned for BHPetrol on weekdays, it loo

I recently bought a Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay (which I will refer as the unit)  to allow me to back up my personal photos and videos. The unit looks like a cable tv decoder but much heavier since it contains two hard disk. What I liked  I like the fact it comes with RAID 1 (mirrored) configured. One of the fear I have is losing all my precious collection should the hard disk crash. The unit also allows me to replace the hard disk. I assume that this will allow me to upgrade to a higher capacity when it becomes more common. Hopefully the unit will support the higher capacity then - seen cases where the firmware may not support the higher capacity. The Seagate Media software supports Android and allows me to back up the photos and videos I take on my phone directly to the Personal Cloud when I connect to a wi-fi anywhere in the world. However, I am disappointed that it does not backup the mp3 files from my phone. The unit also allows me to start and stop services I do

I would like to recognize two exemplary customers service I received this week.    First was the salesperson from Yes in Queensbay Mall. I was considering to subscribe to the new FIZ unlimited broadband service from Yes. Even though my house is within the coverage service, I wanted verification on the stability and the speed before committing to the two year contract. I called their careline and was recommended to visit their outlet in Queensbay in order to get one of their technicians to my house to check on the service stability. However, during my visit, I was told that they are short handed and suggested I take back one of their units (after placing a RM400 deposit with them).   Luckily for me, one of the salesman - Razak volunteered to come with me to my house to perform the check after I told him that I will sign up for the plan immediately if the service stability is proven. He spent close to two hours at my house checking on the signal quality and perform the speed t

Note 3 is already more than a year old and is superseded by Note 4. However, I have had it for slightly over 6 months.  I decided to treat myself with the S View cover mainly because it allows me to take pictures without unlocking my phone. I missed a few photo opportunities while struggling to unlock my phone. Sadly, I was not aware of the many issues plaguing this product. The following are the ones I am aware of. Repeating Calendar Events Calendar events keeps repeating themselves even after we dismissed them. Initially I thought it was because I did not dismiss the event correctly. However, I found the following thread discussing the issue. The problem is the S-Planner for Note 3 which comes with KitKat is not compatible with S-View cover. A temporary fix is to install the S-planner for S5. The apk is available from XDA Developer . Note that you will need to reinstall the apk each time you reboot the phone. This problem does not affect everyone. Some of my friends are no

I recently noticed that my android phone was incurring data charges (while I was not on data plan). Initially, I thought it might be due to a virus, rogue app or some setting I may have accidentally activated. In order to trace the issue, I started removing apps from my phone, but the data charges kept happening. On the first day the charge was RM5 but subsequently it ranged between 2 cents to 20 cents. In order to stop the hemorrhage, I activate a one month plan. The one month plan was RM 30 for 30 days, but the unknown data usage had already cost me RM 15 without any benefit to me. I also tried resetting the phone to factory mode, but found that the phone automatically restored some of the applications that were still installed - great feature, but not when I am troubleshooting this data leech on my phone. Resetting the phone helped in resetting the data counter and allowed me to see the amount of data consumed. It was the background data were incurring the cost of my mobile data

Recently we had the opportunity to visit the mini comic fiesta held at Penang Times Square.  My son noticed the banner promoting the event and wanted to learn more about it. The event lasted for two days. We had to pay an entry fee of ten ringgit per person for a one day entry pass. We arrived at Penang Times Square around noon and decided to have lunch before going into the exhibition. At the food court there were quite a few people dressed up in comic characters. A few of them carried props of giant guns and swords. Some of the costumes look extremely uncomfortable, but was interesting to look at. When we finally entered the hall, there were a lot more people dressed as comic characters. The place was filled with anime related merchandise. There were also a few stores promoting online games. My son bought buttons and a t-shirt. My daughter felt bored and told me that she came along for lunch and was not really interested.  My son commented that this was called a comic fiesta bu