Interloper View

Initially I was not interested in watching Zootopia in the cinema, but my son expressed interest in the movie. However, he was too busy with a lot of other activities and was unable to go with us. Instead I took my daughter with me to the movie. We loved it, the storytelling was great, it has mystery, plot twist and humor. We are first introduced to Judy Hopps, a bunny who wanted to the first rabbit to join the police force, but both her parents did not support the idea. They preferred that she continued the family tradition and remain a carrot farmer. Most would have succumbed to the pressure and give up the dream but not Judy. Her partner is Nick Wilde a fox; Judy fell for one of his scams during their first encounter, but managed to blackmail him to help her later in the movie. The movie makes good use of stereotypes in the story, showing how societies prejudice pressures makes some of these stereotypes, self fulfilling (as in the case of Nick). Judy and Nick reminds me of 48 h...

For Christians, Easter is the day when Jesus rose again, three days after he died on the cross. During mass today, our priest asked us a question, what do we do in the 50 days of Easter season. Our priest mentioned that we Catholics are very good at celebrating suffering, during the 40 days of Lent season, many make sacrifices and our churches come up with many programs. However, nothing is done for the 50 days of the Easter season. In fact, I have never really thought of the Easter season except for the first day of Easter (known as Easter Sunday). What we do for Lent is for us, helping us to join the suffering of Jesus. Easter is the celebration of Jesus’ triumphant return to God, our father. So how do we celebrate Easter, celebrate our resurrection with our Lord Jesus Christ? Our priest asked if any of us have ever experienced resurrection and also for examples, none of in the congregation could. He then shared with us, for the poor and homeless, when members of the church ...

I was looking forward to watching this movie since it was announced and finally watched it this afternoon. The first part of the movie was used to help us understand the reason why Batman decided to go up against Superman. It was a nice to have Luther explain how he staged various events to push Batman and make him want to kill Superman. It is surprising to see the Kryptonian technology lacks basic security and how easy it was for Luther to take over the ship and use it to create Doomsday. The system appears more secure in the Man of Steel movie. It could be that Luther more tech savvy compared to Lois Lane. The subtle introduction of Diana Prince is effective, I thought she was working for Lex Luthor when I first saw her. She had not intended to join the fight, but changed her mind upon seeing the news on the plane about to leave the city. The secret file stolen from Luther provides an opportunity to introduce characters for the future movies without them actually appearing i...

A new museum opened in Penang on Mar 6. I came across the museum in Komtar while I was around the area after watch Zootopia. It was interesting to see how comics evolved in various countries around Asia. There are similarities and yet certain uniqueness in style. The tickets are day passes permitting multiple entries. Here are some of the pictures I took while I was there. The tickets:   The entrance: Weapons from the comics: The museum ends with a small store where you could buy some of the comics and memorabilia. While I was there, Zunar was visiting the place hosting a talk and signing session. This is another activity for my children for the holidays. Disclaimer: I was not paid to write this.

“We get what we measure”, that is why I want to measure my cash flow to make sure that I am spending within my means. Quicken has been helped me do that for a long time, but I wondered whether that is any open source solution able to replace Quicken. GnuCash and KMyMoney are close enough to fulfilling my requirements but there are gaps. Encryption and password Files created with Quicken can be protected with password. I am able to do that by encrypting KMyMoney file using Gpg4Win but not for GnuCash. KMyMoney recognizes the encryption will prompt for the password when I open the file. No such feature is available in GnuCash. Accounts and category Quicken and KMyMoney support both accounts and categories. However, GnuCash supports only accounts. In Quicken and KMyMoney, when a new category is entered, the software will prompt with an option to create it. Categories can be organized as subcategories of other categories. For KMyMoney new account or sub-account have to b...

I had this book for a couple of years but only started reading it a couple of weeks ago without any expectation. The story starts with a young maiden (Edyt) standing over her dying father as the Norman invaders entered the gates of their castle. Edyt then hid in plain side as one of the maids to avoid marriage with the Norman Lord (Alain De Crency) - Rufus, the king of England had promised her as a bride to him. It was fascinating to see how she attempted to protect Alain while pretending to be one of the maids in the castle. Even after her identity was revealed, new elements were introduced to keep me interested. It was obvious that the knights and servants of the castle loved her and would anything for her and that she in turn wanted to keep them save even though she expected to be killed at any moment. She believed that she was evil and was a daughter of Satan and if her secrets were discovered she would be burned as a witch. The pace of the development of the ...

I came across some inspiring animes and manga and thought of sharing them here. Naruto is an anime about a boy who was treated as an outcast in his village. The villagers avoided him and prevented other children from playing with him. In a world where only the strongest and most powerful fighter is respected, he was looked down for his lack of skill. Naruto had a dream to become the head (Hokage) of his village and used this dream to overcome all challenges and obstacles. His tenacity helped him overcome obstacles and along the way he inspired others. He was able to overcome his weaknesses and defeat enemies stronger than him and in some cases made them his friends. My children introduced this anime to me and I enjoyed it in the beginning, but the stories took too long to complete. The first series consisted of 220 episodes. It was followed by Naruto: Shippuden which follows his challenges as an adult. I did not like the later episodes which appear to repeat earlier stories. Keni...

I started using Evernote on Jan 28, 2016, even though I had the application on my phone back in 2014 when I bought Samsung Note 3. I was surprised to find that Samsung had a partnership with Evernote and gave me one year complimentary Premium subscription. I decided not to activate the subscription immediately but to explore the tool first. However, after one week, I accidentally dismissed the link for activating the subscription and thought I had wasted the subscription (worth RM 99). I took the opportunity of the accident to try out their support. I submitted a support request on the incident and received a reply the next day. Amanda from Evernote asked a few questions and after two to three responses (within a few minutes), my Premium subscription was activated. Issue resolved in less than 24 hours - excellent customers service. Web Clipping (browser) This is a great feature to take a snapshot of articles from websites to store for future reference. The web clipper is an exte...

Prior to the announcement of this movie, I did not know much about the character. The thriller was peaked my interest. I went to watch the movie yesterday with my wife but could not bring my children along due to the rating (even though they were interested). My wife missed all most of the jokes (due to her grasp of the English language) so did not enjoy the movie. Deadpool has the healing power of Wolverine and the wisecracking habit of Spiderman. Ryan Reynold is perfect for the role, poking fun of his previous role in Green Lantern asking not be given a green suit or any animated suit. He also referred to the limited budget for the movie saying why there were only two X-men in the movie. I guess it is true, sometime self deprecation is useful approach to humor. It was fun to watch how he grew his hand back after he severed it to escape from Colossus. His character and behaviour did not change much before and after his transformation into Deadpool. Colossus did not feel right in ...

Non native English speakers are sometimes confused by borrow and lend. This is the trick I thought my daughter. B comes first in the alphabets and L comes later. So when we borrow an item, the item comes to us and when we lend an item, the item leaves us.

I found a need to come up with a system to help me remember. Over the years, the process has changed but the goal remains the same. Since moving to an Android phone I have been using GTask.  GTask GTask is a third party app build using Google Task (since Google did not provide an app). It works well to help me track my task, to do list and provide reminders for follow up. Calendars are useful to track your schedule but it is not convenient for task that require follow up or use as reference. I can easily create a task from my GMail. GTask is simple and easy to use but provides text only fields. I decided to explore Google Keep. Keep Initially I used keep as an enhanced version of gTask so I do not need GTask anymore. A few things I like about Keep are: I can now attach a photo to the entry. It provides a convenient way to use certain cards like Starbucks, Domino’s privilege card. Entries are available without network. I do not subscribe to mobile ...

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...