Interloper View

My uncle recently shared with me his retirement hobby - art using shells. I thought of sharing here for all of you to enjoy.  Here is the nativity scene:  Year of the Rooster: Going to a Christmas party:

I was looking for a movie to watch with my wife and decided on The Warrior’s Gate. I thought it was a normal Chinese Kung Fu movie but was deeply mistaken. The movie started with a Kung Fu fighting sequence but from a video game. Turns out it was an English movie. It is a movie about a boy (Jack Branson) who lives with his mother (I do not remember what happened to his father) facing some bullies in school. His mother was about to lose their home because she has not been able to sell any houses for several months. He worked for a Chinese man who gave him an ancient looking box.  The night after he took the box back to his room, a Chinese warrior appeared and seeking his game alter ego (Black Knight) but settled with him instead. He was to protect a princess. It started with a difference in culture but soon he managed to introduce his culture to her before she was kidnapped. He followed the kidnappers into the box even though he did not know how to fight. The prin...

When I took my daughter and her friends skating this weekend, I did not expect to meet Deadpool. He was there a a photography session. The following are some of the picture I took of him. It was 35 degrees Celsius and whoever in the costume must be suffering in the heat.

I played Pokemon Go during my holiday in Kuala Lumpur a few months ago and discovered the following: Speed Matters I read that using incense we are able to attract more exotic Pokemon so we decided to do that while driving down the highway. However, traveling at 110 kilometers an hour made it impossible to catch any Pokemon the incense attracted. The incense was not very effective, it only attracted five to ten Pokemon. The ones we encountered were difficult to catch and the ones we caught would always escape. Malls in Kuala Lumpur are better I was unable to use GPS on my Note 3 in any of the malls in Penang but had no problems in any of the malls in Kuala Lumpur. I guess it is the way the antennas are set in the malls in Kuala Lumpur. Mid Valley was the best mall we visited to catch Pokemon. Seems that there was different spawn schedules, some days we found many Pincers and other days we found Scyther. We also found Pikachu spawns at Sunway Pyramid. Takin...

I recently started playing Pokemon Go after it was launched in Malaysia and these are some of the things I learned. GPS Pokemon Go depends a lot on GPS and the quality of GPS differs between the phones. Samsung Note 3 does not work indoors. Even outdoor Samsung Note 3 loses the GPS signal. I tried switching between the different GPS modes - High Accuracy - GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile network, Power saving - Wi-Fi and mobile network, and GPS only. High Accuracy is the most reliable mode for Samsung Note 3 and is only playable outdoors. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 requires switching between Wifi and Network when playing indoor and GPS only when playing outdoors. High Accuracy does not work very well with the game. OnePlus One has the most reliable GPS. Battery The game drains a lot of power. Xiaomi battery lasts the longest followed by OnePlus. Samsung has the shortest life among the three phones we used. One concern I have is how much the frequent charging and dischar...

I used to like X-men comics, however, I found that the stories contain too much negative energy, hatred between men and mutants. I realize that there a lot of similarities in reality. Anyway, I still went to watch this movie. The movie starts in ancient Egypt, where En Sabah Nur (aka Apocalypse) was revered as a god on the way to transferring to a new body. As the process started, a group of people tried to kill him by bringing down the pyramid and killing the new body before the process completed. They were partially successful in their attempt - he was protected by some of his powerful followers who died protecting him. His revival in 1983 appears to be due to the action of Moira, who was following some worshippers of Apocalypse - she left the entrance open and allowed the sunlight into the cavern and activated the device used by En Sabah Nur and woke him up. We are then introduced to Angel and Nightcrawler - forced to fight with each other in an underground fight club w...

This movie was recommended to me by my brother. In a way, it is inspiring to see how Eddie dedicated his life (from the age of 10) to one goal - participate in the Olympics. Parents are supposed to support their children and help them achieve their dream, however, looking at what Eddie, that dream was clearly impossible. At first it was cute, dressing up and going out in the middle of the night heading towards the “Olympics”. I guess it is not that bad then, but if my children were to do that I would go crazy and immediately ground them. The world is not safe for a 10 year old to go out into the street on his own. As he grew up, he started trying different kinds of sports and it was obvious that he is not your typical sportsman - he was bad in almost everything he tried. At the end, he settled upon ski jumping - a sport that no one from his country participates (but used to). This is something I can relate to - join an activity where there is little interest and you can be...

Term Life is a story of Nick Barrow, who plans heist, but does not participate in them. A failed heist resulted in the death of the son of a cartel leader, Victor Fuente. Victor believed his kid was killed by Nick and wanted to kill Nick for it. The movie was slow in the beginning, but as the movie progressed I started enjoying it. Nick kept away from his daughter, Hailee because he did not want her to be involved in his world of crime. However, he had to went Victor sent his men after her. Hailee did not want anything to do with him either slowly grew to understand and love him. It was interesting to see how Nick uses his understanding of human behavior to plan out his work and how he uses it to hide in plain sight - especially when he told his daughter using wigs and sunglasses will make her stand out instead of helping her hide her identity. Later she asked him to show her how she plans out his heists. He did that by describing how to knock off a bakery - number one knowi...

The movie started in 1991 where Hydra being brought from a cryogenic chamber, his captors had a book that contains instructions on how to make him obedient to their command. He was then dispatched to steal a briefcase and leave no witnesses. This is later tied to the main storyline of the movie - similar to the Iron Man 3 where the something that happened in the past comes back to haunt us. As for the what led to the civil war, the destructions and bystanders killed in the earlier movies - Avengers, Captain America 2, Avengers 2 placed pressure on the government to control the Avengers. However, Peggy Carter reminded Captain America that sometimes it is necessary to stand up for what is right even if everybody else disagrees. The Sokovia Accord was proposed to place the Avengers under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. Tony Stark immediately supported the proposal because of of the guilt he felt after he was confronted by one of the mothers of victims in Sokovia. Steve on the...

I recently started downloading podcast and listening to them on the way to and from my office. Podcast works great since I can download it at home and listen to it (without mobile data) in my car. I tried listening to Audiobooks in the past but takes too much time to download and also to listen. I discovered a podcast series that was just started this year called “The Way I Heard It”. Each episode only last about six minutes and so far the few episodes introduces me to interesting stories of things and people I did not know about. Some of the stories include: The person who came up with the technology used in modern wifi. How a teacher managed to help a shy boy realize his gift and became one of the greatest voice of our time. Only 12 episodes (with the first episode explaining why the podcast was started) have been created so far and it looks like a new episode is made available each week. I just thought of sharing this great discovery.

This is an R rated movie and not a movie for children, so this is not one of those movies that I want my children to watch. The movie beginning was refreshing, Martha’s classmates shared what they wanted to be when they grow up - policeman, lawyer etc, but she came out and said that she is a T-Rex. Years later, she was having problem finding the right man and her best friend was trying to help her after her last boyfriend cheated on her. Mr Right is a reverse hitman, instead of killing people he is assigned to kill, he kills the ones who hired him. He noticed her in a convenience store and immediately took a liking to her and asked her out. Even though he told her that he is a hitman, she thought it was a joke until much later in the movie. After finding out that he is a real killer, she tried to break up with him but could not. Instead, he promised not to kill, even though there were many people out to kill him. Great jokes throughout the movie and love how the way he kills ...

I do not remember when I skin tag first appeared on my neck. Skin tags may appear cosmetic, but I have some tags that feel sore, the kind of soreness that seem to come from the nerves. At first, I did not know what to do with the tags, but luckily for me, my wife came up with a way to remove the tags. She pulled a strand of her hair and tied the tag. The tag will turn black and fall off together with the hair. This approach was effective until my wife decided to shorten her hair and her eyesight started to deteriorate. Since then I tried looking for alternative ways of removing the skin tags. One of the approaches is to apply apple vinegar on the tags. I tried it, but it did not work for me, either because of the way I applied or because I had not applied it frequently enough (I applied it only at night because of the strong smell of the vinegar). I considered freezing the tag using hydrogen peroxide - treatment used to remove benign warts. The pharmacist recommended an alt...

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.