Interloper View

I lost 20 kilograms within nine months in 2005 using willpower and determination. I learned a lot from the experience, losing weight is not a simple process of exercise or just diet; it is a combination of both. By 2011, I regained almost all the weight loss and now weigh more than when I started. I tried the process again but have failed multiple times. I know I have strong willpower but that is not enough because I have to think about it and make conscious decision like what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat. It takes too much mental power to do that and there is always the urge to skip one day and then skip one week. There has to a better way. It is time I created a process that I can follow without making much decision and turn it into my routine. The routine will need to: Ensure that the calories in my food intake does not exceed the calories I will burn daily. Have enough exercise so that I will continue to be strong and flexible. Get enough sleep. I had no

I recently noticed something in the bible that I had not noticed before. Adam lived to the age of 930 years old, Noah until 950 years, and Abraham until 175 years. It made me wonder why our lifespan has decreased so dramatically and seems a bit strange that there are increasing articles regarding increasing lifespan due to advancement in Science and Medicine. I wander what determines the lifespan of a person, is it their lifestyle, diet or sense of purpose. If given a chance to grow that old, would I want to? Is growing old a curse or a blessing? What if everyone in the world has the potential to live that old, what is the implication of on food supply, resource availability and living conditions. The problems with overpopulation in certain parts of the world have shown us the potential hardship it will bring. I do not have any answers, just questions.

The anime is also known as Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso. This is the kind of anime that you either love or hate. It was hard to see the suffering the protagonist had to go through as his friends try to support him but were not able to reduce his pain. The following are the characters in the anime and my thoughts: Arima, Kousei is protagonist who was known as the human metronome because of his piano playing ability at a very young age. He was unable to hear his own music soon after his mother passed away. He has given up playing the piano but held on through his assignments in school.  As far as he is concern, he has no other skills other than playing piano but he has lost that due to his disability. As the story progress we are given a glimpse of his tortured childhood where he is forced to play piano and nothing else. He started taking up piano again after much pestering from Kaori Miyazono. Miyazono, Kaori is a free-spirited violinist introduced to Kousei Arima by his childh

It saddens me to see that our way of life is being destroyed. We had a culture of harmony and peace, nobody worried about what races and religion or offending each other; there was always mutual respect. We are now under attack from within. When somebody tries to be helpful, we question their sincerity and look for ulterior motive. There are boogie-men everywhere. There is increasing distrust between brothers and sisters because of their race or their beliefs. Foreign cultures are adopted, replacing the beautiful cultures of love and beauty. Unfortunately, no one dares to voice out for fear or being attacked and chastised by so called religious police and non governmental groups. Do we have so little regard for our culture and our way of life that we allow the few in power to destroy our culture all in the name of religious harmony. Can a simple sign or words cause people to change their beliefs and convert to a different religion? Do the way we dress turn normal citizens in

Imagine being in high school and believing that everyone hates you - that is what Handa Kun believes and as a result he has creates a wall between him and everybody else in school. Due to his paranoia, he was unapproachable and those around him mistakes his actions and get the wrong impression about him. The story takes us through his experience and how those who felt threatened by him ended up becoming his fan. As his fan base grew, our hero is totally unaware and just see more and more threats. All these events makes for a very funny anime. Some examples of the situations are as follows: When one of the girls in his class tried to confess to him, he thought the letter was a chain letter like the ones he used to get and refused to read it. When he threw the letter away without reading it, another classmate (the best friend to the girl who wrote the letter)  scolded him and then pushed the girl to confess to him. Instead of confessing, she asked him to see him after cla

Whenever I have a decision to make but do not know what to do I have to remind myself to just take action. I may not have all the answers or information at the moment but too often the delay will make things worst. I realize that taking immediate action may result in making taking the wrong choice but I found that the odds are more positive than negative. There are also times when doing nothing may be better. Therefore, before taking action and making the choice, it is important to look at a couple of things: What do I know about the different choices? What are the known risk with each choices? What would happen if I do not decide? If the risk is high then more information or some delay is necessary. Talking to some friends may also help. In the end,  I will still need to make the decision. Once the decision is made and the action is taken, everything needs to be done to increase the chances of success, this includes: Follow through. If I start but take the acti

I had the privilege to drive Perodua Bezza for last week for five days. I had not read much about the car prior to using it so had used it without any expectation. I am impressed with the experience. The one I used was of the highest range which cost RM 50k. I was initially uncomfortable with the keyless feature. I was afraid of dropping it or misplacing it but got used to it after one day. One thing I missed was the lack of auto lock. All cars I have driven since the introduction of central locking has that feature. To make up for the lack of feature, the remote control will only unlock the driver door by default, you can open all the doors if you press the remote longer. The idle stop is an interesting feature, when the feature is enabled, pressing the brake (and holding it down), the engine will be turned off when the car is fully stationary. It will stay off up to three minutes if the driver continue to apply the brake. However, if you are like me and prefer to take your le

I recently watch this anime that was in Mandarin with English subtitle. The story revolves between a girl and two brothers. She met him while crossing the road without looking. He knocked her down and caused him to lose the food he was delivering. This chance encounter explains why she calls him and why he calls her stupid girl. The anime consist of 24 episodes. The development was good, the first episode focus on her looking for a job as a fresh graduate at a job fair (where thousand of others are doing the same thing). Later she receives a text to attend an interview at night. While walking towards the interview, she looked around and realized that the building looked spooky. She then started thinking of why a company would call her for an interview so late in the night - human traffickers or organ traders. By then she was lost in Rakshasa Street filled with demon soldiers. Turns out that she is in a place for the dead and humans are forbidden there. I enjoyed the story.

This is a follow up from part 1 , additional tricks of saving money. Discounts Some discounts are not obvious because they are not openly publicized. So the first thing to do is to ask whether the store is running any promotions. I do not memorize all the offers provided by my credit card and often miss them - the habit of asking about promotion helps in reducing the times I miss such promotions. Some promotions that are still available at the point of my writing are: Starbucks will give a RM2 discount if you use your own Starbucks Tumbler or mug. I am not sure if they will offer the same discount if you use a non-Starbucks mug. McDonald’s will give you a free frozen coke if you spend more than RM10 and pay with your credit card. McDonald’s will also give a free item (sometimes fries, other times apple pie) if you spend more than RM20 in the drive through and have a McDonald’s VIP sticker. Beyond Vege provide 15% discount off the total bill for paying bil

The following are some of the tricks I learned over the years and thought of sharing them here. Cashback Cards A few years back, I looked my credit card and how I used it. I found that it was better to get cash back than to accumulate points. This was what I concluded: Most credit card points expire. Often the points will expire before I could accumulate enough to redeem items that I wanted. In many cases, I could not find anything worth redeeming (or at least needed). When I compute the points needed to exchange for cash vouchers, the cash back yield was a better option. This is why I prefer cash back credit cards over other credit cards types of credit cards. I consider the cash back as discounts since I have to spend money to earn the cash back. Other type of cards is useful if it provides items that is otherwise not available. I have earned quite a lot of cash back since I switched over to cash back cards. However, in the last few years, the banks

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 princess

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