Happenings in Aug 2015

Squeezing time to blog is difficult, but I just do what I can.

Movies:

Have seen ‘Inside Out’ and ‘MI5 – Rogue State’ recently, Pixar produced a great one this time. The movie was entertaining though it didn’t hit me until I read reviews afterwards. My sons couldn’t get into the movie much, but my wife found that surprisingly deep in content. I think the creativity is superb giving the subject matter and the way of presentation. Certainly, a keeper! MI5 is good too, I like the third one since and I think this one is quite entertaining from start to finish. The female lead is pretty good, something like an equivalent of Tom Cruise in it, not very pretty but very decent for the part. The villain looks a bit funny, I don’t know why his look really reminds me of Tim Cook?! J

Travel:

Spent 6 days in Osaka and have a day trip to Nara last week. A happy trip overall with the whole family. To be honest, I was very tried everyday, but it wasn’t any worst than before. Foods can be better, but certainly much better than the SG trip earlier this year. Didn’t do much shopping, except surprisingly few clothes from GU for myself. I wish the kids are older and would be able to appreciate culture part more, though the Lego Center, Kid science place are fine for them. The Universal Studio was actually more for me and my wife! The Harry Potter land was really amazing, the ride as well….There weren’t too many tourists from the PRC, so the tourists’ places aren’t too packed. Love the day in Nara, the temples are good, but surprisingly the best meal during the trip wasn’t the crab dinner, but the largely veggie lunch in the temple yard, very refreshing!

Gadget:

Haven’t brought it yet, but I’m about to buy a NAS first time and would install that at home DIY. After experiencing the HORRIBLE LOSS of data that I’ve in a freaking Seagate hard disk this year, lost few hundred GBs of MP3 that I collected last few years, damned! I would need to prevent any further loss in my other hard disks, just able to partially rescue most of my photos in another, thank GOD! So, the setup of the NAS is imminent, just need to find time to buy it and install it, most likely QNAP TS251C would be the one, though Synology DS214Play is also good. Let’s see…

With the huge loss of my MP3 collections, I just don’t have the mood to construct my iTunes library anymore. Also, listing to podcasts have occupied my audio entertainment times, I’ve not listened to any music for months! However, given the Apple Music hype, I did the alternative: registered Spotify instead, cuz the prior doesn’t have a free version, I’m not gonna pay for anything in case I forgot to discontinue the free service after 3 months. Well, the free Spotify version is fine and good enough, particularly when I just don’t have the time to be very picky for customization or constructing my playlists. Just looking back the when we still listen to vinyl and cassettes, I thought MP3 would be quite ultimate, just couldn’t expect streaming would potentially takeover until I tried it on myself to see the beauty of it. I think every music delivery format has its fans, more options the better.

The World:

The refugee crisis in Europe is sad. But, for being a fan of conspiracy, it is just the result of the force behind all those chaos. Those who suffer are mostly Muslim and Africans, they are the ‘targets’ of the conspiracy behind. What can we say……

China just has another military parade to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the deficit of fascism?! The purpose of the show is largely for domestic reason. I just feel that ‘self-reflection’ is more important than all the ‘empty’ words and propaganda, if anyone really for peace-keeping. As a side note, my older has started asking me questions about world events as I was watching time on TV. He recently was quite interested in the anniversary of end of WWII, the Japanese invasion of China, etc. He asked me who the face on Tiananmen Square is? Well, I answered him with comment, I think that raised more questions in his head than before, which would be a good thing down the road. ….