Most anticipated Movie in 2010...so far

Death of Blu-ray?

From VHS to DVD is a big reap for most consumers, they mostly opine that DVD gives them extra features and greater quality of pictures. Also, the physical size of it was more comfortable than VHS. Therefore, with the plunge of cost of DVD players, most folks were flocking to move up to viewing DVD as the major format for view movies. Sony lost the war in Beta vs VHS, but it won in Blu-ray vs HDDVD. Theoretically, it should be great for the camp of Sony and Blu-ray. Cos, most major disc manufacturers are now on the bandwagon of Blu-ray. However, the adoption of Blu-ray was disappointing. Certainly, I’m no expert but just a regular folk that entitle to my own opinion. I think that there are many reasons why Blu-ray is not doing well.

Firstly, the cost is no lower enough and fast enough. Secondly, most consumers are happy with their DVD, the leap to Blu-ray is not deemed to be large enough to convince folks to open the pocket. The selling point of Blu-ray is even better picture quality and capacity. However, to most folks, DVD is good enough; Blu-ray is better, but not much better. For extra features, DVD has it too. For capacity, well, a 2-hr movie is a 2-hr movie on either DVD or Blu-ray. The extra capacity is a wasteland. As such, why would folks spend on Blu-ray? Also, the promotion of Blu-ray is not doing that good a job that I’m not sure if Blu-ray player is capable to play DVD, if not, definitely adios!

The biggest problem or threat to Blu-ray is internet. I.e. streaming or digital download. As music side a clear indication, from vinyl/cassette to CD is a great leap, but people never migrate to SACD, DVD audio, etc. Instead, MP3 takes over. Music becomes distributed in a digit format that can be reaped, transfer in a digit format, rather than on a physical medium. Yes, we use iPods, but we got that via iTune or streaming, or even through wireless download. CD is going to its grave; DVD will follow, though it will still take many years for that to happen. Blu-ray as a new comer with smaller acceptance in the market will die earlier than DVD. That’s my prediction.

There are still 2 streams of development in the distribution of moving pictures. On the one hand is the continuous research in physical media in the traditional way. Like, researches saying something about optical media that can carry 500GB on a single disc. I can only see that be something that can help the harddisk technology. I love to have 500TB harddisk in 10 years. However, what is a 500GB disc do for me if I just wanna watch a new movie. To me, it is just a larger wasteland that can’t be used. To have disc with such capacity, it is only good for some HD long TV series, like the 10 years of X-Files on one disc. That’s something people would buy, but not for watching a chick-flick. On the other hand, it is the faster internet, 4G, 5G, wireless whatever name they will be called. By then, movies can be streamed or download in a snap. When that happens, who will need a physical disc? We may need a larger capacity, but smaller size harddisk to save it. Or, if ‘clouds’ develop well, we don’t need to store those movies files, instead, we can laterally pull them from the air. I think it may be it. So, regardless whether larger capacity harddisk will be it or clouds, Blu-ray is gonna die soon.

Latest Domestic Suffering 3

After being off from works for 2 weeks for training my new housekeeper, looking back that it has been a complete disaster. What a waste of time. The biggest problem with her is that she can’t speak the languages that I know, she has big memory, and she is dumb! What a killer combination! Yes, we have fault of our own that we didn’t inquire her language skill before she arrived; however, the agent should not pick such raw potato for our selection in the first place.

Therefore, my wife and I went to another agent last week and selected another housekeeper who was interviewed on video chat briefly by us. So, at least we know if she can communication with us. However, come to think of it, our questions may be too simple and perhaps ‘guessable’, so she might have already recite scripts provided by her training school. Anyway, she should arrive in 2 months and such swap would cost me thousands of dollars.

My son was sick for almost a week for fever, then flu and cough. He was mostly recovered on Sat, but turned a bit worse last night for the running nose. Thank God that his fever is gone and the cough is still not serious. However, as he got running nose, he couldn’t drink his milk comfortably. I think our new housekeeper doesn’t know how to cuddle him enough to drink that or feeding him effectively. So, my already-skinny son is getting thinner. Just don’t eat much. That got my wife and I worry. Last night, he couldn’t sleep with an empty enough, woke up 1pm and behavior crazily till 3pm, by then, we were worried that I called my dad to come over to bring him to ER! While he is out on the cab, my son was fine then. After the brief check by the ER doc, we all came back home and went to bed by 4am. My God, what a night and I had to take some caffeine this morning to stay awake.

I hope my new housekeeper will be an ok one and she can arrive ASAP. Cos, we don’t know how long we have to stay in hell……

Latest Domestic Suffering 2

After few days of hell at home, I got back to work for few days and my wife is taking her turn at home to be with our new housekeeper from overseas who doesn’t speak any language that we know. We were originally thinking about replacing her, but thinking about the alternative and the specific domestic requirement that we have. It becomes obvious that keeping her is the option. I think my wife and I have reached a consensus that training her would take much longer than we originally thought it would. The worse case is that she is not only having language barrier with us, she is not good in memorizing things. So, yes she takes notes, but God know if her notes are well written or not. She is not good in remember what to do. It really tests my patience some times. Well, what can I say, I made my choice and I’ve to live with it. I think her communication skill with us is worse than our yet to be 2 years old son. What we hope is that she will input in coming months. My target is 6 months. Hopefully, she can show improvement quicker. Also, I hope she can keep her ‘willing-to-work-hard’ attitude and caring of my son. That’s most matter to us.

Since it is the second time with hired a maid, we have experience in managing such domestic worker. Yes, this one is different from the previous one. The current one is dumber and older. Also, we think that she is poorer and more innocent, so we have to manage her a bit different. More demos and guidelines will be needed, and must train her up of routines. Also, we have to stick to routine more, so she can at least build up some habits that fit us. Also, we have to manage her appetite, learning the lesson from previous ‘big-stomach’. I don’t like micro-management, but I can’t help it in this case. If I don’t, she will wreck our place. She lacks many basic concept of modern life, like energy saving, cost saving, fast pace of city life, hygienic requirement of city folks, multi-tasks and concept of work sequences, etc. Just too many things to teach, can’t tell you how exhausting to be with her all day long. Thanks to my dad that he takes my son out for walks twice a day at least during meal preparation, so we can train her one on one. Otherwise, with my kid running around and poking things here and there, I just can’t manage two ‘trouble-makers’ at the same time! Hopefully, good days will be ahead….sooner than expected!......

Latest domestic Suffering

I've not updated my blog as frequent as before as I'm facing some real life challenges at home. My wife and I just hired a new housemaid and I'm taking few days off to deal with this person. She is basically a woman from a village from her native country. Language barrier is higher than I expected. There is only so much body language that I can do. Cos, some concepts wording are harder to do with hands. On her second day on the job, I spent 5 minutes to explain to her the word 'have' and 'haven't', with an orange on the dinning table. You can imagine how hard it is!

She is a bit older than my wife but looks at least 5 if not 10 years older than my wife. Anyway, what matter is her IQ. That's what matter. I think she is a slow learner and she takes time which is a luxury that we don't have much. When she and my sons are at home. I felt like I need to take care of two kids. I think the life in last 2 days are hardest since my son's birth. That's what my wife has said as well.

Well, after squeezing few minutes to update my blog, time to get back to hell! I hope I won't be staying in this hell for too long. The only thing that give me hope is that my hunch will be right down the road that she will be a relatively reliable domestic servant...

Movies Sequels

Going to movie has been my hobby for many years. I like all kind of movies, domestic vs foreign, commercial vs art, and also pretty much all genres. Throughout the years, not only did I watch movies, I also like to read news about movies. I’m not talking about movie reviews, but things about the movie industry itself. Certainly, I’m no expert. But I still like to comment something about movies industry.

For Hollywood movies, we all know that there is something called the ‘Blockbusters’. It is widely agreed that it started with ‘Jaws’ in the 70s. Since then, every summer, there will be those big popcorn movies that are targeted to make loads of money. I think that has been a well-oiled money making machine that most Hollywood studios is using to prosper. I think it is very smart and healthy that they put those blockbuster movies as tent poles on the calendar, the money that they make would be used to fund the smaller movies, art movies and developing new talents for future usages. That’s one of the reasons why Hollywood can maintain its edge throughout the years.

If ‘Jaws’ started the trend of blockbusters, I’m not sure which movie that started the trend of making sequels, or further developed into ‘trilogy’. Cos, ‘Jaws’ itself became a trilogy, ‘Star Wars’ became a trilogy. Personally, I’m not against sequel or trilogy. As long as they are good, though the fact is many sequels or trilogy suck, not only the studios would rather have not making them, we as audience wish we didn’t spend time to watch them neither. The concept of making sequels and trilogy are very logical. When you have a breakout movie, surely you want to further capitalize on it. If the main characters are not dead in the original, just make up a story and make a sequel or two to milk more money. As the marketing costs + effectiveness of sequels are usually lower, audiences are already familiar with the characters. You just need to add a little here and there, and here you go with another blockbusters (supposed to be). In some occasions, the actors/actresses would be signing for making sequels already, so the cost would be lower if they original has not even been shown yet, the box office figures of which would not be known as well. That’s to the power broker of the studios to squeeze better deals from the actors/actresses, especially, those less famous ones.

These days, almost all major Hollywood actors have a trilogy of some sort under their belt. For examples, Harrison Ford (Star Wars and Indiana Jones), Keanu Reeves (Matrix), Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible), Arnold (Terminator), Sly (Rocky, Rambo), Bruce Willis (Die Hard), Matt Damon (Ocean 11-13, Jason Bourne), Brad Pitt (Ocean 11-13), etc. They are have 1 or 2 trilogies or even quadrilogy. Usually, trilogy would only be made because they are profitable, though the quality of the sequels may not be that good. But, the color of Hollywood is always green. So, that’s only matter. Comparing with actors, actresses usually have less sequels. Come to think of it, I can only remember Siqourney Weaver and Neve Campbell have trilogies (Alien quadrilogy and Scream trilogy respectively) Mostly to do with the type of movies that featuring actresses as the major draws, cos genres pay an important part in make sequels.

Genres that usually can be made into sequels or trilogy are action, sci-fi, horror, animation, and comedies. There are not many Godfathers all these years. For actresses, there were not many action or sci-fi chick flicks, even if they do, usually those movies are usually not that big in box offices. Tomb Raider is an exception, but I heard that Angelina Jolie won’t be in the second sequel. If the action movie is led by actor, actress would usually be dispensable, Die Hard for example. For horrors, scream queens usually died in the movie, so they won’t be in sequels. For animation, there is no actor. So there only come to comedies, good comedy roles that can be made into sequels are rare. I can only think of two movies that have sequels but not yet to trilogy and not sure if they will ever going to be: Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality, and Reese Witherspoon’s Legally Blond.

In the last decade or so, as the movie technology and special effect (FX) have greatly advanced. There have been a renew crop of blockbuster sequels or trilogies that have been doing very well. That’s the comic book heroes. Besides the well-known one like Spiderman and X-Men , the lessor known characters like Watchmen, Punisher, GhostRider were also made into movies as well due to the heavy demand by studios. The cost of licensing those comic book characters is extra cost for movie budget, but the marketing cost would be lowered with the existing fan bases of the characters in other media. Also, the studios would be less tripped by the paycheck of the main actors who could demand extraordinary amount. Cos, if Tobey Maguire cost too much for making a new Spiderman, studio would not hesitate to get another younger actor to play Peter Parker. On the contrary, if Bruce Willies doesn’t play John McClane in a new Die Hard, there will be no more Die Hard. I think that’s the case for Lethal Weapon 5.

Anyway, that’s just some thoughts that I have about Hollywood movies sequels and trilogy. I think I will talk more about other movie subjects in future.

The Legacy of Michael Jackson....continue...

Since MJ’s death last week, everytime I put on my headphone of my ipod. I would listen to his songs. It is weird that we don’t pay attention to someone when they are alive than after they are gone. Yes, I’m a fan of MJ, I also a fan of many musicians as well. That’s why my limited music- listening time have always been allocated among many artists. I think I’m the biggest fan of MJ’s music during the time of his Thriller and Dangerous albums. Perhaps I had more free time to listen to music back in those days. Anyway, during the past weeks, as I listened to his songs more, I begin to appreciate more of his songs than before. For those fast tunes, those dances beat, I love time for sure. But even for the slower tunes, and particularly the lyrics, which was usually overlooked by me, I began to pay more attention, and I have renewed a deeper appreciation of his music and talent. There was a song in his Dangerous album, called ‘Gone too soon’. The title of which really fit the tragic end of his life. I usually skipped that song before, but now, I just found out how good that song is.

With the recent flood of news and comment about what he was planning to do, just full of ‘what ifs’, it seems so sad….I’m not a shrink to comment on his mental state and all that, also there is no way I can understand the truth about his real life, what he had been through as a person day to day. However, I am entitled to my opinion that he is a genius with artistic talent. He is a king on the stage and in studio, but he is tragic figure in many other aspects in his life.

Of course, with his passing, there will still be news about his life and death in the coming weeks and months. As a passive fan like me, I don’t really care too much about how much money his children or his family gonna get, what is the cause of death, who’s gonna be blamed and all that? Cos, he is gone. That’s it, just as his never materialized concert’s title as. For us, what matter is his music (and his visual performance as well). That would have two aspects of it: the songs that alright out, and those that will be released in years to come.

As most fans do, I will definitely pay attention to more of his music in the vault. Though, it is believed that MJ had chosen to release those songs that he thought were the best in his album, it doesn’t mean that those in the vault were bad at all. They are just hidden gems that pending to be heard and I’m sure many of them could be very good as well. We will just have to wait and hear…

Just like other past icons: Elvis, Beatles, etc. They are already bigger than life and become part of our culture. I’m sure MJ are joining them. Fans of Elvis and Beatles are largely older. Yes, every now and then, we would watch news and see eight or ten years old kids would dress like Elvis and singing Jailhouse Rock, etc. However, the commotion from MJ’s fans would be even larger in years to come. Cos, his fans are younger, more diverse, and have a bigger base. With the abundant records of his songs and performance, and the aids of visual recording and technology, he will have a wider and deeper impression to more fans to come in future. When I listened to his Billie Jean, and Beat it last week, the beat and rhythm doesn’t get old though they were recorded more than 25 years old. It really proves that his music has been tested of time. I think the aura of his works will stay for decades to come. Cos, in the world today, it becomes very hard to have artists that can achieve and get that big these days. The closest one is Madonna, who got famous around the same time as MJ and often viewed as able to achieve a female version of MJ. Other than her, who else? Nobody! Not Britney, Justin, Eminem….I think as a fan of pop music, we do all thank God for MJ for all he had done for the world of entertainment and culture.

Wants and Needs

Different from animals which usually only going for what they need, we human being, for the most part, after gunning for what we need, we have desire to seek extra things. I think that pretty much sum up most of events or movement in human history, except those of natural disasters. Genghis Khan and his Mongol armies conquer Asia and Europe not for what they need, but what they want. Why the European flocked to America? Why German, Japan and Italy started invasions and caused WWII? Why the U.S. went to Iraq? None of those were because of needs, it would be lying for whoever say so.

If all human beings only go for what they need, some people would think that the world could be much more peaceful. Cos, we only eat for survival, we only wear clothes to stay warm, we would happy with a shelter, and any transportation mean would be fine. There were philosophers wrote theory about it, and some people did try to implement that. In the Utopian world under communism, people are treated equally by allocating them only what they need. We all know how that went, just need to do a bit searching of history in the net.

We human beings just have desire. It is source of our creation, development and advancement. We have planes because we wanted to fly. We have paper because we don’t want to carry our thoughts on heavy means. We have printings because we didn’t want to write all the time, etc. For most regular folks, including me, yes we may not be inventor or trail blazer of some sorts. Needs and wants still control us everyday indeed. Our needs make us get up to go to work everyday, and our wants make us to work hard to perform at work.

From a business sense, satisfying human’s needs would make decent money, cos the demand will always be there. However, satisfying our desire would make the serious money. The risk is greater, but so does the reward. Cos, only people that have already been satisfied with their needs will think about their desires. The greater the dream that you try to help someone to fulfill it, the higher a premium that those want that to be fulfilled will be willing to pay for it. Namely, the greater margin you can charge. Certainly, with a bit of economy of scale, the cost of fulfilling desire will go down and you can still make money by volume.

So, what do we want? That may sound too broad, many people would say that there is no limit of our imagination. Is that true? I would challenge that idea a bit. Yes, there is no limit to our imagination, but there mostly have the same origin – the source of our desire is to satisfy our senses and our mind. So, how that work?

For our senses, that would be what we see, smell, hear, taste and touch, and any combination of them. For our mind, that is much more complicated. I would say that some of them are culture specific, but many of them would be tied to common universal values. For example, to be loved, cared, worshipped, admired, praised, etc.

Most religions, particularly Buddhism, are trying to suppress our desire, or direct our urge of wanting material things or things that would harm ourselves or others to something else, through different methods. Like, if we want certain things, we are told to pray God for assistance. As a result, that would deviate our attention or reliance on our full strength to get certain things. Objectively, it ‘may’ reduce our chance of getting what we want. However, the side effect is that we would be more comfort on our failure and blame part of the failure on God. However, if the thing itself is harmful, we would thank God for that. Mediation is another method to make us think about whether we should want certain things or not. As many desires are ‘urges’, once we got time to think, to calm our impulse down, we would be very likely to understand that it is not something that we need. If that thing is very hard to get, just put the desire of pursue down would be very relaxing and liberating. That actually is quite helpful to most of city dwellers like us that are surrounded by material things all the time.

I would suggest that we can take an exercise to understand where did our money goes, are they fulfilling our needs? Or extras were spent on things that we want? Or the worse part would be that we spent on things that we actually don’t need or want. What we can do is that, along the budget or expenses lot that some of us for personal finance management, add a column to mark if those expense are ‘want’, ‘need’, or ‘neither’. I think the result would be quite interesting, useful, and maybe even surprising as well. Wanna give a try?

Michael Jackson R.I.P.(1958 - 2009)

Whenever celebrity dies, especially those of larger than life figures, it always invokes the ‘mental stamp’ that we will remember where were we when we first heard of the news. When Princess Diana died, I got that through TV news at night when I was reading novels with TV on. 10 days later when Mother Teresa died, I was at work and got that news via CNN.com. Today, I learned Michael Jackson died on news.google.com this morning at work.

I was shock by the news. Well, that’s normal, cos he was not known with long term sickness like cancer or something. So, at the age of 50, he was reportedly died of cardio arrest. As of this moment, the exact cause of death is still pending for examination.

Michael Jackson is definitely one of my favor entertainers. His rise of fame basically took place during my teenage years. Yes, I owned a cassette of ‘Thriller’, one of the first few American pop music album that I listened to back then, along with Billy Joel’s Innocent Man album and few others. His dance move was simply amazing. I didn’t know people can dance like that with beats and rhythm. Before him, my impression of dancing to modern music was those images of folks in disco dancing along Saturday Night Fever or some ABBA’s songs. Namely, simply body swinging left and right, back and forth, nothing fancy. Michael Jackson changed all that. He even made zombie looks cool with his Thriller video. Of course, subsequent facial and skin color changes were unexpected as well. However, to audience of his performance and listener of his music, including me, those are not important stuff, let alone other allegations, or scandals of his private life. What matter to me was his performance, whether his dance move still got the groove or whether his songs still catchy, and they all did.

Well, his death became another footnote of our growth and maturity. It just reminded us that time always on the move and history has been making all along. I think artistically, Michael Jackson has done pretty much most he could. It would be close to impossible to overtake what he had done for the world of entertainment, not even by himself if he would still be alive. I think for audience like us, all we can do is to listen to his songs and watch his performance back in his hey days every now and then. For me, I will definitely show his videos to my son when he is older, to show him that there used to be a great entertainer called Michael Jackson that his dad had admired very much.

Not being nice, am I?

In most occasions, I consider myself a nice person, even to strangers. Cos, I think people should be nice to each other, so people can get along. However, in some situations, I could be mean. For example, when I receive cold calls from those salespersons who try to offer me low interest loans, or sell me phone plans etc. As they usually call me while I'm at work, I just don't bother entertain them, simply saying I'm not interested and hanged up. Sometimes, my wife would say that they are simply trying to make a living, don't be rude to them. Well, I just can't help it, I know that it is part of their job to make cold calls to strangers. In order to take such job, they should be get used to rejections. I wasn't nice in rejecting them, but I don't think I was really rude, perhaps, I simply expressed my feeling that I didn't want to be bothered.

Today, I was rejecting someone face to face. The story was that I got cold call saying that I would be offered a bottle of free red wine if I meet an agent from an insurance company for a chat in person. Yes, I admit that I was a bit greedy, though I'm not a drinker myself, in fact I still have a bottle of very nice red wine sitting in my living room for almost 4 months as a prize from my company's annual dinner. However, it wouldn't hurt to get one more for cooking or gift, knowing that the quality of such free stuff won't be good anyway. Since the meeting is at lunch time, I didn't have any appointment for lunch today anyway. So, I told the appointment to meet that agent in a big 'M' near my office.

That agent looks like he is in mid forties and is half bald. I was eating my fries and burger while he told me that he was planning to collect some data from me and do an analysis of financial situation at the spot. I did have similar encounters before, however, they were usually taking place in the branch of banks. With a nice, smiley CFP, chatting with me in a friendly way, while inputting my data on a PC or laptop. As those agents were from banks that I had relationship with, so they knew my name and some of my background. Though I didn't end up doing business with them, at least the experience was present. Well, this time was different....

This agent wasn't very friendly, not his tone, but his look and facial expression. He didn't smile or enthusiastic about approaching me. Yes, I wasn't very cooperative neither. Like when he asked me for some personal information, I said that I wanted to keep some privacy. For some information that I thought wouldn't matter to his analysis, like the gender of my kid, I simply said 'would that matter to your analysis?' I think he should be trained to handle different type of customers, including some difficult one, like me. He shouldn't expect everyone would be cooperative, consider that he was able to meet me through a cold call, rather than from some existing business relationship. However, when he took down my financial information, I saw him simply scratch some numbers on his form with bad handwriting. Many blanks were still left blank. Also, when he tried to give me some numbers, like how much I would need if I retire at 55. He pulled out a calculator of model 20 years ago and did some calculations. That looked so unprofessional to me. In these days, would he be at least using a smartphone, a netbook, or a laptop for God's sake! after about 20 minutes after I was done with my lunch.I felt that this meeting was definitely a mistake. I was disinterested, and so did he. It was an chicken and egg scenario...was he made me disinterested with his communication skill or preparation or presentation? or my reaction that made him perform badly? I wasn't sure, come to think of it, it must not be my fault.

At the end, he handed me his business card, showing that he is a CFP and was a team manager of some sort of an international reputable insurance company. Well, that didn't matter, the issue was him, nothing to do with his company, which I dealed with before in my previous job. Other folks there were very professional anyway. So, I asked him if there was any gift for the meeting. Then, he pulled out a coupon of some sort for the red wine that worth 159RMB. I said what? RMB? You wanted me to cash that coupon in China? Come on!? He said that he didn't know much about that coupon, but there was a phone number on it that I could call. Then, I told him that he could keep it, didn't bother. I didn't want it. Not planning to go to China to get a bottle of red wine. Never! So, I left.

On the way back to my office, I was thinking back that....was I being rude? He was trying to make a living only. Why did I give him a hard time? Did I?.....well, he wasn't prepared, he should present better if he wants to succeed in making a deal. Maybe, I just taught him a lesson. E.g. should be at least know something about the free gift that he would hand out to his potential client? Should he bring a laptop to run analysis rather than using an old calculator? Come on, people run software and did printing scenarios for customers. If he can't print such, should he propose to meet customers in his office or branch office to be more professional, rather than sitting in big 'M' with construction worker chatting loudly at next table while you are trying to make deal with potential customer? I don't know the answer. Maybe I'm just not his right target. Anyway.....just an encounter experience that I wanna share......