The Journey Within

It’s rare that a very good martial arts movie with a strong story comes along. Rarer still that the martial arts are really good to watch! They don’t make films like these anymore, until Ip Man.

This is a portrayal of a true martial artist who learnt the art of Wing Chun. It shows the light and dark side of a period where I can only imagine what it’s like. It’s set in a place where the streets are filled with martial art schools, which makes it a very competitive place for learning martial arts. It also shows the hardships during the Japanese occupation, and how, through kung fu, the spirits of people are lifted to new highs. Do watch it.

p/s: It’s pronounced Yip (as in yippee) Mun (as in Bun), and not eye-pee man…

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The Dark Knight – Batman’s latest movie instalment, is dark. I wasn’t anticipating this movie that much initially. Even after the movie, I wasn’t sure if i’ve enjoyed the movie or not. It’s a strange feeling. I found the movie long (it’s more than 2 hours), and the beginning a little bit draggy. But after the whole movie finished, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling any longer.

The theme is dark. Good and evil has been mixed up so much that you can’t tell the evil from the good. I see families with kids going to the movies, and I wonder if the subject might be too dark for the audience.

It’s hard to talk about The Dark Knight without talking about Joker and Two-Face, the 2 other characters in the movie. They are what made Batman bad or good, depending on your perspective. Without mentioning too much about the plot, Joker actually has the clearest mind about everyone in the Batman world. He’s clear about himself, he’s clear about the people around him, and he knows Batman better than Batman knows himself. That is what made Joker such a formidable nemesis to Batman.

According to Joker, Batman won’t kill Joker because of some misplaced moral guidance that the good can’t kill the evil. Joker wouldn’t kill Batman either because he’s just “too much fun”.

If that intrigues you, go watch the movie.

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A panda destined to be a Dragon Warrior, and yet do not have a clue how. Let’s face it, have you seen a panda fight? Even his teacher is clueless how to teach this panda kung fu.

So the movie begins with how each other found faith and belief in each other, and themselves – the panda to believe he can learn kung fu, and the teacher to believe he can teach kung fu – to anyone.

The best quote I liked from this movie is this:

There is no special ingredient

If you’re waiting to learn about one special ingredient so that you’ll progress tremendously in whatever you’re trying to learn, you’ll be disappointed, because there’s no such special ingredient. You can definitely get away with the skills you have, but it will not bring you very far, unless you realise that there is no special ingredient, then your mind opens and everything is acceptable.

This is the mind of the child, the absorbent mind, as discovered by Maria Montessori. And maybe, this should be the mind of the learning adult as well.

p/s: i like kung fu movies, even the really bad ones, and this is not half as bad. Do watch it. It’s hilarious, if you don’t mind it being a cartoon.

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Nah, our annual offsite was not a visit to the Heroes set, like the lucky bunch who gave us Google Reader. And I thought I was already quite close when I saw some of the Heroes cast here! Our offsite this year was a milder version of the Amazing Race, without the “strange things you have to eat” stations… oh wait, we did.

One of our things-to-eat was a strange concoction of leaves, some hardened gum, and a white paste. It’s a race, so we didn’t try to find out what all three things were and just made the “dessert” and chewed on it. The hardened gum turned to a red goo after plenty of chewing. The taste? Hmmm… You just have to taste it yourself.

Anyway, solving the puzzles under the sun, asking strangers for directions, avoiding the other teams… all in all, the day spent wasn’t that bad. It might be a tough call between choosing that from working. The puzzles weren’t too well thought of – and at the end of the day, the day’s activity was strung together to show the company’s values, which was a bit stretched. No mention of how to marry theory with practice.

How would you like your offsite to be? A day of fun? A day of challenge? A day of relaxing? I guess it comes back down to what is the purpose of the offsite?

An offsite involving different departments and people you have not come in contact with will have quite a different purpose from an offsite for a small team of 6. I don’t believe the BIG offsites actually work. In fact, it’s only at the end of the race that we actually bonded more. After a few glasses of wine, we knew more about each other than during the entire race! And there were less than 10 of us left.

Small somehow works better than Big.

I’m not a celebrity who has to do my rounds, show my presence, make the small talk. I’m just someone trying to get to know others better so that we can get along better when work crosses our paths. In some small way, I just want to be the small Hero to the person where our paths happen to meet, not a Hero to everyone under the sun.

You might say – at least there was some effort to bring everyone together. Would your rather have this opportunity? Would you rather have a choice? A vote to what constitutes a better offsite? A vote even to not have an offsite at all? Incidentally, such voting wasn’t allowed for ours. But i shoudn’t be asking questions, should I? After my rant on questions… and my rant on the word “should“… I’ll shut up now.

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Ever wished to be a Hero? A hero like Superman? Spiderman?

You don’t have to have superpowers to be a Hero.

That’s one of the quote from a TV series titled “Heroes”. The TV series is about a group of people with special powers. Some of these people think about the amount of good they can do with these powers. Others, prefer personal gain or world domination (think X-men without costumes). Of course, there are some who just want to lead a normal life. The series depict the light and dark side of people with powers. Kind’a like our world isn’t it?

I do like the series, so if you get a chance, do watch it.

As an aside, I was lucky enough to win a pair of tickets to meet some of the cast from Heroes. Got some memorabilia, a long wait, and a brief encounter with the cast. I thought they would have at least come down and gave some autographs, but it was just up on stage, “thank you fans i love you”, and a not so discreet exit. I guess being a Hero on TV and in real life is really the same – you do not have much time for everyone.

I think I’m too old to be here. I don’t even have a banner like the girl below.

There was girl with a poster which reads “Mohinder, marry me”, and another with a dotted line drawn across her forehead, with a caption “cut here”. (If you watched the series, you’ll know why). The closest shot I got was when Greg, Ali and Masi Oka entered the stage.

I think I still prefer to be on the couch watching them.

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Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship enterprise. To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life form and new civilisation. To boldly go where no man has gone before…

Ok. Star Trek was part of my daily TV diet during my university days. And because of that, I scored fairly high on some nerd test online. Although I now will also have to bring in another one under-rated film, Contact. It explores the relationship of human beings when faced with alien technology. The one line I remember from the film is:

(in the context of whether there are aliens out there)… If it is just us, seems like an awful waste of space…

We see space everywhere. From the “thing” between stars and galaxies, to the space between you and your fellow commuter on the train. No matter how little space we feel we have, the lift can always seem to fill “one more person”, until the “overweight” alarm sounds.

I have used the word “space” in its broadest sense, representing all spatial relationships. A recent martial art movie, Fearless, highlighted an interesting message about plants.

Plants are living things. They need space to grow. Without sufficient space, they can’t grow properly.

Maybe that’s why there is so much space. The water bottle needs space to store water. The house has living space. Art is made up of spaces so that the subject is instantly recognisable. Without space, there can be no physical matter.

I think this applies to time as well. We need to allow some space in our time, not to fill up all the space time has to offer. The space is there to make the time spent actually “doing” things more meaningful. And to take cue from the universe, we have to provide some “space out” time. So, for all the action junkies out there, or even if you feel guilty spending “space out” time, just remember, you are just learning from the universe. Great excuse to day dream isn’t it?

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We get signals now and again, about how we should go about our daily lives. The lives we’re trying to lead normally throws us clues as to how we should lead them. Sometimes the clues are loud, like “i’m hungry” and you head for the nearest place you can find food, within budget. Sometimes, the clues are subtle, like the conversation you had with a stranger in the library. That stranger eventually became my wife.

Subtlety of such signals actually depend on your receptors. Some people are always “tuned in” to these signals. Others may just never “get it”. One of the signals which I want to highlight today is “character fit”.

I’ve never thought of character fit as a signal. Then again, signals are difficult to tell. Most of the time, it depends on how you interpret the signals. The same signal may mean different things to different people. I’ve just watched Shawshank Redemption, again. That film is about hope, and life in prison to demonstrate the power of hope. There’s a quote about prison walls which I want to highlight:

These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.

It reminds me about the the walls that we see around us, whether it’s built by our own self-limiting beliefs, or built by institutions. As time passes, you will get so used to them that you will depend on those walls. I picked up that message because of my interpretation of the signals given in the film.

Character fit plays an important role in life’s learning curve. You need both friends and foes. Hopefully more of the former, but they’re both equally important. My wife was (is?) as much of a foe as she is a friend. I’m sure she can testify to that. We quarrelled plenty during our “younger” days and still do today (although much less, i think she gave up). Without those quarrels, we may not end up where we are today, in wedlock!

Character fit played an important role with my choice of teachers. During school days, we never get to choose who our teachers were, although there were choices if you actually went for extra tuition, or extra classes. Even then, our choice of teachers could be quite limited. Being an adult now (although my wife would say that i’m still a kid!), i don’t think our choice actually expanded. You would know that you have found a good teacher if there is character fit. The teacher either push all your buttons so that you grow as a student, or the teacher has the same principles in life as you do, or the teacher brings some other meaning which you require at that point in time. Even bad teachers can fit your character if you are meant to learn something from them.

That’s how powerful character fit is. It’s not everyday you find someone with character fit. It may fit you as a friend, like a jigsaw puzzle. It may jar you like a blunt razor blade, like the person eyeing the same rung in the corporate ladder as you. Commonly known in the business world as “healthy competition”.

So when you do find character fit, be wary, be alert, and above all, be thankful! It may be some time before you find another person with character fit. I think character fit can also be known as “human fate”. 人缘 (ren yuan). You may think socialising more may increase your human fate, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to want to meet such people. You have to have faith that you’ll meet these people. The people you meet may not be who you think you want to meet initially, but they may be the most important person that you need at that point in your life, and could most likely affect you for the rest of your life!

So be wary, be alert, and be patient. Now all you need, is some character fit.

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I like.

I like how the film tackles the various conflicts that humans (and mutants) can have. The conflicts, in no rank or order:

1. internal conflict between government and itself regarding mutant policies
2. internal conflict of a man who fathers a mutant child, and of the child who has a human as father
3. the conflicting views of a mutant cure – is being a mutant a disease?
4. the conflict in mutants who cannot accept who they are – they want the “cure”
5. the conflict of who is in control – does your power control you or do you control the power?
6. how Magneto recognises and respects Charles Xavier, even though they’re fighting each other

It does draw plenty of parallels into our own life, depicted with a big budget, Hollywood style film. Can you see the parallels in your life?

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