martyfartywarty

Few months ago, I ranted about how good was The Golden Compass book. Now I will rant otherwise for the movie. Do not watch the movie, I repeat, do not watch the movie. Two reasons:

1. If you haven’t read the book, you won’t be able to follow the story, the pace was just too fast.
2. If you have read the book, you will be dying of sorrow inside the cinema, read my spoiler rants.

I was expecting something like a three hour movie, yet it was 1.5 hours. This coming from a thick fantasy book with rich stories of a world vastly different from ours with extensive history context ~ big mistake. Totally huge mistake, there was not enough scene for any character developments, not even for describing the world sufficiently. Such a waste!

My rants will contain spoilers, so if you still want to watch it, don’t read on. The Golden Calamity gets only 42% on the tomatometer.

Read the rest…

Measure the distance from your shoulder to your fingertips, and then divide it by the distance from your elbow to your fingertips. PHI again. Another? Hip to floor divided by knee to floor. PHI again. Finger joints. Toes. Spinal divisions. PHI. PHI. PHI. ~ Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code

I had a bad day when I went home after work on one of the past days. The bus driver was slow, the traffic jam was horrible. All in all was caused by my chit-chatty mouth. I talked too long to a friend whom I haven’t met for a while.

My place was a bit far from the city, so I had to catch 2 buses to get home. First bus was a public one and the second was a private. I was late for 7 minutes and the bus only came every 30 minutes. I got books but it wasn’t a comfy place to read (no seat, and it was wet because it was pouring before then) *slump*.

So then 3 minutes later at 6.10 pm, I decided to walk home with a prediction that I will reach home around 6.30, but at the end I arrived home at 6.45. It took the same amount of time if I had waited for the ride instead. Why did the journey that usually took me about 20 minutes became 45 minutes? Because I carry a fair amount of weights… My handbag weighed 2.5 kg and my other bag with laptop in it was 8 kg. If you are wondering why I was carrying such heavy bags, you can glare at squirtle (my laptop). He was cute but heavy nonetheless :S

Carrying bags weighing about a quarter of my body weight wasn’t extremely easy and it costed me sore arms and shoulders the next day. I first put the heaviest one on my left shoulder, kept moving and changing its position constantly. I lasted 15 minutes till I finally gave up. I switched it to my right shoulder and voila! I didn’t feel any uneasiness, and I didn’t have to change the position of the bag even once after that. It was a weird joy like when you just recover from runny nose, things are superbly normal - I felt I could walk the same as if I only carry a small bag. My right shoulder was hell lot stronger than my left’s.

I have a lot of asymmetric body parts: non-existence right eyelid, smaller left foot, lenkier left fingers, not to mention differences caused by my right-handedness. My right fingers were that stubby that any ring on them would look ugly, thank God the left one appeared more normal. It was very hard to put eyeliner on my right eye. Leaving it on only the left eye just made me look like panda. My left foot made me never able to wear any strapless shoes - if the right one fitted, the left one would be loose, left fitted, right too tight. Damn, life was full of disappointments.

My effort to balance my right eyelid stopped after a few painful days of wearing home-made shaped sticky tapes to construct the line as similar to my left one. My high school computing teacher would ponder on my unusual glittery eyelid everytime he saw it. Back in Indo, I would have to boil kettle for hot shower, so I would use my left arm muscles in order to make it stronger. Didn’t really have any effect though. I would try to write or catch balls using my left hand but in things like juggling, I still have a lot of issues trying to coordinate my weaker limbs.

Dan Brown’s introduced 1.618 as a divine proportion in his most famous book: The Da Vinci Code. He claimed that divine proportion, or phi (its mathematical notation) governs some of the basic ratio in human body such as elbow-to-arm, thigh-to-leg ratio, and more of others . Despite all the critiques of this suggested ‘fact’, it is easier to accept that God might have some kind of blueprint when He/She/it created humans at the beginning. But the truth doesn’t seem to be the case. Each person is different, each person is unique. Asymmetrical body parts are also another one of human characteristics. I eventually realised that there is not much point to alter any parts of my body just for appearance *doh*.

The question remains though: for the health purposes, should I use more of my stronger limbs because they do the job better or should I bother training my weaker parts to have better balanced posture and body?

Look at all parts of your body now and you may notice new special features if you haven’t done so yourself.

Slow Dance

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Do you run though each day
On the fly?

When you ask: How are you?
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done,
Do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die

Cause you never had time
To call and say, ‘Hi’?

You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life is not a race.
Do take it slower.

Hear the music
Before the song is over.

~ David L. Weatherford in The 4-Hour Workweek

I bought this book based on a friend’s recommendation. It has been a slow reading for me because Timothy Ferriss, the author, has a style which at first I found him boastful. His aim is to instill a can-do attitude for everyone to do the stuff he’d done, and more! I am a reasonably confident person, but his achievements that he discussed in the book were just hard to believe. The first 50 pages are hard to digest before I finally got into his rhythm. Maybe this is one of those books that I shouldn’t judge by its cover, or even by reading initial chapters of it.

These are some of the things that he has done:

• First American in history to hold a Guinness world record in tango
• Princeton University guest lecturer in entrepreneurship
• National Chinese kick-boxing champion
• MTV break-dancer in Taiwan
• Athletic adviser to more than 30 world record holders
• TV host in Thailand and China
• Shark diver
• Motorcycle racer

and he was 29.

The book explained about his technique and ideas. All of the ideas in the book are very well reasoned but the best idea for me is about mini-retirements.

I remember the boredom I had in the 4-months summer holiday after my HSC. The thought of going to uni seemed to be so exciting, in fact the thought of doing anything new would be exciting. I was desperate for getting the activities I used to get at school. In my long break last year (lasted for 3 months), I felt the same thing. I missed the social life I got from going to uni. I felt miserable from being unproductive.

If you have had the same experience, now imagine that in your 20 years retirement. I used to take it for granted that I will have to work 40 years and then enjoy my 20 years of retirement - then I can travel here and there, buy anything I want, etc. But if I can’t even fill up the 3 months void I had, I surely won’t have a fantastic retirement. I was so used to external deadlines put on me, but I didn’t have any control of putting my own deadlines to myself. This is usually the problem. That is why mini-retirement about 3-6 months is better. There is no reason why you have to keep the best to the end of your life. Plus if you haven’t trained yourself to retire, then you won’t be able to be good at it in the future.

The book answered how can I finance myself to get 3-6 months out of the office, how can I get the time to travel while still having my 9-5 job, how I can train myself to get something productive out of it and lot more other ideas (how can I outsource my life, how to learn any language in 3 months, etc). It is a very practical book, closely linked to Tim’s own life. Sometimes it felt as I am reading an auto-biography, but a more useful one.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to get the most of their lives. Life is just too short to be spent on working full-time for 40 years.