My Lunch 'date' with Jet Li

Technically, I am not a fan of Jet Li's movies & not an idol of him in his acting capabilities.
His movies are entertaining enough & his acting good enough to be famous. Yet, I was not and am still not dying to catch his next movie.

BUT, as a person, he holds a great attraction for me. This revelation is a result of having watched an interview of him in Shanghai. From this 2 hours of interview (you'll need to understand Chinese to grasp the whole conversation which I'll try to upload here or link it to the site) and discussions about what he believes in, what he is currently venturing on, he has impressed upon me how similar we are in our believes & thought processes. That is a great revelation to me, to find someone out there whom I don't really know anything about for many years & then to instantly find that connection. On top of that, he convinces me about his cause. That is what most people would not be able to convince me of. & for that, I do admire him.

I shall not write to much about what his believes are here as I believe everyone has a chance to discover it for himself/herself (again, you need to understand Chinese to do so). It is a journey into one's core belief if you choose to watch these few videos. These videos have completely changed my prior perception of Jet Li the actor. It is the best interviews I've watched on CBN (China Business News, Shanghai) this year.

李连杰：慈善是一门生意（上）
李连杰：慈善是一门生意（下）
李连杰：天生我才必有用（上）
李连杰：天生我才必有用（下）


Note: You need windows player to play these videos.

P.S. This is the same review I posted on Lunch about Jet Li.

Let's do Lunch after VT

As some of you might have know, I was into travelogues many years ago. Spent majority of my waking hours on VirtualTourist. Made some great friends along the way too & got to see many parts of the world which I otherwise wouldn't have step into!

Well, the boss JR Johnson sold it off and is beginning to launch another site. So, he has invited me over to Lunch! Sorry about the delay of posting of this post. I've been otherwise engaged & have been investigating about the potential of Lunch. The verdict?

Lunch is still in its infancy. A beta version as it is appropriately labelled. There are some fine tunings (as with our selection on the menu when we go lunch) that need to be ironed out. And imho, narrowed its selection into groups (remember about going to a restaurant that offers too many selections to the extent that we are at a loss as to what to order? yep, i got that feeling after 2 days navigating the site & trying to write some reviews. It's a little big (even at this initial stage!) and in disarray. It definitely has potential. It'd be great if I get a map when I enter the compound though. At times, I feel lost! It's like going to WDW without a map! What exactly is Lunch? It's central theme is quite similar to VirtualTourist. A platform for interested party to voice themselves (in VT case, about travel & the travel relatede) on anything (literally under the sun) they are interested in. In other words, blogging & rating about whatever that caught your attention, be it good or bad. If Lunch is able to draw crowds & tons of audience who turn into writers, then it can be great site. The most crucial issue, imho, is how to manage the site when it gets real big & messy. Trust me, from my many years of experience on VT, it can be real messy (without even getting too big)! All in all, best of luck to JR Johnson! I hope you can make Lunch into our main meal of the day!

About IP (Intellectual Property)

When I was in Shanghai, I attended James' law course on IP at Fudan University.

It's a hot topic in China now, including a case last year where Microsoft had computers of users of pirated Windows software experiencing blackouts (for chinese speakers, an indepth discussion on this matter can be found in Brainstorm sessions with experts from the IT field).

I'm not against IP at all, in fact, I'm all for it since I build websites of my own.

What is interesting though is that the benefits from an open platform is being hampered in the western medias more so than in the chinese medias (in the name of profitablity, I'm sure). It is a surprise to me, to say the least! I'm not merely referring to hollywood productions or the entertainment field. I'm referring to productions by CNBC, CNN, Reuters instead. These are all commercial entities. Granted, it has its shareholders to account to, wherein some or most of the Chinese medias are government funded, a case in point is CCTV or CBN. For educational purposes though, I learn a great deal out of these medias which have many of its programs streamed onto the web on a daily basis. I've a lot more (free, as in not paid, which in turn becomes FREE, as in dissemination of ) information streamed out of China than I've about the West (main stream media, I mean). WE may be living in a free society, but we are definitely all made to pay for them!!! This is especially true of CNBC, CNN & Reuters! That essentially means (at least to me, it means) having unequal disadvantage when it comes to information processing. Information & the timely acquisition of information for investment's decision making means a lot of difference when it comes to the finance arena! This goes against fair competition, I believe. In some ways, I do feel that there is more fairness among the common people in Shanghai than there is among the New Yorkers. I might be wrong, but that's how I've been feeling & it bothers me that I feel so!


Getaway to Austria, a foreign language (ie. English in this case) travel program by ICS (International Channel Shanghai) broadcasted on Apr. 11, 2009

Today's Video: Gone with the wind (Quacor)

Back to the Future

My colleague sent me a link (The Cool Hunter) to view a private property owned by the Malaysian YTL's boss today. Upon viewing it, it reminded me of the brief period in my life right after college during which I was passionate about designing homes that I had imagined about. I didn't have any training in this field & even though I had aspired to be an architect, my parents didn't think it a profitable field to be in (which proves to show parents don't always know best ;-)) & hence I didn't get the sponsorship to study it in my undergraduate years. Still, I have had those design concepts in my mind & up to today, I still can remember them vividly. One of them involves having a small pool with a transparent bottom in which anyone below it could look up & see the swimmers. This pool would be in the dining (or rather, breakfast) room one floor up. To date, I've yet seen anything I've imagined. Although, I had seen something I had dreamt about. It was so real that I got a chill down my spine when I saw the views from Hearst Castle (I had dreamt about swimming in one of them!) as well as in the movie, What Dreams May Come!

Speaking of movies, The Matrix is one which I had a sense of deja vu. The plot is very similar to some ideas which my sis & I had explored & talked about (aka parallel world) a few years before it was released in the cinema. It may well be the time the author wrote the book. I'm not sure, never did check. But, I do believe some kind of telepathy does exist in this world, as with intuition. I've a good sense of intuition about some major events in the world. One day when I'm ready, I'll write about them. It is something which I can no longer deny that is inherent (despite my early attempts to shrug them off), but I can't based them on any facts nor can I predict nor prove how accurate they are either. It is simply this feeling of knowing (& sometimes, uneasiness) which arises out of nowhere. Spooky, isn't it?

The tie that links architecture & The Matrix is my innate preference for futuristic designs; any design that is out of this world & ahead of its time per se. It does not have to be anything out of Star Wars or anything that is from E.T. It may be something like Sagrada Familia or something like Guggenheim Bilbao. I do like some of Wright's works as well. It often brings me joy to get a glimpse of the future & through some of these (be it movies, gadgets, concepts, thoughts) inventions, I get the lucky feeling that I've been transported through a time machine. It might well be a case of back to the future!