- Firefly - This is a series that just show that a good concept and good characters will not survive without general popularity. It's a big mish-mash of stuff put together to give an interesting but short TV series. Post apocalyptic, western theme science fiction with expletives in Chinese. Probably a bit too strange for the average American audience and probably a bit slow initially. Which is a pity that it got pretty interesting a lot later on but too bad the show was canceled. I think it's not bad but I'm pretty sure that this series is not for everyone, even hardcore science fiction fans. Anyway, it's only about 14-15 episodes long.
- Serenity - The feature length movie continuing from where Firefly left off and this is clearly a big change in terms of how they style the show to appeal to the mass audience. Instead of heavy western motives that you see in the series, it has been significantly cut back and gave it a slightly cleaner futuristic look. The great thing is that they managed to get the entire main cast of Firefly back into the movie to get back as much of the chemistry from the series to the movie. Non-watchers of the series shouldn't find it too difficult to jump into the movie but it's obviously better if you did. It's still a pretty good science fiction movie. And yes, the expletives in Chinese is still a little weird to me.
- My Blueberry Nights - Continuing my run of watching Wong Kar Wai's movies. Very noir story telling style, something that I really love, coupled with slow 15-ish frames per second sequences reminiscent of 2046. Colours are saturated, blues and jazz and almost constant night scenes add to the noir feeling (although some might argue about the colour being noir. Ironic you say.) The special features of the DVD had a Q&A session with the director and it's just interesting to see how he thinks and how he translates his "script" to film. Great stuff. The movie too.
There are just some days that you just don't understand anything anymore. Things that you think you've got it figured out suddenly had a wrench thrown in by some random monkey. Friends you've mixed around for quite awhile suddenly feel like strangers. Or even things that you don't understand at all just coming back to annoying poke its finger at you. And so on. Have had a few of those recently and it's a fairly frustrating thing to live through. Some of it is entirely your own fault, others are just a by-product of chance and bad timing. On hindsight of course.
One that recently surfaced was the issue of this image that I seem to carry around. For many instances, I've had dozens of people essentially express a very high opinion of my abilities of which I don't think I deserve, that I am capable of great things, things far greater than what I think is the proper ball park figure. This ranges from a wide range of my dabblings such as cooking, photography, my academic disposition etc. There are some that I can let it slide for example cooking. It's just feasible that my ball park figure can be a bit higher than what I think simply because the variables in the game are easier to predict or learn as I do tend to think in cooking (some may argue against this). Photography, not so much although some friends of mine tend to think otherwise. But the one thing that I am quite stubborn about is my recent move to the area of computer science.
Despite my grades what my grades may tell you, I really am playing second fiddle to everyone else who is in this business. Possibly third. And here I am getting comments that I am capable of doing something great, like writing a killer app or something to that effect or to be able to get into that exclusive workshop affiliated with a certain fruit that keeps the doctor away. One, this area is almost certainly short term in its mission. There is no heart or passion that is poured into it, just pure drive to get the job done. That by my definition is not the sufficient condition to be great. Two, it's an area where hands on work is valued more than what you've got on a piece of paper. And I'm a person nearing 30 and I've only barely scratched the surface in this area compared to the thousands who've tinkered with computers before they've even hit puberty. Add the two together and you can see why my ball park figure isn't going above sea level.
According to a good friend of mine, it is all in the image I portray. How good I talk, how good I present myself will give them some sort of a judgment about my abilities and what nots, which I agree whole-heartedly. If this is the case that I am presenting a self-image which gives them the illusion of reputation that precedes me, to give them a relatively high expectation of my skill sets, then I am guilty of a crime. A crime of false advertising. Worse is that I may not be fully aware of it at all. I may seem like I know my stuff but judging from past experience, that is far from the case. Which means all of this talk about why people view me highly, on why can't they see what I'm really made of, is essentially my fault. That, my few fellow readers, is a very dangerous thing to know and do. Subconsciously know and do. I could get into a lot of trouble just strictly on the basis of high expectation that I somehow set myself up and indeed I have a couple of times.
So, problem identified. Now what? If I've learned a few things from the behavioural economics books that I've been reading, is that foreknowledge about something before actually seeing it in person (or in action) reshapes our thinking, our expectations. So, using that piece of information, if I really want to eliminate this expectation and make people see things first before laying down the fancy jargon or passionate discussions on the subject matter...
...I should just shut up and just let them see it for themselves first.
I'd probably emphasize on the shutting up. It's the less talking, more doing stance that should be taken here. So I realized that there's a lot of empty chatter on technicalities on the matter and very little of actually showing it off hand that I've done. Hopefully, it will be the other way around at the end of the day.
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It's amazing what a couple of hours plus a movie can do to your thought processes.
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