This morning, as Michelle and I were driving off to work.
Here‘s a unique take on Inception relating it to personal finance. Who would have thought? But then the guy is a financial planner. The article is good and is a must read. Allow me to highlight a few statements that really caught my eye:
“…many are also trapped in the world of escapism and succumb to living a life of fantasy they can hardly afford.”
“The average Pinoy changes his cell phone every eight to 12 months; expensive coffee shops are mushrooming all over the metropolis; malls are sardine-packed with people, etc.”
“…the level of savings of Pinoys is well below that of many of our neighbors; consumer debt is rising in an alarming rate; we are not preparing for retirement; the number of people with financial investments or insurance remains to be one of the lowest in Asia—in short, the average Pinoy is not prepared for the future.”
“We need to wake up to our reality that we are responsible for the actions we take in personal finance and in life in general—and that’s the reality! There is no secret to achieving financial freedom and there is no shortcut—it is a process, and we build it little by little by the actions we take. There’s no substitute to industriousness, prudence and discipline. To believe otherwise is foolish.”
Ouch! I feel guilty already :D
Jeanne is quite talkative and tonight she said “Dah-dhy!” and both Michelle and I heard it! She probably doesn’t really mean me by that but it sure made my night!
Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream, Merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
That nursery rhyme is very apt for this movie. Inception means the beginning or creation of something. In the movie, inception is the microcosm of an idea that once planted to a person through a dream and accepted becomes the basis of that person’s thoughts, opinion, other ideas, and even his or her personality.
Cobb(Leonardo DiCaprio) is an “extractor”, someone who retrieves information from a person by going into that person’s consciousness and extracting the information. He is hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe) to attempt the heretofore untried inception on a competitor. As in a typical heist movie, he then assembles a crew to do the job and after the usual drama, set about doing it. Of course, since most of these happen in a dream, you definitely can’t expect the usual.
But it is a heist movie in the same vein as The Italian Job and The Thomas Crown Affair. That’s tough company but even if Inception is not one of the best heist movies, it’s certainly one of the more imaginative ones. It has action but it isn’t as edgy as The Matrix, to which it can and will be compared to. It has some twists but it doesn’t attempt to befuddle the user: Whenever things get a little bit complicated, the characters make sure to explain everything (sometimes a little too much). But put together, it’s a well-built, riveting movie.
Rating: 4/5
Finally, 10 years after the first, Starcraft II is out! How big an event is this? BIG! We’re talking about a game that has sold over 11 million copies, still being played all these years, and is Korea’s national sport. They even declared today an official holiday. Of course, there’s a lot of unofficial and personal holidays elsewhere today.
It is doubtful if it can better the original but time will tell (like maybe 10 years) but it looks great, modern, and fun in its own right. There’s no LAN play which was arguably one of the reasons why the original is so popular. That’s a bummer but we can do without that anachronism as shown by World of Warcraft. Maybe it will even force those ISPs to drastically improve their service.
Looks like I’ll be needing a new gaming computer.