Zen - A Movie about Dogen

This is a rare Japanese movie on Zen Buddhism. The story revolves around the life of Japanese Zen master Dogen in the 13th century.

It is a religious movie, so you can expect some stereo types, such as the portrait of endurance, persistence, courage, generosity, etc. The story does not have drastic ups and downs, everything flows seamlessly.

This movie will not fit into the category of good entertainment, however, it does fit into the category of chicken soup for the soul. Watching this movie makes you feel calm and peaceful. Maybe just for a moment, it makes you feel more detached from the material world, your soul is free from all the worries. This very much thanks to the director/cameraman's mastership of cinegraphy. The scenes are speechlessly beautiful, especially those of Chinese landscape.

The first 20 or so minutes of the film describes Dogen's learning experience in China. It is interesting to see all the Japanese actors speaking accented Chinese. During the Tang & Song Dynasties, a lot of Japanese scholars, monks went to China to study and learn the Chinese culture and technology. They brought back what they learnt in China faithfully to Japan, and they actually preserve those cultural relics till today. When I was in Japan, I was pleasingly surprised by the evident influence of the Chinese Tang Dynasty. After many dynasty changes over the last one two thousand years, you can hardly see anything Tang Dynasty style in China anymore, but you can see plenty in Japan. We really have the Japanese to thank for preserving Chinese cultural relics.

My rating: 4/5

Live Malaysian Drama

Life is boring in Singapore. Local TV dramas are more plain than plain water. TV, newspaper, internet news, everything will report exactly the same thing, sometimes even word by word. To come out from such 'boredom', I turn to our neighbour.

Come, visit http://malaysiakini.com. You will never get bored. The live drama is better than any drama in the world TV arena plotted by the best ever playwright.

The latest episode about the fight of 'kangkong', a special South-East Asian veggie dish. Suddenly somebody got kicked out of a party for his sexual prowess, and then somebody is being accused of accepting huge sums of money under the table. Sex, rivalry, betrayal, politics, corruption, criminal acts. Wow, which drama elements is lacking here? None.

It is amusing from an outsider point of view, but if you are an insider, an ordinary person on the street of that independent entity, your feeling is going to be like tom yam kong.

20th Century Boys 2: The Last Hope

This is the 2nd episode of the 20th Century Boys series of movies. This 2nd episode is a lot more watchable than episode one.

The cast is no longer 20th century uncles and aunties. Finally we see some young ones coming onboard, especial the lead character changes to a 20 something young lady.

The plot is getting more interesting too. More clues are being uncovered, but the mystery gets deeper and deeper. Just when you thought everything has come to an end, a beginning has actually just started.

In terms of stupidity, there is quite a plenty in the movie.

My rating: 3/5

World's 50 Safest Banks

Wow... Global Finance published the list of world's 50 safest banks. Singapore's three local banks all manage to get into this list (at least in this financial storm).

DBS comes in 24th, UOB and OCBC come in 34th and 35th, respectively. Congratulations! For such a small little country, all 3 local banks can make it to the top 50. It is not something to be sneezed at.

The other banks that make it to the top 50 mostly come from Germany, France, Spain, Australia, Canada and of course, the king of the banking section, Switzerland.

Mind you, DBS is also the safest bank in Asia! Other Asian banks that manage to have a position in the list are mainly from Japan. None of the banks from greater China appears in the list. None from other South-East Asian countries, either.

Big Shui Kuei

Went to Pek Kio market for lunch yesterday. There is this stall selling Big shui-kuei. Shui-kuei usually is of one small cup size. You need approximately 4 kuei's to fill the space of one ordinary plate. At Big Shui Kuei, one kuei is of the size of plate, so you only need 1 to fill your plate :)

The Cai-pu they use is the 'sweet' type. Ok, I had an argument with my colleague as whether it is 'sweet' or 'salty'. I tasted it as salty, but my colleague said it was sweet. Ok, different taste buds :)

The kuei is not bad. The texture is smooth. The smoothness of the rice is brought out flawlessly. But other than that, nothing fantastically special.

Wong Kok Char Chan Teng

Wong Kok Char Chan Teng seems to be one of the many franchise Hongkong-style teahouse restaurants. It is tucked into one back alley in JB's City Square, the 'inner city'. Chinese saying, a mountain does not have to be high to become famous, as long as there is an immortal living there, then the mountain will be famous. In this case, as long as the food is nice, then the restaurant will be famous, even thought it is hidden in one dark corner :)

The deco of the restaurant is kind of 'retro', with old photograhes hanging on the yellowish walls. There are also many street signs.

The place is quite crowded. We arrived there at around 2pm, and we still had to wait for another 10 mins or so for a table.

Food-wise, typical Hongkong tea house food, mixture of western and Chinese cuisine. The names of their drinks are interesting. I ordered a Devil's Fairytale. Haha... Do you know what it is? Take a look yourself :)

I would not rate this restaurant to be a top restaurant, but it is a not too bad place to enjoy some Hongkong ordinary food.

Rating: 3/5, quite ok

The Little Book That Beats The Market

Title: The Little Book That Beats The Market
Author: Joel Greenblatt
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons 2006

It is a book originally intended for the author's children, so it is very much a book for beginners in investment.

The essence of the book is to tell readers how to do value investing. There are basically two rules:

1. High return on capital
2. High earnings yield

Investors should look for companies that meet the two criteria and at a bargain price.

As the book is originally intended for the author's children, so there is quite a lot of not really relevant stuff in it. For those who already have a good knowledge in investing, this book may be quite boring. For beginners, it is good point to start.

InvestFair 2009

Went to the free InvestFair 2009 at Suntec City this afternoon. It is free, so don't expect much.

The participants can be broadly classified into 4 different categories.

1. Brokeage houses, such as Philips Security, SAXO, CMC Markets, Lim & Tan.
2. Land-banking firms such as Walton, EdgeWorth
3. Wine investment firms
4. Forex trading
5. Misc such as Adam Khoo, Fundsupermart, etc.

There are free seminars running throughout the day for today and tomorrow. It is quite eye-opening if you are new to the investment world. However, if you already have some knowledge in investment, the seminars are just so so, not too informative.