Movie: Departures (Okuribito)

I guess you can easily find much better review of this movie than the one you are reading now, but I do think it is worth to make a few comments using my own words. Don’t worry, there will be no spoiler.

For those of you who have seen some trailers of this movie, you know it is a story about a Japanese cellist who lost his job after the orchestra disbanded, and you know he eventually got a job and became an undertaker, or mortician in the States.

But what I actually want to say is how much appreciation I have for the undertakers after watching this movie. I had always thought that undertakers are for people who have weird interests, or are only taken up by those who find no other jobs to do. After watching this movie, I have totally changed my perception for this. Undertakers are one of the most courage-testing jobs in the world and they can too be highly respected like fire fighters.

I enjoyed the fun and joyful atmosphere that the movie began with, totally unlike what I have first expected of this movie – to be gloomy, grey and sorrowful. Masahiro Motoki’s character of Daigo, looked puzzled, confused and innocent most of the time but carried quite a bit of cuteness (according to my girlfriend) and lots of his moral perseverance (according to myself).

My second favourite character is Tsutomu Yamazaki’s Ikuei Sasaki, the owner of the undertaker company. He kept his cool at all time, and like most Japanese movies, he is an aged yet deep and experienced figure, who is most likely to be elusive and unreachable at first, but later found to be extremely enlightening and incredibly understanding. Although this I had expected, I wasn’t bored by yet another spiritual leader as such.

Finally, apart from the simple yet great storyline, I was deeply immersed into the movie by the music in this movie. Particularly, the theme song “Memory” by Joe Hisaishi 久石 譲 . I did a little search on the internet, and immediately understand why he is the best you can get – even Hayao Miyazaki 宮﨑 駿is a big fan of him and used his music in so many of his animes! Including the latest "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea 崖の上のポニョ"

Comparing with Slumdog Millionaire, I will choose this one. Definitely a movie to watch again and again!

Music on Youtube:

Official English Website:

http://www.departures-themovie.com/

Investment: Say “Hi” to Mr. Market

Do you know how to predict the future? I don’t. If I knew, I would have sold some stocks one day before the 30^th March, and bought some back before the market closed on the 30^th March. Why particularly this day?

The answer is obvious, Adam Cheng Effect / Ding Hai Effect. The King of Snooker premiere led to the fall of 4.70% in the market.

Can we explain why market goes up and down? Reporters in the evening news are always able to do so, and I do believe that there is some truth to their explanations, but most of the time, there isn’t really a reason. In fact, there is no need for one.

Say you walk down a street one day and see a stranger. Since you do not know him, you have no opinions or feelings towards him. However, the stranger sees you and gives you a big smile. Now, the question is, what is the reason he smiles at you? He likes you? Maybe. He wants to show you politeness? Perhaps. You look funny? Not for sure. Nonetheless, maybe he did so without having any reasons.

Another scenario is for the guys, how often have you seen your girlfriend suddenly in a good mood, but swung to nightmare in just a short moment? I have. Have you then asked why she changed so quickly? What will they tell you? Must there be a reason? Verbally, no; scientifically, yes. It is well-known that people’s moods are controlled by our brain and the messages are delivered by electric pulses and hormones. (Well, I’m not going to get too scientific here, don’t worry.)

Warren Buffett’s teacher, renowned Value-investor Benjamin Graham’s allegorical portrait of the stock market as Mr. Market [1], who in my rephrasing, is willing to buy your stocks every day at price he likes. The quotes he offers might be a worthy or super ridiculous, but you can feel free to take advantage of him or ignore him.

Mr. Market’s moodiness reflects the mood swings of the markets, and thus the irrationality of the human psychology. So by theory, if someone can catch the movement of this irrationality, then he will be rich! But is there any regularity in this irrationality?

Warren Buffett said that, “If a business does well, the stock eventually follows”, so if this stands, the regularity is found. In fact, he ignores the fluctuations of the market (the mood swings), and takes a more relaxing method and waits for the stocks to eventually go up, that is of course, if you are willing to wait. Well, whether it really is a good idea or not, it made him one of the richest guys in the world, and he is for sure a great teacher of everyone (He’s mine too).

But does that mean speculation cannot earn a big fortune? Then I really don’t know how people explain the case of Mr. George Soros. I haven’t read much about Mr. Soros, so I am not going to say more, but my belief is that every method has pros and cons, and timing is exceptionally crucial in investment. Wrong timing can kill.

But then how do we know when is the good time? Is now a good time? Well, with the Hang Seng Index (HIS) at 14998.04 (at the time of writing this article, 6^th April 2009, market closed), I personally feel scared to buy in now because from 10917.65 on 17^th May 2004, took 301 trading days to break 15000 on 2^nd August 2005, but the recent two times of breaking 15000 from similar lows, from the lowest 10676.29 on 27^th October 2008 took 7 trading days to break 15000, and from the lowest of 11344.58 on 9^th March 2009 took 20 trading days to break 15000 once more. (For your interest, the 7 days to break 15000 took 13 trading days to reach a so-called low point 11814.81)

Where is the rationality this time?

Although history doesn’t guarantee the future and some might say history never repeats the same way, the odds of earning more is just not so great. With not just one market (the HSI) is going up and down by large amount, but the whole world’s markets going up and down at the same time, you know this is not something anyone can predict. Why not? Well, obviously, there must be a group of people so rich and so concurrent in their buying and selling, that they controlled the movement of the markets in the world. To me, this group of people seems like just one person and indeed, it does seem like it is really Mr. Market in action. How can you predict if he will be spending more money in buying something in one day or another?

Guess what, I can! Your chance is 50-50.

Pictures:

http://investing-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/benjamin-graham.jpg

http://img.ent.tom.com/uimg/2007/7/31/taixinhua/1185852886507_40669.jpg

Citation:

[1]: The Intelligent Investor Revised addition p204-p205 ISBN: 0-06-055566-1

Coming soon: Review of the Japanese movie "Departure" because it has been postponed.

Reply to comments & readers:

1. Question time, how many times has Adam Cheng Effect / Ding Hai Effect worked for the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index?

Environment: Earth Hour 2009

Did anyone of you join the Earth Hour event last week? What is Earth Hour? From Wikipedia,
“Earth Hour is a global event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, also known as World Wildlife Fund) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.”
The event was conceived by WWF and first took place in Sydney in 2007, and then exploded into many parts of the world in 2008.

That night, I was out doing some shopping and thus there was no light on at home, but I was rather disappointed that the shops inside the mall didn’t join this remarkable event. I mean, come on, there wasn’t much business to do anyway. Maybe if they did join the event, and lit candles instead, the shops might have attracted more customers because of the mood and the curiosity of the people.

What can an hour of lights out do?

We are not talking about one home, but all around the world! Now that’s something much more different. Power is generated mostly from the burning of oil and coal these days, and by switching off redundant lights for one hour, it was enough to reduce the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission by a monumental amount! Data can be found on the WWF national websites as well as from Wikipedia.

What I think is even more important, is that human beings truly see no boundaries of countries, races and beliefs, and stand together to protect the one thing that nurtures as for many billions of years – our planet Earth. This common goal of survival does not base on declaring wars or triggering bloodshed, neither on generating money nor capturing resources, but on protecting Mother Nature. Every time I think about this, it just keeps giving me a rush of heroism to the chest.

How was the movie clip? Every time I watch it, I feel so touched and wants to cry so much!

When I was a little boy, like many other ones, thought about becoming a hero when I grew up, but I had no ideas how I could achieve that. Today, we all know how to be heroes, and everybody can take part in saving this awesome planet of ours – reduce, reuse and recycle.

Here I have a nice song from the Discovery Channel, called Boom De Ya Da! Sang by a lot of program hosts and hostesses, as well as famous scientist, Stephen Hawkings.

Easter is coming, let's make this world a happier and better place to live. If you care, every day is Earth Hour.

"We take so much from this planet, and what do we give back?" -- Locky

Coming soon: Review of the Japanese movie "Departure"

Reply to comments & readers:

1. Happy Learning as always!

Grammar: Reported Speech = Past Tenses?

Locky said,“I love my students in Maryknoll Fathers’School.”

Question:

Is this sentence in reported speech: “Locky said he loved his students in Maryknoll Fathers’ School” correct or incorrect?

It is a “common” belief for Hong Kong students in the primary or secondary schools that whenever they are reporting, or reiterating, someone’s speech, they will have to use past tenses, and that has, of course, stuck so firmly into the minds of these students that even till now that they have grown up, they still unquestionably accept this “rule”. Is this the rule? Of course not!

The “rules” of the reported speech go:

“All present tenses go to past tenses, past simple goes to past perfect”

do à did        is doing à was doing           has done à had done         has been doing à had been doing did à did/ had done             will à would shall à should can à could may à might

(present simple à past simple) (present continuous à past continuous) (present perfect à past perfect) (present perfect continous à past perfect continous) (unchanged / past simple to past perfect)

 

Actually, just open up any English newspapers, you do not always see past tenses in reported speech.

Quoting from the Standard on the 27^th March 09:

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=13418&icid=3&d_str=20090401

“(The Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority)It blames the errors on inaccurate salary information provided by employers or employees. 

The HK$6,000 grant is aimed at helping the lowly paid as part of budget sweeteners.”

Obviously, the authority spokesperson must have said the above or otherwise the newspaper article will not print as such. But if this is already “said”, why does the article say “blames”(present simple) and “is aimed”(present simple passive)?

The answer lies in the fact that this action is still on-going!

That is:

1.     The authority STILL blames the errors (by the time of writing this article).

2.     The HK$6,000 grant is STILL aimed at helping the lowly paid (by the time of writing this article).

So the rule should add one extra information to it, and that is,

“If the situations of the verbs has not changed, then no change in tenses, else we change them according to the old rule.”

An easier example is,

Today, I tell you that I am an English teacher. Tomorrow, will you tell your friend that,

1.     “Locky said he was an English teacher” or

2.     “Locky said he is an English teacher”?

Am I still an English teacher tomorrow? Most likely, I guess I will still have my job tomorrow. So it is only correct to say 1, if I tell you that I am quitting English teacher today, so tomorrow, I am no more an English teacher.

Last year, when I was teaching in a band 1 school, students were still so sure what their teachers taught them was right and they rebutted my corrections. I guess these teachers do know the real answer, but due to the requirements of the examinations (that the students do not need to know the truth of the usage – meaning OFS, out-of-syllabus), or the perception that these kids are too young to know the truth (are they?), the teachers decided not to teach them. Whatever the reasons are, students have the right to know the truth when using reported speech and even if time or age of the students makes teaching the truth implausible, teachers should at least say,

“Just remember, there are times of exceptions, so you are only learning 50% of it now.”

By letting the students know they are not learning all of it, they will at least accept the new knowledge when they appear.

 

Coming soon:  Earth Hour

 

Reply to comments & readers:

1.     I have just realised that some of you wrote comments on my very first entry. Thank you for all of you! But private tuitions I guess I really can't offer right now due to the press for time. I will let you know when I eventually can. Until then, please keep reading my Blog.

 

Science & Vocabulary: Litmus Test

From the last entry, I used the term “Litmus Test”, I wondered how many of you put in effort to find it out. Hopefully a lot, I am an optimistic person.

This term actually originates from Chemistry, and litmus is a so everyday indicator for all kinds of pH (acidity and alkalinity) test. It is a water-soluble mixture of different dyes extracted from lichens and it is often absorbed onto filter paper before using. Basically, it is used to test whether a solution, meaning a mixture of liquid, is acidic or alkaline.

When I was still in school in Singapore, I did a lot of experiments in the Chemistry laboratory. Most of the time, the students were given blue litmus paper to test the acids. The red litmus paper, which is used to test alkalis, was less often used. I have never really got to understand why that was the case; maybe testing acids was a more fun thing to do?

Because of the property of the litmus paper or the litmus solution, and the use of litmus as an indicator of acidity or alkalinity, it is now used in the English of politics and some other means.

Cambridge has the following explanation which I don’t really like:

litmus test noun [C usually singular]

someone's decision or opinion about something which suggests what they think about a wider range of related things:

The President's policy on abortion is regarded as a litmus test of his views on women's rights.

I prefer the explanation in the Dictionary.com Unabridged:

A crucial and revealing test in which there is one decisive factor.

Or in the WordNet 3.0 by Princeton University:

A test that relies on a single indicator; "her litmus test for good breeding is whether you split infinitives" 

So in even more simple words, it means “an important indicator to sth”, and it has a synonym, “acid test”.

This is such a common word and you can easily find tonnes of news that uses this word. Try typing "litmus test, news" in your favourite search engines for more examples of using.

"Inability to succeed is just a litmus test for greater courage." -- Locky

Picture source: http://www.sciencestuff.com/Merchant2/images/Chem1290.gif

Coming soon: Grammar, grammar, and more grammar

Reply to comments & readers:

1. Many thanks to Phy and Bo Bo.
2. Sorry to my students of the last Thursday class because I felt asleep in the staff room and was late for 10 minutes. Too tired. I hope you don't mind my 15 mins extension of that lesson. That was to pay you back the time.

Learning Psychology: Regularity VS Irregularity -- Is English difficult to learn?

Most people dislike grammar and think it is a very boring part of English (or other languages, or all languages), but I just think it is the greatest part of it! I have been teaching it for 2 years before I joined Prime English, and I just can't get enough of it. Why is that the case? Well, because I am able to see grammar from a systematic, structured perspective.

I guess I can say most languages on this planet have exceptions, and most people are discouraged by the large amount of exceptions. Some of my students even told me that English is a very difficult language! And my response was,

"Do you know how complicated are some other European languages?"

When I was studying Italian, the beginner level was already killing lots of my brain cells. For example, the present tense for regular verbs already looks like this:

• Conjugation 1 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -ARE


• Conjugation 2 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -ERE


• Conjugation 3 contains verbs with an infinitive ending in -IRE

	1 PARLARE	2 SCRIVERE	3 DORMIRE	3 CAPIRE
1st pers. sing.   I	parlo	scrivo	dormo	capisco
2nd pers. sing.  you	parli	scrivi	dormi	capisci
3rd pers. sing.  he, she, it	parla	scrive	dorme	capisce
1st pers. plur.  we	parliamo	scriviamo	dormiamo	capiamo
2nd pers. plur.  you	parlate	scrivete	dormite	capite
3rd pers. plur.  they	parlano	scrivono	dormono	capiscono

So, when in English, when we say, "I/you/we/they speak; He/she/it speaks", in Italian, everyone will spell differently. In English, at most, you need to worry about using 's' or 'es' after the verbs, but in Italian, sorry! It's 7 x 4 = 28 different look. Imagine the Chinese art of Bian Lian, or face changing  (This will take you to information of Bian Lian.)

Well, don't get too excited and think it is that easy! The regularity of the irregular verbs goes as such:

	avere	to have	essere	to be
1	ho	I have	sono	I am
2	hai	you have	sei	you are
3	ha	he/she/it has	è	he/she/it is
1	abbiamo	we have	siamo	we are
2	avete	you have	siete	you are
3	hanno	they have	sono	they are

avere = to have	essere = to be	venire = to come	uscire = to go out	andare = to go	dare = to give
ho	sono	vengo	esco	vado	do
hai	sei	vieni	esci	vai	dai
ha	è	viene	esce	va	dà
abbiamo	siamo	veniamo	usciamo	andiamo	diamo
avete	siete	venite	uscite	andate	date
hanno	sono	vengono	escono	vanno	danno

fare= to do; make	sapere = to know	stare = to stay; be	potere = can	dovere = must	volere = to want
faccio	so	sto	posso	devo	voglio
fai	sai	stai	puoi	devi	vuoi
fa	sa	sta	può	deve	vuole
facciamo	sappiamo	stiamo	possiamo	dobbiamo	vogliamo
fate	sapete	state	potete	dovete	volete
fanno	sanno	stanno	possono	devono	vogliono

And you think that's all? You have yet to see the past tenses, future tenses, etc.

If you want to know how lucky you are, please visit this great website to learn Italian:

http://www.gwc.org.uk/ModernLang/hotpot/Italian2/GrammarIndex.html

(all tables above are kindly provided by the above website)

Guess what, Italian is already considered as one of the easier languages to learn because it is a syllable-timed language, just like Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese!!!

As a learner of a language, you should always 'stay cool' and 'chill out' in terms of facing difficulties in the process of learning. I understand that sometimes it can really get frustrating, but you can look at the obstacles from a positive point of view. 

Maybe in the past, you will tell yourself, "Learning English is so difficult."

Now you can ask yourself, "Is learning English that difficult?"

Then answer yourself, "Lucky that I don't need to learn XXX language."

And you should immediately feel better.

Emotional Quotient (EQ) is a key in learning English, as it is also in any other parts of our life.

"Learn to cure yourself, and be willing to be cured, and you will be cured." -- Locky

It is just another Litmus test on "Is the glass half empty or half full?" situation.

Coming soon: More on the term 'Litmus Test'.

Reply to comments & readers:

1. I would like to thank Phy for the care and support. I will sleep more.
   
2. I expect all readers to take note of or check meanings of the words in bold.