I hardly ever blogged about my birthday but this time I decided to write a little bit about that. You see, I turn 30 (yes the big three oh) in a couple of months time, less than 3 months to be a little bit more precise. A friend of mine once told me that when he turned 29, he embarked on a journey to complete a set a tasks for him to complete by the time he hit 30. That sort of gotten the clogs in my brain working a little while and I decided that I should embark on a similar journey.

To lose 30 pounds (lbs) by the time I am 30 years old.

Well of course the whole idea of losing weight is something I have been procrastinating and the final nail hit the coffin when my insurance agent informed me that because of my current weight, I got to pay an extra loaded premium.

At this time, I weigh about  107 kg. So my target weight to reach by the time I am 30 next year in February would be 93 kg (I am just rounding up). Hopefully by then, my pants/shirts (about 70% of my clothes) would have fit me better.

What I have installed for me would be to:

• Diet - cut down on fast food completely, drink more water, eat less carbs especially at night and eat more fruits instead


• Exercise - swim a little bit more at the swimming pool at my apartments, reschedule my night teleconferences and go for badminton!


• Lifestyle - Get more sleep in order to let my body process the sugars in me

Let's see if I can keep up with this project, Project 30!

 

Having bought a model ship, the Unicorn, for a pound off a market stall Tintin is initially puzzled that the sinister Mr. Sakharine should be so eager to buy it from him, resorting to murder and kidnapping Tintin - accompanied by his marvellous dog Snowy - to join him and his gang as they sail to Morocco on an old cargo ship. Sakharine has bribed the crew to revolt against the ship's master, drunken Captain Haddock, but Tintin, Snowy and Haddock escape, arriving in Morocco at the court of a sheikh, who also has a model of the Unicorn. Haddock tells Tintin that over three hundred years earlier his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock was forced to scuttle the original Unicorn when attacked by a piratical forebear of Sakharine but he managed to save his treasure and provide clues to its location in three separate scrolls, all of which were secreted in models of the Unicorn

I remember when I was young, whenever I got sick, my mum would always cheer me up by bringing me to the bookstore and getting me a Tintin comic book. Yes, back in those days, comics such as Tintin and Asterix would fill my time tremendously and I really did enjoy reading them. Of course these were the days before computers and computer games.

The moment when I heard that a movie was coming out about Tintin, I was equally excited. Especially when it was coming from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson! And to top it off, it was in 3D as well. From the moment I bought the tickets via my GSC iPhone app, queueing up for snacks at the counter and entering the cinema, I was totally on my edge, thrilled with excitement and joys.

And the movie doesn't disappoint! What actually disappointed me was that there weren't that many people who were interested in Tintin. I think there were only 8 people in total in the entire cinema.



Based upon the story of the 1st book, The Secret of the Unicorn, the movie goes through the story well and shows how Tintin meets Captain Haddock where the two of them will eventually start off on an exciting journey of adventures and thrills.

Overall the movie was done quite well and the CGI graphics were nice. I love how that the entire series is depicted in the old days and how funny the Thompson and Thomson idiotic Scotland Yard policemen were played as well.



The movie itself had a star in the form of James Bond actor, Daniel Craig who played the voice of Red Rackham/Ivanovich Sakharine. Jamie Bell did play a good job as Tintin

Overall I would rate this movie a good 8/10

It even garnered a good 7.8/10 on IMDB

 

 

As clueless I was, I didn't know that iOS 5 came out with this new feature, which was the ability to update your iPhone's/iPad's iOS version via Wifi without the need to plug-in to iTunes. It's very easy to do it, just follow the following steps.

1. Go to your iPhone's "Settings" option


2. Select "General"


3.  Then select "Software Update"


4. The phone will search the servers for the latest patch

Select "download and install"

Make sure that your phone is also plugged into a power source

Wait for the download to complete and voila, your iOS device is now updated.

When you advertise a movie that came from the same producers of 300, it is definitely a movie I wanted to watch but the only problem with that was it created a huge hype. Now the problem with having such a high expectation of the movie, the moment it slightly disappoints, critics will be all over it.

Storyline was straight. Absolutely straight. A tale of a hero that the Gods believe in named Theseus. Set in the time of ancient Greece, the land was at trouble and amongst a peasant  village emerged a hero. So what else is new? Greece is still in trouble today with it's financial crisis that I wonder if there would be a hero that emerges to bail them out.

Anyway the whole story is about an evil king, Hyperion, who wants to unleash the Titans to challenge the Almighty Zeus who lounges about at Mt. Olympus. In order to do that, he needs a magical bow (as in bow and arrow) to help him do that. Of course this is where Theseus steps in as the hero.



The fight scenes were pretty good, I love how far Hollywood has progressed in terms of the fight scenes to match that of chinese kung-fu movies. The graphics were good but the one thing which irked me the most was our Malaysian censorship board. Everything kept skipping and certains bits were censored off which really did spoil the mood of the show.



Personally, I had a lot of expectations to the show and perhaps that it would have been better if there wasn't any censorship (I know where I would go and get one that isn't censored) and perhaps if the storyline was a little better.

I would give it a 5/10 overall.

Check out the movie trailer below.

Back in May this year, I attempted my first night shoot on the Volkswagen Golf. Only recently did I attempt my second shoot. This time it was done within 45 minutes and the location was extremely impromptu. Let's just say that I was driving back from Putrajaya and I made a detour towards an industrial area.

Here are the results of the shoot. Shot completely in natural light mainly because it was an impromptu shoot and I didn't have anyone to help me to carry my speed-lights.

[caption id="attachment_3197" align="alignnone" width="540" caption="Volkswagen Golf 1.4 TSI"][/caption]

[gallery link="file" orderby="rand"]

 

When you start getting advertisements in your email inbox like the one below. I wonder if they are trying to hint something to me...



:(

[caption id="attachment_3167" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 with a Rieger bodykit"][/caption]

Here is the continuation of photos that I took during the previous shoot which I organised with the Volkswagen Malaysia Club members. More photos are also available in my previous post.

[caption id="attachment_3166" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 with a Rieger bodykit"][/caption]

The funny thing about the image below was that while I was busy snapping away, a couple of "mat rempits" decided to join in on the fun and I was pleasantly surprised that one of my frames managed to capture him in "action".

[caption id="attachment_3168" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Mysterious Trio"][/caption]

So can you guess the differences between the 3 cars above? Let's see if you can guess which of the models are on displayed in the image above. I will buy whoever (excluding those who attended the shoot) a "teh ais"  if they manage to guess them correctly and comments on it in the comment section below.

[caption id="attachment_3167" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 with a Rieger Bodykit"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_3169" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Comfort, Normal and Sports mode!"][/caption]

According to the owners of the cars above, they all agreed that the left one is on comfort mode, the middle one on normal mode and the white one on sports mode.

I definitely can't wait to plan for another shoot and this time to spend a little bit more time on a single car.