Future plan

It's almost coming to the end of April yet the weather in Finland's still that cold. I have no idea why it's still retaining cold like that, but it's windy so much that whenever I go out, I feel like being frozen. If I look into the sky behind my room window, wow the weather seems to be nice. But it turns out to be harsh. There is wind screaming anywhere just like a storm coming. Gosh.

1. My connection, ironically, was **ed up again today. I came home after work then realized it dead. Felt like being in an intensive rage, I run right away to the ISP office. I told them about their stupid mistake with all of my furiousness. It was a bit rude, but I was unbearable any more so that I nearly screamed or roared out loud to them. The secretary lady must be scared of me. She explained something like someone got wrong so that they sucked my connection. The third time, you believe it? That kind of explanation was just stereotyped as the previous time and I felt like being provoked. I said I could not stand in this situation any longer and told I was gonna eliminate the damn contract. She started to phone someone else and after several minutes gossiping bla bla bla, she timidly announced to me that my goddamn connection would be re-activated quite soon after 10 minutes.

Why me? Why was I always be in this kind of situation? I warned them that I hate to see the problem happening again and the lady scarily promised that it would be OK since then. WTF.

Thanks God when I was back home it's reborn. But I'm still mad at them, the ISP, and their services. I hardly believe they're that terrible and irresponsible.

2. Ok ok I'm sick of telling about that goddamn, so I'm gonna tell another thing. It's just cool that I make friend with NiteAngel lately. He's HongKong architecture and graphic designer. He's just ambitious and clever. We exchange thoughts about some certain things in life and I can see the similarities between us. I wish I could visit HongKong and have a meet up with him.

He motives me a lot. It's not only the desire for Design but also the determination to study English careful. Since I was small, I studied English very soon. And I knew I have penchant toward learning languages. Years ago I once read from somewhere that one who is left-handed dominates to study languages very well. And I'm a left-handed. I admit that if it wasn't my mom who oriented me and my best friend to learn English as soon as we were just 10 years old, I wouldn't have had that such solid and comprehensive foundation at present. I was better at learning English compared to other class-mates and once gained a 3rd reward in a big English test. But since I went aboard, my English didn't improve that much because while my listening and speaking skills ameliorated yet my writing skill had been worse than it used to be because I lost my writing habit.

Generally I do love English because of its tidiness but I never take it seriously to study English. But NiteAngel motives me a lot because he's himself an English learner and he improves so quickly. To some extend I can say I admire him. And be inspired by him. He keeps saying like if he does have enough determination he is easily able to overcome such hard probation in life. So do I. I feel shameful because after that years yet my language ability's just insufficient. But I have self-introspected and did raise a clear target "study plan" to be achieved. And after nearly a month, I can see my positive change. I will determinately keep this trend and truthfully after maximum an upcoming year, I will reach such a level which is as outstanding as he is, NiteAngel.

Actually because I'm doing my practical training in one faculty of my whole university, so my direct boss's a lecturer as well. And I'm participating one course of his simultaneously with my work (I'm allowed to combine study with work like that): English for Mechanical Engineering. Sounds like not related to my field (Business Administrations) at all but anyway, it's a English course so I do love to take part in. And basically I'm trying hard to be the top student of that class just to let my boss know how I am. Due to the grades I gained so far, I'm still at that good, ha ha.

NiteAngel, my mail-mate, has impacted me and I just wanna admit that it's just a beneficial advantage I achieve. In return, I give him some valuable criticisms or praises that I think he will find them interesting. Yes, it's just great if you could have an enthusiastic mate who has something for you to learn and be willing to share whatever.

3. Eventually I did decide the official title for my graduation thesis. Yes, after I complete the internship I have to seriously concentrate on writing my thesis. I was stuck on a dilemma of different topics appearing on my mind. But with the advice from my aunt, I decided the unique topic among them already, and I believe it would be an appropriate choice.

The thesis should be really independent research of student and my supervisor commands it is compulsory to have at least 70-100 pages length which are self-written. Such a challenge. I have never written that long in English so far. But, I'm gonna do it anyway. I know someone who faces the graduation thesis will try to plagiarize from someone else. I mean, thesis is somewhat challenging and baffling that many people will think of faking or ripping it by others' work. I myself used to think that, too and that's just shameful. Now, I think that thesis should be appreciated because it proves your comprehensive experiences gained after years studying in some certain fields. So, why deceive yourself by ripping? It's ok if you can counterfeit some researches and mysteriously transform them into your own one later on. But what's for? Nothing. You will get no benefit from that except just an useless disguised certification. I don't wanna be a charlatan that way. So, I will do my thesis myself. I will write it through every single word. And I wish you could do the same.

The title of my thesis? For sure I will publicize it here once I finish outlining the layout for it. I estimate the time I start it is the end of May because I need at least one month to read reference documents and articles. And by the end of this year I want it to be accomplished.


I'm so excited and full of energy to do my thesis. C'mon, one more year and I graduate.

11:39 pm - 210409 -

Thaumaturgic

Lately, I've spent more time watching movies than usual. Cinema is such a joy of life that you should make it as a daily habit yourself. I mean, it's just great if you could spend a certain time in your daily timetable to enjoy a good movie. To me, to watch a movie often costs time and since I always feel lack of necessary time I don't watch movies very often. But, undoubtedly, a good movie always captivates your spirit; let you be in merry or tristful mood, due to the story of it.

Since I watched V for Vendetta, I have tried several movies but none of them was possible to bring me that such intensive inspiration as the character V could do. The aftertaste of the movie lasts such a long time that I can not feel the interest in any others. But surprisingly there are two isolated movies can bring me out of the shadow of V for Vendetta, and they just merit being considered cinematic masterpiece.

They are The Prestige and The Illusionist.

They are all telling you about the world of Thaumaturgy, the two movies are both mysterious but they have different styles. While The Prestige's core is about world of true magician performing on the stage based on "tricks", The Illusionist tends to refer to the supernatural powers of human.


The Prestige

Being voted 8.5 out of 10 in IMDB, you can imagine how good it is. The Prestige, from the very first scene to the ending, always forces you to pay highest attention to the progress of it. With the purpose-built scenes, which are ever-changing from past to present, it's hard and even confusing for the viewers to understand what is real and what is hallucination. As a result, the viewers get lost, as the judiciously crucial idea of the film makers.

There are two protagonists, both of them are magicians, working in the same circus and be friend each other. One guy's wife accidentally died in one performance of the magicians and he blamed the other one to be involved into his wife's death. Thus, the animosity of loss was essence to which the movie based on. They eventually split up out of the circus and worked individually. Each of them still kept performing magic skills to earn a living but they were jealous of other's tricks as well. They tried to discover secrets of other's performance and invented a new higher-level magic. Generally, it's quite hard to evaluate who is dominated between them.

When one of them showed off a new magic called Transported Man, the trick persuaded audience that the magician could transport to two different positions in such a transient moment, the other one felt himself astounded and was insane to find out the key secret of it. Since then until the ending, the movie dealed with solving the conflict of that two guys. The unique of the movie is that even you might be intelligent that high, you still are possible to anticipate which is next because of such perfectly sophisticated scenario. Yes, you will be misleading all the time watching it, even when reaching the ending, you still are impossible to fully understand some details. Only after rethinking of the key details, connecting and analyzing them, could you be able to answer the big question existing in your mind of why-is-that.

One of the movie's metaphors that I can feel is that human always possesses good or bad side inside his or her ego. I mean the charitableness and brutality of one man can be just close and once their hands are dirty, they are. The ending of the movie was just astonishing and unexpected. Only one thing I dislike is that the film makers created an incongruous spot towards the secret of Transported Man. It's unreal. They used a machine to duplicate one "real" person and it's the point. They said it's pure science rather than magic or trick, but that detail even makes the movie become unbelievable.

Anyway, that's cinema. And The Prestige is still a masterpiece of the makers, which is nearly perfect from every single scene. There is no hot scene at all, excepts some romantic kisses. There is no violence, either. It did not thrill the viewers but still made sense to them. Really a top-choice movie to be watched.


The Illusionist

The Illusionist differs from The Prestige mainly for the content, although as said they all tell about the magician, but The Illusionist is love affair-based so that it is more emotional and touching. There was a boy who loved a girl, and unfortunately it was a forbidden love because of the different social classes they were from that mattered. The girl was aristocrat while the boy was just poor, but they still fell in love to each other. A really tearful calamity happened that separated them for years and when they had a chance to meet each other again, it was 15 years later.

The boy, who had become a famous illusionist, and the girl, who had become a beautiful noblewoman, knew that their barrier was just lengthened and it was quite hard for them to be together again. But they still tried to be together! After 15 years, the love of their still was that intensive. But seemingly they were not that lucky since there was the third man existing between them, the Crown Prince, who intended to marry the girl, just as a political conspiracy. The noblewoman tried to flee from the rude Crown Prince in order to be able to stay with her beloved man, and it was all about how the movie's progress going: a love conflict among three people.

The ending of the movie is unanticipated. I mean, the ending itself is too astonishing that you never can predict, under any circumstances. It is just amazing and really really touching, I totally satisfy with it that much and have no complain about it at all. It's no way to make such a more perfect ending rather than that. So, I will skip about re-telling the content of the movie but commenting some outstanding details of it.

The Illusionist, this word itself can describe that the protagonist here, even somehow still be a magician who performed in the stage, in front of the audiences his magician skills, but the magic here was seemingly supernatural power. He even did the necromancy or controlled the speed of time when he raised a tree growing up just in a moment, or called up a soul of some dead ones. The film makers must want the viewers to think about the man as a God, an evil or an angel or anyone who has power that a normal "real" person could never be achieved. Who is he really? You will keep asking yourself this question by the time watching this movie, and it's the point. It is explained only by the ending, and just watch it then you can answer.

Generally, his magic is somewhat materialistic and even superstitious or ultramundane. And, it's the main point that differs from magic of The Prestige. You know what I mean, when you watch both of them.

Besides the love affair-based scenario, the movie also related to political side. The Crown Prince was on behalf of bad guy who wanted to make coup d'état to achieve his own conspiracy. He was rude, ambitious and be an egoist. He did not have love inside yet he used woman just as a good exchanged for certain purposes. As a result, he got what he deserved. The metaphor of the movie is that love itself does not have any barrier from social classes. It isn't the difference in classes that baffles if two people fall each other. If you love someone, just tell him or her, and together try to cherish the affection and raise it up as much and as long as you could.

The Illusionist is just suitable to watch with your-special-person or just by yourself, with friends if you wish. It is worth watching! It is no doubt that once you search for some movies mysterious but still romantic, so The Illusionist is your best choice. From the begining to the end, the movie makes you excited, even it didn't explain the serect of the man's tricks, but you still accept it as a natural thing: Magic shouldn't be explained. Just enjoy it!

12:44 19th April, 2009

Tedious

If you can imagine, let's assume that the energy value could be counted and 100 is set to be the standard. So, my energy for yesterday and today has just reached as much as 10 only. I'm really frustrated.

1. Yesterday my damn-slow Internet connection was **ed up unreasonably. The ISP closed it violently without noticing me a word in advance. As usual, I woke up right in time in the morning to go for work and returned home at 0430 pm just to realize the connection was dead already. I came to their office, complained about the error, they checked and said I didn't make any mistake thus the problem came from themselves. Ridiculously, they said it was almost out of working time so everyone in the Technical Office had gone home and they promised to reopen my connection the following morning. Funny huh? They closed my connection and it was annoying to me! In return, all I received from them was an inconsolably helpless explanation, "I don't know why". So cool, even not a single apology spoken out! Hey, why you kept sitting there just not to know how your job is going on, lady?

I was just furious. It was the second time I was forced to be involved into that situation, they always did close the connection without explaining anything to the customers. Sign of cheesy offensiveness, wasn't it? I really needed the Internet because I planned to do some researches for my job but I was forced to play games the whole night in stead, ha ha. Today morning when I woke up, I rechecked and the connection was reborn. A lot of fun they are. If they do it the 3rd time, I swear to eliminate the contract immediately and try another ISP.

Furthermore, seemingly that my laptop gets trouble. This morning it works really slow and I can feel something wrong with it... C'on, baby, works fine please. I fear of wasting time fixing you up, you know, sweetheart?

2. Recently, it's been hard for me to have a sound sleep. Even sometimes I felt exhausted yet I couldn't sleep right away after laying in bed. Even while sleeping, I didn't feel really enjoyable. Morning, I woke up and felt really tired. As a result, during the whole day, I kept felling asleep. Sigh, tonight I will try a little Baileys and let see if it could help. :D

3. ManU won yesterday. At least they won and I just satisfied with the result, but the way they played was just lack of spirit. They still have a long way ahead to touch the Champion Cup, I'm wondering how they could survive if keep playing like that?

4. Almost Vietnamese E-newspapers are more or less becoming tabloid! I can see every e-newspapers publicize some news very ridiculous and irresponsible. There is not much good news to be read so far since they're all concentrating on submitting such the same news for many times. Some news are even carelessly translated from foreign websites which are lack of authentication and eventually confuse the readers.

I don't believe much in Vietnamese newspapers no more.

5. The next entry will come with a review of Murakami's novel.

16th April, 2009.

End of pleasure

Eventually I've come to the last day of my rest. Tomorrow I'll be back to the daily casual routine.

1. I missed the chance to do Photography these off-working days. Yesterday the weather was quite nice but I was lazy of going out. Sigh, shame on me. Today, as planned to get up early then to go out somewhere, I got up at 12:00 noon just to realize it was late enough, and the weather was that murky, too. The sky looked not bright and really turned my energy down.

Besides, if I have had some partners with me that I would have gone out. My friends seemed all busy doing their own businesses that I hesitated to call them up. Okay, just wait for another chance. This weather wasn't for enjoyment, either.

For 4 recent days, I slept late and woke up late as well. Afraid of being changed my biological clock that leads to bad affection to work, I guess I need to sleep earlier tonight. Sigh, I miss the solitude at mid-night much. Being lonely at night, if you listen to a song, you can pay your highest concentration to it. And surprisingly, you might realize the deeply hidden meaning of the song that you are impossible to understand when you hear it other day-time.

2. I'm a loyal Firefox user. There are many other good web browsers out there but I only prefer Firefox because of its abilities to allow the users to customize and make-it-your-way. Today I just found out an awesome add-on for Firefox which so-called "Tab sidebar ".

You see? The essential advantage of this add-on is to create a new way of displaying your tabs in your web browser!

Usually when you open up multiple websites simultaneously in one web browser's window, the tabs of those will be shown up successively underneath the address bar. Now, with this creative invention you can move that tab sidebar into different positions on the browser screen; on the left, on the right, or on the bottom. Tabs will be displayed as thumbnail-based frames and the power here is the status of theirs are up-to-dated with your network progress. You can even see a tab whether it's been loaded successfully or not. For example, you open a new tab, insert a website address and return to the previous website you're working in. Then, after a while, you just see the status of the loading tab as previewed on the tab sidebar to know how it is going. Very convenient!

Additional, the benefit of this add-on is to help you find the tab you're looking for in case you're opening such many many ones simultaneously (and get lost) since they have thumbnails themselves. Just scroll down the tab sidebar until you find it. Moreover, since my screen is 20" inches width with high resolution, there are much unused spaces on my web browser because a typical website's display is coded in standard of 1024 768 ratio or a little more, thus if you use this add-on it will fill your screen up by width and gain some small free spaces by height of the screen because it gets rid of the tab bar below the address bar, as usual. So, after all, is it such a must-have add-on?s

You might not get acquainted with the new thing soon, but believe me, your Firefox will be ameliorated and be more convenient for your work. Just give it a try and spend a little time to encourage the person who made it.

I'm really cheered up with my Firefox now, it has most useful adds-on installed and really be something unique.

3. Today I re-watch the movie entitled "The Gameplan", it is just damn hilarious. It makes me laugh into tears even I have watched it several times.

Also, I was shared some very very funny and cool Vietnamese Rock songs from my bro. He he, and it's such a day today to me when I can get good songs. Music is my most desirable and enjoyable thing.

4. I feel deeply home-sick. It isn't so often I feel missing Hanoi to death, about twice per month I guess. Of course I miss my home sweet home every second passing by, but it doesn't mean that I wanna be back there immediately whenever I think of it, I can self-control my mind. But, it's seldom I feel hysterically missing Hanoi that much. And whenever I'm in that bad mood, it's just like turmoil or being spiritual tortured.

I don't really know how long I could stand being in this situation. But, I have been standing under a permanently question of whether I come back Vietnam or I continue living abroad for long. Still have no question yet. The problem does not refer to lack of decisiveness myself but come to another complicated extend. Is it really better to be back ASAP?

Anyway, the life's still going as it's supposed to be. I just need to finish what I've not done now is to graduate from university. Afterward, I will see how I let my life flow.

13th April, 2009

Off-working days

Days without writing, becoming lazy again...

1. I'm having off-working days for the Easter. I guess you know this holiday, no? Look it up here: Easter. It's just valuable time since I have 4 days for myself. I just watched two movies yesterday, Traitor and Cocktail, and they were just good enough.

The movie entitled Traitor, whose background is Islam, told about conspiracy & terrorism. The spot you can read on the Internet since it's ubiquitous but I must say the content of the movie impressed me much. I almost had no idea of what Islam was excepts knowing that Muslim seemed to be quite pious. But, I didn't expect they, those who following Islam, are that devout. Because I'm an atheist, or more exactly nonreligious, it's hard for me to understand why there are ones who are willing to do whatever just to get benefit for their religion, even to come to die. I can't say I adore them for that because I don't think death is worth that way.

Well, you who haven't had chance watching that movie could be curious what I'm talking about so I will tell in more details. The movie tells us about a Muslim, the protagonist whose daddy died in a car-bomb, looking for a revenge of his loss in the past. After suffering through calamities in life yet he joined one hidden terroristic organization leaded by an ugly man, who turned out to be involved into his daddy's accident. Those terrorists tried to destroy the world as much as possible by setting bombs in different places and control them to explore later on. The leaders of that organization even trained young kids to be "shahids" by magnetizing them that to die for good of Islam was just solemn and those deaths were considered sacred or sainted!

The end of the story was just easily anticipatable but it still did make sense to the viewers because of the whole movie's progress. It brought out a clearly view of such harsh world of Islam where people paid their lives just to defend for their belief. I can't say more about it but the movie really deserves watching. If you're interested in discovering something about Islam, just don't miss it.

The second movie, Cocktail, which is expected to be good by me, eventually became not so. A young ingenuous bloke, who came back home from military service, (starring: Tom Cruise) searching for a well-paid job in some companies but wasn't so successful because of the lack of study degree. The coward, by accident, tried the last chance in a bar and, bravo, he did find a humble job as a bartender. Time passed by and he was inspired by making cocktails in bar, getting himself some girls to get laid, making fun in life... stuffs like that.

I felt no sense at all watching that movie, but because of interest for Cocktail I tried it. It still made you laugh for some scenes but I even stopped the movie while watching half of it and didn't have plan whether I would resume it or not.

2. I feel strongly depressed for this damn low-speed Internet connection I'm having now in my new apartment, 512/512. My old house had crazily built-in high-speed connection (actually it wasn't that fast but compared to the current one, it could be called crazy) and if you can imagine, my current one's as slow as a turtle. I had to register a discrete Internet connection with the IPS and paid an extra amount of money beside the housing rent. With support from IDM and cFosSpeed programs (downloading acceleration software and Internet speed increase software) and a premium account of Megaupload service, I just could download something with the speed of approximately 50kbs ~ 70 kbs, and not even exceed 100 kbs. Damn it! Can you believe? I used to download from Megaupload service with a speed of 700 kbs at the peak. How can I accept being in this situation?

It means for a normal movie, 700 megabytes weight, it takes hours for downloading, and weeks for a heavy game. This matter really drives me crazy. The ISP provides different levels of Internet speeds but with exorbitantly expensive prices for acceptable connections' speed as well and I just can't stand for that hard offers. I'm totally pissed off.

3. The weather in Finland's becoming nicer and nicer since it has sunlight everyday. In front of my window is a small forest which has a river crossing and a quite nice view. I just wanna go out for wandering and taking photographs in the morning but I'm so lazy. Anyway, I will do that sometimes.

Since the summer's coming close, I just wanna be back Vietnam as every previous years. But this year I'm busy finishing my internship period so I must stay here for long. I'm planning to graduate in the next summer at the latest because I must do my graduation thesis and study some more courses in the next academic year. I'll be crazy busy since then until next summer and I guess I need to push myself very often in order to achieve what I'm planning. Student time will be ended soon and after that I'll be standing between two choices: staying in Finland if I can have a job or coming back to Vietnam. Hmm, I still don't know which one I prefer.

4. I've been using Gmail for months but haven't discovered all its great until recently. Gmail's just WOW, too good to use. Gmail is like all-in-one email service that Google can offer. You know, Gmail is just amazing when you can do many many things with it. You can chat with friends, make voice-chat or video-chat, organize your documents or creat to-do list, reminders for yourself. There are many many utilities waiting to be discovered. Just try it!

Stop using other email services to get acquainted with Gmail, please! My higly recommendation to you guys, I swear you will never regret with Gmail! Best email service ever!

New living ambiance

Yes, I have moved to a new location yesterday and got my new apartment there, which is about 40 kilometers far away from my old one.

New house is smaller but cleaner and better looking. I have no complaint since it's quite more convenient. Only one disadvantage that really annoys me is the lack of Internet connection. This new apartment doesn't have a built-in connection so that I must come to the Internet services supplier to register a new one. I did it 3 days ago but until yesterday they haven't finished installing the Internet connection for me yet. I have no idea why it was so unreasonably that late but, fortunately, today I got a message from them declaring that it's OK. Bravo, so cool, better late than never.

Recently I have made friend with one of the best Graphic Designers in DeviantArt, NiteAngel. One who visits DA very often might know him, very talented artist among others. He is from HongKong and really a must-know versatile genius in the world of Design. We're mail-mates and it's just great to retain a habit of writing letter (email) for someone. Here is his website, visit it if you're interested in Design, Food and Hong Kong: Angel World

The weather in Finland's becoming warmer and warmer, and I guess the real spring has come. Later on will be the summer. When it's warm enough and my inspiration for photography comes back, I will go out sometime taking photographs. It's ages since last photograph captured and submitted into my Flickr, gosh. It's just paradoxical because I used to process my photographs with my vintage Sony Vaio laptop. Now, I get a new powerful HP with dreamily strong graphic card (nVidia 8800gts) but still have no chance experiencing its strength excepts playing such heavily graphical games. :D But I guess it could handle well when I work with photography, for example helps me create very nice tone of photos. Let wait and see.

My work is stable as usual, but I was promoted to another position, with the change of working style as well. I'm learning some programming languages hard even I have no interest in them at all. But because of the work's requirement, I must force myself to adapt it. By the way, I got my salary yesterday and it's just great. :D

Few recent days I usually drink several small cups of Baileys before going to bed. Seemingly that helps me get out of insomniac but I'm afraid of being addicted to Baileys, and that's not so good at all. Ok, I will control it in sobriety. :P