Jeffrey's Thoughts

Maharaja Review

Warning: This review contains spoilers of the movie

I traveled to Hershey Park with my girlfriend recently and the night before going to the park, we decided to watch a movie that was recommended to her by her friend. Neither of us knew what the story was about but we turned on Netflix and started watching. The hotel TV was having issues showing the subtitles so we watched on the computer.

I thought that the movie was pretty interesting. There was a lot of action and the beginning was pretty disorienting with the numerous characters and time skips and missing context. However, it seems like that was on purpose because as the movie progressed, the pieces came together and the whole story was revealed.

The barber was pretty badass and it was funny for me to see that this guy’s “superpower” was that he doesn’t let anything go. He has an insane grip that can tear down buildings as well as a perseverance to make sure that justice is served.

The society seemed to be pretty unfortunate. The main villain was not well off so he resorted to stealing and killing and raping to get the lifestyle he wanted for his wife and kids. The juxtaposition between this guy doing villainous things in strangers’ houses and eating their food and then him coming back and being a loving husband and father was jarring for me. It made me think that just because people may do bad things, that doesn’t mean that they treat everyone poorly – it is possible that they also have loved ones.

Anyways, this main villain gets arrested and he blames the barber for it. So, after he gets out of jail, he goes on a revenge arc against the barber. The barber doesn’t know what hits him, but he doesn’t let anything go. So, he reenacts Liam Neeson in Taken and hunts down the people who broke into his house and attacked and kidnapped his family. This guy ends up beheading one in a warehouse, kills another in his house, and handicapped the main villain in a construction site. The barber’s daughter ends up talking to the main villain and it turns out that the girl was actually the main villain’s daughter. The night the main villain broke into the barber’s house, he and his accomplices beat her up and raped her. Realizing this, the main villain felt extreme remorse and jumped to his death.

This movie is certainly not the happy, lift-your-spirits-up type of movie that we were planning on watching. However, I think it was a good movie nevertheless.

Cat touching my head

I am cat sitting my parents’ cat and one thing that I noticed was that he likes to jump on my bed when I am sleeping. It took him a couple days to get comfortable in my apartment, but now that he is comfortable, he’s walking around like he owns the place. Anyways when I go to sleep, he sometimes walks up to my head and steps on my pillow and pushes his body into my head. Then, he scratches my head with his paws and his mouth. After he’s satisfied, he walks away and uses his mouth to lick himself. I’m not sure why he is doing this, but I think it might be tasting some oil that’s in my hair or is trying to assert dominance.

Is my cat weird or does this happen to other people?

People at Costco entrance

I walk to work pretty often and on my way to work, I pass by a Costco. Almost every time I go to work, I see a couple older ladies and gentleman swiping on their smartphones and chatting. I haven’t talked to them to see what all the fuss is about, but I can’t imagine that they are avid Pokémon Go players. I wonder what they could be doing?

Germany and Austria trip

I recently went to Germany and Austria for 9 days and it was a pretty good experience.

Germany

Flew into Munich, spent a day walking around one of the parks, and took the train to Salzburg, Austria.

One of the important mobile apps to get is the DB Navigator app. It allows you to buy tickets on your phone for the train and other public transportation. One ticket that we took advantage of was the Bayern Ticket, which allowed us to have unlimited travel for a day on all the regional trains and whatnot (although no one actually checked our tickets).

Salzburg, Austria

For traveling on the trains between cities in Austria, we used the OBB tickets app. For Salzburg, we got the 48 hour Salzburg pass, which allowed us to go to a bunch of different attractions for free / discounted rates, and enabled us to use the bus system. There were some places we weren’t able to visit since we didn’t rent a car, but the bus system was good for the most part – you just need to make sure you get to the stop at the right times.

We visited the top of a mountain, a salt mine, Mozart’s residence, a fortress, a river with a few bridges, and a bunch of restaurants. One thing that was neat about Austria was that they had some unique signs. Like some signs pointed out where people would be walking and kids playing and there was a sign that looked like a couple dancing.

St. Wolfgangsee, Austria

We took a couple busses to get from Salzburg to a lake area. We were able to buy the tickets on the bus, but there wasn’t that much room for luggage at the bottom of the bus. We were lucky that the luggage fit.

The lake area was pretty relaxing and the views were really wonderful. We did some biking, walking, canoeing, ferry boating, sliding, eating, and tramming. The tram up to the top of a mountain needed tickets and we were able to bundle those tickets with the ferry tickets. Not sure if that saved us any money, but I can’t imagine that it cost more. There was a giant slide nearby that we bought tickets to and that was fun. We were only able to slide down once since it started raining.

Vienna, Austria

Our last stop was in Vienna. We took a bus to a train station and took the train to Vienna. For traveling in Vienna, we downloaded the WienMobil app and got a 48 hour public transportation ticket. It was useful, although no one checked for our tickets. The busses, trams, and metro system were able to get us to the places we wanted to go. We took a bike tour and got a bunch of historical context about the country and the city. A lot of the historical sites are in the central parts of Vienna. We saw the Schonbrunn Palace, a bunch of churches, a Mozart concert, some funky looking apartments, some gardens, and some cafes.

Perfect Match Season 2 Review

I was on Netflix and got recommended to watch a show called Perfect Match. I had not watched season 1, but season 2 just came out and it was getting promoted to me. So, I started watching instead of finishing the kdrama Queen of Tears.

I thought that this show was very entertaining. I liked that I recognized some of the cast from previous shows and was curious about others on the show. Of course all the people were attractive, but it was interesting to see that people were getting stereotyped based on the dating show they were on. For example, people from Love is Blind were seen as marriage minded whereas the others not so much. The challenges and the ability for the cast to go into the boardroom and choose who came onto the show was a neat concept. Like instead of the showrunners having to do the calculus on who would bring the most drama to the people at the house, why not have the people at the house do that to themselves.

Do I think that this show actually wanted people to find their “perfect match”? Not really. Do I regret spending the 10+ hours watching the show? Not at all. I was hooked and the editing at the end to reveal what actually went down at the cenote was the icing on top.

Spider man multiverse thought

In New York, my roommate and I accrued some experience with dealing with cockroaches. Fortunately, they didn’t appear that often, but each time we were able to either kill them or get them out of the apartment eventually. Recently, I killed a cockroach and I thought, Hmm, what if there was a spiderman cockroach? Like there was a spiderman pig in the multiverse, so a spiderman cockroach wouldn’t be too far fetched. Then, I thought that a spiderman cockroach would probably be pretty hated from the good guys and the bad guys.

Some food that I made with my girlfriend

Game idea – Emergency room

I’ve been playing Overcooked on the Switch for a bit and it is fun, but a bit hectic. I was thinking this type of scenario could be similar to an emergency room. Like you could be one of the doctors and then you get patients every so often and you have to treat common cases. And then there might be “boss” levels where they have a complicated case. I’ve played hospital / medical video games before, but I don’t think any of them were as fun and addictive like Overcooked. So it might be cool if there was a medical genre game with this type of gameplay.

Story idea – stories as currency

I would say that telling stories is an art and is already a type of social currency – people gravitate towards those who can tell a good story. Storytellers who write books, host podcasts, sell goods, and more can also make a good living.

However, for this idea, I was thinking more about daily life. What if I had to tell a story to the cashier in order to buy my groceries for the week. And if the story wasn’t “expensive” enough, I had to tell additional stories. Or what if I needed to tell a story to rent an apartment? In this world, maybe the more interesting and unique stories are worth a lot. Imagination or strong memories in addition to strong speaking abilities would be highly valued. Perhaps there would be a story trading system or perhaps people would be secretive with their ideas, similar to a great startup idea. The value of the story would depend on the person though – I might find a story about superheroes to be worth a lot, but someone else may value the same story to be worthless.

I don’t think I have enough stories to survive in this type of world, so there might need to be a fallback to the existing regions’ currency, like the US Dollar, Euro, etc.

Story idea – living clothes

What if I told you that clothes, like the shirt on your back, was actually alive? What if I told you the sock that just happened to get lost in the wash didn’t actually get lost, but ran away? If you don’t believe me, then you’d probably be right. But, if clothes were alive, just like any other animal in the world, then that’d be a pretty crazy world. What would I feed my shirt? What should we do about all the discarded and abandoned clothes? Would washing whites with colors be a form of animal abuse? What if my plain white tee doesn’t identify with being tie-dyed? I don’t think I would want to live in that sort of world, but I think if clothes were alive and revolted against humans, I think humans would have a difficult time winning. Wearing clothes is the social norm in most societies and who knows how many more clothes there are than humans. Also, clothes might have some parasitic abilities and might have the ability to take over their hosts. Perhaps nudist colonies are on to something. Perhaps all the talk about climate change, pandemics, the economy, gender wars, and so on are all a distraction and we should really be focusing on what to do when the clothes attack.