A movie to be watched: Manda Bala

Jason Kohn’s Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) won the Grand Jury Documentary Prize at this year’s Sundance Festival .
Unfortunately it’s not yet available on DVD. I should start making a list with ‘Movie to be watched’ and be diligent in finding them.

The movie depicts a hyper-realistic Brazil, which is more than samba, carnivals or World Cup soccer wins.

It’s about political corruption, money laundering via a frog-farm and ear-reconstruction- plastic-surgery for victims of a kidnapping culture where sending severed ears with ransom notes is common practice.

It’s a world where if you are rich enough to avoid traveling at street level in Sao Paolo, you take a personal helicopter from the top of a high-security apartment to the top of a high-security office. If you are not so fortunate, you travel the roads on bullet-proof vehicles with private security entourages.

And if you are anything else but fortunate, I guess you live day-by-day.

Redford and Coppola : back to the big screen

Robert Redford is to direct a film adaptation of Richard Clarke’s memoir Against all Enemies, the best-selling book about the George W. Bush administration’s handling of the al-Qaida threat before and after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The latest Robert Redford’s politically themed movie, Lions for Lambs is going to be presented at Rome’s Festival.
The film tells the story of two soldiers wounded behind enemy lines in Afghanistan.
The two soldiers, students of idealistic professor Dr. Stephen Malley (Robert Redford) become the string that binds together two disparate stories on opposite sides of America.
One is Dr. Malley’s attempt to reach the disaffected student Todd and the other one is a bombshell story about to be given by Senator Irving (Tom Cruise) to a TV journalist (Meryl Streep).

Among other titles screening in Rome is Noise, casting Tim Robbins as a vigilante exasperated by car alarms going off in the middle of the night.

Francis Ford Coppola returns to the big screen with Youth Without Youth a movie based on a novella by Mircea Eliade , about a Romanian professor who becomes young again after being hit by lightning. Coppola has picked Rome for his world premiere.

Looking to buy good green tea?

Everybody seems to know the benefits of drinking green tea. According to some evidence, green tea may prevent the occurrence of some forms of cancer, but the mechanism of action it’s still poorly understood.
Each year, about 2.5 million tons of teas are manufactured from the dried leaves and leaf buds of the shrub Camellia sinensis.
Green tea, black tea, and oolong tea are all derived from this plant.
The growth bud and the first two or three leaves at the tip of the shoot produce the finest tea.

Tea varieties reflect the growing region (Ceylon, Assam, etc), the form (pekoe is cut, gunpowder is rolled) and the processing method (black, green, oolong).
Green tea- the preferred drink in Asia- is produced from leaves that have been withered, rolled, fermented, and dried; in other words it’s not crushed and oxidized.
Black tea- the preferred drink in Europe and Americas- is crushed, allowed to oxidize in heat for a few hours, then fully dried.
Oolong tea is in between green and black in term of oxidation.
Green tea and black tea are having different chemical properties.
As like anything else, with tea, you get what you pay for.
There are many green tea brands around, but not all of them are equal. Serious companies, offers green tea for ‘connoisseurs’ and the price is accordingly. Over there you are not going to find tea in other way then loose leaves.
My favorite tea store ‘Herbal Republic’/is located in Vancouver, BC; they carry absolutely awesome fine teas.
An on line store I consider investigating is O-Square

Lawyers open a virtual branch office in Second Life

I’ve been reading about the virtual ‘Second Life’ for months now; starting with how addictive it is and ending with how you can spend real money into a virtual world. The last but not least, how real people made real good money in a virtual world.

The virtual ‘Second Life’ gathered a community of about 9 million people from various walk of lives and continents.

It has cops, robbers and from now on real lawyers.

According to the Vancouver lawyers, having a virtual branch will provide the opportunity to network with their clients effectively. Although set in a virtual world they will give real-life advice. Of course, getting new clients would be the bonus, right?

BlackBerry catching on in China

I have a BlackBerry-8800 and I must admit that I like it very much. The problem with it? it’s addictive. Having a smartphone like BlackBerry, makes you work longer hours.
A study done recently, showed a typical increase of working hours from 40 to 70 a week.

Going back to BlackBerry in China: the rumor had it that it would be available for sale in China for $700 at the end of August 2007.It did not happen.

China Mobile, the Research in Motion’s partner for Chinese market, does not sell BlackBerry, just offers service packages for it. So people are told to buy one from Honk Kong or other foreign countries.Once in the possession of the precious toy, they can buy a service package offered by China Mobile for prices between $57 and $85, pretty expensive for an average income of $350 per month.

Although the RIM is not selling yet on Chinese market, somehow they are sold on Taobao, the Chinese-language equivalent of EBay. The suspicion is that some of them might be knockoffs; the selling price is between $75 and $800.

The problem is that without China Mobile, the devices will not send or receive e-mail, but they will work as a cool cellphone and can access Internet.
Interesting fact: there is a Chinese copycat of the BlackBerry: it’s called RedBerry.

Tibetan Bell

I have entered another Fall with another bout of anxiety.
Stress related naturally. Stress over everything: job, endless list of chores and errands, too much work not enough sleep, etc.
I found that if I meditate, it helps me calm down.
Right above my computer desk, I have a laughing Buddha statue; actually two of them.
I have as well a beautiful singing bowl.
What I don’t have, and I would like to get is a Tibetan bell and dorje.
The bell and dorje are ritual objects in Tibetan Buddhism.
The prayer bell is used to call the presence of the Buddha.Ringing the bell can be used to request protection, or it can be a sound offering.
The dorje represents the thunderbolt of enlightenment and it is used to visualise deities.When used in a ritual, the dorje is paired with the bell.
The dorje is normally held in the right hand and it represents the masculine principle. The bell is held in the left hand and it represents the feminine principle.

‘Heroes’ is back!

I am looking forward to watching ‘Heroes’; it was my favorite show last season.
It looks like the second-season will bring new characters.
As a reminder: the season finale culminated with Hiro impaling the evil Sylar and Nathan and Peter Petrelli flying into space to spare NY City a nuclear explosion.
The new season premiere will catch up with characters as they readjust to everyday life four months after the season finale.
Hiro teleports 400 years into the past to feudal Japan, which he may have to save.
There, he is going to meet a potential love interest and his samurai hero- who is not exactly what the idealistic young man expected.
Other heros are spread across the world. But as duty calls, the characters will reunite.
Some characters are forced to deal with a threat resulting from the actions of their parents’ generation, including Petrellis’ mother and Hiro’s father.
The new season is broken into two major story arcs; one is called ‘Generations’ and visits the sins of the fathers and mothers of the heroes.
A few hours after my draft: I watched the episode; it was good. My question is: how much Nissan Rogue paid for the commercials? It was brutal! Nissan Rogue was featured during the commercials and within the episode.

The truth about sites that pay you to blog

The truth is that not many sites are going to accept you into their ‘make-money-for-blogging’ program.
I was trying today to get accepted by ReviewMe. I failed. My blog does not generate enough traffic so far.
This is the reality of making money on the net: you have to be already a winner to get into the Big-Boys-Club; read ‘get lots of page impressions per month’
In some cases, the minimum accepted number is 100,000!!!
Now let’s face it: most of us like to blog for fun and why not, if we are paid for having opinions on something or writing an honest product review, it’s even better, it keeps you motivated.Being rejected is not a pleasant feeling. Damn!

Making big money on line is like getting a well paid job in Canada. You have to have a successful career before applying for the job.
My lesson today:ReviewMe, Kontera and Chitika are not for newcomers. Pooh-pooh on them.
Probably when I am going to have traffic on my site I wouldn’t choose them only because I don’t like this elitism.

The Sisyphean challenge of making money on the net

Seriously, I have no idea how a four year old is capable of developing a successful blog. Or how a teenager has a blog worth 1 million dollars. When did they gather the knowledge?
OK, I am not a good sport; I know I should be happy for their success or at least be more motivated. Instead of that I feel like Sisyphus. I spend every freaking hour off trying to understand the widgets, pings, etc.
Not really a type A personality, I tried to organize the myriad of info and suggestions. It boiled down to the following list:

Learn some basic HTML

: Work in progress

Decide on your topic

: Almost there

Choose your domain name

: Done

Register your domain name and set up your web hosting

: Done

Install weblog software

: To be done sooner then later

Find good, honest affiliate programs

: Good Luck with that!!!

Promote your site

: I still don’t know what the heck to do about it

I got burned already with an affiliate program, more about that later on.
In the mean time, another Saturday afternoon spent trying to find a nice WordPress theme.

Mysterious illness

Villagers in southern Peru were struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area, regional authorities said Monday.
Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.
Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a “strange odor,” local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.
Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.
Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.
“Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned,” he said.