Running

"Look back. Nobody is chasing." I always say it to pace myself whenever I jog. Yes, I jog now. Not everyday, mind you, and not intensely but I jog more frequently now than at any other point in my life.

My friends in this "small" city had always invited me to jog with them. And I always declined. I said I don't like to jog and that I prefer to take a walk. And I did walk (daily at one point) for a time. After work, I walked within the lush, green and peaceful Chinese and Japanese Gardens at Lakeside. It was convenient because the gardens are located between where I work and where I stay. And then I noticed something. People around me were running and cycling. I was the only one walking.

"Maybe I should run, too."

And run I did. I bought shoes and shorts and shirts for running. I wanted to run on the same path around the Chinese and Japanese Gardens. But I thought it was too cumbersome to bring running gears to work so I settled in running around an old track near my place. That was four months ago. I'm still running now. Not daily, only whenever I'm not reading something or playing badminton in the evening, but I'm still running.

I hope I'll have the motivation to continue finding time to run even if I stay in this slow pace; to look back and find nobody chasing me whenever I'm impatient to finish the activity.

Hobbit and penguins

Hobbit 3

I've anticipated to see this movie for almost a year and expected too much that when I finally saw it I was underwhelmed. How could I not be underwhelmed? It was barely a movie despite its 144-minute runtime. The only scenes that I really liked were the ones near the last 30 minutes. I'm beginning to believe that they only had that much remaining movie and that the rest were fillers to get to that ending. I've read in the past that they only planned two movies. And based on what I saw, that may have been the case. Be that as it may, I don't begrudge Peter Jackson for making 3 movies instead of the planned 2. In my own industry some things also don't go as planned. But I question stretching it to 144 minutes if he only had about 30 minutes of story to tell. People will complain of paying full price for a 30-minute movie for sure. But why not trim down the other 120 minutes by half? What is so wrong with having a movie that's shorter than 120 minutes if you really only had that much to tell?

On a side note, this reminds me of another movie I saw this year that I thought was stretched out purposely to make an extra movie. That movie was  Mockingjay Part 1. I also did not like that movie as much as I liked the previous ones in the series.

On another note, the line, "Why does it hurt so much?" in Hobbit 3 and how it was delivered was cringe-worthy.


Penguins of Madagascar

I had no plans to watch this movie, but the company picked it for a free movie outing. So I got to see it for free. And it was fun! It won't be a classic any time soon, but it was fun to watch.