The final word to close my 2017 will be my gratitude. I have been grateful to every change happening in my new job, in new path, in new adventure. This is a year of change of the world as I knew it. Fresh challenges have been coming after and after. I took surgery and it went well. I started kickboxing. I met new people and became good friends. I became 40 years old. I started to make some good things a habit. Overall it was a peaceful year but also one of the special times of my life. I feel like I'm breathing different air. I feel a small but important change has been happening to me physically and mentally. After these changes, I feel very calm and quiet. It's just, Thank you.
Winter holidays are good to stay quiet and do nothing but thinking many things that usually doesn't come up with. If this is summer vacation we have tons of activities to enjoy summer. In winter yes we also have lots of fun things to enjoy winter, and I will be delighted to enjoy snowball fight or making snowman, skiing or just walking in the woods if there were snow falling around here, but it's no snow and I prefer activating my mind and brain to enjoy books, musics and movies, and trying to stay away from SNS (which I like much, though). I remember the time when I was a kid and thinking lots of things quietly but with fun like this. It was likely to happen in the car which my father drove. I was sitting and watching the scenery from the driving car. The scenery of the town, field or mountain which was flying away from my vision, quickly changing color of the sky and the other cars driving aside, was something I never got tired of watching. I remember these feeling because I was thinking for myself. And now I can recall the feeling when I am in the same quiet thought.
Today is New Year's Eve and I was out for a little shopping to one of the most popular and brightest department store. I thought it might be too cloudy for me to make it a peaceful shopping but it turned out that it wasn't. Many people were enjoying the eve in the most gorgeous street in the town, but there were few hustle and bustle. I sat down and had a nice cup of coffee to watch people coming and going. They look most likely foreigners. It's natural because almost all the nation has been going to each destination to return back to their hometowns. I like the quiet and peaceful air in the city at this time of the year. The city looks very different from its usual appearance. With a special feeling of closing a year, full of foreigners, no crowd and no rushing, I feel like I am traveling.
The only one book of Agatha Christie that I often read over is Murder On Orient Express. So I can tell my favorite Christie is the Orient Express. There is no need p explain what the book is all about. This year we see a film based on the novel after over 40 years since the last amazing film in 1974. I know the story well. I know the old movie and like it much. I have read the book over and over again and almost remember every storyline. I wonder if this new movie can take us to another depth of intellectual entertainment. And, like it or not it's truly a well-made movie. There are lots of newly arranged charm including fresh image of Hercule Poirot. It sounds like cheerful, emotional and courteous Sherlock Holmes. I've never seen any Poirot with such fighting skills but it looks pretty good. But the other spectacle of the new movie is the beautiful and marvelous scenery from the window of the Orient Express. It's just breathtaking and if my memory is correct this is something that Agatha Christie didn't describe in the novel in which the dialogue was held only inside the train. Another point that has been added to the climax - a surprising action taken by Poirot after he knew everything - I was surprised but felt positive about it. I thought it was very well done. It's my great pleasure to wrap up 2017 with watching such movie of high quality.
When I first listened to and saw the promotion video of the first song from Reputation, I didn't quite understand why Taylor Swift shifted her music into this way. Recently I have started to listen the whole album and it is stunning. Fun, stylish, straightforward, modern and simply, very very danceable. I also truly liked her last album 1989 but this Reputation is much more powerfully advancing and powerfully fun. I never imagined that anyone could achieve the state-of-art with attacking the past identity, looking into its own darkness, and still filled with pure delight and positive energy. I am no music critics but just one music fan, and I have been delighted to listen to this work. Taylor Swift has been almost like a similar image of Disney princesses. And now Moana coming in, a huge and speedy conversion is about to start in many aspects of this modern era, I suppose Taylor has enough reason to stop being a gifted princess to become a valiant artist, which she livelily made it.
Secrets are to be kept confidential. People often tells me about their secrets, even if I never think of asking them. At the end of the day, it might not mean much to them as it looks. But I keep it confidential because not only that's what they expect me to, but also I can stay fully confident and comfortable to lock the secret, give some advice sometimes, and finally I forget it when time comes. It's like a lake in the mountain of forest which never connect to the outside environment and stays just calm and quiet.
I suppose everyone has at least once tried to sing in bathroom or in bathtub. And I believe most of us like it very much. As singing is not a easy work, bathroom is the only place we can obtain our best voice and tone without any effort. And you can enjoy it everyday if you want (but if you keep singing in the bathroom everyday it doesn't mean you become a good singer outside bathroom.)
In fact I have found this great entertainment very recently as I know few songs that I can sing without listening to it. I love many songs, but I cannot sing it except just enjoying sing along or lip sync. But I found two ways for me to enjoy bathroom singing: one is simply to listen to music loudly played in my room, and the other is to make my own song instantly with singing haphazardly. Actually, the latter makes more fun. It feels like becoming an artist writing a song. It doesn't matter if the song is fully haphazard. it's even more better as it's like "do an improvisation", which feels like more real. It's really something we can entertain ourselves. And what's more, if you come up with a real good song of your own, it's amazing, and it proves the bathroom may be the most creative place.
As the Last Jedi is coming up, I'm sure I will be excited to see it in the theater soon, but to me there are something, or many things still in the classic episodes. I enjoy a lot of comic book movies these days. Whether it's Marvel or DC, the superheroes are attractive and stunning with their own style, strength, humor and characteristics. Yet Star Wars stories are very different and very unique and outstanding in the history of entertainment movies as one and only icon. Star Wars universe is completely free from the connection with the world as we know. The whole universe is a pure work of creation (even though it has some, or lots of the features of real world). It's free from any realty but at the same time has overwhelmingly convincing and attractive reality that enable us to believe in the world and fully enjoy our imagination during the two hours. The Star Wars universe is so firmly and carefully structured that we easily understand the system, the framework and the conflict where the heroes and heroines are destined to find their path.
Jedi, a mysterious knights with light side of force, wisdom, well-balanced mind almost like Zen master, are the heroes of the world, but they don't look (usually) like SF characters with very special and extraordinary skills. Jedi doesn't transform or do anything that is far beyond the physical theory. They don't use magic, they don't fly, they don't hack computers (it's done by R2-D2), and they are not immortal. They are humans with excellent talent who has been well trained physically and mentally. Star Wars world doesn't forget the perspective of smart and exquisite level of reality.
