Book review: The Secret

Way back 2007; I was still working for a foreign company based in my country. It is a kind of call center industry where in we teach non-native English speakers improve their English communication skills.  It was that time I met these two kids named Nikka and Rachel (it’s their English names I gave them). At first it was too difficult to make them focus with our lesson until when I changed my approach. We became friends. I exchanged mails with their mom and I discovered a lot about them.

October 16, 2007; my birthday, I was surprised when the mailman arrived in the office and was looking for me. According to him, I have packages from South Korea. I was wondering from whom the packages are. When I saw these two boxes, it was from the kids. I was so excited to open them. I got a lot of things from them.  The one thing that caught my eye was a small box. It was wrapped beautifully with a ribbon on it. To my surprise, it was a book entitled “The Secret”.  I really don’t have an idea what the book is about. So when I got home, I read it. That was Friday so its fine for me to stay up late since it’s my day off on weekends. I tried to finish the book that night.

I learned a lot from the book. I can say that this book changed my way of thinking.  This book has several ideas that are considered exciting and controversial. It tells about the Law of attraction.

1.     It says in the book that if you focus your attention on achieving your goal and believe that you can do it and you have done it, you will be successful in achieving your goal virtually that you set on your mind to. 
2. If you focus on things that you don’t want and you can’t do, you are actually inviting those things into your life. The secret is you have to think of only the positive things. For example: Instead of saying I don’t want to be late for work, you have to say, I can go to work early. People should stop asking the questions “how” instead say it and put it in your mind that you can do it.
3.   The principle of the Law of Attraction is whatever you focus your energy on, whether it is relationship, possessions, work, and even your health you will be able to achieve good or bad.

This book became controversial. Some people say that this book is anti-religion. It might be because readers would tend to focus on material things alone. But I disagree because it depends on how readers interpret it. 

This book has a lot of secrets to reveal. I am super thankful to Nikka Kim and Rachel Kim for giving me the opportunity to read this.

Movie Review: Knight and Day

Everybody wants to have a knight in shining armor whenever we face troubles. However, is there a knight in shining armor in our modern world? Definitely yes!

Knight and day, an action romance comedy in one has such a jump-starting and quite puzzling introduction. The story goes this way. June Havens (Cameron Diaz) bumps into Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) at the Wichita Airport while she is struggling in carrying his luggage full of car spare parts that she is going to use to restore his deceased father’s GTO for her sister wedding. Only to find out that they are on the same flight, however, she was not in the list of the passengers after checking her boarding pass. With that, Roy told her, that sometimes things happen for a reason. Puzzled June sat at the waiting area hoping that she could get on that flight. After a couple of minutes, she was asked to board on the plane because they found an available sit for her. To her surprise, he noticed that there are only four or five other people present. She chats with Miller about her dreams driving to Cape Horn and the latter is preoccupied glancing on the other passengers while they are both trying to make themselves comfortable with the bumpy flight. She is strongly attracted. She goes to the restroom to freshen up. While she is busy, Miller is attacked by the other passengers on the plane.  The fighting, chase and surveillance started. June Havens’ simple life is tangled with Roy’s troubled life.  As the story goes, Havens has trouble thinking who to trust. But Miller convinced her that he is the good guy protecting an energy source that a rogue agent wants to gain for his own benefit.  The question here is: Can she trust Roy when she starts to see bullets flying and explosions anywhere they go? You have to find it out.

We’ve seen Tom Cruise doing Mission: Impossible franchise and definitely he nailed this movie again. His charisma together with his moves made this movie a wonderful one combining with Cameron Diaz’s charm and easy to handle any movie past mediocrity. It was a perfect combination of the two.

Patrick O’Neil, the writer, wrote a good story to make the viewers excited for the next scene. The story was not boring because it was fast. I would keep on flipping the pages if this is a book.  Though the twist isn’t that unnerving, you still have to think what’s going to happen next.

James Mangold, who often directs an action movie made his ability to run this one. However, he could have added a bit of love to make it more special. But I guess romance is not his forte. But of course, every project has its own flaws.  Even so, I would still recommend this to everybody.

Clear your living room as you might accidentally kick and punch your pop corn and soda while you are enjoying this movie. :)

Movie Review: Kick-Ass

As I was trying to find something else to do to kill my boredom, I accidentally bump into something that caught my interest. I saw the movie kick-ass over the internet and I decided to watch the trailer on YouTube. Well, the trailer was a bit fascinating because the main character came up with the question “How come nobody has ever try to be a super hero? His friends obviously don’t want to be because for them it is impossible, but for him there’s nothing impossible when your intention is to help people.

It made me more interested when I saw one of my favorite action stars in the trailer. I then decided to stream the movie.

The movie is narrated by the main character, Dave Lizewski. It started with a question from Dave about how come someone hasn’t ever tried to be a superhero given those large amounts of comics over the decades.

To summarize the story, Dave is an ordinary high school student and a huge fan of comic books with a few of his friends. He lives alone with his father. There’s nothing very difficult in his life. His personal trials are not that tragic as well. However, he makes a simple decision to become a superhero despite the fact that he has no powers or training suitable for being a superhero.

Nicolas Cage (Damon), one of my favorite action stars is in this movie and I have noticed that he did remarkably well. I was a bit sad that he died in the movie.

Mindy, (played by Chloe Moretz) one of the other main characters in the movie had awesome moves. I was really fascinated! However, parents out there might not like their kids to like Mindy because she storms the movie with lots of swearing which is not common for super heroes I guess as super heroes should be teaching their viewers moral lessons.

Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass), did also great specially being beaten by thugs! Of course, as expected, a superhero is going to save someone at the end of the movie. And he did so.

Mark Strong (Frank D’Amico) together with his son Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Chris D’Amico/Red Mist) is the main protagonist in the story. I really like Mark Strong’s aura being a criminal. He is really good at that. Chris shows that with lots of money, you can be a superhero or a super villain. This happens in reality.

For me, the movie is totally entertaining but don’t expect too much about it as it is not that big like other superhero movies. If you want to add something in your list for the weekend, watch this. Learn some moves. (I hope I can play martial arts again). A word of advice, don’t let your kids watch this alone.

There is something I learned from this movie. If we want change, then let’s start with ourselves. It is risky to be a superhero especially if you don’t have superpowers. It is also risky to change as we might lose some of our love ones but if we change for the better, go for it!