Daggers and Downpours

This past weekend I watched two movies -- "House of Flying Daggers" and "Hero." Both films arrived in the U.S. from China (HK?) not too long ago. I actually enjoyed Flying Daggers more. Though both flix have colorful imagery and both star my favorite Asian actress Zhang Ziyi, I found the plot of Flying Daggers to be easier to understand and touching. Daggers reminds me of a slight Asian take on the Romeo and Juliet forbidden-love story, while Hero was a Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon reminiscent, figure-out-whose-side-of-the-story was true, about fulfilling promises and morality and honor. Either way, both films were full of the typical fly-around-the-forest, somersault-in-middle-air-while-fighting-mercilessly style that Hong Kong kung fu flix are famous for!

Also did some cleaning up of my apartment garage on Saturday with family in preparation for lightening our pac-rat load of items for the move this summer. As a result, came across a lot of old photos and trinkets from my childhood and high school years, bringing back fond nostalgic memories of an energetic kid without cares. Heh, sometimes I really miss being a kid -- when I was younger, didn't have a care but to go to school, eat junk food, and play with friends while discovering the world around me. I sometimes also miss being 18 and in high school, back when I was preparing myself for college and the world, back when you feel younger and more naive, things much fresher and new. *sigh*

The rain has been coming down this past week, heavy at time, here in San Francisco Bay. But the downpours have been no where near what's hitting my friends in Southern California. I've been getting the weather reports from them and it's major flooding. The storms even generated a deadly mudslide unfortunately in Ventura County. Also heard on the news today that if Southern California did not get one more drop of rain for the rest of the year, they'd still be at normal for the rest of the year. Unbelievable.

I just started using Mozilla Firefox 1.0 instead of Internet Explorer for my browsing, and I have to say it's quite impressive! Easy to use and FAST. Mozilla used to be the engine behind Netscape Navigator. And with all the security flaws and hidden scripts and hackers on the Internet these days, I'm willing to try a new browser that isn't so monopoly-driven such that its inner workings have not been jeopardized. It's free and I definitely recommend trying it!