How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

I didn’t see this 2010 movie for the first time until 2014, and I’m not sure I fully appreciated it at the time. It is probably one of my top five favorite movies ever.

It has a dragon who is unbelievably powerful and cool but also catlike, silly, and adorable; it has a geeky underdog protagonist with a gratifying self-actualization plot; it has a romantic subplot featuring an immensely capable and hardworking girl; it has an awesome soundtrack; and it has the best aerial joyrides!

Siqi put in the DVD of HTTYD to test our new living room audio setup: he connected a new (used) pair of speakers behind the sofa, so now our system is 5.1 instead of 3.1. Pretty awesome! 🙂

Exposed (2016)

This was advertised as a Keanu Reeves movie, but he’s not really the main character. The movie’s original title, “Daughter of God,” better reflects the fact that the movie is mainly about a young Catholic Spanish-speaking woman who has a strange experience late at night on a subway platform and starts seeing angels.

The movie turns out to be about rape and child abuse, not, as the standard summary claims, “police corruption.” So it was very heavy, with one particularly disturbing scene. You could argue that the movie has a happy ending, but the net effect of watching this movie was definitely the opposite of happiness. I would unwatch it if I could.

Incidentally, this movie is an interesting case of the use of unreliable narration in film. If it weren’t so disturbing, I’d want to watch it again and look for clues that what we’re shown initially isn’t what happened. It’s clever. But I hate the story.

Two wood bears

Item description / significance
These are two small painted carved wooden bears, one white, one black.

Both were described as hand-carved, but I’m a little suspicious about that. The listing for the white bear said it’s made from beechwood.

Bought where
in China on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app

Age and origin
New!

What I like about them
The lifelike poses. I’m not an expert on bears, and these are a little abstract, but they still seem to contain an accurate kind of bear spirit somehow. These bears seem friendly and curious. (I would not approach a “friendly and curious” bear in real life!)

Other notes

So apparently now I have a collection of 3 wooden bears, including the Japanese bear I bought in Longquan, Zhejiang, China.

See below for more photos of these two, including photos from the sellers.

Continue reading Two wood bears

Notable vehicles (Q1 2025)

Ever since arriving in Hangzhou in December 2022, I’ve been noticing stuff about cars here, and I’ve been meaning to share my observations.

Therefore, here are some facts about the automotive landscape in China (especially Hangzhou):

In addition to imported vehicles and vehicles produced in cooperation with foreign automakers, China has a lot of domestically produced car brands. I’d heard of them because I edited news articles for China Knowledge, an English-language news portal offering business, financial, and real-estate news about China. But to see all the different designs in person is dizzying. Never knew there could be so many different shapes of taillights. (LEDs have changed the world.)

There are “cars” on the road that are tiny, some with only three wheels. These glorified golf carts are mysteriously ubiquitous despite not being road legal. (Apparently, they have recently been officially banned in Beijing.)

Some courier vehicles have no driver. These may start to replace the much more numerous three-wheeled courier vehicles that do have drivers. (But who unloads them, I want to know??? Seems like you’ve still got a last-mile problem.)

There are many consumer model vehicles with AI self-driving features. “Already today, a quarter of all newly registered vehicles in the Chinese market are equipped with a Level 2 driving system for highway scenarios.”

There are often mechanical shelves for cars in underground parking garages to increase capacity. (They are super annoying to park in because you have to back in, and you have to do it very precisely, because there’s only about 6 inches of space on either side of the car. Miss and you damage your tire or rim—happened to Siqi twice.)

There are no vanity license plates, but sometimes the license plate kinda spells something by accident. My brain constantly wants the alphanumeric inscriptions to be real words; they’re usually not. Electric and hybrid cars have green/white license plates, whereas petrol cars have blue license plates. There are a lot of EVs in Hangzhou, maybe 20%-30%. (Here’s a 2022 report with some statistics.)

The highway infrastructure continually amazes me. It’s new, it’s massive, and from what I’ve seen, there’s no graffiti.

Intrigued? See below for 25 photos of vehicles and vehicle infrastructure.

Continue reading Notable vehicles (Q1 2025)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The book is about the titular character, and is set in a town in 1840s Missouri. While I have been a Southerner, I have never have been a mischievous little boy. Therefore, I find Tom Sawyer’s daily life a little difficult to relate to. But that’s what books are for: they let you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Or bare feet, as the case may be.

Even if you’ve never read a word of the book, or watched a movie adaptation, you probably already know about Tom’s cleverness in getting his pals to paint a fence on his behalf. But did you know that Tom witnesses a murder? And goes on a holiday from civilization on an island in a river? And finds stolen treasure in a cave with miles of tunnels? There’s plenty of entertainment in the plot.

The themes relate to honor and honesty, about doing the right thing when it matters, and not worrying too much about phony social rules as long as you take care of the people you care about.

Meanwhile, throughout the novel, Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens, if you prefer), offers, in deadpan style, a number of sharp observations of human nature. See below for some examples.

Continue reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

When and Why I Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Time to read some Mark Twain.

Genre: American literature
Date started / date finished: 18-Mar-25 to 20-Mar-25
Length: 248 pages
ISBN: B072F1WKW1
Originally published in: 1876/2017
Amazon link: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels, originally published in 1727, is in the public domain. Using the Android Kindle app on my phone, I read the AmazonClassics ebook shown above, which I downloaded during the Covid lockdowns when Amazon made a bunch of classic ebooks available to download for free. However, this Amazon ebook does not include the illustration in Part 3, Chapter 5 of the automatic writing machine, which features in another blog post of mine. I therefore recommend the Standard Ebooks version of Gulliver’s Travels, which does include this illustration, and which, moreover, is free. (Standard Ebooks offers a growing selection of Gutenberg ebooks that have been noticeably improved in terms of proofreading, typesetting, cover design, etc. All free.)

Where does Gulliver go? Are his travels funny? What’s Jonathan Swift trying to say, anyway? (Do I even like satire at all?) Does the book resemble the 1939 animated film adaptation? Find the answers to these questions below.

Continue reading Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

When and Why I Read Gulliver's Travels

I know a little about Gulliver's Travels by cultural osmosis, but that's not the same as having actually read it! I know that Lilliputian means 'diminutive' because Lilliput is a place full of small people who famously tie Gulliver down (and that brobdingnagian means 'huge' because Brobdingnag is a place full of huge people). I've heard of houyhnhnms, and about some kind of mechanical word machine that people use for writing. It's time to fill in the gaps.

Genre: English literature / satire
Date started / date finished: 10-Mar-25 to 17-Mar-25
Length: 306 pages
ISBN: B073WW8W3R
Originally published in: 1726/2017
Amazon link: Gulliver's Travels

Chicago (2002)

Recently I made the mistake of listening to the soundtrack of Chicago on my computer. The songs are incredibly sticky. Hearing the songs echoing in my head for several days, I decided I wanted to rewatch the movie itself. This, of course, just reinforced the echoes in my head.

Watching the movie, I decided my favorite song, because of its sheer energy, was “Cell Block Tango,” which repeatedly insists that “he had it coming.”

Also, I remembered that, although the movie is incredibly good at what it does, I actually really don’t like the characters. See below for more on that.

According to Wikipedia, the movie is based on a 1975 stage musical, which is based on a 1926 play, which is based on some actual events in the news.

Continue reading Chicago (2002)

John Wick Chapter 4 (2023)

I remember bits and pieces of the previous John Wick movies, perhaps the first one especially, but they don’t have a lot of plot or dialog. They are mostly full of stylized violent action. Some of it’s cool and some of it’s too brutal for my taste, but I like the character, and I like Keanu Reeves.

Siqi and I saw this movie when it was newly released in theaters in China (two years after its US release). According to Wikipedia, it’s the first of the series to be released in China at all. Apparently the reason it was allowed to be shown, and the basis for a lot of the marketing, is the fact that it stars popular Hong Kong Chinese actor Donnie Yen.