RIFLE RANGE BOY

Cycle (Marathi, 2017) A Malay proverb goes, ' gajah mati meninggalkan tulang, harimau mati meninggalkan belang, manusia mati meninggalkan nama'. Literally translated it meant elephants die leaving bones, tigers leave their stripes and men leave their good name. Essentially it denotes that a legacy of a person is his deeds, not his materialistic assets. It may all be make-believe and fabled narration - that the world is so good where it provides for everybody. Your deeds are the only that matter. That is the only thing that is remembered of you are your virtues. The material representations of you are not you but the mere reminders of your existence. The movie set in 1958 rural India. Perhaps the innocence of Man that existed in the yesteryears is just a forgotten relic of the past. Modern Man is more self-centred and suspicious of the person beside him. Money has pervaded into everyone's life that it supersedes doing good or the right thing. Maybe somewhere in the corner of...

S2B: Seoul to Busan It is not a race.  Ep #1 Meet the P-stars.  Ep #2 Fighting the demons!  Ep #3 Bare necessities that we need!  Ep #4 7 Samurais set to go! ©Bob The day is here!  Ep #5 The time is now!  Ep #6 Time is a river of passing events. Ep #7 Episode 8: Day 5 S2B (10.10.19) Resolved to end the tour today, we made an early start, at the first sign of daylight. At least, that is what we thought. By the time we saddled up and tightened up a few loose ends, it was 0630 by the time we left our bike motel.  It was a chilly morning, slightly windy and foggy at 7C. Everything was going on fine for the first half of the day.  Korea decided to save the best for the last. She took us through multiple hills, some as steep as 13%. We managed most of the hills except for a few which proved too long too strenuous. The world of Maya. The cloud-like fluffy structure in the bottom half of the picture is the early morni...

S2B: Seoul to Busan It is not a race.   Ep #1 Meet the P-stars.   Ep #2 Fighting the demons!   Ep #3 Bare necessities that we need!  E p #4 The day is here!   Ep #5 The time is now!   Ep #6 Time and tide. Ep #7 Episode 8: Day 4 S2B (9.10.2019) After knocking ourselves out in slumberland at Zone Hotel in Gumi, North Gyeongsang, in what we call a ‘love motel’, we hit the saddle again. The love motel was the closest that came by when we hit Gumi all weary yesterday evening. Yet a sumptuous simple Korean dinner came in front of us when we entered a restaurant, told the chef to surprise us in rudimentary caveman sign language and grunts.  0830, back to the grinding mill.  Weather was generally beautiful today with the sun was out by 7am. The temperature was cool at 7ºC and slightly windy. We were fine, and we had a feeling that something good was on our way. Hence, we set to do 120km for the day.  The sun pe...

S2B: Seoul to Busan It is not a race.  Ep #1 Meet the P-stars.  Ep #2 Fighting the demons!  Ep #3 Bare necessities that we need!  Ep #4 The day is here!  Ep #5 The time is now! Ep #6 Episode 7: Day 2 S2B (7.10.2019) Going Korean? ©FG With a good night rest after the ever-smiling hostess’ simple Korean dinner that she dished out in a jiffy when we arrived at her doorstep all sweaty and hungry, we started grinding for the day.   Here in the northern part of South Korea, our observation was that Korean food comprises the main dish which could be pork or beef accompanied with little carbohydrate in the form of a small bowl of rice or noodle with their standard accompaniments - kimchi, cabbage pickled with spice, radish in vinegar and leafy vegetable which tastes like water hyacinth ( kangkung) sauteed with spiced chilled and pickled little chilly. In Busan, being a coastal city, seafood is favoured. We had another a...

S2B: Seoul to Busan

Westworld 1973 Michael Crighton, 20 years before his blockbuster, Jurrasic Park, was a debutante with this sci-fi thriller. The on-going Westworld mini-series has its roots in this Yul Brunner acted classic.  The setting in the same; patrons have their dreams came true in a make-believe resort with different themes and manned by recyclable robots/androids/AI (whichever generation you are from). Just like in 'Jurassic Park', things go terribly wrong. The robots start malfunctioning or infected by viruses and start harming the guests. Even though the film was done at a time way before it was thinkable of portable computers and smartphones, it is interesting to note that many of lingo used many a lot of sense and are relevant in this digital age and time. It must have been revolutionary to think of a 'biological' agent like 'virus' infecting robots, but it is here. It looks like all man's endeavours seem to bite him at where it hurts him most. He...