Going by the book, movie review

I just finished watching this peculiar movie that touches upon so many things behavioural. In short, it is a long bank robbery. Or is it?
The premises are summarized as a cop who enforces the law too well without exception and who does everything he is ordered to his best of his abilities, who is then given the role of a bank robber in a police simulation...

Watch By The book here

As the robbery unfolds, the line between simulation and real robbery gets blurred easily from the viewers point of view. And it takes the character something like " if I were a real robber" to get back to the simulation situation. In fact, the the police is trying everything by the book as well, following procedures as if the a real robbery happened. The hostages are behaving naturally like real hostages as well after some resistance were crushed.

What is most interesting is the cop turned pretend robber's character: a righteous cop who needs to be a thorough thief. It may be because of my current state of mind but it is pretty much a question to the audience to me. What if you are given free reign to act out your unlawful repressed desire ?

It is very tense to watch the character maintain both his thief and cop logic, the thief doing his best to evade the police, and his cop self justifying what the thief was doing:
For example, the thief did not yield to his mother's plea to surrender. Accused of not behaving like a real thief, he indicated that his mother did not shed a singe tear, since she knew he was a cop. Hence the thief was not moved and did not surrender.

Although I hope this kind of character exists, one that can maintain its righteous belief and orientation, it was very surprising to see that the thief character did not take over, armed with rifle, money and free escape.

It is labelled as comedy, but one that is a serous comedy, asking some valid questions.

These are the signs that spring is here..

 

Let's pick a number and win big!

For a reason unknown, we started talking about a dozen of bus drivers winning the lottery at work, and somehow ended up fired up to play as a group as well. It is 10€ per 5 sets of numbers, drawn twice a week, and there are 9 of us who got absolutely pulled into it. The guys were even making plans already about what they will do, where to put the money to pay less taxes, because in Switzerland apparently 30% of your game earnings belong to taxes...


In any case, today we finalized the numbers and payment. It took us a full half day to pick the damn number, after a whole day yesterday of a strategy on how to pick numbers. one would think statistics would play a big role, but for some of the big talkers among us, it is a matter of positive energy...The conversation started to be a bit irrational so I spaced out, until they'd ask me for a number.


Somehow some numbers were called out frequently, as much as 3 times (such as the number 5, 3, 41), and we planned to have the most frequent numbers in one of the grid. That didn't go well with one for the participants because he wanted to have everyone remember the numbers we called and see which numbers would be drawn frequently and have the persons that picked those numbers pick more numbers, using that person's positive energy...he got a bit ignored and we now have a set of 5 grid that we would play for at least 8 draws, since we already paid for the month.


As soon as the numbers are set, Friday morning one person will buy the ticket and set the numbers. So one of the question today was: what do we do about the original lotto ticket? 


So all kind of scenarios started to emerge:
-the buyer will disappear with the original ticket and the money
-I had to borrow some euros to pay my entry fee, and so my lender asked: if we win tomorrow, can I get 40% of your earning then?
-If yo in big, would you still come to work?


It was all very funny and jovial but it makes me wonder what would really happen if we win, because money changes people, and on never knows until faced with the situation.

The strangest thing: pizza delivery

G. is visiting for a couple of days and just returned from a ski weekend with her parents. After catching up on our nonexistent love lives and meager career opportunities, it was dinnertime. She offered to order some delivery, and I warned her about the unavailability of reliable information on Geneva businesses online, especially on restaurants. All the nearby restaurants have no website or menu online. But we assumed the major delivery chains like Pizza Hut or Dominos would be a safe bet.

While doing other things, we decided to order online, after registering my email address, and choosing toppings etc, we managed to order after getting over the initial shock of the price: 37.50 CHF for a medium pizza with 3 toppings, plus a cheese bread and 1.5L drink (Nestea). She lives in NYC so she can eat for a whole week at that price. But this is Geneva and a pizza can cost 30CHF.

It took us 30min to order, and we set a delivery time  1h afterwards, at 20:00.

Time flew and our stomach started to crave the pizza. 20:00 came and went, and at finally at 20:30 we called both Dominos branch nearby to ask when our order would arrive. Their answer was depressing: they did not receive our order, despite the fact that I received 2 emails confirmed that our order was accepted....We gave up and decided to cook something quickly.

I started making my okonomiayaki base, with flour and eggs, to mix with the cabbage, onion and lardons that I cooked at noon. I mixed everything and prepared the pan to heat, when the bell rang...


A not bad looking delivery man was holding our order, and i still cannot wrap my head around it. Nobody supposedly received our order but we still got our pizza....1 hour late but I suppose I am glad I didn't order another one by phone...

I guess I will have okonomiyaki for the next 3 days...

fantastic baby (Big Bang)

My body in numbers

This is what happens when one just wants to try out something popular. As expected, the Iyashi dome made me sweat buckets of water, but the main feature that they do not explain until you get there, is that they weigh you naked before and after 30min of sweating...

Starting from the beginning, one undresses then hops on the scale then the attendant input your age and height into the device, which then programs itself like an intelligent microwaves to administer sufficient heat. Then it outputs a little ticket with different numbers, all scary numbers, starting with:
Weight of fat, weight of muscle, weight of liquid, BMI, etc...and a final statement indicating whether one is overweight or not (clearly I am, with an obesity degree of 67%). As an encouragement, it also indicates the ideal weight (49.5kg).

After 30min of sweating, another trip on the scale indicates I lost 300g of water, and also the fact I need to drink more water (% hydrique= 45.7%).

So in short, I'm obese and need to drink more water. I guess the fact that the flu came at me full blown 4h later is an indicator, and now I am drinking 1L/h, with all the teas and soup ingested...

I can't wait for the 6th session of that sweating machine to know how my body changes. In the meantime I bought a scale to look at with guilt...