Learning and Earning by Doing

It has been two weeks since I decided to learn foreing exchange business to understand the realm deeper. By the fifteenth of April, I saw an advertisement in my Yahoo! Mail page. Curiousity took over my mind and I ended up signing in this account. I was half-hearted back then. I was afraid that it was a fraud to take my money. Yeah, cybercrime. Yet again, I believed Yahoo! wouldn't grant any untrusted source to make advertisement in their page.

Five minutes later, I still hadn't finish my deduction, but an international call came in to my phone. I was shocked, so I ignored it. I bet it was a call from the forex company. Then when it came in again about ten minutes later, I decided to pick it up. I was right! It was a call from the company. After half an hour of talking, I decided to have it a try. I deposited US$ 100 to my account, and the game was just began!

I was so excited, so I opened a position. After several minutes, I lost US$ 20. Perfect! However, I managed to gain US$ 41, made a a net profit of US$ 21. Wow.... A beginner's luck, maybe. Along the time, I've made profits and losses inconsistently. But that's the point of learning and earning by doing, isn't it?

Since then, I received at least two emails about strategy and economic information from them. It made me easier to know what was going on in the market and thus what position to be opened. And the best thing about that was they also conducted webinars -- a web-based seminars. I hadn't have any idea what was that about. And the tricky thing was I had to adjust AEDT (Australian Eastern Day Time) with GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), which was claimed +10 hours, but when I synchronized it with the forex platform, it was +9 hours. The schedule was 7PM GMT, which was 4AM AEDT. So if I followed the formal GMT, I would've been too late to join the first webinar. Well, it happened to one of the attendant.

They used Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro to perform the webinar, so the moderator interacted through audio-visual and chat mode. Moreover, he also could control slides and examples and showed them in the middle of the screen. It was very interactive. We only could comment or ask any question through chat mode, but that was more than enough to make any point. Before attending the webinar, I had never imagined that I could join a web-based seminar while the moderator was on the other side of the world and he responded to me directly. It was kinda funny because we used different mode -- I asked and commented through chat mode, while he responded audio-visually -- and yet, it was so unimaginable.

Now, I've already mastered the way to use platform, but I am still struggling to find out on how to read the trends of the market whether they are going to rise or fall. One of the main difference between speculating with foreign currency and stock is we could make money when the currency rise or fall, whereas in the stock, only some people could profit by the fall of the price (the method is known short-selling). I've been spending a lot of time in front of my laptop just to monitor my profits and losses, and it is becoming my habit. But so far, I've been enjoying it. I'm looking forward to master the way to read the trends and make some money through it.

Avatar: Welcome to Planet Pandora

Warning: This posting contains some details from the movie. For everyone who haven't watched it but love to enjoy the movie without anyone tell you the storyline beforehand, I suggest to pick the reading wisefully.
James Cameron is surely a master of break-the-record movies. He was the man behind "Titanic", the worldwide highest-grossing movie of all time, at least until the beginning of this year, before he broke another record through his recent masterpiece, "Avatar". Also, many movie criticists suspected that Avatar had the highest budget of all time. One movie with multiple records. Splendid!

For me, Avatar made my record too: watching the same movie three times in two weeks. Twice on my laptop, and once in 3-D IMAX Theatre. Why's that so special? Well, because usually I am too lazy to watch a movie after I watch it once. But there are just too many factors made me fond of watching this movie.

The other-worldly Planet Pandora was as far as 5 years of light from Planet Earth, which in this movie was succumbing into its destruction, thanks to humankind greed, indeed. 'Twas occupied by six-legged and four-winged creatures as well as glow-in-the-dark plants, and most importantly the blue-skin humanoid: the Na'vi. Na'vi was the human in its own world. Well, not real human, but at least humanoid. Its body was more evolved than human with bones reinforced with naturally occuring carbon fiber. I didn't really know what's the significance, but essentially its bones were seriously harder than human bones. Also, Na'vi had intelligence, speaks advanced language, granted control on its nature, and had complex culture. The cultural details were explained in quite thorough way: how they accepted newcomer, how they acknowledged one's maturity, how to behave as a good Na'vi, and also how they made bonds, i.e. Sa'helu, with horses and Ikrans.

Na'vi's goddess, Eywa, was another ethereal touch in the story. She was so real that Na'vi interacted with her almost directly, and more importantly, Her rule in a decisive battle with the bad side: human. Yeah, human. The fact that human was not always being the most righteous side was one of the most important thing that made this movie very special. Not like most of human-versus-alien movies, human was the main villain in this movie. As if that wasn't enough, human also took part with the good side, most notably, Jake Sully

Favorite moments

There's several moments I liked best, and I sort them based on my preference.

1. Jake implemented his hypothesis about the Toruk. Jake believed that because Toruk was the king of the air, it became too proud of itself and though that there was no reason to be afraid when it flew on the air. So he tried to prove it by jumping right on its back. Good job, Jake!

2. Jake fled away from furious hungry Pandoran tiger, Thanator. I loved the slow-motioned moments when he fought his way to lose the tiger, especially when he jumped off the cliff while the tiger tried to catch him right by the edge of the cliff.

3. Tsu'tey led three young Na'vis -- included Jake -- to find their Ikrans. They ran and climbed furiously through roots and jumped to another roots with the risk of losing their lifes. Classic.

4. "Seeds of the secret tree" covered Jake's body. Neytiri believed it was a sign from Eywa that Jake was special and thus decided to bring him to Moat.

5. Jake's survival game in the forest. The first time I watched this movie, I thought he would surely not make it through the night without any serious injury. He was surrounded by two dozens of dogs, for God's sake! Luckily, the "good Samaritan", I mean "good Pandoran" named Neytiri arrived to save the night.

Flaws

Despite its complex features, I always think that the movie could be done more than it had. Here are the things I considered as flaws in the movie.

1. Pandoran creature limbs. The fact that Planet Pandora had less gravitational force than earth made it rational for Na'vi's posture to be as twice as human, but it was slightly out-of-track for another creatures to have extra limbs for lower gravity than earth's. Luckily, Na'vi didn't have four legs.

2. Na'vi's language fluency. I love the way Neytiri spoke in English the first time she met Jake. "This is sad. Very sad, only," she said it with awkward pronunciation and structure. That's it. That's the first and last time she spoke like that. It was strange for me to hear Na'vis talk English very fluently, considering they only practiced it with Jake and Grace. She even spoke English more fluent than me, whom have learned English since elementary school. I would like to hear them speak stutteringly like: "You... who?" or "You... come... from... where?"

3. The "sex" element. I think it's extremely absurd to put the element into this movie in the way a human made out with a Na'vi woman. How come they did it exactly as human do? Kissing, hugging, etc. Moreover, it wasn't even Jake's real body: it's artificially controlled by him. Yet again, it's Hollywood, man! That's the way they've always done it. There's almost no Hollywood movie except with sex or nude scene in it.

4. Tail and Sa'helu of Na'vi. Why did it had tail and Sa'helu? What's the purpose of the tail other than to be stepped by another Na'vi? Also, the Sa'helu was alogical. Na'vi's head was covered by hair but it had Sa'helu by the end of its queue/ponytail? And it could even made Na'vi blind if it touched the eyes? "It's kinda creepy," Jake said.

Despite the flaws I mentioned, I still think the movie is spectacular. James was surely supported by consolidated geniuses. They worked very hard to make this film with sophisticated technology to bring CGI evolution to the extent that animated expressions were so realistic. I really loved the movie, and it was the best movie I've ever watched. Four thumbs up!

Meet the Na'vis and the Avatar Riders

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully

Zoe Saldana as Neytiri

Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey

Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine

CHH Pounder as Mo'at

Wes Studi as Eytukan

Joel Moore as Norm Spellman

Trivia

1. To make this movie, James and friends spent about 10-15 years from research and brainstorming until the finishing touch to release it. Isn't that just insane? Luckily, James live long enough to finish the movie.

2. Avatars, like its riders, had five fingers and toes whereas the real Na'vi only had four.

3. Inspiration for the Na'vi people was from indigenious tribes, especially traditional African. It explained the familiar body paints and loinclothes, didn't it?

4. Even Na'vi's skin color was blue, their blood was red.

5. Average height of male Na'vi was 3 meters. It was as twice as male human height.

6. Their strength was three times than normal human strength.