Giddy Tigers

It had been ages since my husband and I went on a movie date, and since we were both on leave last week, AND Ethan was obviously having fun with his friends at daycare, we decided to check out a movie at the local cinema here.  We ended up watching TWO movies on two consecutive days, simply because we could! Hehe.

The two movies we watched were Valkyrie (starring Tom Cruise) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett). 

Valkyrie was quite a disappointment to me, because although it had some exciting parts, there were some parts of the movie that were left unanswered.  Watch this only if you are an ardent Tom Cruise fan. 

Benjamin Button, on the other hand, was a humorous yet touching take on the life of a man who aged backwards.  Although it stretched on for close to three hours, we didn’t really feel the lengthiness of it, probably because we were caught up in the soul of the movie.  Watch this for a generally feelgood movie, for its special effects (which I am sure are Academy Award material) and of course, just to see how young and good-looking (or how old and haggard) Brad Pitt can be.

Apart from watching the movies proper, I had some observations at the cinema too.

• Popcorn in the US is of the salty kind.  Good thing I asked before I bought it because I do prefer the caramel sweetness of popcorn.  My husband did point out a caramel/honey dispenser at the side of the cineplex, which we *think* is for the popcorn, but we didn’t try.
• Theatrical trailers shown before the movie starts are all in theme with the movie you are watching.  Unlike in Malaysia where you might see a horror movie trailer right before they screen a kids’ movie like Madagascar, we had trailers in the thriller genre when we watched Valkyrie, and comedy/drama trailers when we caught Benjamin Button.  I thought that was very apt indeed.
• It’s free seating in the cineplexes.  Not sure why, but it wasn’t packed, so we managed to get quite good seats. 
• Cineplexes here are not as cold as in Malaysia, even though it is winter here.  Maybe they figured out a way to regulate the temperature accordingly.
• I did not experience a SINGLE incident of some cellphone ringing right in the middle of the movie, or the gleaming light of someone texting an SMS.

Previously, when I want to go places, I use the conventional method of printing out the directions from Google or Yahoo, and following them to the tee. And while I have been in cabs and cars that use the GPS, I have never myself used this device before.

So when my hubby placed an order for a new Garmin GPS, I just thought it was way too expensive to begin with, but hey, I let it go, for I figured it was one of those *toys* guys indulge in, ya know?

Anyway, I’m now made to swallow my own words and thoughts, because our new Garmin nüvi is one baby that your really don’t wanna leave home without.  Forget about that Amex card… 😛

Initially we only used it to find ATMS, restaurants and addresses near where we were staying.  And it certainly came in handy when I dropped by to visit Vien not too long ago.  We had a good chat over some scrumptious mee siam, but that is another story… hehe…

This sleek rectangular baby is now very much a part of lives, as it served us so well during our recent Christmas vacation.  Not only was it able to provide us accurate directions to our destination, it was able to also detect delays and traffic jams en route, and was intelligent enough to steer us to a path that was less congested, hence cutting down on travel time.  And when we were in Southern California, I just don’t know what we would have done without the Garmin.  We found all the food we wanted to eat in an instant, and arrived at our target destinations without the need of squinting our eyes looking at some deranged map.  Okay, maybe that’s just the kind of relationship I have with paper maps…

We now have absolutely no fear of getting lost (or going hungry), and oh…one thing though…I’m praying we can also get it to work on Malaysian roads!

How we spent our New Year’s eve (and part of New Year’s Day):

• AM: Fetched Ethan to daycare and came back home. 
• I had some last minute online purchases to be done with offers expiring Dec 31, so got that settled immediately.
• While on the PC, a virus error message appeared at the bottom right of my computer screen, informing me that a trojan had been detected, and asked if I would like to clean it up.  Looked like a legitimate message, so I hit ok.
• The next screen prompted me to register for and subscribe to an anti-virus software called Rapid AntiVirus, if I wanted to have the trojan cleaned up.  Of course I hit no.
• The next thing I knew, I was faced with the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)!
• Restarted the computer and noticed that there were a couple of icons on my desktop related to porn that I had not downloaded!  Immediately deleted those, and the BSOD greeted me again!
• Informed hubby that PC had some problems, so he started running some diagnostic tests, which took like forever!
• I started cooking lunch, but my mind was definitely not on the stir-fry chicken with broccoli, onion omelette and spinach with wolfberries soup.  I was already on the verge of tears when I thought about losing all the photos we had painstakingly taken during our recent Christmas vacation!  They had already been downloaded and I had already deleted all the photos from the SD card.  With no backup, the only copies were in the computer’s hard disk!  I prayed and prayed that our hard disk will be restored to its original ok state as soon as possible.
• My hubby then discovered that all photos and files could be viewed while entering safe mode in the PC.  It was a major breakthrough, and we made plans to somehow copy those photos out.
• 2:15p.m. – I went out to collect my dry-cleaned trench coat, and at the same time, visited a nearby electronics outlet to purchase an 8GB USB flash drive.  In safe mode, our theory was that the drivers might not work, but the USB port probably still worked.

• Came back home, but hubbs was still running all the memory and hardware tests.  At about 6:00p.m. all tests passed, and we proceeded to copy the photos into the thumb drive.  Left the copy running and went out to fetch Ethan.
• When we came back home, we discovered that the copy was still ongoing, but later on the PC rebooted itself, much to our confusion.
• Resumed copying photos and files, and then transferring them to the laptop.  8GB ain’t a lot of space to begin with, I’ll say!
• At the same time, I logged in with my laptop and searched for references to Rapid AntiVirus, which I discovered, horror of horrors, that it was a fake anti-virus rogue spyware program that maliciously tricks PC users into thinking their PC was infected!  I can’t believe I fell for it, being the very careful person I am when it comes to PC viruses and stuff.  I found plenty of advice and instructions for the removal of RapidAntivirus, and also plenty of *personal opinions* on how this virus had wrecked computers everywhere.  In the end, I decided to follow the instructions on Rapid AntiVirus removal by downloading  the Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware software or MBAM.
• Since our home PC could not access the internet in safe mode, we had to copy the downloaded exe to the PC desktop and run it from there.  It was already close to midnight then, when hubby started the MBAM scan.  It detected a lot of threats, but even after we removed them, Mr BSOD still decided to show up.  Aaargh!!!
• Hubby then ran the scan for all profiles on our PC in safe mode, and then rebooted and ran the scan in regular mode.  This allowed all the newest updates to be applied.
• And finally at sometime after 1:00a.m., we welcomed the New Year heaving a sigh of huge relief, knowing fully well that Rapid AntiVirus was gone for good. 

A good night’s sleep beckoned and the New Year too!  Happy New Year one and all!

Oh by the way, we are looking at getting an external hard drive now… 🙂