Once again folks, I'm back ...

TMNT

Hurried to catch TMNT yesterday. Didn't want to risk missing it altogether after coming back from Cambodia. Not that I was expecting much from it that is. It is after all spawned from a cartoon about 4 pizza-loving American ninjias who happened to be giant mutated turtles as well.

But I was blown away. The graphics were fantastic. Possibly the best CGI-rendered animation I ever saw (not that I'm an authority on CGI-rendered animation, I must qualify). But I think it was really good. They every-day stuff like streets and cars looks very real and they did a great job making (CGI-rendered) rain fall on CGI-rendered mutated giant turtles looks realistic.

And the action sequences were superb. The turtles ran across the city roof like real ninjas, swift, agile, powerful. It's almost like watching green spiderman. You can never achieve that with real actors in turtle suits. And animation is "darker" in this movie, and the storyline more serious, and the villains more sinister looking, a big advancement compared to the goofy cartoon it originated from. It's almost like a coming-of-age of TMNT.

If you're a fan, go watch it. If you are a skeptic, go watch it too.

Starfish

Happened to be watching Channel News Asia today and chanced upon a documentary entitled "Back to Basics". It talks about how simple discoveries and remedies relating to healthcare and nutrition have changed the lives of people of this planet. One of the case was about an ophthalmologist who, in the course of finding the cure for night-blindness in children of poor countries, discovered that the lack of vitamin A (found in common food like milk and eggs, which people from poor countries often could not afford) made these children more vulnerable to diseases. He also found that by administering a few drops of vitamin A to children twice a year, child mortality rate can be reduced.

However, his discovery was treated with skepticism. Experts just could not believe that the solution was so simple. And when he eventually convinced the medical world of his discovery, he still faced the daunting task of administering vitamin A to millions of impoverished children in poor countries. Although a system was eventually established, how many children had died while skeptics were being convinced and bureaucratic processes were overcome.

Yes, the solution can sometimes be so simple. Vitamin A to prevent night-blindness, Vitamin B3 to prevent Pellagra, Vitamin C to prevent scurvy, present in common food readily available to people like us in developed countries but which are luxuries to people in poor countries.

This reminds me of the upcoming mission trip to Cambodia, our first in 2007. This reminds me of the vitamins that we dish out to the children and adults and visit our mobile clinics, and the kid that would have died if he did not get the drip which cost less than US$1. This reminds me of the starfish.

Remember the story of the starfish? A man saw a boy walking along a beach. Every time the boy saw a starfish stranded on the shore, he picked it up and threw it back to the sea. The man was curious and said to the boy, "There are so many starfish stranded on the shore, and you are just one person. What difference can you make?" The boy held up and starfish he had in his hand and said, "Well, it makes a difference to this one." And promptly threw it back into the sea.

While governments and institutions work out their plans and systems and resources to solve the problem for the entire starfish population, we work on the starfish we can reach.