2023 Weekly Musings #1

What I have learned

This week I listened to this episode How Can You Give Better Gifts? where the hosts discussed gift-giving. One of the hosts provided an interesting view (maybe from economists) which based on an economics term “deadweight loss”:

“A great deal of the stuff that you buy for other people is just wasted. You’d be better off not giving them a gift, or maybe you just want to give them cash, which is something that most humans don’t really like.”

Although I am a Taiwanese as the other Chinese host, living in a culture of giving people cash especially in our big days (Chinese New Year, weddings), most of time I would rather get “real gifts” instead of cash even if I knew beforehand that gift I definitely wouldn’t like because I feel cash so cold. It doesn’t involve the feelings of the bond between the person and I at all. But maybe this depends on who are givers and when. Three advices on gift-giving mentioned in this episode: (1) Gift that people might not otherwise know (2) A nicer gift than people would buy for themselves (3) Gift that people feel seen. I think why I prefer “gifts” is that expectation of the feelings of being seen.

The Movie I Watched

Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean something bad will happen. What it means is whatever can happen will happen.

This week I watched Interstellar, which has been on my watching list for months. When Murphy questioned Cooper about her name is my favorite conversation.

— — Why did you and Mom named me after something that’s bad?
We didn’t.
— — Murphy’s Law?
Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean something bad will happen. What it means is whatever can happen will happen.

Before, I misunderstood the meaning of Murphy’s Law as Murphy did since people like to quote “Murphy’s Law” right after something bad that we had been worried with so long does really come true. This law(?) sounded pessimistic to me, so I like how Cooper defined its meaning, which expressed a feeling of hope; with that hope throughout the movie, we didn’t know which plan would happen, or Cooper would fulfill his words to Murphy, until the end of the movie where we knew a good outcome did happen, just as her name, Murphy, which she thought as bad became a well-known name. Interestingly, not until when I gave up trying to recall Cooper’ s first name at the moment of writing this review and looked up in the net, did I realize his first name was never mentioned in the movie! It is because “ghost did not get a name?” and “Copper is Murphy’s ghost”! Oh my god! What an amazing surprise!

My favorite plot was, when Cooper was just drifting from that five-dimension and falling to Saturn, the moment when I (and maybe himself) was still in a shock, he saw Amelia and the spaceship which was just talking them to the unknown journey. Remember she stretched her arm out and wanted to touch something outside with eyes of unexplainable tears? The person, I thought she seemed seeing, was her lover, which is so normal as someone has been missing a person so much, but, it turned out to be He! Cooper! The Cooper who will/just achieved the Plan A (for her, the future tense is more appropriate??) and is about to live in a different star. I started wondering what she thought and felt after she met the future Cooper. Did she know that was the future Cooper? She knew he would survive whatever happened in the end? I love the surprise! Another little surprise for me is the actor who played the role of Cooper’s son Tom, was Timothée! wow! Glad that I watched another movie Timothée has played. One good take-away is I know the name of Black Hole came from. However to the end, I still mixed Tars and Case together. Which one is the robot’s name? I like their humor on humor intensity anyway.