My wife and I went to a couple of concerts recently, Hebe Tian on 13th December and Stefanie Sun on 20th December. I wasn’t planning on writing about either of them. Concerts are my wife’s passion, not mine, and I don’t really care about music in general anyway. But considering how both concerts were by fairly prominent Chinese female singers, took place at the same venue and in close succession, and yet differed markedly in quality, I felt tempted to write something.
Even as big a comics nerd as I am, I had no idea that this was based on a Marvel superhero team. I would have if they had kept the original characters like the Silver Samurai and Sunfire, but after watching this, I’m glad that they changed things around and made it its own thing. I would have skipped this completely as just another Disney adventure cartoon and never known anything about it if it weren’t for excellent word-of-mouth.
Beyond Beauty is a Taiwanese documentary produced by renowned director Hou Hsiao-Hsien and directed by aerial photographer Chi Po-lin. It consists entirely of aerial shots of Taiwan from the vantage point of a helicopter. We’ve wanted to see it ever since we watched the trailer showing off the crystal clear images of the best scenery that the island has to offer. Given how small and how heavily industrialized the island is, the variety and grandeur of the natural landscape can’t help but surprise and impress.
Drive was one of the most distinctive films of 2011 so when I learned that it borrowed liberally from this 1981 movie, that definitely put it on my radar. It also helps that I consider Heat , probably the film for which Michael Mann is most famous, to contain some of the best gunplay scenes ever captured on film. So right from the opening shot with the camera ever so slowly panning down a tenement block to the rain-slicked street at night, I felt right at home.
One of the most common ways that people arrive on this blog is apparently by searching for Malaysian index funds to invest in. Many more visitors than usual have arrived in recent weeks, no doubt due to the current volatility in the market. Apparently my two posts on the subject, this one and this one, rank quite highly on Google when these keywords are used. It is also evident many of these people, no doubt having read research about how index funds due to their low costs are better over the long run, are interested in finding more information about Malaysian index funds.
My own conclusion is not to bother and in fact empirical data indicates that the top equity funds in Malaysia really can beat the KLCI over the long term, even after costs. For example, working with the database available at Fundsupermart.com.my, I extracted the following for its recommended Malaysian equity funds. Note that all of these are annualized returns:
| Fund Name | 1 Year | 2 Years | 3 Years | 5 Years | 10 Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FBM KLCI | -4.25% | 6.63% | 6.11% | 6.724% | 6.911% |
| Kenanga Growth Fund | 12.36% | 9.52% | 17.748% | 20.404% | 15.843% |
| Eastspring Investments Equity Income Fund | 4.47% | 7.15% | 15.109% | 14.835% | 10.837% |
| Kenanga Syariah Growth Fund | 0.01% | 7.73% | 10.921% | 15.395% | 13.372% |
| Affin Hwang AIIMAN Growth Fund | 0.01% | 10.10% | 14.061% | 12.828% | 10.038% |
As a rationalist, it does frustrate me that such seeming anomalies exist. Not every equity fund outperforms the index, but as far as I can tell, most actually do over the long term, which is surprising according to the literature. I don’t pretend to know how this can be possible and I’ve already discussed some of the possible reasons in those old posts. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Malaysian stock market must be very inefficient at uncovering market information.
A disclaimer: currently I am not personally an investor in any of the funds listed above. I do invest with FSM but only in their international funds. I instead have Malaysian equity funds in Public Mutual for legacy reasons and invest in the local stock market on my personal account. My data for my personal investing record is limited but a preliminary indication is that I outperform the KLCI as well but underperform the best equity funds.
Normally, there are several reliable warning signs to look out for to tell whether a particular science-fiction film deserves to be taken seriously. One is whether or not it knows its stuff when it talks about hacking computers. The Signal passes this test. Another is how closely the protagonist hews to the Hollywood action hero stereotype. Here Brendon Thwaites plays MIT student Nic Eastman who has muscular dystrophy. He looks dorky enough to just about pass muster and fallible enough on his crutches to drop the coffee he has just bought.
The two previous entries of the trilogy starred female leads who were already known to me. Rouge stars Irène Jacob, an actress I know nothing about and who seems to have become famous mainly since appearing in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s previous film La Double vie de Véronique. Yet she is easily the most beautiful and charming of the three. Appropriately enough, for as some reviewers have put it, she plays the role of Beauty against Truth as incarnated in the person of Jean-Louis Trintignant’s Joseph Kern.