Some recent pictures that I took

 Because why not. Pictures bring visitors.

Iran ceasefire

Right now, which could of course change, this is looking like a tactical victory for the United States, but a strategic one for Iran.

Donald Trump has only himself to blame for that.

On Netflix, everyone can hear you scream (Review: 'Agents of Mystery' 1.4-1.6, "The Deep Sea Mystery")

Ian Fleming could be a bit of a racist, to put it mildly. He saved some of his worst bigotry for Koreans in Goldfinger - Bond considers them "rather lower than apes" and Goldfinger considers them "the cruellest, most ruthless people in the world".

Anyway, one wonders what he'd make of K-content, because it is clear that stereotype is nowhere near the truth.

One of Netflix's crown jewels is Squid Game, but they've got a veritable branch of Ernest Jones in what is known as "K-content", the array of content produced by and set in the Republic of Korea, aka South Korea. Some of their stars, including the lead actor from Squid Game, have broken out into non-Korean media, such as The Acolyte and The White Lotus.

One show that popped up in my suggestion list there or on YouTube, I forget which, was a show called 미스터리 수사단 (Miseuteori susadan) or "Agents of Mystery". Falling into the rather large area (these days) of "reality show", this show can be described as "six Korean celebrities doing a very large escape room".

The central shtick of the show is that our cast of celebs are "Agents of Mystery", working for a mysterious organisation that investigates strange occurrences around the world, travelling via a teleportation device, aka a lift that shakes a lot.

Once they get to their destination, they have six hours to solve the case - with the added complication that their ride won't be available until five hours later. Each mystery plays out over three episodes - this is the second one from Season 1 and the recently released Season 2 has three mysteries in total.

This one sees the agents sent to a deep-sea research submarine. Of the six life signs on board, five are no longer present and the sixth is decidedly odd...

Now, I didn't know the cast from Adam. For one thing, my knowledge of K-pop frankly starts and ends with "Gangnam Style", although I have at least heard of BTS and Blackpink, the latter via The White Lotus. So, I had to look them up on Wikipedia. They consist of singers, comedians and actors, including two K-pop singers (K-poppers? That sounds like something you buy in a nightclub that isn't exactly legal) and a Korean-American who did rather well on American Idol.

Fortunately, you do get to learn their names fairly quickly, helped by the subtitles. They take it seriously enough, but still have plenty of (slightly nervous) laughs at the situations that occur, including multiple references to the first episodes, where two of the guys ended up tied up in a wagon.

One standout is Karina, a singer, rapper and model, who is the youngest of the group. With over 22 million followers on Instagram, she's well, the kind of person who gets a lot of followers on Instagram. Not that she is scantily-clad here - they're all wearing jumpsuits and wore suits for the first mission. Karina ends up being the team's walking inventory, picking up a whole bunch of useful items that will help them.

We also have Lee Yong-jin, a comedian who comments that he served in the navy, South Korea having national service, but never went near a submarine. Which is not much use here.

I was very much reminded of a point-and-click adventure game by the nature of the puzzles that the team have to solve. Including the bit where you have to trudge half way across the map because you've forgotten something needed to progress. Also, in this case, I would have been calling for hints more than once. Fortunately, the team have a digital camera that they can use to record clues they encounter. Also, a number of clues require knowledge of English, with documents even having phrases in Latin script in the midst of all the Hangul - they have an American with them, but they're actually reasonably decent on their own. One doozy involves waking up the sub's computer using a wake word that definitely isn't available on your average home assistant.

The horror scenario here gives a good opportunity for a few jump scares and some gore. Or more for the audience to see the agents themselves get jump-scared by finding various bodies etc. then quick replays of them screaming out loud - indeed, these also act as a commercial break point. There's a particularly well-realised main monster as well. 

One must give a shout-out to the two-storey set. It's a highly detailed one where they even had salt water present for added realism - there's a bit where pulling on a vent results in a torrent of it landing on Eun-ji, soaking her through to her panties as she insists on telling everyone. Twice. We also get a great bit where the entire sub (or perhaps just the section they were in) tilts over a full 90 degrees, which props and people sliding stage left - or stage down, rather.

The climax, which involves a race against time, involves a surprisingly simple method of dealing with the monster and then a rather sudden ending that reminded me of the OG Mission: Impossible. That reminds me, I probably ought to review one of those at some point.

Conclusion

A highly enjoyable show for when you want something a bit different from dark and miserable - the cast really make it work.

It would make for a good English-language show too, provided you cast people who took it in the right spirit.

9/10

Jesus the servant

It's Good Friday today and that means time for my annual Easter post. As I am sure I've said before, I hope this is decent and interesting, but it is God who ultimately brings people to Christ, not humans.

I've been doing a lot of pouring of tea and washing-up lately in connection with a major local event I am involved in over the Easter weekend. This has been hard work, but it has been worthwhile and indeed appreciated by many.

Indeed, the thought occurred to me about how they did the washing up in Jesus' time. Apparently involving a lot of sand. Clay pots didn't last very long either and were generally thrown away once broken or used as "scrap paper" for writing on. That is why we find a lot of bits of them on archaeological digs - the landfill of today is the museum piece of tomorrow. Especially with some of our forever plastics...

Jesus would have done the washing up - and a lot of manual work other too. He'd have swept the sawdust from his father's workshop, brought in the carts of wood required for his products and probably sharpened the tools as well. I'd be curious to see what a 1st century saw looked like and I might try to find out afterwards.

Jesus' final act of service before his arrest and crucifixion would have been the washing of the feet at the Last Supper. I imagine this was a task reserved for the lowest servants and slaves in Roman society. Also, you'd have seen some pretty nasty toenails in an era where steel-capped boots weren't really a thing. Yet, Jesus not only voluntarily chose to do this task, despite being master of ceremonies, indeed he actively stopped others from doing it. This was the living God reducing himself to menial status - just before he went even further.

It's this sort of attitude we should seek to emulate in our Christian life. Volunteering to put the chairs away or remove the rubbish from people's tables after the meal. Helping people take stuff out to their car. Even if they say they don't need your help, you'll feel better that you offered. Of course, one should not do something that you are completely unsuited for or which might actually cause you harm - God wants able servants, not injured ones.

If asked to do a task, you should generally accept unless you have a good reason not to. You may well moan under your breath, but remember that you were once reliant on people taking care of you... and will likely be again at some point in your future.

I will finish this post with a song we sing a lot at church.

I wish you and your loved ones all a Happy Easter.