Bhutan vs. Russia Entry Requirements : Which of These Two Countries Would You Visit?

Bhutan and Russia is not the first countries you probably thought of when you are about visit somewhere abroad, but these two countries do have their unbeatable charms. Russia has its expansive interdisciplinary collection of historical arts, museums, and galleries. Bhutan has its rich, and remarkably unique culture to Bhutan that has been passed down on generations. Both have their untouched nature, though Bhutan is officially voted 1st Green Destination in the world.  

Attached with its appeal, they came with a caveat, that is uncommon practice of entry requirements. This writing will lay contrast to the things you need to be equipped and prepared for the journey, as both countries demand extensive planning to visit their respective places.

Even if you own a powerful passport, that does not mean getting into Russia easier in the slightest. Russia has no exception, meaning everyone must have a visa to enter. You also have to fill-in the application in person, and has to state each and every starting-to-finishing dates of your travel in the last 10 years. If it extends your current passport, they will ask for you to bring your previous one. One typo, and you are at risk of being rejected. Suffice it to say, this process may take a while. Being self-aware to this situation, Russia provides the service for faster process with some extra fee. This attention to detail roots from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the borders were erected, immigrants are coming in and out, so they have to be wary if some of them are carrying false documents.

Getting a Visa in Bhutan is quite easy though expensive, and do note that you have to plan your itinerary ahead for at least 90 days prior to your arrival, to get the formalities done in time. You also have to pay the visa directly to the tour agency that works under the government, while at the same time choosing your accommodation.

Know the countries you are visiting! In Moscow (as expected for you to visit the city when coming to Russia), visit the historical places, but make sure you have stacks of cash because the entry ticket for foreigners are much more expensive. In Bhutan, actively find out which package (that includes your visa and hotel) is the one that suits you, and do note that your money is allocated to the Sustainable Development Fee that takes care of the local’s free health-care, free education, and poverty relief. So the more money you spend in Bhutan is totally justified as you contribute to the prosperity of the nation.

If given the opportunity, which of these two countries would you visit, including the hassle of their entry requirements? If I were to choose, I would go easy and went with Bhutan, because intensely filling application forms while under the impression of being rejected does not sound like a vacation to me.

Sources : https://www.tourradar.com/days-to-come/most-difficult-countries-get-visa/

https://www.tripsavvy.com/how-to-travel-to-bhutan-1539176

Which One of These Three Time-Traveling Films is the Best?

Written by Rayhan Abrar Rizkan

 Writing this comparing and contrast piece has been a challenge for me, the biggest challenge is to pick what topics do I really want to discuss. The runner ups are : Star Wars, the Ocean’s franchise, and even down to which is the best girl in Chainsaw Man. Other references aside, this one is my pick, due to my fascination towards Time-Traveling films. For this piece, I narrowed down the nominations into these three : TENET, Avengers: Endgame, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

 I picked TENET because of my personal bias. I picked Avengers: Endgame because you all have probably seen it. And I picked the second Terminator movie because it is one of the most quintessential, monumental, and an absolute classic to set the pop culture we know today. I could have picked Back to the Future, but I can’t, or won’t, pick one. Let us begin with the first point of comparison : The Story.

 The most important thing to a film is the script, the writing that you sell to the studio or anyone you want to work with. It goes without saying, it has to be good. A Movie has to tell a story, to follow a character, and/or to set a specific goal in mind. It is the easiest and the first thing people say when they are describing a movie, for example, “It’s the one where they have to carry a ring to the volcano.”, “There’s wizards, magic, and they have to defeat a snub-nosed villain.”, “So there’s this guy, and he got bit by a radioactive spider....”. Case in point, you can probably guess those movies just by the plot or the premise, that is set by the script, that is how powerful a story could be if written properly.

 TENET has a simple story. Calling it complicated is an understatement, but if you finally opened your third eye somehow while watching this movie, it is simple. TENET is a lot of movies stacked into one, it is a spy movie, a heist movie, a sci-fi, and action. TENET follows the Protagonist (That is how you know this movie is beyond awesome, they do not even bother naming the lead) to find pieces of an advanced weapon algorithm with secret battles coming from the past and the future to stop World War III from the hand of the main villain, Sator. See my point here? It is simple..... but I did leave out the whole time-bending plot to see it all in one straight line. . But when you see all things unveil, especially during the second watch seeing that it is how Nolan makes his movies, you can truly appreciate TENET for what it is, cinema.

 Avengers: Endgame, you already know the story. After their massive defeat in Infinity War, the original members with the help of few others tries to undo what Thanos did and return those who are lost. This movie is plain and vanilla yet the perfect closing for this symphony of Marvel’s ensemble cast in comic book movies, you do not have to follow all 21 MCU movies to watch the adventures that they went through to understand the main story, but they will reward you if you do, as there are tons of fan service and easter eggs to get excited for.

 For Terminator 2, maybe I should explain on why I chose this instead of the original, and it ties in to the story. In the first Terminator movie, Skynet, to put it simply is a future-evil-internet-robot-brain programmed to eradicate humanity and enslave those who survived in the purge. Skynet sent a robot assassin with the face of Arnold Schwarzenegger to kill Sarah Connor from giving birth to John Connor, the future leader of the resistance that will defeat Skynet. So the John Connor in the future sent Kyle Reese, one of the member of the resistance to protect his mother Sarah from the Terminator Model 101. Kyle eventually stopped the Terminator and somehow fathered John Connor in the process. To recap the first movie, John sent his own father to protect his mom from the past. Now, the second movie is where they did a twist. Instead of just having another advanced Terminator to the past sent by another version of Skynet, the resistance also sent another reprogrammed Terminator to protect the target that is (kid) John Connor. If this is done now, the twist is completely overdone and seen as nothing but a gimmick. But for a movie in the 90’s? this is revolutionary. Its like having Jason Krueger as your ally in the sequel, but replace that with an Arnold Schwarzenegger looking killer robot despite the lack of his trademark of making unintelligible noises. Because of the same face, the Terminator has to convince Sarah that he is not the Terminator she once knew in the first movie, but a reprogrammed one set to protect them, this interaction of not trusting one another and always be on guard sets up the movie very well. The flick is a staple of action movie back in the day, having two indestructible killing machines squaring up against one another, how can anyone top that at that era?

 Now that we are all caught up with the story, it is time to discuss the soul of these movies have in common, the Time-traveling aspect, the main plot device, the cause or the breaker of movie retcons. In this short list, Terminator has to be the simplest in terms of the mechanics of the time-travel story. The time machine is one time use only, as it can only be used in the future where such things exist. So once you go back in time, the only way to go back to the future is to wait, just like everyone else. And what you did in the past will instantly affect the future accordingly. The time machine in Terminator movies has to be the one with the weirdest mechanic, where you can only send things with living tissues and no other, now that the fact is laid out on you then yes, everyone who went back in time has to be naked. So they have to find new clothing when they arrived. At least that is their explanation on why the Terminator has to be wrapped up in synthetic human skin, not to show off Arnold’s five hours a day of intensive muscle toning in six months with the help of a big pile chicken breast and a year supply of protein shake, not at all.

 Avengers: Endgame has the most flexible machine out of all, where you can set the time and place of where you want to be, as long as you have enough supply of Pym particles to go subatomic and travel a safe passage through the fabric of time. But with multiple journeys with different groups you will run a risk of creating an alternate timeline, but they simply nullify such possibility with having Hulk said that they will go back in time after the final battle is done, and return the things they took in the past back to its place and time so nothing will inherently change. The time traveling part of the movie is the charm of Endgame, where we get to re-visit the characters, places, and events we have seen in the previous films in a different perspective that is canon to the universe.

 Now, this is where it all gets tricky to explain, because the time-traveling of TENET is not the same as any other movies I have seen. Calling it a time-traveling is not even entirely accurate, but the mechanic of how it works calls for more of a “Time-inversion”. The time machine in this film is very rustic, where you go into this big turning door that leads to the other side of the room, but once you are “inverted”, you move forward in time, but the world around you goes backwards. You cannot choose which time you want to go to, if you want to go back in time for 10 minutes, you have to wait it out while being inverted for 10 minutes, that is why the palindrome suits with the whole movie. This makes amazing visuals when combined with action sequences, imagine reverse car chases, bullets were caught to the gun instead of being shot out of, punches were pulled instead of thrown. In other words, if you see a sequence of two people with one of them inverted, they can both win or lose at the end depending on which point-of-view you choose.

The time inversion in TENET is not only treated as a plot device, but also the philosophy that is abided by the movie, as there is only one timeline that exist in the movie. This is made clear in the story that no matter what you do, you cannot change the outcome of the future, as the present is set with the human’s free will, and even though they are randomly generated, it happened anyway. “What’s happened, happened” said Neil, one of the main characters in the movie explaining how time inversion works to the Protagonist. It is not a battle to change the outcome, but to gain a perspective for what’s to come.  Whatever happens, happened and will happen all at the same time. With the limited mechanic of time-inversion that TENET has (or had, or will have, this is confusing even to me now), it is amazing what it can achieve in terms of storytelling, how the story we see in front of us is one enormous temporal pincer collision of the past, future, and present in one sitting (or collide, collided, will collide, I do not know what is happening). From my standpoint, clearly I prefer TENET above all else, but do let me know what’s your pick out of these three! Better yet, what is your favourite time-traveling film? 

WandaVision and How Fan-hypotheses Subverts Expectations

Written by Rayhan Abrar R.

(Spoiler Warning)

       WandaVision is our introduction to the phase 4 of Marvel Cinematic Universe as a form of TV-series, which can be streamed exclusively on DisneyPlus. WandaVision takes us on yet another journey exploring this expanded universe that started with a soon to be re-cast giant green man and a heartless engineer. In this story, we see of what it looks to be Wanda and Vision living in an alternate universe as a couple in a sitcom. Gradually, weird things keep happening like small glitches and hiccups, making the fans wonder what is really happening behind all these events.

        The episodes are aired weekly, and this seems to be the double-edged sword that Marvel had to come in terms with. Of course, in a business standpoint you can stretch the airing dates so people can’t help but to stay subscribed to the platform. As an added bonus of having a show clouded with mystery, it works well with weekly airing because people will try to feed their curiosity by talking about it, finding Youtube videos of easter egg hunters and details referencing to the comics or other source materials.

        With all this reasoning, it does not make sense if they were to decide to release all the episodes and having the audience watch it in one sitting as it does not create any suspense, and people will talk about it less. Imagine the conversation “Have you seen the latest episode of WandaVision?” to “Have you seen WandaVision?”. if its weekly, people tend to talk about it in the coming weeks, instead of releasing it all in one where people tend to ask about their general opinion with the overall show, not per-episode.

       Provided with the benefits of having mass amount of following on a show, people like to guess about what events might arises in the coming episodes which comes to what we really want to talk about in this piece : Fan-theories. Fan-theories, is what they like to call it, but as the word “Theory” is more tied to something that is very likely to happen and intended to explain certain events, we would like to shift the word to “Fan-hypotheses” as a hypothesis is nothing more than a prediction, a proposition, or even an assumption gathered with limited evidence merged together with one’s line of reasoning in search for the truth. This fits well as WandaVision likes to make certain remarks in each episode with leaving clues scattered in the dialogue or hidden within the screen, only possible to be seen if you slow down the frames.

       Now, these weekly fan-hypotheses likes to feed the idea to the viewers on what might happen, or the least likely to happen if they’re feeling frisky. But the problem is, making up hypotheses will do nothing but build expectations, for example, there was a hypotheses where a certain character will make an appearance in the finale, and it could set up a sequel or to tease something more. And the surprise is that there is no remarkable appearance at the end of the show, the expectation that was created by the fandom itself did not meet with the reality, that is the show that was written months ago in advance. This is why there is a split in the fandom regarding the finale of WandaVision, those who are disappointed were the ones that are digging their graves by putting their hope in the hypotheses they want to believe in. And that is how the finale subverted the expectation of “what it could have been” in the eyes of the fans.

Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest, And like a forest it’s easy to lose your way… To get lost… To forget where you came in.