Red, Fraternity, and Compassion

Seeing the good in people...
Compassion will pay off, even in a weird, serendipity like way.

Blue, Liberty, and Pain

The thing is
in a fight with pain
you're never the winner,
until you gave in. 

Snow-Out!

Was it I who was cheering for the snow? Well, no thank you, we've had enough now! We had a total snow-out situation last week in our twin city. The university had to shut down for 2 days- for the first time in its history- to be able to showel the snow to enable people to walk on campus.

And the funny part of the story: my car is totally stuck in snow and I can't dig it out. I was parked off-street when the blizzard started and when I got out of my apartment the day after, the city snow plows had cleaned the middle of our street, making a 3 feet snow wall between my poor car and the street! Any of you have a snow showel I could borrow? ;-)

White, Equality and Revenge

"Equality", a word with a positive association. "Revenge", one with often a negative one. But as you look at them closer, you'll see the relationship: Equal pain.

Die Slowly

by Pablo Neruda

He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones “i’s” rather than a bundle of emotions,
the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly.

He who does not travel,
who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck,
about the rain that never stops, dies slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it,
who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn’t know,
he or she who don’t reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly.

Let’s try and avoid death in small doses,
always reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort by far greater than the simple fact of breathing.
Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

Officially old...er

Once a year, you get an opportunity to be reminded of the love and the care of the people around you. I'm thankful to them all.

We Didn't Start the Fire

They say "Any publicity is good publicity". I kind of disagree. I'd rather stay anonymous than being recognized for 'Ayatollahs' in the song.
The song also names Toscanini. I recently went to a concert in his honor. He died 50 years ago on Jan 16th.

Let it snow

The first Winter snow.
So white,
so calm,
and so beaustiful.

Why we hardly break up with our friends

It might have happened to most of us. That your best friend had said or done something you extremely disliked. Yet you don't usually breakup with your friend. How come we are more compromising towards our friends, and less in our relationships? Perhaps it's because we can give a friend a break; she says something you don't like, you take off for a couple of days and then the issue is cooled down and you both can ignore it. Or maybe because we don't feel the need to change our friends' attitudes, we accept them as they are and are happy with whatever we can get from that friendship, nomatter big or small. Our expections are high in a relationship; I say that's why we tolerate less.

In constant sorrow

The break is over, and I feel blue. The same old kind of feeling you have when you get to the end of some time period and you haven't accomplished what you has considered you would in the beginning. Sometimes you wonder if you could turn back time would you act differently. Well, I know I would handsomely waste my time all over again, if now was Dec 15th again. I'm a lost case.

A man (girl!) of constant sorrow

Audience

I was thinking today, when somebody writes a post in his weblog, does he have a specific audience in mind? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I write something here with the consideration that some people in particular would read it. And this to some extent is normal. After a while you got some returning visitors to your weblog and you automatically consider this in your writing. But what sometimes slips the mind is that potentially 'anybody' can be reading your posts. Even the people you had not have accounted for.

Wicked

Wicked

If I were living in Chicago, I would defenitly have kept going to those first row seats draws, till I could get my tickets:-)

A good cook!

I had some guests over for a small dinner party tonight. And here you see my apple pie. Looks good, doesn't it?:-)
Such a pity that I didn't make a picture of the main dish, but that was even more delicious than the pie. Saffron chicken over orange peel rice. Although I don't like bragging, but I guess it would be fair to say : I am a good cook. (No exclamation mark!)

Here's to 2007

One year passed. With all its ups and downs.
Lights and darks.
Smiles and tears.

Here's to 2007,
May it bring more smiles and less tears,
May it have more friendship and less lonesome.
May it bring more success and less devastation.
May it fulfill your dreams (well, at least some of them)
and
May it be filled with love.

And you know what, I have the sneaky feeling that it will be. Odd years are noble:-)
Happy 2007.

Never gonna stop the rain by complaining!

I very much like this song. I remember when I was a kid watching "Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid" and my mom singing along with the song.

Does anybody know what he means by "sleeping on the job"?

Five things you didn't know about me...

There is this game that started among some blogger friends on the Yalda night, as an after-shake of an older game here. The rules are -if you get tagged- you have to say five things about yourself, and tag 5 other people to continue the game. And my dear magician has tagged me. So here we go.

Five things you didn't know about me:

1. One of my dreams was to be a choir singer, and tonight I actually sang with one :-)
2. When 8 years old, I was involved in a serious rebel against the teacher in our after school day care who didn't let us play more. We successfully put her into tears and escaped to the playground!
3. I used to wear men's perfume when in 10th grade. It was a segregated school, and no, I'm not gay.
4. The cold weather gives me an uncontrollable shiver. Funny enough that I have to live my days in Midwest.
5. I have a uni-brow! (well, some of you knew this one)

Five bloggers I tag:
1- A primary school friend whom I met virtually after 15 years.
2- A old schoolmate who flies on the wall.
3- The best bro ever. The smarter side of me.
4- A great master in the west coast.
5- I still read here.

This Year On

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
This year on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

Ms Dewey

What do you think about this search engine?
http://msdewey.com/

I guess it is supposed to be funny, but I couldn't relate with the idea at all. I found Ms Dewey discourteous and annoying but perhaps men find her sexy. If besides her there was another receptionist at the desk I would walk to that other one.

Hello holidays

I graded nonstop for hours today and I am DONE. All Exams, homeworks, computer assignments, all are DEAD. I dare any Stats assignment to show up here and I'll kill it with my red pen that btw deserves a graceful retirement too. I'm now officially done, and the nice lazy winter break is here at last. Isn't it great? :-)

Risk

Ding, ding, ding, ... , it strikes December 18th and I'm thinking of exactly this moment last year. You don't necessarily remember all your history, but for some reason I remeber this one.

Will I take the same risk today? I think I will. Did i learn anything from the loss then? I did, but if you don't bet, you don't win. I'm happy that I didn't lose my ability to risk.