On the theme of balance in one's life, I think it's vital to surround self with spontaneous people as opposed to fickle ones.

Spontaneous is "hey, let's go ice-skating!" and you pack up and go five minutes later. Fickle is getting to the rink and saying, "wait, I don't want to skate anymore." Spontaneity enriches your senses without necessarily being a burden. Fickleness constantly throws you off-balance and creates more fickleness.

Uncertainty and doubts = bad.
But swimming in the fountain at 3 am on my 21st birthday = good!

When Chen was teaching me how to drive, he used to ask if I enjoyed it.

Once, this question came in the middle of a heavy rain. The road was narrow, the windshield wipers were not working, and we were running late to pick up a friend. I was expecting a crash any minute. Anxious and panicky, I said that I'd be glad if I never had to drive again.

Back then, I was so worried about what might happen: that the car would slid, that another driver would not see me, that the rain would never stop. After driving in all sorts of conditions, though, I learned one thing. I can't control anything besides my own driving. I can choose what route I take, which lane I'm in, what speed I'm driving with. The traffic and weather I have to accept as given: there is no point in trying to predict them. At a red light, I stop. At a green, I go.

Driving is kind of like meditation or yoga, it forces me to just let go :) And I love it.

A few years ago A-s left his Latin American country to live in a Scandinavian one. He prefers the Scandinavian way of life. When he visits his home country, he complains about its backwardness. He is sure he will never go back, and doesn't understand why anyone would choose to stay there.

To me, the country you were born in is like a mother. There's nothing wrong with the decision to leave your country, just like there is nothing wrong with moving out of your parents' home. You can disagree with her actions, beliefs, and plans. But you can never change that she raised you, even if your upbringing was messed up. You are part of her. 

Scandinavia is A-s's hot new lover. It might eventually become a long-term spouse, but it's all up in the air. He can switch Scandinavia for the Mediterranean, North America, or the snow of Eastern Russia. But no one can get a new mother, so A-s will always be a Latin American.

Third edition of the niktionary (nika + nic dictionary). This glossary is of absolute importance to anyone conducting any sort of business with bunnies** or wolves**. The niktionary brings you the real definitions of words that you accepted as given, such as coffee**, dinner**, and carrots**.

From the previous edition, you learned of carrots. Many like these stout, hard vegetables; sharing your carrot might be appropriate after a proper dinner, if your dinner guest has a taste for them. Let's go on...

Desserts = A nice alternative to carrots. Like a carrot, a dessert can be eaten in a variety of different ways. Some enjoy the rough, hard, thick carrot roots; and some like the sweet, strong flavor of a fruity, mushy dessert. Yet others combine the two foods.

Quick lunch = When bunny girls get a bit bored with their boy bunnies, they tend to escape for a quick lunch to try carrots from other gardens.

Eating jalapeños = Obliviousness to the business going on in nearby closed spaces.

Damage control = When you wake up and think, what fun things did I do yesterday and how do I undo them?

Studying = Be sure that if someone is telling you that he is engaging in this activity, he is definitely not.

Queen project = Successful management of many coffees and dinners.

**explanations found at http://diverges.livejournal.com/8068.html

It is hard to let go of the familiar and the secure. Who knows if the new thing will be half as good as the old one? But there is no real safety in what has lost its meaning. The only way to gain confidence is through battling your own fears, one by one.

As children, we learn defensive mechanisms that are needed to cope with the environment that we are in; when we are adults, these mechanisms can turn destructive. In Jeux D'Enfants, Julien and Sophie kept playing a children's game well into their adulthood because it used to be a safety net for them. The game protected them from life's problems and from their own feelings, which were scary and difficult to deal with. The more Julien and Sophie tried to escape their feelings with the help of the game, the more it destroyed their lives - and the lives of those around them.

The more you are afraid to do something, the more you have to do it. If you hide away in your protective bubble, you are separating yourself from everything around you. And the key to being whole, I think, is to connect yourself with world, find a balance between the inner and the outer.

A friend of mine is getting away to Vienna soon! I am so jealous.

Nic and I went to Vienna last July. He described this city as an uptight, cocky girl who was spoiled rotten by rich parents. Austrians, clean-cut and well-dressed, look at you as though you have just grown two heads if you dare to ask them a question. At a concert in Palais Palffy, we had front row seats. Frenchies with VIP passes in line ahead of us were getting upset that they had to wait to be seated. Austrians were absolutely oblivious to the Frenchies' complaints: "You will seat where we will tell you, and we will tell you when we have the time."

However, the concert itself was amazing. The main violinist played with a feeling I didn't expect from this cold, arrogant city. He was in tune with every single player in his orchestra. In the middle, he let the flutist to take over the lead over the orchestra for a breathtaking thirty seconds. In the collected, cautious Vienna, I also did not expect to see a dance imitating a girl getting intoxicated on a picnic with her boyfriend. I thought a drunk picnic was a great idea, and the dancer, who winked at me, probably thought so as well ;)

Because of the UEFA cup, we couldn't get into the center of the city and didn't see much nightlife. But since the night Vienna was so empty, though, we got the large, straight streets, surrounded by huge cubic buildings all to ourselves.

After the sharp and clean lines of night Vienna, we went to the Hunderwasser's museum. Everything you heard about his architectural style is true. Twisted floors, houses under meadows, pool-shaped windows, pictures of bleeding cities. Hunderwasser was right - it is so much easier to walk on curved surfaces!

I found a rather nice translation of my favorite poem by Pushkin. His love life was uneasy: he wasn't happy with his wife and even less happy apart from her.

I loved you; and perhaps I love you still,
The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished; yet
It burns so quietly within my soul,
No longer should you feel distressed by it.
Silently and hopelessly I loved you,
At times too jealous and at times too shy.
God grant you find another who will love you
As tenderly and truthfully as I.

This is brilliant. I've wondered so many times - why is there such a discrepancy between the way American kids study in school (not that much) and the way American adults work (burying themselves in work)?

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13825184&source=hptextfeature

There are kisses that say nothing and there are kisses that say everything.

Discuss?

As a side note - I'm getting totally addicted to Los Hombres de Paco.

I wonder if it's possible to learn a foreign language just through watching a lot of television in it?

Representation of you - in nine images. This is cool. Do it.



Rules:
a) Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search (http://www.flickr.com/).
b) Using ONLY the first page, pick an image.
c) Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Mosaic Maker. Change rows to 3 and columns to 3 (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php).
d) Save the image and post it as a reply to this entry or your own journal!

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What is your favorite color?
4. Favorite band? 
5. Dream vacation?
6. Favorite hobby?
7. What you want to be when you grow up?
8. What do you love?
9. One word to describe you?

How workaholics are born:

Take ingredient a) addictive personality.

I played around with Photoshop while taking a five-minute break from Economics today.

It's the Fisherman's Bastion, in Budapest.

Just got off the phone with my grandmother.
Lately, she switched her number one question from, "Do you have a boyfriend yet?" to "Do you have a job yet?"
Times are changing.

In any town in US, you'll find people confessing their deepest sins to family and friends. These men and women cheat, drink, gamble - and hope for forgiveness. Amongst all these confessions, what is even tougher than coming out of the closet? Admitting that you don't believe in God.

According to a recent EllisonResearch poll, 20% of Americans think it's a sin to not attend church or religious worship services on a regular basis. And a much larger percentage disapproves a complete lack of faith.

Atheists are America’s least trusted group, according to a national survey conducted by Minnesota University sociology researchers. 40% of respondents think atheists do not at all share their vision of America. 50% of Americans are unwilling to let their children marry atheists.

An atheist friend of mine who is considering a career in politics says he'll join his parents' church before he starts campaigning. He says that outright admitting that he doesn't believe in God would put a big red cross over his career.

What you can see about the atheist community is that there is no atheist community. Atheism is, at its most basic, a rejection of faith in favor of empirical verification. The important point is that people usually came to such conclusions out of own free will. Consequently, they tend to view it as a personal thing and don't have "Atheism studies" (as opposed to Bible studies) to discuss it with like-minded people. This is not a recipe for success in Washington, where making people think you share their beliefs is the core.

And religious Americans don't think they have much in common with atheists (see poll numbers quoted earlier). One of the most common question from Christians to atheists is, "How do you know the difference between good and bad if you don't believe in God?"

That just baffles me. Do you do everything in life just because god told you so? If you found out there is no god, would your feelings toward your family and friends change, would you go out on a killing spree or stop washing your dishes?

Whatever our beliefs over the origins of the universe, we all want to eat some food, sleep in warm beds, laugh at silly jokes, snuggle up with our loved ones, smell flowers in the spring. Right?

Let's go back to 2005. I, a freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill, walk into my first journalism class. It's 8:00 in the morning. The lecture is so exciting that I'm falling asleep. Trying to keep myself awake I'm looking around, at the toilet-colored walls, at the little flowers someone drew on the corner of the whiteboard, and at my eighty classmates.

And then, I realize something. I'm wearing black leather boots with heels. My classmates are wearing sneakers. I'm wearing tight black jeans. Quite a few of them are in pajama pants. I'm in a blouse. They are in sweatshirts. Fuck.

But, just the night before, I was out in a club on Franklin street, and these same girls were wearing stilettos, leather skirts, and tube tops that barely covered their boobs - let alone such crazy things as navels. And it was freezing cold outside.

It's 2009, and I don't look like I'm dressed up for work everytime I show up for a class. But, the question is still unanswered. Why such a difference between day and nighttime wear, UNC girls? Why, when you're going out, do you choose your clothes so carefully and deliberately, without regard for comfort or warmth - but don't give a second thought to what you wear between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m.?

If you love the casual feel of flip-flops around campus, wouldn't you be longing for them when racing from your favorite bar to Wendy's for some after-drinks-munchies? And where's your favorite sweatshirt when you're smoking outside the frat house in January? Skirts are too much hassle to wear to the library (can't climb into a cozy chair without exposing too much skin), but okay when 3 guys are grinding up on you at the dancefloor?

Maybe it's the difference in expectations. After all, maybe you'll meet your future husband while playing Beer Pong in a coconut bra at that "Pimps and Whores" party. As for classes - well, might as well wear some Uggs over gym pants to show that you're just here to learn.

Nabokov told his family that if he dies and leaves some work unfinished, that work should be destroyed. When he died, Nabokov left behind the drafts of "The Original of Laura". His son debated for years on whether he should publish or burn the drafts, and finally decided on releasing them to the public.

Was it the right decision?

I think so. If you're an artist, what you create doesn't belong solely to you. Once it's out of your mind and on canvas - or paper - your creation has it's own life. Just like if you're a parent, your baby doesn't belong solely to you. Giving birth doesn't give you the right to decide whether your child should be killed. So, "The Original of Laura" shouldn't be destroyed just because Nabokov happened to die before making it perfect.

Anyone disagree?

Poll #1356950 Signs
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Is the absence of signs a sign?

My little Gemini feet are itching. Chapel Hill's been very kind to me for the last six months, but it's time to explore new territories. I'm not sure where I'll be going or what I'll be doing. Maybe Spain? Living in Madrid would be a dream.

One thing for certain, I'm ready to leave. I'm going to give myself until May to (a) finish journalism school and graduate, (b) see where the icecubes are melting away to, (c) give my family some time. And then, who knows! Any suggestions?

When I was 11, I developed this huge crush on someone much older than me. The crush lasted a few years. And as much as I tried, I could never remember the specifics of that someone's facial features after they dissolved from my sight. Maybe because I could barely look them in the eyes?

Now I'm 20 and can't stop staring at the person who I like. The eyes, the lips, the smell, the taste, the feeling of skin against skin stay in permanent marks in my memory. The imprints spill out of me in random verses, 

And the ring of your whisper....
Warmer and crisper!