Foreign Prophecies

How to live a better life

>> 31 May 2009 – others

1. Sit and reflect in total silence for at least 10 minutes everyday

2. Don’t sleep too late in the night

3. Live with three Es: Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy

4. Read more books from year to year

5. Spend a lot of time with people above 70 and below 6

6. Drink a lot of water

7. Make at least three people laugh everyday

8. Clean up the mess in your house, car, desk and let a new energy flow into your life

9. Don’t waste your precious time for gossips, reminiscing the past, negative-thinking or other things you could not control. Rather, invest your time for this day with a positive outlook

10. Life is too short to be spent hating others

11. Don’t treat yourself too seriously

12. You don’t have to win every argument; you could always agree to disagree and vice versa

13. Make peace with your past so that it won’t ruin your present

14. Don’t compare your life with others’. You don’t even know what their life journey looks like

15. Nobody else could be held responsible for your happiness other than yourself

16. What others think about you is none of your business

17. No matter how bad or good a thing looks, it will change

18. Your job doesn’t take care of you when you’re ill. Friends are the one who could. Keep in touch with your friends always

19. Envy and greed will only waste your time. You’ve already had everything you need

20. Remember that you’re already blessed, hence you don’t deserve to freak yourself out

Enjoy this journey of life. Remember that this is not the world of Disney and indeed you don’t want to let it pass quickly. It happens only once, thus live well.

An eldritch switch

>> – unique world

The following text is originally lifted from http://www.unkno.com/

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
The word “lethologica” describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
An adult giraffe's kick is so powerful that it can decapitate a lion.
Turtles can breathe through their butts
Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
A snail can sleep for three years.
Every year about 7 people gets killed by sharp objects in the dishwasher.
You lose 60 hairs a day.
You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
Pancreaticoduodenostomy is the longest word with all six vowels in order.
A human can not kiss his elbow with his lips. Also 96 % of people who reads this information are compelled to try this.
More than $1 billion is spent each year on neck ties in the United States.
The average length of an orgasm for a pig is 30 minutes.
The largest number of children born to one woman, who was a Russian peasant is 69.
TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
Chocolate can kill dogs; it directly affects their heart and nervous system.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
Giraffes and rats can last longer without water than camels.
Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln are born on the very same day of 12 Feb 1809.
When Titanic sank it had 3000 tonnes of ham onboard.
More people are killed by falling coconuts every year than sharks attack.
Thomas Edison created the English word, 'Hello'.
If decapitated, a chicken will die from blood loss before heart failure.
Pilot and co-pilot of a flight never have lunch (or dinner) at the same place. In case of one of the pilot feeling sick, the co-pilot can replace him.
You are more likely to get strike by lightning than win the state lottery
"Bookkeeper" is the only word in the english language that has 3 letters that consecutively repeat.
Forty percent of Americans iron their clothes while wearing their underwear or being completely naked.
There are more pigs than humans in Denmark.
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
An ostrich's eye is larger than it's brain.
One thousand words make up 90% of common speech.
The only word in English with three consecutive S's is "godessship".

25 books you must read before you die

>> 29 May 2009 – book

Here’s a list I found from a bookaholic magazine in Indonesia… They provided 50 actually, but since half of them are Indonesian titles (which is of little relevance in this blog), I’ve decided to jot down the 25 western books only.

The ones in bold are those I have read.

Totto-chan: The little girl by the window – Tetsuyo Kuroyanagi
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
Everything Is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran
Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone – J.K.Rowling
Wind Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Stardust – Neil Gaiman
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
Ulysses – James Joyce
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
The Catcher In The Rye – J.D. Salinger
One Hundred Years Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Confession of A Shopaholic – Sophie Kinsella
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom
Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
Slaughter House-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
Fight Club – Chick Palahniuk
Bridget Jones Diary – Helen Fielding
Moby Dick – Herman Melville

Ceased and extended

>> 28 May 2009 – indonesia, jakarta, personal

So I’ve finally came to the end of my 14-week-long French intensive lessons which I attended everyday, and no longer do I have the obligation to wake up at 6 in the morning every Monday to Friday.

Ah, I could finally enjoy waking up late again!

The French test DELF would fall on 17 June (which is going to be the day after the birthday of Zee’s sister) hence if there are any celebrations to be made, I just hope I don’t have to study anything more on the 16th.

As there would be one month plus before my (hopefully) grand departure, I extended my CCF library membership for merely Rp40,000 (a bit less than 3 euros). And it’s valid till June 2010.

Not a bad deal, considering that the library’s membership allows me to borrow any French-related items such as the latest release of books, audio CDs, or even their latest box office movies.