Merry Christmas!

Joy

Joy is knowing God has granted you innermost wish and you are still around, basking in His glory, breathing the air and smiling back at the sun or childishly enjoying the raindrops falling on your cheeks. Joy is knowing you are not alone and there is always someone to share the miracle of being alive with.

Word(s) of the Week: Angry

Everybody knows what "angry" means, but did you know these related words and expressions? :)
a little angry: miffed (informal), peeved (informal)
rather angry: annoyed, irritated, cross, in a bad/foul mood
very angry: furious, livid, outraged, incensed, incandescent with rage (formal)
to become angry: lose your temper, go mad , go berserk (informal), go ballistic (informal), hit the roof (informal)
words for describing someone who often gets angry: bad-tempered, grouchy, cantankerous, crabby, stroppy (BrE informal)

The True Alchemist of Words

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"Call me Z"

"I thought you are my Jesus"



"A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" is a beautiful book. So beautiful that it becomes difficult to express it into words. It is the story of a simple girl from China who is sent to London by her parents to study English so that she could easily establish connections and develop their business. Nothing out of this world so far, except that she narrates her story/love affair with an older Englishman in a rather incorrect English, and this is what made it unique for me. Besides the sad love story. Not only is she struggling with tenses and plurals, but she also has difficulty in understanding the Western way of living and loving.

The honest way in which she compares attitudes and cultures is so touching. Her naivete and search for love and truth are endearing. We do smile when she pays a visit to a sex shop or when she states how irrelevant it must be to talk about the weather all the time. Still, there is sadness in her lines when she talks about being loved and needed.

"I hate myself being so needy. The way I want of love, is like a hard toothbrush try to brush bad teeth, then it ends up bleeding. The harder I try, more blood comes out.But I believe love can cure everything, and eventually the teeth will not bleeding anymore. I still think love is the hope, of everything."
Is it, indeed? There are many dreams in a long night...

To read the entire novel, click here.

The Happy Bunch :)

Partir

There's nothing like a French movie, especially when Kristin Scott Thomas stars in it. After an astonishing part in "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime", she takes up a role in which she embodies a wife who longs for attention and love and whose husband doesn't seem to provide that. So, she finds herself a penniless lover and strives to get by with very little, provided she is offered love, sweet love. Is there a happy ending to their story? Maybe, maybe not...



I quite liked the movie, but I still prefer "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime", simply because I didn't find any plausible reason why I would sympathize with the Spanish lover... Nevertheless, the scene at the gas station is heartbreaking and the way Kristin portraits a 40 and something woman in love is quite impressive and reminiscent of this.
Peut etre partir, c'est aimer un peu...

More about the movie and the director's ideas here.

Stay

Truth Hurts

I Read Books Because I Can't Stop

Is it a bad thing being a bookaholic?

* I spend more money on books than on other "respectful" things.
* There are times when I don't go to sleep because I have to see how a book ends.
* I have a book with me most of the time I am out of the house.
* It is hard to leave a bookstore without buying (a) book(s) even if I have a huge pile of "to-be-read".
* I am not sure of the books I have.
* I sometimes find myself quoting from the books I have read.
* I don't lend my books because I might not get them back (or have them stained).
* I can easily get excited about any new book that my favorite writers release.



* There are plenty of books I have read before other people.
* I can leaf through a book and forget about the food on the cooker.
* I enjoy reading reviews before and after I have read the book.
* I have a wishlist on a dedicated site.
* I have my favorite books in English, French and Romanian (if they have been translated).
* I have struggled to get autographs from my favorite authors (and succeeded).
* It took hours to be taken out of the "Shakespeare and Co."
* I am planning a future trip abroad in accordance with a literary festival.

Teaching to the Student

Seth Godin continues to teach me smart things :)

All teachers know about differentiated learning, but what this phrase actually says is that different students want to do different things and what they end up doing is what makes them acquire new information. Thus, if you want your students to learn the most, you should start by thinking that they are different.



The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition states that there are 5 stages that a student could pass through:
1. Novice
--wants to be given a manual, told what to do, with no decisions possible

2. Advanced beginner
--needs a bit of freedom, but is unable to quickly describe a hierarchy of which parts are more important than others

3. Competent
--wants the ability to make plans, create routines and choose among activities

4. Proficient
--the more freedom you offer, the more you expect, the more you'll get

5. Expert
--writes the manual, doesn't follow it.

Although it is hard not to teach to the book or to the curriculum, what should one do is teach to the student in order to get positive feedback.

Demonstrating Strength

Via Seth Godin's blog.

Apologize

Defer to others

Avoid shortcuts

Tell the truth

Offer kindness

Seek alliances

Volunteer to take the short straw

Choose the long-term, sacrificing the short

Demonstrate respect to all, not just the obviously strong

Share credit and be public in your gratitude

Poetry Is Where the Heart Is...

TIPTIL



aud glasul tau si privesc in
lumina ochilor tai.
fara suflare
incerc sa-ti patrund in inima
cu sfiala,
sa nu-ti tulbur ritmul
exact si perfect,
care ma-nfioara.

(Nicu Alifantis)

You Are the Drug That I Can't Quit...

Optimism

The Art of Travel

It’s in our nature to be on the move, in the search of new places, exhilarating experiences and longed-for soul mates. We travel in our heads or over the clouds, but we always look for the next heart throbbing spot that will place us in the center of the yet untamed mother Earth.



Indeed, there’s nothing more addictive than roaming around, discovering, with every step, things, places and people that change us forever. We go sightseeing, travel guide(s) in our backpack, just as the painter goes on to trace lines on the canvas, hoping for wishes coming true, as we hope to go beyond the unknown and tedious, because there is pure ART in the way we TRAVEL, and there’s no art without pleasure. Yet sometimes, our sole purpose is to only return from our travels in order to flee again, in a much greater style, for what is our world but an oyster awaiting to be conquered?
And if our restless heart and desire to hit the road prove to be more abundant for a single life, we can still hope for the other eight...

If You Want, I'll hunt You like an Animal...

I am totally overwhelmed by the number of Madonna leaks this past week. Not only are they of good quality, but most of them sound fabulous.
Here's Animal, from the Hard Candy sessions, and I am still wondering why it wasn't included on the album. It's definitely funkier than some of the songs from HC.I guess Madonna has her ways, after all...

Madonna - Animal (Hard Candy sessions)

Asculta mai multe audio diverse

Four Lions or Screw Political Correctness

Ok, let’s cut to the chase. I loved this movie. It was simply brilliant while being bloody funny. I haven’t laughed that much since Blackadder.
Four Lions is a black comedy, which, fortunately, makes you laugh at contemporary issues, because, let’s be honest, that’s probably the only thing worth doing. It tries to show that extremists are humans after all, and multiculturalism can also be a sloppy matter. Indeed, there may be some uncomfortable truths amongst the laughter and irony, but one can go past them in order to savour a comedy in which four blokes are trying really hard to put together a terrorist cell that could blow up …. wait for it….. a mosque. What the buffoons end up doing is … well, I won’t spoil it for you so watch the movie without feeling guilty that you might laugh when a bomb goes off. It happened to me, too.



Here are some hilarious lines and the trailer.
“We’ve got women talking back. We’ve got people playing stringed instruments. It’s the end of days”.
“You can’t win an argument just by being right”.
“Are you in Paradise, bro?”

Les Memoires D'Hadrien

Octavian is generous once more and here I am writing in order to get a book. But not just any book, Les Memoires d'Hadrien written by Marguerite Yourcenar, the first female writer to enter the French Academy (and this time, my knowledge about her and the book stop here).

Why this book? Well, shamefully, I haven't read anything by her, not even during my French courses, so it would be a great first. Secondly, I long to read in French and to brush it up a bit, since I can sense I am getting rusty at that :).
Thirdly, (and here comes the "generosity shock" on my part), If I enjoy it, I will pass it forward to my friend and French teacher... How does that sound for "giving, you shall receive"? :)

Whisling in the Wind

I was leafing through the "Encyclopedia of Taboos" and found an interesting article about whistling.
Now, it seems that you can whistle in the dark or become a whistle-blower, not to mention the wolf-whistle that some men use to show the animal within, but still, it is useful to know that in the Islam world, whistling is forbidden because of its association with sorcery and the casting of spells in pre-Islamic times. Whistling is also a means of “communication with the Jinn”. The Jinn (from which the English word “genie” derives) inhabit the immaterial world. In the Koran it is stated that the jinn were created from “smokeless fire” while man was made of clay and angels were formed from light.



Moreover, the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, has uncovered a link between whistling and sorcery in ancient tribes, fact described in his book "From Honey to Ashes: Introduction to a Science of Mythology".
If you also happen to travel at sea, mind that you could easily be thrown overboard if you attempt to communicate with the jinn, simply because whistling at sea is deemed unlucky.