at last!

chocolate I am at least allowed to eat, thanks to Xocolata Sampaka..chose the Catala' version, to get into the mood:)

My choice Tableta de Chocolate negro Ecuador 100%..

yeah, no sugar, only pasta cacao y manteca de cacao

Advice is a form of nostalgia

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be
it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own meandering
experience…I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not
understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and
recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before
you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you
imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as
effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you Sing Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with
people who are reckless with yours. Floss Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes
you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with
yourself. Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you
succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. Stretch Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your
life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they
wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year
olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe
you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky
chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t
congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your
choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body,
use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people
think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever
own.. Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for
good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the
people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you
should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you
knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live
in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will
philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize
that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund,
maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one
might run out. Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will
look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than
it’s worth. But trust me on the sunscreen…

my only contribution: getting together song, lyrics and pic
and the idea, of course...

benefits of living by your own #7

I've realised I haven't been treating this subject seriously...well, life is rich in all kind of experiences...

until today, something came into my inbox.

Not at all funny not even ZEN, as the page would make me think..
but there are some people speaking about benefits of living on you own or with somebody else...

happy St Andrew's day!

November 30th...St Andrew...adored especially in Romania, where he spent a period of his life...

my favourite Andrew is him: the apple of so many people's eyes( thanks Mr Eckersley for the phrase!)

buongiorno, Principessa!

memories

back

I have come back for two days but I still can't write a single word...

where are those green trees, those happy people and that bright sun?!

...poem to read: an anti-ode to Villon's Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Bar...

...celooooooona!



My dear friends, I'm going away for a week..



call me freak but I have a superstition: whenever it's my birthday and I can, I run away as far as possible...this is how I won't be 30 this year, even if my ID says so...the years couldn't find me home, so I'll be only 27...

I'll be with friends: Mona( an almost 30 year friendship ties us, as we first met when we were so little and our mothers walked us)... so don't worry about me!


See you when I see you!


Book to read, in the meanwhile:


Music to listen, as I enter the summer of my life:


what else???

The Booming Cannon went to heaven

Ferenc Puskas, voted the 20th century's sixth best player by the International Federation for Football History and Statistics, died, last night, in a Budapest hospital.

Part of the Hungarian Golden team, he defected to Spain in 1956, the year of the anti-communist uprising in Hungary...that was the moment when the became history, since half of the country's best players, also playing for Honved Budapest,

decided not to go back home.

He played for Real Madrid, coached Panathinaikos and got the chance to go back to Hungary and coach the national team, after the Iron Curtain fell.

He never managed to bring glory back to Pannonia, but people there and even here, in Transylvania, will always remember the times he and the other Magic Magyars were feared all over the world.

More about Ferenc Puskas here

pic found far away in Vietnam, here

so I am happy!

Reuters Health says Happy people may suffer fewer colds

Staying positive through the cold season could be your best defense against getting sick, new study findings suggest.

In an experiment that exposed healthy volunteers to a cold or flu virus, researchers found that people with a generally sunny disposition were less likely to fall ill.

Since I can't remeber the last time I caught a cold...a real one...I must be happy!

Advice for the others: shake the disease!!!

je prepare mon champagne...10 jours...

Do you know this song?




well, the composer is Vladimir Cosma...better known in France than in his native country, Romania...

a great guy, a prolific soundtrack composer and a bon vivant..

I remembered a custom in the Cosma house from Paris... sabrer le champagne
meaning: opening a champagne by violently cutting the bottle neck with a sharp sword....romantic, huh?

Cosma's biography here

Pic and sabrer technique here

where's my mind?

Pixies song and Arizabaz on deviantart mooooood

the beginning of the end...

November 15, 1987

or the beginning of the end...
massive strike in Brasov, Romania's second largest city...an industrial one..the plans conceived by Ceausescu for this town weren't at all welcomed there...after a heavy industrialization for the last decades, now the Regime in Bucharest wanted to cut almost 15.000 jobs, not to mention the salaries reduction...

as I recall from what my aunt in Brasov told me, the riot began in the morning and the workers had all the rights to shout WE WANT FOOD on the streets, since the 'supermarkets' were empty, only vietnamese shrimps, pastas and ugly jams...if I remember well...all this when, downtown, the County Communist Party General Secretary was celebrating his birthday I think, in a hall with large windows. Large enough so the passers- by could see the salami, meat, cheese and other goodies on the tables...this was enough..imagine them, almost knowing they had no chance to change anything...thousands of people on the streets...army and the Securitate forces with them..among them..tens of the protesters arrested and imprisoned, while hundreds were relocated in other parts of the country, so that they couldn't gather again and say anything against "the beloved leader"

11.15.1987 did not directly lead to the 1989 coup d'etat...but weighed enough so that Ceausescu realise the workers were a force...One that wouldn't make deals with politicians, as nowadays happen...

Fortunately nobody died in Brasov those days..that's why November 15 is a day to remember with a smile on our faces...it was the beginning...

one week to go!

no creas que te odio y te desprecio

or how to pamper your soul in an early winter evening...with a mysterious interpretation of Falsaria

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

-Abraham Maslow

sniff sniff...

- because my mommy always told me I could be a member of the French High Noses Academy, due to my sharp smell sense

- because I do have a good olfactory memory

- because I was dumb for days after reading Patrick Sueskind's book

- because once I fell in love with a gentleman whom I caught secretly sniffing my scarf that hanged in the hall stand

I can hardly wait until the movie comes in the Romanian cinemas...

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Uploaded by confidencial

trailer found while surfing on Knuckles Lantrowski's page

ay, I missed it!

the Chocolate festival in Obidos Portugal ends today..

I wasn't there, though my place is deffintely everywhere you discuss/ taste/eat chocolate...

The festival included a chocolate sculpture contest and a recipe contest, not to mention the chocobar and the chocofesta..


today's program here

music to listen: Chocolate Puma- Always and forever


pic found here

happy...name day!

song of the day:

cartoon found here

second step

we did it!

a day I would like to be erased from the calendar

the snow ball started there and then..


november 7, 1917: Bolshevik coup in Russia

Vladimir Lenin seizes power from the czarist regime in a stunning coup d'etat. Widespread starvation and catastrophic military failure in World War I left Russia ripe for revolt. Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on March 15, 1917, and an ineffectual provincial government was established in his place.
more here and here



there are so much to say...do you realise how a whole continent's destiny, almost, changed, with this try?

movie to watch: Doctor Zhivago...try a bit of the soundtrack, if not

Lara's theme, for you

first step

click..reservation form...fill in my name...all other details...confirm

what a girl wants...

or how can a nun have sex but get her soul into Heaven[ Romanian saying]

a Romanian teenager swallowed her tootbrush in an attempt to tickle her throat...all she wanted is to puke up what she ate before, for which woman doesn't want to be skinny?

she succeeded in tickling her throat so thoroughly that she swallowed the object.

Dear skinny- wanabe will now perform surgery...have a nice scar on her chest...because nobody in Romania teaches children anything on diet...or other many health related topics.
[ of course there are a lot of "..." other women who think they can avoid diet by squeezing tons of lemons and drink that sour stuff, but still eat rubbish 5 times a day]
video including the X ray in [RO] on PRO TV

horrifying anorexic girl, thanks to pintendo, here, on deviantart

digging for serendipity

Isaac Newton's famed apple falling from a tree led to his musings about the nature of gravitation

this is serendipity..one of the most difficult to translate into other languages English word, they say...[ in Romanian I would suggest unde dai si unde crapa]

Science is, probably, the field where serendipity is more common...


I don't believe in serendipity in love and I don't call serendipity a thing where I thought I could find love, honesty and truth but discovered insanity, lies and dirt, lots of dirt...

As a blonde long haired woman I, of course, applaud the Velcro discovery, made by Georges de Mestral. The idea came to him after walking his dog through a field and observing the hooks of burdock attached to his pants ...how else could my hair look the way it looks? :)


"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter." Julius Comroe Jr.

LATER EDIT: SINCE I'VE GOT THIS SPAM MAIL...as a comment for this post: 'once you´re heart has start beating for someone, it will nevere cease doing it ...an excerpt not from the depths of newton´s toughts...' I realised I could call that story serendipity indeed, as I searched for love and truth and bumped into dirt and lies...

more on serendipity in different books, magazines and on wiki

Sunday afternoon

i maschi disegnati suoi metrò
confondono le linee di Mirò
nelle vetrine, dietro ai bistrot
ogni carezza della notte è quasi amor
Gianna Nannini- I maschi

nostalgic me...remembered Gianna, today...then I bumped into this Miro..
What a lovely Sunday afternoon

paris by night...black night

and a real night....

according to all news agencies, and I quote here Yahoo news:

A power outage Saturday hit 15 regions of France including parts of the capital, firefighters said.

The Rhone, Isere, Loire, Ain and Saone-et-Loire were among the regions affected by the blackout which struck at about 10 p.m. local time. The cause of the blackout was not immediately clear.

France Info radio quoted French power utility Electricite de France as saying about 5 million people were still without power early Sunday and it was not sure when it would be able to bring consumers back online.

No injuries were reported, though firefighters in Paris said they had responded to nearly 40 calls from people stuck in elevators.

can you imagine the Champs Elysees in a total blackout by night??

I can't...

ode to Champs Elysees. NOFX...punk's not dead, remember:) Joe Dassin, you're out:)



pic taken from here

meet Monica # ...

Christians enter another fasting period soon...time to take a deep look inside our soul, be humble etc...

Time to see what you thik of life, generally..
took another a test.happy to see what I already knew: some of us are baptised against our will:)
( I am a christian orthodox, btw)


1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (98%)
3. Liberal Quakers (98%)
4. Bahá'í Faith (83%)
5. New Thought (76%)
6. Mahayana Buddhism (75%)
7. New Age (74%)
8. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (73%)
9. Neo-Pagan (73%)
10. Theravada Buddhism (72%)
11. Reform Judaism (72%)
12. Orthodox Quaker (71%)
13. Jainism (69%)
14. Sikhism (62%)
15. Secular Humanism (61%)
16. Hinduism (61%)
17. Scientology (60%)
18. Orthodox Judaism (53%)
19. Taoism (52%)
20. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (51%)
21. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (50%)
22. Jehovah's Witness (46%)
23. Islam (41%)
24. Seventh Day Adventist (39%)
25. Nontheist (39%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (20%)
27. Roman Catholic (20%)

I do have some limits...

I must post this again...2 months after and my junk folder is full full full...

of course, I don't need a penis enlargement, for Christ's sake!

so, as I used to say:

Dear Hillary Munoz, Aliyah Woodley, Susana Morris, Weston Metcalf, Deborah, Katie etc etc etc,

thank you for keeping in touch with me ( though I don't even know you) but PLEASE stop writing again ...I don't need a penis enlargment, free boobs, hair extension or I don't know what loan..

All I need is that my friends write to me, not YOU....

I know you won't read this, for you only write and write, and try to sell, and spread viruses... but now I know at least I told u what I had to say...

PS Dear Mitchell Johnson, I know you needed my attention, but I just couldn't do anything but click and delete your mail too...SORRY, I have my limits...

banner found here

yeah!

first snow over Bucharest...more like rain to snow...as much as I could catch on the camera...at 4 AM , while my teenager neighbour was coming home from God knows what club...he was shocked seing the blonde at the first floor taking pics by her window, I know:)

goodbye, fall!

song for an autumn that left way too early...

Katie Melua- I cried for you

let me introduce myself

I am Somewhat Machiavellian

I'm not going to mow over everyone to get ahead...But I'm also powerful enough to make things happen for myself. I understand how the world works, even when it's an ugly place.I just don't get ugly myself - unless I have to!

How Machiavellian Are You?

reasons to come home #2

...in a too early cold November evening...

reasons to come home #1

guess what...

it's a GNR evening. I mean it!

say no more!

my horoscope today says:

You can expect some big changes to occur in your life, MONICA. All of the hard work that you have been doing on developing your confidence and self-esteem is showing definite fruit, and this is attracting opportunity to you like bees to honey. On top of all this, your passion is at full throttle right now, so be sure to set aside some private time with your mate.
Plan a romantic evening, open a good bottle of wine and celebrate together!

don't count on me, tonight:))

champagne taken, temporarily, from here real one coming, tonight:)))