Monday, December 22, 2008

Santa

A part to my friend from WWU and parts for all my friends:

May Santa bring you a perfect gift and...

Santa better bring you a job as well,
And a new beautiful home to dwell.
May your winter be snowy and cosy,
Without any neighbours being nosy!

As the days of holiday progress,
May your mind be free of stress!
Be as light in heart as snowflakes falling,
In a room filled with light each morning.

I wish you journeys to the far and exciting,
Maybe even another European sighting!
May all your worries be blown away,
By the cool breeze of a winter's day!


All my best to all of you,
Lumi


PS: Yes, the poem is mine :D.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Let me sing you a waltz...

...no, or...I just don't know, I really don't know. It's like even the most intense reality I experience doesn't feel real anymore. Is it a trap that I've carefully and unconsciously created for myself in the past few months, or all my life? Is it...a trap, a cage? Because this is exactly what it feels like.

We are, all of us, the prisoners of our own mind. And I'm not talking any Matrix BS here. I genuinely experience mental entrapment each day that I face. I try to escape through films. So far, I have been unsuccessful, but there are a lot more films that ca provide a surrogate escape from the unreal reality that I'm passing through, or maybe that passes through me.

A brief surrogate escape was recently provided by two films, about a beginning and an end: Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004).

Maybe they'll help you more that they helped me, or maybe you'll just take a trip through Vienna and Paris, from the perspective of two people that have an opinion about everything. You might just find a few things you thought about at one point in your life.


Before Sunrise




Before Sunset - The Waltz

Monday, December 15, 2008

The Snowflake Man

Since I was a kind I have been fascinated by the beautiful shapes of the snowflakes. Even now, if I happen to catch one in the palm of my winter gloves, I stare at it until it melts. This is an amazing piece of nature's perfect handcraft.

When I was in kindergarten and I first saw a snowflake, and it looked just like in the cartoons on TV, I tried to tell my friends about it, but they didn't believe me. And I never got the chance to show them, because a certain kind of snow makes those shapes visible to the naked eye.

I'm so glad that now, I get to show everybody that didn't believe me...well, at least, the few of them who read my blog, what these snowflakes look like.

The pictures below were taken by a man who dedicated his whole life to snowflakes, Wilson Bentley, also called The Snowflake Man. He took his first snowflake pictures in 1885. You can read the short versin of what he did: here.

Snowflakes, Snowflakes, Snowflaaaaaaaaakessss!!!!!




Thursday, December 11, 2008

How about this for making students buy things?!



See if you can guess what they did to make their products more appealing to students, then click on the picture to see if you guessed correctly.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Trees and Twilight

About a week or so ago I went with Aida to a tree-planting session near Bucharest. We planted all day and the satisfaction and exhaustion felt afterwards were memorable. An organization called MaiMultVerde (the Marea Plantare campaign) has enabled Aida and I to tick off the list one of the three MUSTS in a life time: plant a tree, dig a well and baptize a child. I don't think the second one will ever be ticked, except maybe if we're away in Africa...maybe, but the first one has been done. I actually wouldn't mind doing it again.

Speaking about trees, I have to say that the ones in the movie Twilight (the script based on Stephenie Meyer's book with the same title) look fantastic. I love the cinematography in this movie and the soundtrack has something for everybody.

I had a huge-vampire-movie phase as a teenager, and this particular film brought a little of that period back to me. But it's not your classical “fangy”-tale of blood, it's a beautiful beginning of a love story between a vampire and a teenage girl. The actors are super sexy and the landscapes are amazing and mysterious.

I might be under the influence of Robert Pattison's golden-vampire eyes (he, by the way, sings a couple of the songs from the soundtrack), but I kind of developed a soft spot for this movie and am waiting for the sequel, New Moon.


Enjoy Twilight! Enjoy every twilight!