Boyfriend

Realizing that the boy you love and is supposed to be your boyfriend does not love you actually, is quite daunting. It's true, I want to be loved and I would like to think that I am lovable. I don't want to end up alone, even though we come to the world alone and probably leave it alone...yet, until then, it is stimulating and reassuring to have a companion and love in your life.

His excuse: he can't love anybody. And here we go again, hope dies last, hoping that love will spring....

Miami, Florida

"Miami is a strange place; not at all like you imagine it, is it? [...] Take a good look: Miami is nothing. Because it's got everything but lacks the vital element: it has no heart." (from Havana Black by Leonardo Padura Fuentes, 1998)

Kerkeling ueber Humor

"Eigentlich ist Humor doch nichts anderes als das Verhindern von Eskalation. Ein Ventil. Wer von Herzen lacht, signalisiert: ich bin nicht gefaehrlich." (Hape Kerkeling in Ich bin dann mal weg. Meine Reise auf dem Jakobsweg. Muenchen: Pieper, 2006.)

Societies and Fulfilling Dreams

"When societies set things up so the only way people can achieve their dreams is to go outside the law, it automatically loses any opportunity to control the chain reaction. "(from Val McDermid's Blue Genes, 1996)

The Welsh

"Call me a racist, but when it comes to the Welsh, I immediately summon my irregular verb theory of life. [...] And in my considered opinion, the Welsh are a humourless, clannish bunch whose contribution to the sum total of human happiness is on the negative side of the ledger." (Val McDermid's Blue Genes, 1996)

Moon Rock & Perspective

"Whenever arguments [...] heated up beyond reason, I would interrupt and say, 'You see that rock? It's 3.6 billion years old (moon rock). We're all just passing through. Let's calm down and go back to work'. That moon rock gave me a whole different perspective on history and the proverbial 'long run'. Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. [...] All we have is the moment." (Bill Clinton's My Life, 2002)

Men & Toilet?

Garcia Marquez in his book Love in the Time of Cholera: "The toilet must have been invented by someone who knew nothing about men."

On Knowing Love

"She [Sara Nariega] would defend herself, saying that love, no matter whatelse it might be, was a natural talent. She would say: 'You are either born knowing how, or you never know!" (from Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera, 1985).

Kerkeling ueber Rhythmus und Menschen

"Rhythmus und Tempo trennen die meisten Menschen auf dem Weg. Es ist schwer, jemanden zu finden, der in einem aehnlichen Takt ueber den Weg tanzt. [...] Erst muss man sich seines eigenen Tempos ganz sicher sein und kann sich dann vielleicht jemandem anschliessen. Die Pilger sind, fuehlen und denken, wie sie laufen." (From: Ich bin dann mal weg. Meine Reise auf dem Jakobsweg, 2006)  

Adjustment to Rhythm

William Golding in Lord of the Flies (1954) writes: "[...] the northern European tradition of work, play and food right through the day, made it impossible for them to adjust themselves wholly to this new rhythm."

Kaminer on Cheaters

"Betrueger sind oftmals nett und sympathisch, das gehoert einfach zum Beruf. Kein Mensch wird einem unsympathischen Betrueger sein Geld aushaendigen. [...] Nicht umsonst speist er sich aus den besten menschlichen Eigenschaften in Vertrauen, Naechstenliebe, die Bereitschaft zu helfen oder auch die kindliche Faehigkeit, an Wunder glauben." (from Wladimir Kaminer's Es gab kein Sex im Sozialismus, 2009)

Cousin performing in Dutch Play 'Titanic'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGP2vzEENfw

Garcia Marquez about Wisdom

"But if they had learned anything together, it was that wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good." (Garcia Marquez in Love in the Time of Cholera, 1985)

A Good Man's Life

"According to Wordsworth, the best portion of a good man's life is his little, unremembered acts of kindness and love." (Bill Clinton, My Life, 2002)

Mother Teresa

I wondered whether todays' youth get to know about Mother Teresa? I have not heard anybody or the news talk about her in ages. She died in 1997, leaving a massive legacy in form of her Charity established to continue to help the poor, suffering and children throughout the world. Shewas awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

(Picture: nobelprize.org)

Oscar Wilde & Life

In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), he writes: "One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."

Girls & Boys?

Teenage girls seem to be very active nowadays in finding boyfriends for themselves. An exclusive source (let me call her Lina) described how she had been admiring and eye-flirting with that cute boy one year above her in highschool. Her girlfriend encouraged her, saying that she had caught him watching Lina at a distance, concluding that he must be interested in Lina. Two days later, Lina summoned her courage and asked the boy if she could have his number. She said that she was scared of being rejected, but could not avoid asking him in the end. She got his number. Thank God. Have times changed so much that girls take the initiative in an instant and with no time to wait? Or are things just more open now, where girls and boys alike act on their interest? Gone seem to be the times when girls had to wait patiently for a pursuer. Perhaps not quite. Having a closer look, let me realize that, actually,  it has been always been the female who actively looked for her mate, yet she has done it in a more subtle and patient way, or not?

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Movie Stories vs Real Life

Patel had to abandon his car, on his way home from work somewhere in the English countryside. It is January and heavy snowfall caused a traffic chaos. So he left his car behind in the snow, helped others to move theirs before he had no choice but turn to the village church, looking for shelter. He spent the night at an old couple's house in Surrey. The next day, in the early afternoon, he made it back home, but still had to get his car back. Now, reality or fiction?

Quotation from Bill Clinton's "My Life"

"[...] there are things in life we cannot control and mysteries we cannot understand; that I wanted them to take more care with themselves, their friends, and their families; and that we could not "deaden our sensitivities by working too hard". That last bit of advice had been always easier for me to give than to take." (p 532)

Bill Clinton after the suicide death of Vince Foster, a life-long friend of the Clinton's, lawyer and later member of the White House Office Council.