Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Tao Te Ching
I’ve been re-reading the Tao Te Ching. I find it very inspiring somehow.
Recognize beauty and ugliness is born.
Recognize good and evil is born.
Is and Isn’t produce each other.
Hard depends on easy;
Long is tested by short;
High is determined by low;
Sound is harmonized by voice;
After is followed by before.
Therefore the Sage is devoted to non-action,
Moves without teaching,
Creates ten thousand things without instruction,
Lives but does not own,
Acts but does not presume,
Accomplishes without taking credit.
When no credit is taken,
Accomplishment endures.
Wild
The naked bear in my previous post makes me think of the creatures from Where The Wild Things Are.
Harry Potter
After helping the hundreds of Harry Potter fans to some popcorn, sodas and, of course, the new Harry Potter movie tonight, some co-workers and me finished the night with a drink and some scary stories.
Driving home just now I started thinking that my own Harry Potter experience actually started during a period of bad dreams and short nights. When I was a kid I had a lot of those periods. I was scared of anything and everything and whenever I watched or read something remotely frightening I would wake up nights in a row, full of unpleasant thoughts and unable to get back to sleep. During one of these periods I had just started reading the Harry Potter books and they helped me through many a night. When I woke up during those nights I would pick up my HP book and read a couple of chapters and after that I would be filled with thoughts about the wonderful world of magic and wizardry and would fall asleep without problem.
I guess that’s where my appreciation of Harry Potter started. He got me through the night.
Besides the fact that I love Harry Potter for taking away my scary dreams back then, I also really enjoy the books for what they are: good stories. I really love all of them. I think I read the first four books at least three times each. I just reread the sixth book and have now started rereading the seventh. I very rarely reread a book, but with the Harry Potter books a reread is just as much fun as a first read.
I also watched the latest movie today. I actually enjoyed it! I don’t like most of the Harry Potter movies, but this one was pretty decent. It’s fun how a movie like this really gets all people talking. Some movies people just walk out of without saying a word. With a movie like Harry Potter there’s always some people talking about it.. how it was, if it made sense, what could have been better. People are really invested in the story, wether they’ve read the books or not. I always wonder if it’s because the movies are just entertaining or because it is about a whole different world. Do people get more invested in fantasy storytelling (HP, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings) or is it really about the characters and what they go through, wether it’s in a fantasy world or on plain old and familiar earth. I wonder……
It could also simply be because most of them (LotR and HP) are based on books. And people always love to discuss (read: nag on) movies based on books.
World eBook Fair
I have never really read an eBook (except for one on my phone) and I’m not sure I’d enjoy reading a book on the computer as much as having a real one in my hands. But the World eBook Fair does make me want to try an eBook out.
From July 4th to August 14th they’re offering thousands of ebooks for free. They include lots of languages and genres.
Check it out at www.worldebookfair.com! (I hope the search function doesn’t annoy the hell out of you as it does me.. I can’t seem to find anything!)
BTW, for the musicians among us: there’s a collection of over 3000 free sheet music books. Which, I think, is probably more interesting than the thousands of free novels up for download.
Kansas City Shuffle
I just finished watching the movie Lucky Number Slevin. And I think it’s the first time that I thought a movie was too short. And I don’t mean it in the ‘I liked it so much I wanted it to go on and on’ way, but more in the ‘maybe it would have been better if it wasn’t so short’ way. The movie is a little bit over 1,5 hour long and it kind of feels rushed. The twist came so fast that it wasn’t really a big surprise..
I still liked it though. The actors are ridiculous(ly good): Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu. Bruce Willis’ character reminded me a lot of his character in Sin City and everything that reminds me of Sin City is a good thing. Plus.. Josh Hartnett: HOT!!!! Even when he’s wearing a purple towel with flowers on it.
I also LOVED the crazy sets. I haven’t seen so many ridiculous wallpapers in my life, let alone in one movie.
I feel like I haven’t watched a lot of movies lately, but when I look at my movie list I see that’s not true. I guess I just haven’t been watching a lot of movies at home.. Ever since I posted that I don’t go to the cinema much it seems like I have been making up for lost time. I have watched more movies in the cinema than I did on DVD. It’s funny though.. because out of the 18 movies I watched in the cinema this year, only 7 of them were during opening hours. (Did I mention I love my job?)
On another note. I just started reading the book High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. I thought I should mention that, since another Nick Hornby book (Slam) was the first book I read since I started keeping these lists on here 
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Correction
After a little argument with my mother I have to admit that the weather wasn’t as awful as my previous post may have implied. It was just awful compared to how the weather in The Netherlands was and compared to what you would expect from Italian weather. The weather was actually quite excellent for the things we were doing (volcano climbing and sightseeing). So, there ya go 
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There couldn’t have been a sunset if there wasn’t any sun
(view from the hotel porch)
Typical
Isn’t it funny that almost immediately after writing my previous post I went out and bought three books?
I was bored at work today so I colour coded my movies page. I made the movies that I watched in the cinema blue. I thought I’d point out the difference as the movie experience is so different in the cinema than when watching at home.
Most people think that when you work at the cinema you go to the movies all the time. According to my 2008 list I went approximately 20 times last year. That’s not very much is it? Maybe it is more than average person.. but not more than the average movie lover, I don’t think.
Let’s Dance!
How cool is this T-Mobile commercial.
This commercial was shot at the Liverpool Street Subway Station in London Jan 15, 09. Only the dancers knew what was happening; the general public didn’t have a clue what was about to unfold.
Books, books and Murphy (what else?)
I’ve been so busy with school (yeah, I can hardly believe it either) that I didn’t even have time (read: the energy) to write here. Isn’t it annoying how school always gets in the way of everything!
During all the busy being I finally got some new furniture as well. Some Sundays ago I went to the famous Ikea with my friends Renee and Stefan. Ikea on a Sunday gives you
1. a headache
2. a lot of ideas on how NOT to name your children and
3. a very very VERY full car.
I would show a picture of how Renee and Stefan looked sitting on about 20cm of seating space in the back seat of the car, boxed in by Ikea furniture, but I’m not sure if they appreciate me posting their pictures. But it was a fun drive home I can tell you.
So, what did I buy? I bought a new bookcase 
. It’s not quite finished (the different cases still have to be bolted together) and I didn’t organize it yet either, but here’s how it looks now.
Thanks to Stefan and Renee for putting all the furniture together for me!! I did absolutely nothing while they were hammering away.
I also bought a cool rocking chair (also not put together by me: thanks Renee!)
My view from my new ‘reading corner’
Ugh. Murphy always looks so sad… He’s a happy dog! I swear! He just tries to look cute all the time. That’s how he gets ya!
Look. Happy Murphy.
Now. That’s just scary.
To get back to books.. I found a site that’s kind of cool. It’s kind of like Last.fm but for books: www.goodreads.com. You can keep track of what you’re reading and rate your books and if you make buddies you can see what they’re reading as well. It’s pretty cool. So.. if you like reading then go and register and add me as your buddy.
Automobile
Of all my friends I almost always seem to be the only one who has a car.
I find it kind of weird that they choose to not have one, because I would be so lost without a car. Although, with my particular choice in cars I’m kind of lost all the time anyway since I’m very often driving a car that stops working. I learned one important thing from these experiences:
Nobody helps you!!!
Not even when you step outside the car and look really sad. If they can drive past you. They will. If you’re blocking them. They’ll honk the horn. If you don’t move within 1 minute. They’ll yell at you.
Last week I was standing still again on the middle of the road and after standing there for 10 minutes with every car driving past me looking like I’m the biggest annoyance in their life someone actually stopped and asked if the car should be pushed to the side. So I said ‘yes please!’. The guy replied with ‘it’s not too heavy is it’. So I said ‘well, it is kind of heavy, I can’t push it on my own’. Guess what? He said ‘oh, that’s too bad’. And then he drove away!!!!!!
People suck.
Anyhoo. I can’t really say if my current car is less dependable than my previous car or if they’re equally bad. At least with this one it always has a reason (it kind of leaks coolant and I always forget to check it and refill it on time). Plus it is a really old car so I mind it less.
This is my car btw.
Reliant Scimitar from 1973
My previous car was very different, but equally cool. But it was not reliable at all. I can’t even remember what was wrong with it, but it would very often stop working. Or it would not start. I still loved it though.
Suzuki Vitara from 1991
I just found this picture of my sisters old car. She had the coolest car ever! She had to sell it for like 100 euros because it leaked on all sides. If you drove through a puddle the puddle would end up in the car, the car had that many holes in it. That car was so cool though. It had a foot pedal to operate the windscreen wiper and other weird things like that. I loved that car!!!
Opel Kadett Coupe from 1973
After that she also had this one.
Yup. Together we had some pretty awesome cars. She has a fancy car now though. I guess she has evolved while I’m still stuck in the cool-and-pretty-but-not-so-good-working-cars. She now drives a fancy convertible with automatic everything. Tsk. Traitor.
Oki. I’ll stop talking about cars and turn into a girl again now . Although I did talk only about the prettyness of the cars so that’s still kind of girly right? No?
O oops. I almost forgot about the most ridiculous car we had. Well. It wasn’t a ridiculous car. We just kind of made it ridiculous. My sister and I owned a car together. We both just went back to school and sold our cars and then for Christmas we got one from our parents!!! It was a white Toyota Corolla. We turned it into a garbage bin. Ok, I did. My sister is actually pretty neat.
Lol, I can’t find a good picture of the car, but this one is pretty hilarious.
You might ask why I’m wearing pleather pants and looking like an idiot (may I add that my sister looks worse, that’s why she’s hiding). It’s because we participated in the Auto Rally Puzzle Race (a school thing) and the theme was trashy/porn or something like that. We had to do things like suck milk out of a condom and get our picture taken in weird positions and draw people’s private parts in the sand. It was quite a horrible experience actually.
Maybe some people will now start to understand why it is so hard for me to go back to that school. All the trauma’s!