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Monday, February 26, 2007
Places I'd Like to Visit Before I Die
Now that the family and I are thinking holiday, I've been pondering about the places I'd like to visit sometime in my life.
Japan is one of them, for sure. I cut out a picture from the newspaper last week of one of Japan's aquariums where a pair of whales swam before an awestruck crowd. I have my reservations about animals in captivity but once in my life, I'd like to see a whale up close.
Of course, the US of A. With so many friends there, many of which I'd love to see again one day, some time in my life I would like to visit New York, LA, North Carolina, Washington, and Las Vegas, for starters.
Europe is always a draw for me. Sure, I have visited Paris, Florence, and Rome before but it is so huge, one could never hope to explore the whole of it in several lifetimes. I love the small towns and hope to visit at least Tuscany before I grow too old to wander up the cobblestone path.
Most recently I have been rather fascinated by the artificial islands under the name of Dubai Marina, where construction is ongoing to cater to the rich and famous. Of course, I could never afford to buy a dubai property on that island, but I hear that there is no income tax and the weather is beautiful. Plus the shopping is great. :)
This post was sponsored by Dubai Venture and it has gotten this author wanderlusting again.
Hark! If you're a parent, you're definitely more depressed than a non-parent, says a study by Florida State University professor Robin Simon and published in the American Sociological Association's Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Part of the problem, Simon figures, is that Americans don't get as much help at parenting as they once did, or as is the case in other countries.
"We do it in relative isolation. The onus is on us," she said. "It's emotionally draining."
The depressing results seem to be across the board in a study of 13,000 people. No type of parent reported less depression than non-parents.
"Parents have more to worry about than other people do—that's the bottom line... And that worry does not diminish over time. Parents worry about their kids' emotional, social, physical and economic well-being. We worry about how they're getting along in the world."
It seems more and more people are opting to remain single. Either they feel their time has past or they've just given up meeting someone they connect with. I've met several such people over Chinese New Year, all of whom are nice, sociable, pleasant-looking, financially-stable folk.
I feel the advent of Internet technology has actually isolated more people than others. Peeps are happy to exist online more than offline. Instead of meeting your buddies for dinner, you're chatting on IM to your online friends; instead of joining friends for a movie, you stay home and play World of Warcraft (yes, I have been guilty!). It's easier and more comfortable to stay home than get dressed to go out. We've all been there.
While being friends online helps you connect with people, it doesn't give the warmth that meeting real people does. Numerous independent studies have shown that being with friends is one of the best indicators of happiness.
Now, as with any technology, it can be utilised for your benefit. You can meet people online and see if you like and trust the person enough to meet offline. Certainly, care must be exercised in such endeavours as well as a dose of skepticism, and always bring a friend along to meet up with your offline friend in a public place.
There are plenty of online dating sites, most of which you need to pay to join. But there are a few free dating services you can sign up with to see what it is all about. You'll never know when the ONE is just a click away. If not, you'll have made yet another friend.
This is a sponsored post by JustSayHi. The author notes that social networking online can be a delightful experience but laments that her single cats have had more success in this endeavour than she obviously has.
Yup, this morning I saw lots of burning bins all over the estate. I had peeked out of my window last night but saw no bins in the vicinity. But the smoke carries. Last night my eyes stung all night and my nose was runny. Poor Jack also got the sniffles when the burning began so I think he might have inherited my sensitive nose. Dang.
When she went to buy the joss paper for her ancestors, a Bo Wah clerk gave her detailed instructions. "You get a brass pot of red and gold and you take it outside,'' she said. "You get a red candle and light it and pray and then you light the joss and put it in the brass pot to burn. And you let the candle burn until it goes out.''
It's raining today so I figure there won't be any burning, which is a relief for baby, the 5 cats, and I tonight. But if it clears, I'm going to shut all windows and doors tight tonight and turn on the air purifier to high so hopefully we'll get a better sleep.
Making My Podcast has been on my list of to-dos since antiquity. Like travelling to Europe, it's been on the backburner because "real life" has always taken precedence. Why a podcast, you ask?
Here's the history of.
Some years back, I did one poetry reading on a local radio show and my BFF and very talented photographer V kindly helped me record it when it went live and commented that I have a great radio voice!
Ever since I have been enamoured of the idea of running my own radio show. There's always the option of becoming a radio DJ but it's not something I want to do as a career, but rather, for fun.
Hence the wishlist tag and the lazy. Excuses I make are the usual: well, V, there are the numerous barriers to entry... how to create one, where to host, what equipment to get... you know the usual procrastination deal.
Anyhow, with technology catching up with the cult of personalisation, here's a nifty solution. ;)
The very usable and cheery site MyPodcast.com offers you FREE bandwidth, FREE hosting, and FREE usage of their software for your podcast, plus they pay you every time someone downloads it. Here's a link to where they explain it better.
I'll be bookmarking this site for the time I am ready to go on air and I assure you, you'll be spammed with a link to download it when the time comes. :D
This post is sponsored by MyPodcast.com who really rock!
I have to say this product is perfect for me. I hate typing. Especially when I work on a Mac where the shortcuts and hotkeys are alien to me after years of working on a PC.
Similar to the nifty word expander I had for my PDA, TypeIt4Me takes it a step further.
Using abbreviations, TypeIt4Me expands it to a word, a phrase, a few pages of text, and even pages too! The abbreviations can also be used to trigger AppleScripts instead of dropping down a menu or shortcuts and hotkeys (which are alien to me).
MacFormat UK wrote: "TypeIt4Me has done more to enrich our lives than the internal combustion engine, coffee, sliced bread and Catherine Zeta-Jones combined" while MacWorld reported: "Riccardo Ettore's TypeIt4Me is a more powerful and systemwide autocomplete utility that has been around for a while on the classic Mac OS, and more recently on OS X -- and my fingers haven't been quite so happy in a long time."
So if you're using a Mac and like me, want to just get the job done quickly and efficiently, try TypeIt4Me at http://www.typeit4me.com.
Armed with my 40% coupon, we headed to Borders with a single-minded mission: to acquire Carl Sagan's latest book The Varieties of Scientific Experience. Unfortunately it was $49.90 and only in hardcover. I personally prefer paperbacks - they're easier to hold and they sit on my bookshelf better.
A couple other books grabbed my attention: the autobiography of Rupert Everett (whom I consider one of the most beautiful men alive), and another book I simply cannot recall (I have the mental image of where I was looking at it in Borders but am unable to remember the name of the book. Chalk it up to another one biting the dust in my holey Mommy brain.
Finally I wandered around to my favourite SF shelf where I thought of my friend Mike Allen and then to the horror section where there it lay, the latest Repairman Jack paperback, Infernal.
Now I've been a fan of Repairman Jack since I read Nightworld and The Tomb, simply two of the best books ever written. In fact, my son Jack is named after him. :)
Hence I grabbed the best of the three copies there, paid for it, and we left, without a trace at all of buyer's remorse.
I had to chuckle at some of Gaspirtz's cartoons. They're fun, irreverent, and will probably offend someone out there. But for peeps with an open mind, they're a delight to look at and will definitely send a cheer to your day.
This is my first post via mobile phone through the neat Opera Mini browser. I usually check Gmail with my phone but this is my first time blogging with it. Will add tags and hyperlinks later.
In other news, huge congrats to my friend Fred on the birth of his second child Alyssa.
UPDATE: Although there was an error message on my phone after I submitted, the post appears to have gone through! :)
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison (Harper's Magazine, 1890)
A woman's romance with motherhood, green living, finance, and this heady thing called life.
There are plenty of online dating sites, most of which you need to pay to join. But there are a few 
