if i only knew...

I am reading Sylvia Beach's

I am reading Sylvia Beach's book on her Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company. I just found this lovely description of what the little eclectic shop is about by someone who stayed there once: Paris Shakespeare & Company

Combining two of my food

Combining two of my food favourites, indian flavors and carrots: 7 Indian Carrot Recipes, most notable is the Carrot-Tomato Soup.

I am cooking Split Yellow

I am cooking Split Yellow Pea Curry right now, and it looks yummy, but if you ever cook this, count at least 2 times the cooking time that is in the recipe. The yellow peas need at least an hour to cook, not 20 minutes!

Interesting intelligence/learning ability test: LDRC

Interesting intelligence/learning ability test: LDRC - Home - Projects - Multiple Intelligence Inventory, although my scores didn't reveal anything new... i am weak in Maths and good in languages and visual things. And i am a slacker in sports and can't sing well. :)

Linguistic 42
Mathematics 33
Visual/Spatial 47
Body/Kinesthetic 35
Naturalistic 38
Music 35
Interpersonal 40
Intrapersonal 38

I finished Hornby's About a

I finished Hornby's About a Boy yesterday, and i loved it! I have never read a book after seeing the movie made of it before, but this time, i was pleasantly surprised, and the book was even more enjoyable than the movie. At certain points the story develops differently, but that's not what made it so funny and readable, but the writing, the language. Because 80-90% of what i read on the web is US-based, it felt so good to read British English again! I used to read a lot of English style and teen magazines and knew all the British slang, but lately i fpund myself using American English all the time. This book brushed up my language again.

Next book is "Fateless" by Imre Kertesz (see previous entry). I am of course reading the original Hungarian book, not the English translation and i am glad i do, because the writer himself said that the current English translation is very poor quality and he wouldn't be surprised if upon reading his book in English, people would be wondering how a book like that could have got the Nobel prize. The book will be re-translated and a new edition will be published in the future.

The Google guys have done

The Google guys have done it again, they got a really basic need (the need for up-to-date news in several subjects and regions on one page) and stripped off all the superfluous and unnecessary things that we had to put up with so far when we had to rely on other sources to satisfy this need. It's the same affect as it was when Google replaced Altavista as *the* search engine. Altavista was OK in the beginnings, but then it grew into a huge and unusable monster that did everything else, BUT searching efficiently. Now here's Google News for us. Only news, from several sources, clean layout, no ads, no superflouos design. And... to top it all, there are no human editors behind all this, just a computer algorythm. I can't stop admiring what Google does.

Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian

Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian author won the Nobel Prize for literature yesterday. The book is Fateless, a striking account of the Holocaust in Hungary, the events drawn from Kertesz' own life. He was one of the few Auschwitz and Buchenwald refugees who survived the horrors of the Holocaust. Only two of his novels have been published in English, Fateless (see above) and Kaddish for a Child Not Born. These jumped to the top of amazon's bestseller lists within hours of the announcement, Fateless was #1, currently #2, the two editions of Kaddish... also both in the top 25 (#10 and #22 at the moment).

Now this will finally - hopefully - put Hungarian literature on the shelves of bookstores around the world, because it has been very neglected so far. In Germany and Austria, Sandor Marai (Embers, Memoir of Hungary, 1944-1948
) has been leading bestseller lists recently, and Peter Eszterhazy's (in stock at amazon: A Little Hungarian Pornography, She Loves Me) books have also recently been published in German. But that still leaves much of the Hungarian classics in the shade, so i will mention a few names here hoping that you will check them out:
My favourite poet ever is Dezso Kosztolanyi, and while amazon doesn't seem to have any of his poetry in stock, read one of his novels, Anna Edes to get an insight into a slice of 20th century Hungarian history. If you ever come across Kosztolanyi poems, read and absorb them!
Krudy Gyula and Zsigmond Moricz are also some of my top picks for entering the world of Hungarian literature.

If you are familiar with

If you are familiar with Budapest, you know that it has lots of bridges... 9 exactly. One of these is the perfect venue for suicidal people to go and try to jump. It's a beautiful bridge, painted a lovely green color, with a beautifully curved metal structure. It's very easy to climb up all the way to the top, it's essentially just a walk up a ramp, which is wide enough so you don't get wiggly, and not steep at all. Until the end. The last third of the ramp gets steeper and steeper. You can see a photo of the bridge here (opens in new window).

I can imagine walking up. You walk, it's nice, you see the magnificent view of the city, you walk, and the top is so close, and you never realize that it gets harder to walk. And then you're there.

Then you sit down and get second thoughts. You realize that this is not a good idea after all. You decide to come down. But it looks sooooooo steep now. No way would you make it down. The cars and trams are zooming by below you. And then - because you took your mobile phone for backup in case something holds you back from jumping - you call the Fire Fighters. They arive within a few minutes, ambulances, police, firemen all start running around like little ants 100 meters under you. You are sorry for the whole mess by now.

Then two firemen briskly walk up to you on the same ramp, the same way, one of them even without a rope attached, just himself like you did about 20 minutes ago. They get to you and ask you standard questions. Then they lift the crane up to you and you get into the basket and down to the ground.

This is what i witnessed from below the bridge's ramp on my way home just about an hour ago. I think it may have been a guy who just walked up there because he wanted a bit of adventure and hang out there for a little while, and then realized that he can't get down. But he also may have wanted to commit suicide. When i walked across the bridge he was sitting on top, not standing like they usually do, and he looked like he is talking on a mobile phone.

This happens about once each month on this bridge. Do they *think* of the suicide aspect when they design the bridges nowadays? This of course is a bridge that was built 1896, so i guess it wasn't a consideration then... but is it today?

This day in history: 1940

This day in history:
1940 - John Lennon was born
1975 - his son, Sean Lennon was born
1980 - I was born. I see a pattern here... :)

Today is the last day

Today is the last day ever that i can say i am 21. Tomorrow i turn 22. I have no positive or negative feelings about the age, it's just a birthday. In fact, the whole day will look like more of a completely ordinary day than a birthday... Bence is in France, so we will talk on the phone for about a minute, that's all, my friends are busy with school and whatnot, so no partying in sight, so... what's left? I will probably go out for dinner with a friend or something.

I have seen quite a

I have seen quite a few books and websites about web site color palettes, and creating color harmony, but nothing as cool as
ColorMatch 5K, where you can find 6 matching colors for your site in seconds. Incredibly cool!

I saw the Royal Tenenbaums

I saw the Royal Tenenbaums this weekend! (I fell like i will get movie overdose if i watch another movie in the following month... The past two weeks i saw 4, four, vier, négy, quatro movies!) It was a hilariuos movie, sooooo much fun! And of course Ben Stiller delivered yet another of his BRILLIANT comical performances, he was so made for this role. If you haven't seen it yet, go see it!

OK, i know i said

OK, i know i said i find these annoying, but i just found another cutie. :)

Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

I still can't believe it,

I still can't believe it, yesterday i was finally able to sign up for not one, but TWO of the1000 Journals. And it looks like i will be contributing to at least one other through nervousness. I kept hitting refresh last night at about 10 minute intervals and i catched the first one where i m #5 and the other one he was posting too... when i went to the site there were 9 slots open, but by the time i clicked the sign up link someone sneaked in before me, so i am #2, but still. What fun! Of course it took again only 2 minutes for the journal to fill up completely, i am wondering how many people keep refreshing the site and trying all day long like i was yesterday...

Today's livejournal find: ikea (yes

Today's livejournal find: ikea (yes - it's a userID)

Just posting here so i

Just posting here so i don't forget to read it: Bookslut lesson: How to Choose a Book by Its Cover
. Sounds interesting. :)

Ok, i am so tired

Ok, i am so tired of quizzes popping up everywhere, but i couldn't resist:

what color chucks are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Here is a little puzzle

Here is a little puzzle for you... how many ikea things can you find in my room?

I was looking at National

I was looking at National Novel Writing Month yesterday but decided that i would never be able to come up with a coherent storyline that runs 175 pages and is also somewhat interesting so that people would actually read it. However, i could maybe do decently with just character descriptions. Which is exactly what this interactive novel is about. A very cool idea. I wonder if i could come up with a similar concept that would be cool for a novel (NaNoWriMo)?

As a complete sidenote reading, seeing, saying, hearing the "word" NaNoWriMo *always* makes me think of Nanaimo, the name of a SkyTrain station in Vancouver. Which is kind of nice, because i alwys get this feeling that i am teleported to the moment when i was travelling the SkyTrain and the announcer announced NaNAImo. In this very cool accent and emphasising the NAI part. It always sounded so interesting so the moment and the sound and the whole experience just stuck in my mind, even thought the last time i was there was January 2001.

I signed up with LiveJournal

I signed up with LiveJournal today. It's just such a great community, i didn't want to miss out. :) Now i have to figure out how to keep both a blog and post on LJ without going insane or feeling schizophrenic (sp?). :) Anyway check me out there too.

And if you have a trick on the above mentioned issue (blog & journal), let me know (comment or email).

Interesting random bits about the

Interesting random bits about the Nordic countries (my obsession) at The Nordic Countries' LiveJournal

Sounds like a good snack:

Sounds like a good snack: Mojo Potatoes. Reading the recipe reminded me of the yummy spicy potato wedges we had when we were forced to go to a McDonald's on our greek holida on Crete in July. I swear i would be the last one to go to McDonald's in a foreign country (or even home), but it was so hot and we couldn't find ANY restaurant for 20 minutes, so we had no choice.

But... the experience was much better that i initially expected, because they had these special Greek foods: grilled chicken sandwich in pita with salad and the potato wedges. It was yummy, although a bit McDonalds tasting as all food are there...

Interesting Mango Salsa recipe

Interesting Mango Salsa recipe

Oh, i have a new

Oh, i have a new addiction: read about The Game Neverending at caterina's blog the other day and signed up to be a tester. Oh, boy. I have to say it. It's better than Sim City. There - i said it. It's only in alpha testing, the whole game will be available in 2003, but it's so much fun, i am addicted and i have only been playing for a day. :)