Prang

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Prang Sam Yot

Prang Sam Yot, Lopburi

Prang, in architecture, is a tower-like spire, usually richly carved. It’s a common Hindu and Buddhist shrine element from the Khmer Empire. In Thailand prangs appear only with important Buddhist temples. They were adapted by Buddhist builders around 1350 – 1767 in the Ayutthya Kingdom and 1782 – 1932 in the Rattanakosin Kingdom. ~ Source

It’s the annual monkey party in the Thai countryside of Lopburi.  Prang Sam Yot is famous for being the party venue every year. Those prangs teemed with monkeys when I arrived. I stood opposite while deciding which entrance to approach.

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Changes

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Bible, Da Vinci Code

In this post: Booking Through Thursday and Thursday Thirteen

Charlie Quillen asks:

Has a book ever inspired you to change anything in your life, fiction or non-fiction alike?

Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad inspired me to change the way I look at money.  Kate White’s Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do helped me change the way I evaluate myself.  The Da Vinci Code inspired me to change my attitude toward The Bible.  The entertainment of puzzles in Dan Brown’s work and its references to concepts that ring a bell around times long ago when the Bible was spoon-fed to me, sparked a fancy to rediscover non-fiction mystery that the Bible has abundance of, as well as advice and knowledge that never gets old.

Thursday 13: Inspiring changes. Which ones speak to you best?

1. Change brings opportunity. ~ Nido Qubein

2. Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein. ~ Life’s Little Instruction Book

3. Your life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change. ~ Jim Rohn

4. Use what talents you possess, the woods will be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. ~ Henry van Dyke

5. Each person’s task in life is to become an increasingly better person. ~ Leo Tolstoy

6. Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart. ~ Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford commencement address

7.  The greatest mistake you can do in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. ~ Elbert Hubbard

8. Twenty years from now you will be disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~ Mark Twain

9. Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix                     ~ Christina Baldwin

10. We all have big changes in our lives, that are more or less a second chance.      ~ Harrison Ford quoted by Gary Jenkins, Imperfect Hero

11. Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, humiliated before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, raped before you, yet someone survived. You can do anything you choose to do. ~ Maya Angelou

12. We have a strategic plan. It’s called ‘doing things.’ ~ Herb Kelleher

13. Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful is it is encouraging because it means things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.     ~King  Whitney Jr

Obsequies

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Cambodia

It was a quiet Khmer morning. Friends and I were traveling to Siem Reap. The van we were riding in slowed down by a procession. Curiosity managed to snap a shot of what looked like a miniature house carried by a truck. As it disappeared into gathering speed I saw a coffin inside it.

The deceased apparently had something thousands of his countrymen we visited at the Killing Fields the day before never had – an obsequies.

One Hit Wonders

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One-hit wonder

This week’s music theme had me wondering where have all those songs gone. But then that is why they are called one hit wonders.  Thanks to danboe.net  for his VH1’s Top 100 one hit wonders list. Memories came flooding back.

There was this color poster of Spandau Ballet in an aunt’s room where I hid a bowl of mackerel sardines under her bed. Those late night meals, pranks, and listening to True

Today after twenty-four years is my first time back to Electric Avenue. During school breaks, an uncle would send us cousins to a chicken bar-b-cue restaurant for dinner where this song was played all the time on FM radio –

At home, mother, a long-time church board member and strict, conservative christian banned songs she thought lacked virtues and were a bad influence on me. As someone educated from first grade to college by church-run schools, I of course thought differently and secretly enjoyed forbidden Macarena 

Grandma liked waltzes, My Country Tis of Thee and The Star-Spangled Banner. Her first teachers were American soldiers, and she was fond of Abide With Me.

This post is shared with Monday’s Music Moves Me of
XmasDolly, Shewbridges of Central Florida, JAmerican Spice
and Stacy Uncorked and with Mel’s Memory Lane

Literary pet peeves

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The Phrontistery

In this post: Booking Through Thursday and Thursday Thirteen

Bookish Sarah asks:

What are your literary “pet peeves”?

Put too many swear words in a story and I lose interest. Too much cursing sounds like limited vocabulary, stunted creativity. The other one is something I have experienced for the first time – a novel with an unlikeable character. The Wise Woman is my first Philippa Gregory. If I wasn’t fond of historical fiction (besides thinking that Gregory is brilliant at her genre) I wouldn’t have minded not finishing the book. The heroine is so unlikeable almost every page developed in me a distaste of her that even her death in the conclusion didn’t convince me it redeemed her. I want my reading experience (outside work) to be a pleasure; not characters that I don’t enjoy.

 Thursday 13: Unusual words that begin with letter N

You may be familiar with or have encountered the following words already. If you do not know what they mean, I hope you have as much fun guessing as I had fun putting them together. 

1. nephogram – is a photograph of (a) lungs     (b) diaphragm     (c) clouds
2. nodated – means (a) knotted     (b) sprained     (c) inundated
3. neuralgiform – is like or shaped like a (a) brain     (b) nerve     (c) esophagus
4. nidify – to build a (a) nest     (b) an invalid argument     (c) wooden box
5. nesiote – means living (a) by a lake     (b) on a dessert     (c) on an island
6. ninon –  is (a) silk      (b) cotton     (c) taffeta
7. nacarat –  means (a) tangerine     (b) bright orange-red     (c) gold
8. naology – is architecture study of (a) a temple     (b)a manor house     (c)a castle
9. natiform – is shaped like (a)a nose     (b) buttocks     (c) hips
10. nemoricolous – means living in (a) valleys     (b) forests     (c) mountains
11. nervure – means vein of a (a)petal     (b) leaf     (c) fruit
12. nipter – is ceremony of washing the (a) feet     (b) nose     (c) hands
13. nepenthe – is something capable of making one forget suffering such as              (a) a drink     (b) an inhalant     (c) a liniment

Answers: 1. (c) clouds   2. (a) knotted   3. (b) nerve   4. (a) nest   5. (c) an island        6. (a) silk   7. (b) bright orange-red   8. (a) temple   9. (b) buttocks   10. (b) forests   11. (b) leaf   12. (a) feet   13. (a) drink

Courtesy to The Phrontistery for the list.

Nesiote

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Koh Chang

According to the Phrontistery, nesiote is an obscure word. But defined, nesiote sounds as modern as can be.  It means living on an island. My family trooped to an island for a reunion last year.

This is part of the Fisherman’s Village on Elephant Island in Thailand. Nesiote probably applies best to fishermen who live here –

Albert Einstein wishes that “somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.”

Laurie Anderson claims: “as a New Yorker, I’m someone who lives on an island and looks across to America.”

George Gordon Byron in a letter to Thomas Moore mentions “the greenest island of my imagination.”

This was rather a grey morning but my reverie was full of bright colors as I maneuvered these rocks. A world-class violinist washes up on shore.  Ladies in Lavender fades to a fact: I just love island – living during holidays.

ABC Wednesday

Mabsoot

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Anne Bronte's grave

Are you a mabsoot?  The world will most probably light up if you are. What makes you a mabsoot?

This blue sky holiday on a sunflower field made me go, “and I think to myself what a wonderful world!”  I was quite a mabsoot.

The Dalai Lama says “happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” I thought I would make a little experiment; see what would an action mean to me so off I shopped in Chatuchak, a huge weekend market known to bring seasoned shoppers to their knees.  I came home with sore feet, but thinking the Dalai Lama was right.

What really made me a mabsoot after shopping like a madwoman was my vintage loot.  It makes my heart dance as merrily as it did when I browsed the graveyard at St. Mary’s church in the shadow of Scarborough Castle and found this –

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

That’s Abraham Lincoln. And I tend to agree with him. Making up your mind to be happy is easy, and not as costly as shopping.

There’s a Facebook page called Mabsoot. On its ‘About’ you will read that it’s only for people of religion like laughter.  The page profile image made me laugh and decide that I’ll be nothing else than a mabsoot today, and hopefully always.

You have figured out mabsoot already, haven’t you? The Urban dictionary defines mabsoot as a happy person. The origin is Arabic and why they say it’s commonly used in Hebrew slang, I don’t know, don’t care. It’s just nice to be a mabsoot.

ABC Wednesday

Burlesque and a pea

It’s the Burlesque trailer over Sense and Sensibility film scenes. Only today there’s no sense, no sensibility, and I add, no worry. As a Jane Austen fan I find this brilliantly creative and it makes me laugh.

 

I’m so amused I got a pea; which reminds me of Tuscany. You know Under the Tuscan Sun when Patti says, ‘I gotta (go) pee!’  

Bryant Oden takes me back to that Biology geek in college whose facial expression while mourning the disappearance of his lab snake was so funny. Silly snake probably went for a pea… err pee… err whichever in Grandma’s garden. 

I make no sense, do I? Perhaps this song does.

XmasDolly, Shewbridges of Central Florida, JAmerican Spice
and Stacy Uncorked.

Love at Calvary

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York Minster

Utmost love most pure
divinely capable of
crimson sacrifice

Why He took the cross
is beyond human grasp but
we must be worth it

Nailed at Calvary
He paid the ultimate price
that mortals may live

The flower was hanging by a balcony restaurant where I had late dinner from a book club session (in Bangkok).  At first I though it’s called Flaming Torch, but I am not sure really. It has purple tips.

 The statue is inside Northern Europe’s largest gothic cathedral – York Minster. I snapped it after attending vespers.

Happy Easter!

Haiku my Heart    Friday Floral Fotos     Friendship Friday

Looking glass

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Charles Cooley, Communication Theories, Lady Diana, Looking glass self

The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. ~ William Makepeace Thackery

Looking glass, besides being a mirror, has several other references. It is a novel series, a computer server, a place in three US states, a name of an 1877 native American leader, among others.

In communication theories looking glass is an interactionist sociological concept.

Charles Cooley is known for his concept of the looking glass self. That is, a person’s self grows out of society’s interpersonal interactions and perceptions of others.

Children learn how others perceive them – “You’re a good boy,” or “You do nothing but get into trouble.”

A cousin tells his 5-year old daughter, “you’re really pretty, my child, aren’t you?”

His daughter answers, pouting as if annoyed that her Dad seems to have only just discovered her looks, “of course I’m pretty, Dad. A lot of people have already told me that.”

You may have known people who believe they are not attractive, although you think they look nice.  The mother of that girl with a pretty solid belief of herself as pretty, is quite attractive but doesn’t think she is. Fortunately that is not the case with her daughter.

http://themachoresponse.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html

When I was doing research for a case study on communication ethics, I read that Lady Diana said in an interview that she’s plain. I wondered if the news that she’s considered one of the world’s most beautiful women was ever reflected on her looking glass.

As a kid I once wrapped my head with a white towel like a coif and looked into my mother’s vintage looking glass. That was some kind of curiosity though, not people’s perception of me. I didn’t become a nun.

So I was then a carefree teenager with huge potential for truancy when in the middle of happily neglecting my meager piano ability, I was required to accompany a choir with piano music in a concert less than three weeks away. Struggling, panicking and ready to disappear into uselessness, the music director exposed me as “our pianist.”  Although a near death experience due to a nearly fatal embarrassment almost shrouded my looking glass, the two-thousand audience applause after the performance confirmed I was indeed their pianist.

ABC Wednesday