Mindfulness for breakfast

It's these days' buzzword, so the Guardian came up with this catchy quiz (why not?):

How mindful are you? – quiz

My favourite question:

8. Your favourite mantra is:

1. You are not your thoughts
2. This too shall pass
3. I am an elite warrior
4. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

How could you have been more productive today?

Sustainability is pretty clearly one of the world's most important goals; but what groups can really make environmental progress in leaps and bounds? Chris McKnett makes the case that it's large institutional investors. He shows how strong financial data isn't enough, and reveals why investors need to look at a company's environmental, social and governance structures, too.

Coraline [2009]

This is the second feat I explore in the recently acclaimed Cool New Way of selecting films, as I first got fascinated with Coraline's soundtrack and then decided to watch it. And sorry I feel not, as this is exactly the sort of tale that I am currently open to ingesting:

The mescaline-trip-tinged Coraline is like Pan’s Labyrinth without the self-serious pretense to prestige. Director Henry Selick’s first return to stop motion animation in 13 years (and his first full non-Monkeybone movie without Tim Burton’s guiding hand) centers on the title character, a little girl bored both by her relocation to a baroque, off-the-map manor and her inattentive parents, who won’t indulge her adventurous spirit. Serendipitously, she discovers a small, wallpapered-over door in her gray, unfurnished living room; though bricked-up by day, by night it leads to an other-dimensional Wonderland, opening onto a rabbit-hole-ish portal, a fleshy touch-tunnel reminiscent of the birth canal. It’s as though she’s crawling back into the womb...

Keep tuning in to the Cinepinion review on top, or taste a different take here.

Identity-challenged

This is a time when I should be studying up grammar for my upcoming exam, and instead I'm here making notes of last week. But noted it needs be.
Having my identity challenged has been the supreme feat:
It all started on Sunday afternoon, when my wallet disappeared along the way between the florist's and my aunt and uncle's house. A 10 minutes walk which had been scrupulously scrutinised for the remainder of the afternoon and night. End-result: nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not once had I imagined I would be scooping rubbish bins that weekend, nor that it would amount to nothing once it happened.
Missing: my ID, driver's license, 2 debit cards, money for paying up the house's bills [yes, a significant amount], and a bunch of highly personal highly emotionally-charged memorabilia.

The next day came along with calls from unknown numbers, which I had missed, and kept regretting - thinking that they might have been from either the Police or some unknown benefactor who could've possibly found my stuff. But no; the truth surged on Tuesday, when it became clear that my family had been the one playing pranks on me. [no comment, really, as none's needed at this point.]

It was also on Monday that I found out that, whereas my passport is good enough to identify me for bank purposes for the Romanian Commercial Bank, that does not apply in the case of the Romanian Development Bank.
And then, the walks to the Police headquarters started: every day putting together one more piece of info, hoping that it might be the day I could submit my papers for having my ID redone. By the way, that didn't happen as yet, and I hope to be able to make it happen tomorrow.

In a different vein, this thread had also been pursed at my new workplace, where 'the System' [huh?!] couldn't process my data, therefore not allowing for my access to 'the System', therefore restricting my... well, everything: from owning a badge to help me move around to an account and its associated password, to everything else having to do with a normal employee's daily endeavours.
What's more, the team I've just joined had already had 2 other persons going by the same first name and the same nickname as myself. And being the newcomer meant struggling to find a different nick, which I dreaded and still do, as it drives me utterly insane. It's my name, okay?! This is how I've been called for years now, and I don't want to have to change that just because I'm the newest one in the department really. Does this make any sense to you? Yeah, to me neither.

By Friday afternoon, 'the System' was finally able to accept and start processing my existence and its implications for its working. But that didn't fully sort out my identity issues. More time, more creativity and more patience will be required for that.

Job Interview Question

Though this was (most likely) not the most important question on my last job interview, it was the most difficult to answer for me. So why should I care? Well, because I'm wondering whether it's a common question and, if so, how should I prepare for it.
So, amongst heaps of other stuff (can't remember 90% of them!), the interviewers (2 of them, insisting) asked:

How do your friends see you?, What do they think of you?

I stared blankly.
Then tried putting some pieces together for some sort of answer.
I was still starring blankly.
The fact is, that question caught me entirely off-guard. Of all the questions in the world, it had to be one about how others see me(!). I was baffled. Not because it was an impossibly difficult question per se, but because I had no idea about what I could possibly answer. I wasn't prepared to use my creative skills that early in the interviewing process, and I had no pre-considered answer to give.
I tried asking for details: what sort of friends?, for how long should our friendship have lasted by now?, what should their backgrounds be, in relation to me?, etc, in a desperate try to stall. C'mon brains, c'mon, Think of some answer,...
... Any answer!!...

I did mutter some random adjectives in the end, as a last minute solution, and no, they hadn't been thought out either. [Perhaps this better explains my recent fascination with M.'s post on a certain topic.]

Aaaanyway, here's what I'm wondering: Is this an usual question? Should I get better prepared for its rising its ugly head next time?
If so, what sort of answers are expected from me? Seriously. I have no idea what any of my friends think of me, so I'm not prepared to answer it that way. By this definition, who's a friend anyway? Is it only about real friends, or does it include acquaintances too? Argh, I'm lost. Ideas, anyone?

1421: The Year China Discovered the World

How much fantasy can one bid on a historic re-interpretation of scattered facts and still get away with it? This seems to be the balance that Mr. Menzies is trying to strike in this book - might that be for fun, for curiosity, or for the sake of playing mind games and trying to re-write history at the same time.
The fact that the book's controversial is an understatement: its potential is so great that it might actually be able to redefine the notion of 'controversy'. So if you can play along with that, then it won't frustrate you to read it. But if it's hard facts proven by science alone, this might come as a bit of an off-tracker.
Take CSI, House M.D. or Dexter and apply the sort of investigation scenarios done in those scripts to history -- almost 600 years ago. This does sound a bit tricky in itself, doesn't it? And it gets even trickier as the entirety of the evidence it brings to supporting the ideas [plural] behind the writing is circumstantial, at best.

So what's the big mystery behind it? It's a re-conceptualisation of the Discoveries and who had really undertaken them: Mr. Menzies basically says it in the title of his book: he considers that it was the Chinese rather than the Europeans who had first discovered and mapped the world as we know it - and with highly accurate results, for that matter. He then goes on to say that the Europeans managed to get hold of these Chinese maps at the same time that the Chinese decided to plunge into a [new?] age of isolationism.
This would sound as an agreeable theory at first -never mind that you've never heard of it on the telly or otherwise- if it hadn't been for the manner in which it's unraveled: the way to deal with facts is by starting off with the assumption that they will prove the theory/ies, followed by the assumption that they do in fact prove it/them and concluding with the confirmation that it's all been proven. [For more on punctual criticisms look here.]

[Finally, the translation of the Romanian copy I've read doesn't help much either: many times I had to re-translate the book back into English in order to understand the message behind the words. Possibly this has been one of the greatest difficulties in my appreciation of it.]

Bottom line: if you can find humour in new theories, this is the holidays book for you! If you are however easily bored with facts which might not come as straightforward and are rather seeking the ultimate truth, then this book should prove as rather challenging instead.

[Image credits go here.]
P.S. This is the book's website: 1421.tv

The Ticking

As the word spread, I decided to give graphic novels a go.
This was the 1st try:

Renee French, The Ticking (Top Shelf Productions, 2005)
I am sure there is someone out there-- in fact, I am sure there are a lot of some-ones out there-- who can read through The Ticking a few times and tell you all sorts of things about the subtext, the symbolism, and all sorts of other under-the-surface stuff about this book. I am not one of them. I'm just here to tell you that The Ticking is one of the flat-out oddest productions I have encountered in the universe of graphic literature.
Edison Steelhead's mother dies in childbirth. His father sees that Edison has inherited his own deformities, and sets about trying to get Edison plastic surgery to make him look more normal. Edison himself isn't sure about all this, and flees from the necessity of these confrontations into his career as an aspiring artist. Edison's father then brings home a sister for Edison-- Patrice, a chimpanzee, and Edison and Patrice begin down the road to sibling-hood, one not smooth at the best of times. And that's just the beginning. Things get odder from there.
This is a book both amusing (how amusing you will find it depends largely on your capacity for appreciation of black humour) and horrifying, often in the same panel. French's panorama is the world of the deformed, but [...] French approaches her subjects with a warmth and humour that translates to the audience's ability to better relate to the book's subjects-- always a wonderful thing.
If the book has a problem, it's that it could have been longer. French's impressionist style is wonderful, and the holes that are left are done with an obvious sense of planning, but I'd still have liked to see a little more of... well, everything. The relationship between Patrice and Edison's father in particular stands out as not quite covered enough, but the Patrice-and-Edison scenes, some of the best in this always-strong book, are too few.

As reviewed on Amazon.
To my agreement, the "Unbearable, but beautiful" title of the review made for a very appropriate choice.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: an Intro

Aldous Huxley v. George Orwell - black & white cartoon teaser here: 2 minutes guaranteed to have been well spent!

How is Everything?

I've already said this by word of mouth and to confirm its validity, here it is again, written down: this is for the first time that I read a book -based on which a film had been made- after having seen the film.
Everything is Illuminated the film appeared as humourously juvenile, culturally ambivalent and somehow innocent because of the imagery; it's only much later, during the reading of the book, that I've learnt that Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz was the one playing the role of Alex, which only added some more colour to the entire enterprise.

Everything is Illuminated the book [excerpts from which you can see here] provided for a much more comprehensive experience; to start with, that's formally because it works with two narrators rather than one: Jonathan [the author] and Alex [the Ukrainian 'translator' & later almost-friend(?)]:

Jonathan Safran Foer, designated by Alex as "the hero of this story" is travelling to Ukraine to look for Augustine, the woman who supposedly saved his grandfather during the second world war. All Jonathan has to help him in his search is a photograph of Augustine. Jonathan does not know Ukrainian, and hires the services of Alex as translator. Alex's skills in this direction are dubious, but he makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in competence. Accompanying the two in their search is Alex's grandfather, and their bitch, Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior.

This stylistic manner is further emphasized in that

[t]he spectrum between the two voices that construct the novel highlights the remarkable versatility of the English language, whose contours become unpredictable in Alex's use of it. [...] As raconteur, Alex's role is to tell the story of the search, and in the process, the story of his grandfather as well.

On the other hand,

Jonathan .. (re)constructs the (his)story of Trachimbrod. [...] So if Alex's language is the domain of the novel's stylistic creative endeavours, in Jonathan's story, reality and reliability become areas in which to assert the power of the imagination. There is also the fact that Alex occasionally embellishes facts or even lies while translating to Jonathan. All these collude to create a unique world where either language or/and the story resist an unambiguous interpretation.
Everything is Illuminated comes to be assembled together not only by the two voices relating events independently, but also dialoguing with each other. [...]
Foer's experimentation with Alex's style includes malapropisms like "rotated" for "turned", "luxuriated" for "enjoyed", "premium" for "important", or "appeased" for "pleased", used interchangeably in the way of an English language learner whose attention to vocabulary is ignorant of the context in which words make meaning. In general, Foer achieves this effect by having Alex use superlative adjectives and adverbs ("I did not yearn to mention this, but I will" says Alex in a letter to Jonathan on p.52, and "Enough of my miniature talking," he remarks on p.53) where moderate words would do.

[as written here]

Undoubtedly, the power of the writing style together with the magic of the imagined stories work together for the overall captivation of the reader, as the book seems to be interacting and illuminating based on a personalised timeline which leaves one guessing what would be next.
Obviously these were enticing enough to lead to many appreciative critiques, to a film and a book's website, as well as winning the author the Guardian First Book Award of that year.
So what is left not illuminated you ask; the question of a different topic as dealt with by the same author.

Here's the film's trailer, in case you were curious: