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Nicey Sentences

I haven’t had this section in a long time. Here’s are today’s thoughts that made me go hmmmmmm?

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‘If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.”

“Strength is the ability to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of those pieces” – Judith Viorst

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. ~~~ Mark Twain

“I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” — Marilyn Monroe

“Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” Bob Marley

“Don’t look for the water, look for the thirst.” –Rumi

“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.” – Aristotle

“You are what you think. All that you are arises from your thoughts. With your thoughts you make your world.” – Buddha

“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”

Ramdom sentences from here and there

This blog really had become just a cut and paste plagiarism zone….aahhh what the hell…my brain is on hibernation these day….here’s my stolen stuff for this week:

Depressed people think the only reality is their own depressed reality.

If you want to forget all your other troubles, wear too tight shoes.

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.

An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.

“We Learn . . .
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we see and hear
70% of what we discuss
80% of what we experience
95% of what we teach others.”

Criticize me, and I may not like you.

Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.

Encourage me, and I will not forget you.

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

I’m not normally a religious man, but if you’re up there, save me, Superman! ~~~ Homer Simpson

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.

When a question is posed ceremoniously, the universe responds.

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.

Life keeps presenting us with a lesson until we learn it

Happiness for a reason is a form of misery because the reason can be taken away from you at any time. To be happy for no reason is the happiness you want to experience.

Would think of a title later…

*checks date of last post*

*eyes pops out*

*scratches head*

*wonders how could 4 weeks pass by without her noticing it!!!*

*apologizes to the blogosphere world for being out of touch it for so long*

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Well, I got so much to talk about…but later…in the meantime enjoy some of stuff that have made me smile lately:

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While driving on the highway, my son noticed a child in the window of a car in the next lane, holding up a handwritten sign that read “Help.”

A few minutes later, the car passed him and he again glanced at it. The little boy held up the same sign and this time followed it with another, which read “My mother is singing!”

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We’d just moved to Halifax, and I was working nights in a call center. Parent-teacher interviews were coming up, and my daughter Bethany, who was in Grade 2, took it upon herself to explain to her teacher why I couldn’t be there.

“My mommy can’t come tonight,” Bethany said, “because she works nights, She’s a call girl.”

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It seemed that all our appliances had broken in the same week, and repairs were straining our budget. So when I picked up the kids from school and our Explorer started making rattling sounds, I decided that rather than burden my husband, I’d deal with it. I hadn’t reckoned on my little tattletales, however. They rushed into the house with the news: “Daddy, the Explorer was breaking down, but Mom made the noise stop!”

Impressed, my husband asked, “How did you fix it?”

“I turned up the volume on the radio,” I confessed.

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When you go to work if your name is on the building, you’re rich. If your name is on your desk, you’re middle-class. If your name is on your shirt, you’re poor.

A tourist was admiring the necklace worn by a local native.

“What is it made of?” she asked.

“Alligator’s teeth,” the native replied.

“I suppose,” she said patronizingly, “that they mean as much to you as pearls do to us.”

“Oh no,” he objected. “Anybody can open an oyster.”

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I began thinking about my own mortality after I became a widow. One day my daughter called home from college, and I announced to her, “I think it’s time for us to talk about where I would like to be buried.”

“It’s way too soon to even think of anything like that,” she snapped indignantly. Then there was a brief silence. “Wait a minute, did you say married or buried?”

When I repeated buried, she said, “Oh, okay, sure.”

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We took the family to one of those restaurants where the walls are plastered with movie memorabilia. I went off to see the hostess about reserving a table. When I returned, I found my 10- year-old granddaughter staring at a poster of Superman standing in a phone booth. She looked puzzled. “She doesn’t know who Superman is?” I asked my husband.

“Worse,” he replied. “She doesn’t know what a phone booth is.”

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Out bicycling one day with my nine-year-old granddaughter, Jacqueline, I got a little wistful. “In ten years,” I said, “you’ll want to be with your friends and you won’t go walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do now.”

Jacqueline shrugged. “In ten years you’ll be too old to do all those things anyway.”

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Halfway through a romantic dinner, my husband smiled and said, “You look so beautiful under these lights.” I was falling in love all over again when he added, “We gotta get some of these lights.”

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“An ignorant person is one who doesn’t know what you have just found out.”

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A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning, while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hang the wash outside.

That laundry is not very clean, she said, she doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.

Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: “Look! She has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this.”

The husband said: “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows!”

And so it is with life: “What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look. Before we give any criticism, it might be a good idea to check our state of mind and ask ourselves if we are ready to see the good rather than to be looking for something in the person we are about to judge. “

The Philosopher and the Fish

Quick question: What is happiness? How can you tell when you are happy? And how can you tell when someone else is happy?

I received an email from an friend with the subject line: Poor woman

Here’s the email:

Mum set for 18th baby

An Arknsas woman is pregnant with her 18th child – and says she plans to have more.

Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year’s Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers, including two sets of twins.

All of the children’s names start with the letter J – and they are all schooled at the family’s home in Tontitown.

“We’ve had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us,” she said.

The Duggars’ oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.

Mrs Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and she and her husband, Jim Bob, say they’ll keep having children as long as God wills it.

“The success in a family is first off, a love for God, and secondly, treating each other like you want to be treated,” Mr Duggar said.

“Our goal is for each one of our children to be best friends, and everybody working together to serve each other makes that happen.”

The children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are: Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph, 13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7; James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2.

So when I saw my friend, I go:

Me: why did you say ‘poor’ woman

Her: DID you NOT read HOW MANY kids she has??!!!

Me: DID you NOT see her picture?

Her: Huh???

Me: Just stare at her eyes; with a piece of paper cover her mouth and forehead so you can only see her eyes. She is smiling with her eyes, there’s bright joy in those lanterns. Very rarely you can look deep into someone’s eye and not notice any fear; in hers not only I didn’t see any fear, they were kinds soothing as well.

Her: Would you be happy being her?

Me: Me?!! No!! Of course not…well I don’t think so anyway…but the point is I’m not her. The things that make me happy probably won’t make her happy.

Her: I still think she’s not happy. No one can be happy with 18 kids!!!

This conversation kinda reminded me of the story of the philosopher and the fish. Enjoy the story:

A philosopher once said to a fish, “The purpose of life is to reason and become wise.” The fish answered, “The purpose of life is to swim and catch flies.” The philosopher muttered “Poor fish.” Back came a whisper, “Poor philosopher.”

Jack Handey Quotes

On my old blog, I used to regularly publish quotes I liked. And since tonight, well heck I bored, I thought I’ll reinitiate that tradition. Here are a couple of quotes from Jack Handey:

“When you die, if you go somewhere where they ask you a bunch of questions about your life and what you learned and all, I think a good way to get out of it is just to say, ‘No speaka English.’”

“Whenever you read a good book, it’s like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don’t like to read good books.”

“I wish I would have a real tragic love affair, and get so bummed out that I just quit my job, and become a bum for a few years, because I was thinking about doing that anyway.

“One day one of my little nephews came up to me and asked me if the equator was a real line that went around the Earth, or just an imaginary one. I had to laugh. Laugh and laugh. Because I didn’t know, and I thought that maybe by laughing he would forget what he asked me.”

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, “God is crying.” And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, “Probably because of something you did.”

“Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn’t seem quite so funny.”

“To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.”

“I think a pillow should be the peace symbol, not the dove. The pillow has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn’t have a beak to peck you with.

“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.”

“If you’re in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it’ll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they’re thinking, you can throw a real grenade.”

“Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.”

Life is like having a cup of tea

Life is like having a cup of tea.
You sit by the side of the window, lift the cup and take a careless sip,
Only to realize, somebody forgot to put the sugar.
Too lazy to go for it you somehow struggle through the sugarless cup.
Until you discover un-dissolved sugar crystal sitting at the bottom…
Author unknown

50 things about me

1. To start off, I’m an Iranian born in Kuwait
2. I have seen 32 summers and autumns pass by, but only 31 winters and springs.

3. I have lived in Kuwait, Montréal, Toronto, Isfahan and Tehran. I have traveled to England, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Turkey. And I have had 1 day visits to Boston, Pakistan, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar.
4. I currently live in Kuwait.
5. I terribly miss Tehran. Things I miss most: the mountains, vali-asr street in autumn (because of the magical beauty of the foliage and the various colors and the way the trees are suspended over the street as if they are leaning in to hug you), the smell of Jasmine eespeciallyin the mornings, cool early morning breeze, watching the sunrise or sunset at Darband, sweet smell of snow, smell of freshly baked Iranian bread, Modarees highway and its breath taking greenery, yes even the exasperating traffic.
6. I’ve been an ESL (English as a second language) teacher for over 11 years now.
7. I love love, love and love chocolate. Chocolate anything: bar, cake, ice-cream, hot drink, biscuit, pudding, and especially frosting. I once ate a kilogram of chocolate ice cream in 3 hours.
8. Listening to the sound of rain hitting the roof of my car always makes me smile
9. I have never been in love
10. I procrastinate. One good example is this blog. I created it last week but only making an entry now (pat on my back)
11. I bought a guitar just so I could sit on the beach and play “Yea Divareh” (a Persian song). The guitar is now gathering dust :)
12. I love my niece to bits.
13. I love singing in the car. Switching off the car if one of my favorite songs is on is considered as a moral sin. The right path to take in this situation is to sing along till it finishes then get out of the car
14. I have not read a book in 9 years. The last book I read was the Persian translation of “The Alchemist”. A friend forced me to read it. I can’t even remember the last English book I read.
15. Before moving to Iran I used to read at least 3 books a month
16. I have never lied to a friend. I just do not tell them the whole story (heehee)
17. Despite my best effort, I can’t stop my tears from falling when watching films, even comedies!! Hey I even get teary-eyed during cartoons, commercials, songs. Last time I cried was when listening to the line “Goodbye Michelle my little one” for the nth time in “Seasons in the sun”.
18. My spelling sucks; yes I did say I was an English teacher :)
19. I don’t consider downloading songs off the net as illegal nor immoral. I have never bought an original CD, only bootlegged ones. Is it wrong?
20. I talk to myself…yes even out loud if no one is on the room
21. My favorite 2 sounds are the sound of raindrops and waves
22. When taking a shower I always cover my ears and listen to the sound of water drop on my head.
23. Things I would like to do before I turn 35: bungee jumping, scuba diving, fly in a hot air balloon, and visit at least 2 more countries.
24. If my house is ever on fire, I would grab my diary, my picture album (including my picture CDs), and my box of mementos
25. I sign off all my emails with “Have a magical day”
26. My favorite word is “magical”
27. I over use the word “extremely” and “ass”
28. My biggest flaw is that I tend to jump to conclusions a lot. Hey blame it on my zodiac sign
29. My zodiac sign is cancer
30. I am also quite sensitive…again blame it on my sign
31. When I’m upset with someone, I could go for months without talking to them
32. My favorite album is “Affirmation” by “Savage Garden”
33. The best gift I have ever received was a book on tape translation of “The Little Prince”. The tape was narrated by Ahmed Shamloo.
34. The only French book I have ever read is the French version of this book. And yes, I have also read the English version.
35. For a while, my hobby was collecting quotations. Now I have no hobbies at all. Sad isn’t it?
36. My favorite flower is yellow daffodils; but my favorite floral scent is Jasmine. I used to watch out for those daffodil street vendors when stuck in traffic in Tehran. I thought to myself that if I knew for sure that paradise is full of that bright yellow glow of daffodil and the smell of Jasmine, I would try to be a better person so I could get in.
37. I always get lost when driving in Kuwait. I think that’s mostly because I have a little concert going on in my head :) (see no 13)
38. I hate asking for directions. I would drive around in circles for hours but would not stop for a millisecond to ask someone where the hell I am.
39. I only own 1 pair of shoes, 2 pairs of flip flops, and 1 pair of sneakers. I wonder if I have broken some kind of world record for the least pair of shoes owned by a woman. I once wore the same pair of shoes for 3 years.
40. I hate my hair. I have half a mind to shave it off and wear a different kind of wig everyday
41. I refuse to eat okra (lady fingers). Even looking at it is a bit torturous for me.
42. As a kid I once sat and prayed and begged God to punish Jerry for hurting Tom so much.
43. It used to really piss me off when people did not spell my name right after I had repeatedly corrected it for them. Now I am ok with it. Now if someone misspells my name I would just put a little curse on them :)
44. I also put curses on people who are late for appointments, meetings, outings, dates, etc :)
45. Whenever I am depressed all I have to do is go for a walk on the beach. The longest it has ever taken the beach to cheer me up is 10 seconds.
46. Films I have watched more than once within 2 days are: Forrest Gump, My big fat Greek wedding, Life is beautiful, The Others, From Karkhe to Rein (Iranian: Az kharkhe ta Rien), The color of paradise (Iranian: Raange-Khoda).
47. I can’t stand men who don’t tuck their shirts in when wearing formal attire.
48. I don’t believe in capital punishment. Not because I think it is a cruel and inhumane, but because I think it is not cruel enough. The best way to punish rapists and molesters is to put them in solitary confinement for life. I also believe that the sentence for these 2 crimes should be a lot harsher than homicide since when you rape or molest someone you have scarred them for life.
49. I don’t do mornings
50. I once got detention in primary school because my teacher realized that the nickname I had given him “Mr. Soosky” meant Mr. Cockroach in Farsi. I don’t know why I called him that. I actually had a little crush on him. Anyway, he made me write 500 times, “I will not call Mr Stanistosky (I think that was his name) Mr. Soosky”.