from "shadowqueen"

this is the reason i matchmake.

"wouldn't it be lovely to watch two people fall in love?"

Love Stories with a Jagged Edge

I've been having one of those days - you know, the kind where at the end of it, all you want to do is wrap yourself in blankets and be looked after by your kind and caring soulmate (all prince charmings welcome to apply :P). I think it's partially to do with the book I'm reading, a collection of "love stories with a jagged edge", written by Mary Westmacott, more famously known as Agatha Christie. The stories are very poignant and bitter sweet, very intense, and always very sad. The writing is rich and vivid, and oh-so-compelling, but somehow leaves me feeling very moody and blue. Things feel off-kilter whenever I finish one of her stories - the awkwardness and distress that the characters feel somehow manage to weave itselves into the fabric of my day, throwing off my interactions with other people.

Which makes a perfect foundation for a night of social interactions - i.e. a salsa night! Dancing is all about interactions - from the slight pressure that signals a lead into a move, to the interpretation of the pressure, to the actual execution of the move. Yeah. it was a 'good' night.

Hidden Treasures

I was in the middle of this very sweet chick lit book the other day, when I came across the cutest message handwritten onto the page. It was right after a potentially crazy chapter signaling that obstacles were about to befall the heroine of the novel. I took a picture of it -

Mwahaha ** Yea shes doomed! Don't stop reading now! Ur 1/2 way there :D

I'm usually the kind of girl that hates it when people write in their books or crease the spines, and I'm not fond of the abbreviation "Ur", but I have to admit that I loved this little message - it was so adorable! A welcome surprise :) And it definitely made me want to continue on reading - perhaps even more than the plot of the book itself. You can tell it's written by a girl - the handwriting is round and pretty, and spaced evenly enough that it looks girly. And even without the handwriting - the smilie face tells it all.

To whoever who wrote this - I'll never know who you are, but I love that you cared enough about this book and its future readers to encourage them to keep on with the book. Thanks - your message definitely helped.

Now discover your strengths...

The other day, my aunt recommended that I try this book, "Now Discover Your Strengths," by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. It's premise is that people spend too much time trying to minimizing their weaknesses when they should instead be finding time to maximize their strengths. People don't spend enough time nurturing their talents and abilities, which is silly, because these are the things that will push us onto bigger and better things. Rather we waste a lot of effort forcing ourselves into uncomfortable situations so that we can feel less deficient. While I don't completely agree - I think that if you see a weakness in an area and you want to get better at it, there's nothing wrong with that. At the same time however, we should spend more time being aware of our strengths - our familiarity with them will help us make better decisions.

The book discusses 34 potential strengths or themes that each person could have, and provides a password for an online test so that you can discover your five dominant themes. After the test, I found out that my themes are:

• Arranger: I'm an organizer.
  
• Individualization: It's all about the individual and why they're unique
  
• Responsibility: Well that speaks for itself.
  
• Harmony: "In your view we are all in the same boat, and we need this boat to get where we are going. It is a good boat (lol). There is no need to rock it to just to show that you can."
  
• Significance: It's all about me! me! me!
  

Isn't that kind of interesting? I recognize each of these elements in myself, but I never thought that these five traits would be my dominant five. Arranger - well, that makes sense, I like to plan things and I adapt easily, because I can rearrange things as I see fit. Individualization - totally didn't see that one coming, I always thought I was more of a generalist. Responsibility - I am an older sister lol! Harmony - always has been important to me, but I've learnt the value of confrontation and arguing at Columbia. Significance - surprises me actually. Now I just have to see how the pieces all fit together...

The 2.5 Pillars of Wisdom (the von igelfeld trilogy)

My current read is a book by Alexander McCall Smith, a sort-of Scottish author who has a very dry sense of humor. Fittingly, I first read one of his books in Glasglow last summer entitled "44 Scotland Street," which is a story about these wacky characters who live in the same building in Edinburgh. It's not the usual kind of book I read - people who know me know that I tend to steer towards fantasy/sci-fi or romance - but at the time, it seemed like a worthwhile read. Surprisingly, I was captivated - and not because I was on a plane flying 10,000 miles above ground. "44 Scotland Street" had some pretty impressive characters and (to me) showed the strange sides of "normal" people. I went on to read the next two books in the series before returning to my ever-faithful faeries.

But the other day at the library, I picked up a copy of Smith's "The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom - the von igelfeld trilogy." The little blurb on the back immediately intrigued me:

"Welcome to the extraordinary world of Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, an unnaturally tall and memorable character whose sublime insouciance is a blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and Inspector Clouseau's hapless gaucherie.

Von Igelfeld inhabits the rarefied world of the Institute of Romance Philology at Regensburg, which he shares with his equally tall and equally ridiculous colleagues, Professors Florianus Prinzel and Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer."

Just the names of the professors are ridiculous :). I'm midway through the book right now, and adore it! It pokes fun at pompous and serious von Igelfeld who spends his life thinking about the contradictions of the phrases "x, a friend of cardinals and popes" and "x, a friend of a cardinal and a pope." I love how the most random things are discussed in the most serious manner - from the merits of the sausage dog (to which almost a whole chapter, as well as multiple references, is devoted) to the importance of portuguese irregular verbs. "The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom" is a light-hearted funny read, and I recommend it to everyone - especially fans of P.G. Wodehouse.