So we have hyperminimalism in the visual arts and architecture (pretty much thanks to the modernists and Kasimir Malevich for starting Suprematism), but have you heard of hyperminimalist writing?

I first came across this idea from Unpublished Guy’s blog. His blog is:

“Something happened. A man with glasses was involved.”

So what about that?

The idea is to dip and dap into the ideas that you’re presenting, then leave everything else for the reader to fill in the blanks. As our Unpublished Guy puts it, “Minimalism leaves the reader to take an active role in the creation of the story by filling in the blanks left by the author’s spare prose.”

So lets see what kind of interesting ideas can we get from here? ;)

Of course, you don’t get the picture until you’ve seen more of these. Here’s more example from Naissance, a blog by Shelli,

“It shattered like the glass embedded in her hand.”

Somehow, the power of hyperminimalist writing seperates you from everything else on the page, and when you read that single line your head spins to imagine the scene and everything else around it too — the shattering sound, her face as it shattered, the environment, or what is it that actually shattered. Her heart, perhaps?

Another example from Crockstar Blog,

“Sometimes shorter really is better.”

Or is it?

You question and it keeps you thinking, don’t you? So there, it’s successful. ;)

So to try my hand at this… here’s some of my plays:

“Two mice and a cheese. One has to go.”

Maybe that’s too long. Here’s another:

“Reaching my hands out to touch, yet it’s a mirage too far.”

One last one:

“He moans and shoot into the air.”

Ahem. :P

Perhaps these can make a good Twitter or Tumblr idea. :P

So come on, try your hand with this and see what you can come out with. I’m wanna know what’s in your head!

We’ve talked about maximizing your strengths on the previous post, now what do we do with your weaknesses?

We all have our bad times. Or perhaps some of us are already born with the certain disadvantages that put us a notch below the others. But actually, who is it that is there to determine what is normal or success? And how do we weight ourselves, is it from your heart, or is it from how others see you?

After watching this talk by Aimee Mullins on TEDs, I guess she gave us a very simple but powerful answer.

“It is not so much about overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselves to it, embracing it. Grappling with it. Maybe even dancing with it. Perhaps as we see adversity as something natural, consistent and useful, we’re less burdened by the presence of it. “

Dancing with adversity, making it your partner. Now that’s some new idea that we all can use.

Aimee Mullins: A Living Miracle

Image courtesy of Rams Sports Performance

Aimee Mullins was born without fibulae in both legs. In other words, she had to amputate both legs off when she was 1 year old, and theoretically she will have to live on a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

That’s what the doctors think.

And of course, as of all stories of all great people in this world, she did not buy that idea and made a miracle out of her adversity. She learned to walk using prosthetic legs by the age of two, and went on to do all what other “normal” kids will do — walk, swim, play, and run.

Oh yes, she can run really well. With her specially designed prosthetic legs she had set World Records on 100 meter, 200 meter and the long jump during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. No, she did not compete with the other “handicapped” group, she competed with the “normal” bunch who had meat on both sides of the legs, just like you and me.

Oh, instead you’re wondering why she looks so pretty and hot, she did model for Alexander McQueen back in the late 90s. Yep, she’s a model. A hot one at that.

And that is determination. And of course, she did what she preached in this video: to embrace your weaknesses and dance with it.

I am a huge fan of TEDTalks, and this video is another reason why you should watch them.

“The Opportunity Of Adversity”

Accepting And Embracing Your Weaknesses

Well, I’m sure not every one of you are patient enough to sit through the 22 minutes of the video. Let me just summarize the story for you here.

If you have a weakness, or at bad times, accept it to be part of you, embrace it and turn it into an opportunity to do great things.

A lot of us know that we have our own problems. It may be a physical, mental or spiritual problem. And a lot of us chose to just nod our heads at it, and decide to tuck them under the bed or the old dusty chest of the unknown in our hearts and hope we’ll never see them again.

Wrong.

Running away from your problems will not make them go away. They are still there, and they will be back to haunt you no matter how hard you try to hide them.

And if the problems won’t go away, why not just accept and embrace it, and make it a part of you to be proud of?

I personally have problems of my own too. I have been living with the pain of arthritis for the past 15 years, and still counting. I do admit that sometimes I will feel that I can’t achieve what many others can due to my own problems, mostly physically, but I know that I can excel in other parts of life if I work hard (and maybe smart) enough.

Aimee Mullins achieved what many has deemed “impossible” and became a living motivation for all of us. Now, I am passing on the motivation love to you. :)

Turning “Disable” To “Poss-able”

At the end of the video, Aimee shared her version of the word “Disable”, different from that from the dictionary:

Disable, (verb)
To crush a spirit, to withdraw hope, to deflate curiousity, to promote an inability to see beauty, to deprive of imagination. To make abject.

Ant. To make poss-able.

Someone with problems is not disabled until you crush their hope. And you are not disabled until you have lost hope.

The day you accepted yourself as a whole, the day you have gained so much more. Perhaps more than many others in this world will ever find, because everything about you, including your weaknesses and problems, are special to your own. Keep them.

There are so much hype building on to the Christmas season. The whole world is talking about it, from the TVs to the ads to the radio to the Tweets and of course, all the blogs.

The hype builds itself like a bubble up since a month or two before Christmas, and it grows like a bubble going bigger and bigger.

And when Christmas finally came, POP, the bubble bursts in a day, and what’s left behind is party leftovers, unwrapped presents, an empty wallet, and to many, a void of loneliness and emptiness inside.

So that resulted in a lazy weekend, and even harder Monday blues, and if you’re really into Christmas, a sad month after recovering from the burnt wallet.

Like, ouch. What are we gonna do about it?

Hard Hit After Midnight

Most of our parties began on the 24th, during the Christmas eve. After midnight coundown, it’s Christmas, woohoo!!

Then our parties go on until 25th, the Christmas day. We had fun all day and all night, then when it hits midnight, Christmas is over. Some of us went on partying, but the sad thing is, it all eventually have to come to an end.

Then suddenly reality comes crushing down on us, that Christmas is over. What we’ve been looking forward to for 2 months is all over. As much as we wished for time to freeze and stop at that blissful moment of Christmas, time goes on, and life moves on.

Yup, time goes on, life moves on.

Spend, but spend wisely

It is said that Christmas is a world consumerism spree. There’s no reason to buy and spend oh so much on Christmas, other than just because, well, “It’s Christmas!”

It has become a trend to buy and shop and spend on Christmas time, because everyone says so. Even for non-Christians people buy and give gifts because that’s what the shopping malls ads and music are telling you to, “It’s Christmas, buy gifts and celebrate now!”

Well, that’s not exactly a bad thing, because giving is a gift by itself, but when you spend, spend wisely. Don’t go for the rush and use up all the cash until you have nothing left after the season, then the post-Christmas depression is gonna hit even harder.

“Oh gosh, I spent that much? I don’t even know!”

Party ends, but life goes on

The bad news is that as the party ends there’s plenty of crap to clean up, a bad hangover to deal with the next day, or worrying about the sticky make-ups and the oils that stayed in your hair from the barbeque. That adds up even more to the depression.

The good news is that no matter how shitty the party goes, you will still want to do it again next year.

And next year is something to look forward to.

To some of us who lives in a country with plenty of festivals to look forward to (yeah, Malaysia BOLEH!) we have always set our targets a few months prior to the event. It’s Christmas now, and Chinese New Year is already creeping up. Some of us has already made plans on what to do and where to party already.

“Alright, Christmas is over, now what’s the next party?!”

So instead of sulking in what had happened, look forward to the next best thing. Life is a giant playground by itself, so the fun never ends if you know where to find them.

Post-Christmas Blues, We’ll Get Over It!

The pictures from last-night’s party sure are real fun, aren’t they? So cherish them and upload them to Facebook and lets all have a laugh over it!

Laughter is the best medicine for everything, no? :)

So, what’s the next plan?! New Year party, anyone? :P

P/S: In case you haven’t notice this post is a conspiracy set to post my Christmas dinner pictures. You’ve been conned, wahaha!

As a devoted Netizen we use emoticons everyday. Of course you use them too, right? It’s much more easier to just do a :) compared to doing *smiles* or D8< to doing *I’M GODDAMN ANGRY*.

Well I got kinda interested in the world of Emoticons, and as I dwell further into researching about it, the emoticon world is really far bigger than what we think!

There are probably hundreds of emoticons out there, and what we use is just like 3-5% of them!

Yup, the MSN or Yahoo emoticons aren’t just the only emoticons you can find. You can emote even better using your own keyboard!

So come in here to learn a little history about Emoticons, the difference between Western and Eastern Emoticons and have a look at the list of Emoticons around the world!

It all started during the 1970s

When the Internet was born and all the emails are flying around the world, people eventually felt the need to express themselves better than *OMG I’M SO HAPPY NOW*. There were little support for graphics like that time (yeah, we live in a lucky generation with MSN emoticons!) and all they have were the typographic tools of the keyboard.

So a guy named Kevin Mackenzie at 1979 proposed that the punctuations of our keyboard to be used as means of gesture and facial expression. He wrote that:

In regard to your message a few days ago concerning the loss of meaning in this medium:

I am new here, and thus hesitate to comment, but I too have suffered from the lack of tone, gestures, facial expressions etc. May I suggest the beginning of a solution? Perhaps we could extend the set of punctuation we use, i.e:

If I wish to indicate that a particular sentence is meant with tongue-in-cheek, I would write it so:

“Of course you know I agree with all the current
administration’s policies -).”

The “-)” indicates tongue-in-cheek.

At first Kevin proposed this as a joke, and we don’t really use the “-)” expression to mean “tongue-in-cheek” really today, personally I don’t really see the connection. :P But apparently the Net had taken it as a great suggestion and since then, emoticons begin to take a life of its own.

The Western Emoticons — :-)

So, as for when did the colon, hash and the close bracket become the basis that means “a smiley face” has not been properly recorded in the history of men (aka. Wikipedia), but well Wikipedia did record how the emoticon kinda works.

As the Western language, commonly English or other European languages typically reads from left to right, it makes sense for an emoticon to be registered from left to right too. So you will see the : represents the eye, the - representing the nose and ) representing the mouth. Like, well, this!

Well, as lazy Netizens eventually we’ve decided to take off the nose all together, and that leaves us this:

In case you still haven’t get it, well just lean your head to the left of your shoulder and you should be able to see the faces there. See the eyes there and the mouth doing all the different expressions? Yup, that’s it! :D

Which leads us to another main characteristic of the Western emoticon, is that they emphasize a lot on the use of the mouth to tell an expression. Without the mouth you can’t really tell what are you trying to emote with just two dots, right? So here are even more variations of the Western emoticons:

And hundreds of others more! With just a few combination of keys you can make so many faces, now isn’t that the wonders of emoticons? :D

The Eastern Emoticons — ^__^

Well the Net is a global thing, and global is all about cultures! While the Western people made so many cute faces by looking sideways, the Eastern people preferred to just show a face straight on, without having to tilt the head! This is also partially influenced by the East-asian languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese which reads each word as a block, instead of alphabets. So here’s how some famous Eastern-influenced emoticons look like:

As you’ve noticed by now, the Eastern emoticons uses the eyes to tell an expression instead of the mouth, which is pretty different with the Western emoticons. So if you’re familiar enough with these type of emoticons, we can replace the mouth with a dot or omit the mouth altogether and come out with:

Now, isn’t emoticons beautiful!

Even more complex Emoticons

Well, apparently we Netizens are not satisfied enough with these easily created emoticons, and we wanted more, and more! So the king nerds had come up with these beautiful Emoticons that combines the ASCII art. To put it simply, these emoticons uses glyphs that exist in the computer world but cannot be typed on our keyboard easily! So these emoticons are popular in the Japanese forums as they are preset onto a database and all the users have to do is to apply them by pressing a button.

Well, don’t ask me how they did it, you probably know it better than I do!

Due to the limitations of the blog’s display language I couldn’t show this in a copyable format such as the ones above, sorry! But really, if your computer supports the language, you really can type these emoticons out! :D

Aren’t they really cool??

3 Letter Words Emoticon: OTZ

Well it may baffle a lot of us at first, but OTZ really is an emoticon. Well to the Eastern world, at least! I first heard of the word orz from a song by Mayday, and it’s only today that I’ve found out what does it mean!

If you tilt your head sizeways, imagine the “O” as a head, then you should be able to see a man like falling onto the ground, the “T” or “r” like the hands, and the “Z” or the “L” like the legs crunching on the ground. It’s like the pose when you do push-ups, but this is when you’re wayyy depressed and tired!

So when you’re very so T_____T, you can do OTZ or orz to show that you bow down to the person, either full salute, or no energy!

Whoever who made this up sure is a genius! STO!

Before we come to an end!

And phew, isn’t that a really long post! :D Well before we come to an end, imma leave this one emoticon for you to find out what does it mean!

Well, no prizes this time, but it’s for your amusement really. :P
Tips: It’s a 3 letter emoticon similar to OTZ!

Of course, leave your answer! I’d love to see what can you come up with!

So what are the emoticons that you use most frequently? ^__^

Everyone has been talking about All I Want To Get For Christmas…

Well, how about turning it around, and thinking, All I Want To Give For Christmas, for once?

A little time, a little money, a little patience… How about a little love too?

Image @akosikenet on Flickr

Putting A Smile On The Face

The smiley face has always been a wonder to the human race. As humans we have always wanted to see people smile, and there’s nothing more cheerful than looking at happy movies, happy pictures, happy people, happy kids.

And there is nothing even more happier than to be able to put a smile on someone’s face. No matter how elaborate or simple of the thing that you do to bring that smile, you will still get a smile in return, a smile of gratitude.

While it seems trivial, but giving gifts is one of the way that we do to see a smile on others face. And Christmas is the time when people give people gifts, because people want to see people happy.

I’m sure you have done it before, and I’m sure you know how it feels. Giving is sometimes more satisfying than receiving, no?

A New Christmas Wish-list: What do you want to give this Christmas?

Interestingly, we’ve made such a long wish-list of what we wanted to get for Christmas. And then when it comes to the part where we have to make a list of gifts we are to buy and to give to people, we begin to cringe and sigh about the hole that is going to burn in our wallet.

Image @akosikenet on Flickr

But really, what is it all for? Is it really the materialistic exchange of goods that we’re looking for here? Or is it something behind that is driving our soul to make such a move, the joy of giving and taking, the wish to make people happy?

Put down the Getting wish-list for a second, and look at that Giving wish-list. It’s not so bad of an change after all, is it? After all, what you get in return for giving is not just a hole in your wallet, it’s the feeling of content, the spread of love, the bliss of joy, and well for those who are into it, some good Karma. ;)

Spreading some love for Christmas, anyone?

Anthony from Gratitude had shared with us a charity children home, Good Samaritan Home at Klang, that needed some love for the season. For a little background, the orphanage hosts 29 children ranging from the age of 1-19 that needs a bit of a change, both the cents and the environment.

And they sure can use some lovin.

While I am not going to tell you how cramped their house and how much they can use a real roasted turkey for the season, you can probably guess the state of how most of Malaysian’s charity homes are. To put it simply, they needed more love than how much you need that new iPhone.

If you can, put this little name, Good Samaritan Home on your Christmas Giving Wish-list. For this is so much that I can do and ask of you, and for there is so much more that you can do too. Spread the word if you can’t help financially, for action always speak louder than words. :)

Good Samaritan Home

Home Address:
Good Samaritan Homes
No. 2, Lebuh Jelutong
Taman Selatan
41200 Klang
Selangor Darul Ehsan.

Tel/fax no: 03-33722289
Email: goodsh2002@yahoo.co.uk
Contact person : Pastor Albert Ong
Bank account number : Kindly contact Pastor for the info.

And hey, thank you for reading this far, for you have given me the time to think of my words, I am really grateful. I hope these words will make a change for you, for them. :)

I have always believed that simple words or quotes, by anyone on the net, shows the zeitgeist of our time.

No matter how funny, how sad, how philosophical, how boring, how exciting, how stupid, how smart these quotes might seem to be, they do mean a thing. It might seem to be meaningless at first glance, they might not mean a thing to you, but when you’re looking at it, closely, how many things are happening around us, all of us, each second, each minute?

“When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile. =)” — Umay Es

“The man of wisdom is never of two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; the man of courage is never afraid –Confucius” — Alan Yip

Coconut monkeys found at Vietnam

“When people tell you “money doesn’t buy happiness”, that’s because they don’t have the money to buy the things that make them happy.” — AUGUST MAN Magazine

“Oh you have a ring! So you’re married?”
“Yes I am!”
“Do you have kids yet?”
“No not yet. Why?”
“That’s good. If you do you’ll have another ring. Suffering.” — Jacelyn Tan and her friend

“pink isn’t a real colour. it’s just a gay red.” — Niklas Yong

“In a 24-hour period of time, 4,100 people are diagnosed with diabetes, 23 amputations take place in people with diabetes, 120 enter end-stage kidney disease programs, and 5 people go blind. — CDC” — Noel

“Homelessness is an attitude, not a lifesyle.” — Becky Blanton, The Year I Was Homeless

“In music, it is not about hitting the spotlight but lasting over time. It is a good thing if you’re still here 15 years on and travelling the world and playing your music. It is a form of expression, and my way is to express music.” — DJ Mr Sam

“Do you know the difference between brown-nosing and ass-kissing? Depth perception.” — AUGUST MAN Magazine