http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9UY8Zqg-Q&feature=related Part 2a
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCyvzI2aVUo&feature=related Part 2b
‘Extraordinary People’ is a television documentary series sharing with the world the rarest of the rare, most unusual medical conditions and diseases to the absolute remarkable abilities we as human beings never thought one could possess. I’m so grateful for my friend introducing this series to me as it is seriously addicting :p The titles of each episode is what gets you hooked as you know as long as they belong to the show, they aren’t spoofs!
I’ve watched many episodes so far, and each one never failed to impress. However, there’s something that keeps me going back to one of the few ones I first watched, ‘The man with 30 second memory’ (in fact, it can be as low as 7 seconds). Clive Wearing is 73 year old British Musicologist, conductor and keyboardist who contracted a virus that attacked his brain causing him to suffer from a long-lasting case of anterograde and retrograde amnesia that is said to have given him the worst case of Amnesia ever known. His procedural memory however was not affected thereby giving him the ability to conduct a choir and still play the piano as beautifully as before. I’m touched every single time I watch this, as it is seriously brings a rollercoaster of feelings. My sympathies are always with this man trapped in an eternal present, whilst my heart too goes out to his incredible loving wife, Deborah, the only person he remembers ever since. I can’t imagine the things she must have gone through. But I guess, from watching just 7 minutes of how they live through each and every single day of their lives, she will forever sacrifice anything for her husband as their love along with his musical talent will never diminish. They are absolutely beautiful :’)
“It’s been like death. I’ve never seen another human being before. Never had a dream or a thought. My brain has been totally inactive – day and night, the same. No thoughts at all.”
“Can you imagine one night five years long? No dreaming, no waking, no touch, no taste, no smell, no sight, no sound, no hearing, nothing at all. It’s like being dead. I came to the conclusion that I was dead.”
‘Please come and see me darling, it’s been ages since I’ve seen you. Please fly here at the speed of light”
- Clive Wearing
We all have those phases where we listen to the same band or song over and over again until we come to the point where we find something new to idolize.
However, one band I feel in love with the minute I discovered them and definitely lasted not only a month or less was the fairly known British folk rock band - Mumford and Sons. You might not have heard of these super talented musicians, or you have, and thought it just wasn’t your cup of tea. But I assure you, if your music taste is anything like mine, and you prefer to listen to something less auto tuned or remixed; then they are definitely worth listening to. That’s why I find them so outstanding, merely because I personally don’t consider them the usual musicians associated with the mainstream music. It’s their phenomenal talent for instruments such as the Banjo, guitar, drums, mandolins, accordion, dobro, string bass, xylophone, you name it, their profound messages and passionate stories brought out through their songs, and naturally, their deep, hoarse yet heavenly voices that make these four ultra-gifted individuals’ band what it is. Aside from them, another example for indefinable idolization is the awe inspiring Paolo Nutini (ahhh) and the remarkable Avett Brothers that I came upon shortly after Mumford.
I’m not saying I’m completely against our music today, believe me, I’m actually a Dubstep fan - probably the music in most contrast to Mumford and sons. However, sometimes we need to seek that familiar genre that fits into most of our many moods and elates us into rapture.
lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all
lend me your heart and i’ll just let you fall
lend me your eyes i can change what you see
but your soul you must keep, totally free
Awake my soul - Mumford and Sons
(Source: llggffuuaadd)
The other day I stumbled across a fairly new, not sure if common, reality TV series called ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’. This show follows children as young as months old who, with the help and full attention of their mothers (and fathers) journey around the states to compete in what we call Baby Beauty Pageants.
Frankly and very oddly, I could not stop watching video after video. Not because I was awed by the dedicated mothers of trying their level best to make their daughter’s feel as beautiful as possible, but rather how far these mothers would go to in matter of hair, clothes, and makeup of their children, and how much money they would unhesitatingly pay, only to create a Barbie and win more money.
Now, I have never had anything against Beauty Pageants, I think they can be fun, challenging and definitely entertaining. However, I do believe there’s an extent to how confident and competitive a contestant should get, especially, a child; A child who should be out in the playground with mud on her face, twigs in her hair and sand in her shoes. Quoting New York-based, licensed, clinical social worker Mark Sichel “Little girls are supposed to play with dolls, not be dolls”.
Naturally, it is a norm for the majority of little girls to love the princess life imagery, the joy of dolling themselves up in pink, glitter and beads, but, when these tiny shoes are replaced with heels, their flat natural hair is teased and sprayed high enough to finish a bottle and their fair smooth skin is supplanted with spray tan, one must really question the ethics of this type of ritual and if the self image they expose is genuinely healthy for today’s young generation.
What saddens me mostly is that for the most part, it is not the children who were “born” to be pageant princesses; it is not the influence of fairytales or Barbie dolls that motivated them to enter the world of external beauty obsession. It is solely parents vicariously living out their own unfulfilled dreams through their daughters thereby purchasing dresses, makeup, hair products and “flippers”, yes, white straight artificial set of teeth hiding their premature developing and/or missing ones thus encouraging them more to continue this “hobby”.
What one doesn’t seem to look at is that because of the introduction to this kind of life at an extremely early stage, naturally these children will start to think that this is Beauty, this is the way to stand out and fit in, and that imperfections were not an option. It is merely ‘dress up’ taken to a whole new and exaggerated level.
These notions are all bad now and I can’t imagine what the girls will go through when they get to their adolescent years, a crucial time of their lives where one starts to shape into who they are.
It’s a shame to know what our society has come to. How focus on outside beauty has been exaggerated to such a degree and slowly beginning to affect girls at a younger and younger age. Shows like Toddlers and Tiaras only prove to us this very concept, the drastic transformations of girls into miniature women and the overall immorality. And it exemplifies how the media helps feed the growing obsession of beauty.
This man bought this lion as a cub in the 60’s, and then when it got too big, he let it into the wild. 10 years later, it was like the alpha male in a nature reserve in Africa and was really violent. The guy went to see it, and it walked up to him and gave him a hug. Sweetest thing ever.
(Source: scrublife)
You know the feeling when you get so attached to a show that you can go on for hours and hours and day after day watching it? Do you also know that state of withdrawal symptom as soon as the show is over?
This is why I absolutely LOVE ‘Friends’ and would pick it over anything else, any day. It has this rare quality to it that never fails to make you laugh no matter how many times you’ve watched or heard the jokes. It’s the kind of show that needs every single member to make it complete, as each of them, in my opinion, are as funny as the other. They have their own sense of humor which makes them who they are. When Friends ended, Matt Le Blanc carried on with his own show, “Joey”. Frankly, I only watched about 2 episodes. I kept forgetting that I wasn’t going to be seeing the rest of the crew walk in or meeting up at the coffee house.
It’s a shame that it had to end, but it was a great 236 episodes (in 10 seasons over 10 years) that continues to play up to this day.
I guess you could actually cite me as being a Friend-dork as I can mouth with the majority of their lines like a groupie. (: so, thumbs up for that.
I agree - The world isn’t a nursery.
(Source: black-forests)
Ah Paris. Thought it would be a perfect 1st blog of the summer since it was without a doubt the highlight of my summer so far.
One of the first things I went to see was the Eiffel tower. Though the trademark of Paris is physically just a structure of metal, there is something amazing about it and has simply been an object of infatuation for 122 years.
Not far from the metallic landmark you’ll find yourself standing on the gorgeous tree-lined streets of Avenuedes Champs-Élysées. Decorated with high-end brand stores, endless cafés, souvenir shops and interesting people from all over the world, the extraordinary boulevard made you feel like there was no other place you’d rather be.
I also visited the Arc de Triomphe, The Louvre and of course the Moulin Rouge, but one thing that really managed to grab my attention, were the romantic couples scattered about the city. Paris is probably one of the only cities that make you feel that you’ve been thrown into a romantic movie. It is truly the ‘City of Love’.
For me personally, Paris was everything that everyone always says it is. This ancient city has an undeniable ambiance that takes over as soon as you step out of the airport. Maybe it’s the people, maybe it’s the art, but whatever it is, it’s certainly contagious.
Countless numbers of times have we been asked what we will become in the future. 5% are pretty confident about their choice, 11% say “Uhm…” and come up with a profession knowing they’ll most likely change their minds, and the 84% have absolutely no idea.
Life is too short and unpredictable to know exactly how your future will be. You could be thinking “I don’t want to stress about it” which either means that you believe that “now” matters more than stressing over something that has yet to happen. Or it can mean a self-conscious choice to not bother to stress about it because you believe that whatever your dream is, is a waste of time, thinking you’ll never get there.
I’m pretty sure Elvis Presley, back then an ordinary truck driver, wouldn’t have imagined being the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ after recording a ten inch record for four dollars as a present for his mother in an amateur recording studio.
This made me think that little things can change anything. No one knows their future, and who wants to anyway? Life is about BECOMING who you are supposed to be - not KNOWING who you are supposed to be.
I won’t write too much about this, I’m just going to let you watch and read :)
But my heart goes out for this guy…
This was really touching.
“You’re never too young to fall in love…Because you are never too young to die”
(Source: j-jarradswain)
