impressive!!!!

i simply couldn't not post it

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b5a79a516c

my first 10mins of photoshop ... ever :D

i'm soooooo tired. I've spent the whole weekend plus today working non-stop on an assignment, and now I have to work on a presentation and I feel so burnt out. But each of these excruciating tasks lead you to a discovery.... this time round I have discovered Irish coffee .... mmmmmmm *yummy* Over the past months I have rediscovered my passion for coffee and chocolate-covered coffee beans *slobber slobber slobber* (makes a mind note to remind my beautiful cuddly guy ;D to bring some of the heavenly stuff). Moreover, a couple of weeks ago the family of my better half got back to the island, and his mother sent me this divine chocolate cookies .... aaa i cannot make them justice with my description. Now i've adopted her as my fairy godmother *childish grin*

neeeeway, while my brain was furiously protesting during these last couple of days, i've decided to use up the time and play a bit around with photoshop. it's been lying there on my pc for ages but i had never tried using it, and so to reduce my frustration i tried to create a couple of season's greetings to send to my friends. I have also done one appositely for this blog, and for anyone who decides to look at this space. hope you'll like it. well i guess that's all for now, take care my dear reader, have a wonderful festive season (even if you are a student with loads of assignments to write up, and forthcoming exams waiting on the doorstep, try to enjoy the most possible), and celebrate responsibly :o)

Luke and Menrick - forever in our memory

2 years have already passed from the tragic death of Luke Cassar and Menrick Yeomens - but one thing is sure, they will always live in our hearts with their radiant personalities.

I hope that I will never have to cry as much as that day for the rest of my life!!

Rest in peace guys, we shall never forget

This is Luke and Menrick's tribute site

...a failed attempt to 'warm-up' me mind

umm.... actually I don't know what to write, it's not that there isn't anything to rant on about, but I don't feel like it ...it's just the need to do something instead of writing assignments. I should be happy because I've managed to stay up all night (without dozing off) to go over the books and articles I will be using as references, and somehow I've managed to break past the barrier of the weirdly constructed sentences and paragraphs heavily laden with hidden meanings. Yep, you've read right ... I've managed to do that quite well (well, at least I'm convinced I have managed). Oh Lord, come to think of it, I have written far too many 'I've managed' in the above sentences :/ Well I guess I can call that my writers block, aka bullshit-your-way-to-get-good-grades-strategy.

weell, I guess I'm off to have a nap, and then maybe I'll have enough energy (otherwise I'll get it from the coffee) to make myself write something coherent from the anything-but-coherent sources.

ps: apologies for repeating the same words over and over again ..... guess my mind has decided to go on the summer shutdown, or it's just one of the may university side effects - constipated mind

as nella puts it: Can't wait for batman day!!!!!!

Aaaaaaaarghhh!! How I hate the University of Malta!!! What's the use of having a secretary if she does not know how to do anything and asks the factotum, who in return asks fellow students to contact you? And what is the use of filling all those forms, and the CSC developing the esims, if the bloody secretary has to phone you up (by using the method above mentioned) just to obtain your freeaakin' email address?!?!?!!!! It's honestly getting on my nerves - I really would like to know how these bunch of dimwits get employed... then again maybe it's for a purpose - to train us students when dealing with government employees, such as the fellow at the ID Cards, I mentioned last time.

I was going through the pics from London, and found the one's of my brother's graduation. Even when I see the pictures my heart swells with pride :) So now I'm trying to think positive - within 15months I will be like him; as my friend puts it - parading around in batman's clothes. In between studing for the finals, practising some of my hobbies and spending my time with my buddies, time should pass relatively quickly. And then come June, I'll say farewell to all, pack my rucksack and go anywhere away from this island for at least a month - and try to detoxify my memory of the anything-but-professional secretaries, lost-in-space lecturers and highly irritating fellow students.



Ps: I'm not a grumpy person, even though some of the blogs render that idea. But I like to exercise my right of complaining about the stupid things that I meet in everyday life - too much pressure can crack the shell.
I apologize if I'm giving the wrong impression of myself and irritating the crap out of you

...man

Today I didn't feel like working again after wasting a whole morning because some stupid employee at the ID Cards office doesn't know the correct procedure and sent us to the other side of the city uselessly. Anyway that's a long story. As I said I didn't feel like working and browsed some blogs and I found this one, which I reaallyyyy liked.

Hsejjes Innocenti: Plagerism or what?: "

'I don't need a man:
To survive
To cook for me
To take care of me
To show me what affection is
To change the electirc bulb for me (?)
To tell me how to dream
To globe trek with me
To help me find my way(literally and metaphorically speaking)

I need one:
To fall in love
To take me on bike rides
To shop with me for electronic stuff
To accompany me to the places where I don't have the courage to go alone
To enjoy a good book or film together
To tell me I am awesome (*grin*)
To laugh with me

If I fall in love with him, then he becomes my ideal mate.If he falls in love with me, as well.
Then probably you will find me on the top level of Maslow's pyramid or attained the bloody Nirvana.'"


.....however, even though it states that I don't need a man for those things, I really wouldn't mind if he cooks for me, takes care of me and treks the globe with me, hehe ;)

the eyes, the smiles, the glances ~ for the person who inspires such words

I'm no poet, but I've written this on impulse and felt like posting this. I hope that the person for whom it's intended enjoys it. Love you sweet ;)


Do you remember the eyes, the smiles,
the glances?
The hours spent in each others company,
waiting,
trying to find an ounce of courage to slightly open the gateways behind which our emotions eagerly waited?

And then, when you said those words,
the dams broke,
flooding our souls with these sweet feelings.
And all the ifs and buts,
all the how and whys,
vanished in thin air.

And now the stolen glances became lingering,
and the shy smile became radiant,
making the eyes sparkle with such splendor as if there is a wild fire within.

Ours is a meeting of hearts,
a meeting of souls,
a slow beautiful waltz,
and as the gown turns around, fairy dust seems to escape from it
and it floats in the air around us,
like a wind blown scarf,
adding luster to our otherwise dull lives.




The above picture is "Le Champ de marguerites" (Field of Daisies) by Claude Theberge, one of my favourite artists

... my future? buuuuuuuuq!!

Today is my real day at home after coming back from London. I am really missing the long days out in the parks, I'm definitely not missing the hectic centre, but I'm really missing Greenwich and the Cotswolds. I really miss the serenity imparted in those places.

Well, yesterday was Nella's birthday, so in the morning I went along with a friend to chose a birthday present for her on behalf of the group and in the afternoon I worked on my own personal gift. Being a terrible time manager, if it's wasn't for Andrea I would not have got there on time, so thanks alot mate. Frankly I was surprised by Nella's reception, she kept hugging and kissing me and telling me how much she missed me. Well maybe I'm not a thankful person, or there is something wrong with me, but I did not miss anyone while I was away, except for my better half, which was a different kind of story.

Anyway, today I decided that I should start working on the assignments I have for September and October... and as you might imagine, it did not hold up for more than an hour, so I got back to browsing the internet, doing stupid stuff, thinking about how much I hate this course. Mind you I adore the subject, however I hate the fact that I have to read tons of books that unashamedly break the basic rules of English. It seems that there is a championship of who comes up with the longest sentence in world history; which book requires a thesaurus most, which book has got words you would not even be able to find in a thesaurus; and which book comes up with the weirdest and most stupid interpretations in the whole world! And apart from having to stick up with these books I have to write assignments, trying to fool the lecturers that I have fully understood what these lunatic authors were ranting about in their books which were probably written in some remote desert under the effect of the torrid sun and some kind of exotic drug. I have decided that I would rather spend my life doing something that actually indicates progress in my work than writing papers that I don't even understand myself and spend a couple of weeks hopeful that thanks to some strange cosmic activity I would get a good mark. Thank God that within 11 months it will be over and done with!! Phew!

And after this whole debate taking place in my mind I've practiced a bit my favorite hobby - daydreaming about the years to come and then finally I took a nap... which I was awaken from by a phone call from a university in London that I had contacted the day before regarding the bachelors degree in Interior Design the institution offers. It was a nice chat, however it was quite a shock to discover that it would cost me about STG49,620 just to take up this course, let alone the accomodation for 3years, if not 4! Well obviously I have to continue my search, I'll see what I can find, but obviously I cannot take this decision on my own, apart from my family, I've got to have a long chat with my bank account hehehe, and more seriously with my better half. It's a choice which might affect him in the long run.

Well I guess that's all for today ... I won't promise anything but I hope I will write something about London and put some pictures of the model from the interior design course I took lately.

Cheerio for now, take care



PS: sorry for breaking the basic english rules by writing paragraph-long sentences

Blogthing

ooohhhh gosh!!! almost 5months have passed since my last real blog.... how shameful of me. However during these months I've not been in the mood of writing anything... i guess doing assignments and studying for exams have taken the toll on me, and reduced my 'employing my mind limit' to zero.
today I was browsing the internet and I found this website ... and so just to pass some time and to forget about the shitty weather out there, I did some tests... below you can see a couple of results

You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

You Are 44% Lady

You're part lady, part modern woman. Etiquette is important to you, but you brush aside rules that are outdated or silly.

Are You A Lady?

You are 93% Sagittarius

How Sagittarius Are You?

Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC

"Back in black, I hit the sack, I've been too long, I'm glad to be back" Things sometimes get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get away from all the chaos. But each time you stage your comeback, it's even better than the last!

What's Your Theme Song?

Click here to get your own blogthing

crazy world!

Housefly Gets Glasses Made With Lasers




Picture taken from the National Geographic website, please click on the link above

... the viscous circle

I noticed that it's been a long while since I last wrote anything here. mainly because I was 'busy' planning my weekends and recuperating the lost hours of sleep. It's almost a month now since this viscous circle has started.

All this thanks to James!! ... if it wasn't for the great b'day bash he organised for Andrea I would still be glad to spend my weekends relaxed at home. Now my mobile credit is so volatile that I'm always hearing that irritating voice saying "your account balance is 0 liri and so-and-so cents", since we're always messaging to meet up, or having a follow-up of the weekend. And what about msn!!... i'm always up till 2am chatting with everyone, complaining that I won't manage to get up in the morning, but nevertheless i'm always the last one to leave!

Consequently my scoliosis is getting worse, i'm afraid i'll be getting a hunch on my back, and my knees and arms are killing me since they are always bent!

As you might already have guessed, the action plan hasn't quite succeeded. I have applied for those part-time courses but I haven't taken on exercising and those driving lessons yet. Come to think of it, it sounds like a contradiction ~ exercise and driving! However I need both... well, okay, the exercising is more crucial than the driving.

neway.... I would like to say thanks to all who made this month a memorable one... now that you're going to etna I'm gonna miss you (not kidding)... hopefully your absence will be an incentive for me to start studying... but knowing me, I sincerely doubt it!

the action plan

well today after waking up at 11.30am after spending some 7hours non stop chatting on msn with my newfound and not so new group of friends, I've decided to device an action plan for my life.... coz at this rate i'm gonna end up a couch potato.

So I've decided that I'm gonna take up a new part time course. In fact right now I have the list of part-time courses offered by MCAST and I'm shortlisting them all according to day of venue, level of interest and cost. I have around 5 from which to chose... so as they say ho solo l'imbarazzo della scelta.

I have also decided to take driving lessons. After going to Hal Far at 4am last Friday.. or better Saturday, and suffering the frustration of not having any idea how to drive, I've asked Dori for the contact no of her learner and so today I'm gonna give her a call.

Another thing I'm gonna do is start exercising. All this talk about hiking is giving me frequent bouts of cold sweat coz I haven't moved from the room for months now.... and I'm also getting nostalgic about karate. So I'm gonna take that up as well coz, let's admit it, it's depressing to see a 60year old walking fast and still full of energy when I'm feeling my lungs bursting with the exercise!!

Aaaand I have to quit the computer!!! It's getting impossible. I'm spending days sitting here in front of my pc (in fact my bum has flattened :S) and strangely enough there is always something new to do. Well lately this got enhanced by the obsession of checking the mail box and for any new results. And that pirate game, I never thought anything could be so addictive!!! So i have to spend less time in front of this box!

And ...I have to get back to reading. I can't remember the title of the last book I read!! The bookmark in Anna Karenina has been waiting for me at the beginning of part 3 for ages! I have to finish that one by the end of the month. And start reading the Paolo Cohelo ones, and the one I got for my bday, and the other one I bought in November and the book my friend has lent me more than a year ago......

Quite a long list huh!...... Hopefully I'll keep at least one promise to myself!!

Election fever

In 2 days time the local council elections will be held. Anyone who lives on the island is aware of it, even the street-rats, their parasites, and the parasites of their parasites!!!

For the last couple of months we had to endure the controversies created by both parties and the struggle for some limelight by the third party. Our homes and streets were inundated with fliers of the contestants, electoral programs and sample ballot papers instructing us why and how we should vote and whom we are to give our no. 1 with an endless list of (crappy) reasons.

And obviously the inevitable house visits ~ an election can never reach its potential vertigo without them. Abruptly the candidates start to take interest in grooming; they start combing their hair, use deodorants (and unfortunately sometimes even some perfume that should have remained forgotten at the back of the underwear drawer) and invest in decent clothing and suddenly remember the concept of actually washing their clothes and use fabric conditioners to kill the stench of mould and sweat. And off they go round the village, with a mate in tow, knocking on every door, feigning interest in your requests and concerns, coming up with phantasmagorical excuses that not even the prolific mind of an exuberant 5 year old could come up with, shake your hand and leave off for a remake of their masquerade to your neighbor and eventually the rest of the village.

Every time it's the same old story with different actors playing the characters. And somehow we like it. Yes, deep down we do. We turn on the radio 'incidentally' when the political slot is on, and tune in on TV when a debate is scheduled or when the party leaders are invited to a talk show. And if we see a billboard of the other party placed in a prominent junction we start getting itchy if 'our' party doesn't place one right next to it... Ideally even hiding it a bit. And we start yelling at our TV sets if the one representing the other party gets to talk for an extra second (for what seems to us an extra hour). And we like to sift through all that junk we receive daily in our letterboxes and throw out the fliers of the other party. Yeah, the majority tends to like this fever.

Frankly I don't really care; I don't watch TV, don't listen to the radio, avoid anything that has to do with politics, don't answer the door even if it's that funny Cupid with a 72karat diamond with platinum and full of other gemstones ring, and I leave it up to my parents to sift through the mail. However there is one thing that really irritates me. If the candidates want to waste their time going round the village to show their new hair cut, and their new-found discovery of blades and how to apply them to remove facial hair, it's fine by me. But what it's not fine by me is that for 3 whole years they don't do a single thing. If you send a letter they won't even acknowledge it, let alone reply. If a streetlight needs to have its bulb changed, you won't get it and if the moon's surface is 99.9% much smoother than the road you live in, it's not in their hands. Obviously all this changes the week prior to the cast of votes. Ahh!! then suddenly all the lights are working, all the streets get patched (that lasts only till Sunday, [the day after the elections] as if on contract) and they might even find some money left to pay a group of men to clean the streets and maybe even cut some weeds from the roundabouts.

This is exactly what happened this morning at Fgura. Unfortunately I did not manage to take pictures of the works being done but here you can see the fresh tarmac in my road (even though I managed to capture one of the workers while leaving with his tools).

A note to all the contestants: If you really care for your locality, cut the crap and do your job. If you're not capable of that then get out of the way and stop resorting to this last minute, hope-you're-satisfied kind of works. They suck, are a sheer waste of money, and sooo fake.

a piece of heaven

well, after handing my surveying stuff, I decided that I had to go for a walk to remove the kinks in my joints. We were graced by a warm and sunny day since ages, so together with my parents, we left for il-Pwales ... and boy is that amazing!! the area is full of archaeology... but not just that, it is also beautiful in that even though you're a few metres away from the buzz of life, you feel as if you're very close to heaven. well ok, apart from the terrible stench of sewer when you get to the Limbordin area!!
As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I'll let you judge the beauty of the area ... so I'm posting some pictures of the area, and I'll be posting some more soon on my space ... hope you'll like it

bliss.....

Yesterday we celebrated Mark's birthday, and it was great. Great company, good service and food, and friendly waiters. But there was something more to it... no stress, no nagging from the voice in one's head about deadlines and word limits. I've posted the few decent pics takenon my space ... it's easier than from posting here

Finished with a bang

aahhhhh finally the 1st semester is officially over....and what an ending!!! I haven't slept for 72hours, except for maybe a maximum of 2hrs of rest (lying on the stairs.. I've found out it's effective for back pain), standing on my legs... and as a result my calves are thicker than those of La Scala's ballet etoile... drawing!!! And no it's not because I had some divine inspiration, I just had a deadline to hand in my surveying drawing. Now thanks to it all I can see are dots, everywhere I look!

Neway, I've finished everything just in time, and guess what?!?!.... I fainted, was hauled over to the doctor by my parents and was told that I was suffering from stress and fatigue (wow!!! you need to be an MD to be able to diagnose that!!) apart from the usual stuff about low blood pressure. To top it off I was to spend the whole weekend on my back, in bed!! I had no intention of following this advise, however my mum, being the perfect product of her time and always faithful to the teachings of the strict nuns who used to supervise her at the hospital, did not allow me to fall out (pun intended) of this "agreement". So basically here I am, stuck in bed, with my drafts rolled up in a corner, as if they're trying to tease me and tell me that there was no need for me to stress myself so much in trying to get them finished on time, coz I was not able to hand them in just the same. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!

But that's life ey... at times it does not follow its original course and takes some twisted route. Anyway, now that all my assignments are finally over, I'm feeling much lighter ... and no, they're not the vertigo symptoms coming back... it's the great feeling of not having to have something ready for the next week... and now that's what I call bliss.. the only pity is that I could not go out to some pub with my friends on Friday night. Tonight I'll get a taste to remember what life is (thank God Florence nightingale, aka my mum, is a bit lenient today) and then sometime next week I'll celebrate the real way :)Hehe

Take care guys

PS: I'm attaching a pic of the famous pitted stone... it's a killer to get together!!

Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome! Fremder, etranger, stranger....

Hi all,

well lately I've been getting this impetus of writing down anything that passes through my mind. And so as a means of escapism and for the need of trying something new... a commitment sort of, I'm creating this blog, so....... welcome to the launch of my blog!! hehehe :)

Anyway, hope you'll enjoy it....when I start writing down stuff that is!..... and check it out every now and then = o)

Take care,
Ria
xxxxx