All Are Equal

Recipe: Homemade Vanilla Sugar

2012-02-16T12:38:00.001-05:00

Instead of plain sugar try this Vanilla sugar option. It is a simple recipe to use at home.

Ingredients:
2 vanilla beans
4 cups granulated sugar

Directions:
1. Split and scrape the beans and add the seeds to the sugar. Following the video, rub the inside of the split bean with sugar. Toss the beans and seeds with the sugar until combined.

2. Put the sugar and beans in an airtight container. Let sit for at least 2 weeks. Use as you would normal granulated sugar.

Here is a good video how to scrape the vanilla seeds from the pods, to get most of the vanilla flavor.

Quote: Simple Things First

2012-02-14T10:09:00.000-05:00

"If you take care of all the simple things first,
Then the big things become simpler."

- CV.

* Things or details.

Photo of Vince Lombardi, the famous coach in NFL from Artofwarcards.com.

Poem: Chisel Barriers With Talent

2012-02-13T14:28:00.000-05:00

"Only ignorant impose barriers,
for fear of losing power,
with you giving up,
you make barriers even more stronger.

Fighting with skills, or,
being a linchpin in workplace,
can make barriers weaker,
any barrier becomes surmountable."

- CV.

Image of Seth Godin's book "Linchpin".

Six Words: She Is Back

2012-02-11T15:03:00.004-05:00

"Like Terminator, she back as promised."

- CV.

Six Words: Regret Razor Blade

2012-02-10T09:40:00.002-05:00

"Regret as troublesome as razor blade."

- CV.

Photo of Razor logo from Evolutionandus.com.

Quote: Hide & Lose

2012-02-09T10:54:00.000-05:00

"More you share, more you discover,
More you hide, more you lose."

- CV.

Self-portrait of the famous inventor, Leonardo da Vinci.

Haiku: Word Razor #3WW

2012-02-08T07:17:00.001-05:00

"Like razor cuts flesh,
bloody, words cut soul the same, control speech with care."

- CV.

For Three Word Wednesday.

Photo of Razor logo from Evolutionandus.com.

Haiku: Moral Fabric #HaikuChallenge

2012-02-07T11:26:00.002-05:00

"Just to favor sides, Never relinquish ever, Your moral fabric."

- CV.

For Haiku Challenge.

Inspired by a verse in Athichoodi.

Photo of "New York's Liberty Island - Statue of Liberty and Seagull", David Paul Ohmer, Flickr

Photo of the Day: Sky, Trees, Seagull

2012-02-06T18:58:00.000-05:00

Photo of evening sky, palm trees and a seagull by Robin Grigg Woods.

Great Quotes from 1Q84 Book by Haruki Murakami

2012-02-04T13:39:00.002-05:00

These are some of the great quotes from Haruki Murakami's "1Q84" book, available in Amazon and in Google Books. The book is more than 900 pages but a must-read one. This book is a keeper and should be read in hard bound version, eBook version is OK but hard book version is better.

“All happiness is alike, but each pain is painful in its own way.”

“It’s like watching some rare exotic butterfly. Pleasant to watch, but you can’t touch it, for as soon as you do, it dies, its brilliance gone.”

“Even if I left the world, I doubt anyone would notice, I would shout out from the dark, but no one would hear me. Still, I have to keep soldiering on until I die, the only way I know how. Not a laudable sort of life, but the only life I know how to live.”

“Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.”

“After you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don’t let appearances fool you. There’s always one one reality.”

“Wherever there’s hope, there’s a trial.”

“With great knowledge comes great responsibilities”

“It wouldn’t be very pleasant to die in a place like this. But even if you changed the backdrop to something more desirable, is there really a pleasant way to die in this world? And come to think of it isn’t this world we live in itself like a gigantic model room? We com in, sit down, have a cup of tea, gaze out the window at the scenery, and when the times comes we say thank you and leave.”

“If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.”

“When a vacuum forms, something has to come along to fill it. That’s what everybody does.”

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart.”

“...it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness...But its too late to trade it in for another one.”

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." - Aristotle

“We have ties more important than blood.”

“The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don’t like to owe anybody anything, so I keep myself as much on the lending side as I can.”

“Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned. If so, there’s nothing mysterious about somebody suddenly disappearing one day.”

"In the mathematical world, he would walk down a long corridor, opening one numbered door after another. Each time a new spectacle unfolded before him, the ugly traces of the real world would simply disappear. As long as he was actively exploring that realm of infinite consistency, he was free."

"While math was like a magnificent imaginary building for Tengo, literature was a vast magical forest. Math stretched infinitely upward toward the heavens, but stories spread out before him, their sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In this forest there were no maps, no doorways."

"It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is another world, which has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to take him back to the world he came from."

“Knowledge is a precious social asset...It is an asset that must be amassed in abundant stockpiles and utilized with the utmost care. It must be handed down to the next generation in fruitful forms.”

Senryu: Hiding Place for Crime?

2012-02-03T14:09:00.003-05:00

"No refuge for crime,

Anywhere. Can evade laws,

Can't evade Karma."

- CV.

Photo of Prison Bars from Lonely Walk blog.

Six Words: Nature Recycle

2012-02-02T17:40:00.001-05:00

"She taketh, she giveth, recycle life."

- CV.

Photo of volcano aftermath and vegetation growth by Patrick Di Fruschia.

Quote: Mind Parachute

2012-02-02T13:16:00.000-05:00

"Minds are like parachutes.

They only function when open."

- Sir Thomas Dewar

Via What time is o'clock?

Haiku: Bliss Morning #3WW

2012-02-01T11:02:00.000-05:00

"When mornings detached,
a coffee jolt gives one,
quick surge of bliss."

- CV.

For Three Word Wednesday.

Six Words: Joy Jolt

2012-01-31T19:54:00.000-05:00

"Humor, coffee jolt for the brain."

- CV.

Photo of Women drinking coffee from Technorati.com.

How do you respond to a hostile person?

2012-01-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

How do you respond to a hostile person or persons?

Like how you respond to a barking dog. Do you bark back? No. Just like you give time for the dog to understand you better, you give others time to understand you as well. If they don’t understand you, it is their fault not yours, be the same person as you are. Don’t waste time changing the person, like Victor Hugo says, “To reform a man, you must begin with his grandmother.”

Six Words: No Stopping Good

2012-01-30T14:01:00.000-05:00

“No ‘NO’ stops good intentions succeeding.”

- CV.

Photo of Stop sign from Centralbanking.com.

Six Words: Survivor

2012-01-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

“Give me an inch*, that’s home.”

- CV.

* inch of space.

Photo of a tiny flower in a public paved street from Timeandchance.ca.

Recipe: Chocolate Guinness Floats

2012-01-28T23:30:00.000-05:00

Guinness by itself is a great beer to drink but with this chocolate addition, it will add a notch to your taste buds.

Ingredients:
- Guinness Stout Beer
- Chocolate Ice Cream

Directions:
- Place 1-2 scoops of chocolate ice cream in a tall glass. Then pour the Guinness over the top and serve!

Recipe from Gojee.com.

Six Words: Planet Delicacy

2012-01-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

"Delicacies are a galore for bees."

- CV.

Photo of honey bee and a nectar-enriched flower from Valeriy Chernyak.

Six Words: No

2012-01-28T10:59:00.000-05:00

“Don't let ‘NO’ stop your goals.”

- CV.

- Tim Ferriss, author of "4-Hour Work Week" was rejected 20+ times by the publishers before he was able to publish it and became highly successful. Now he publishes on his own in Amazon.
- Einstein was said No many times earlier in his career. He said that helped him fuel his career.
- Dyson's bagless vacuum idea was rejected so many times before he marketed it himself.
- My roommate was said No more than 500 times when he applied for a computer job before he got two jobs in a row.

Image of "No" from Huffington Post.

Haiku: Evil Monster #HaikuChallenge

2012-01-27T18:50:00.002-05:00

"When Empathy scarce,
Evil becomes a monster,
Devours any good."

- CV.

Photo of young Chinese workers making products for Apple from Micgadget.com.

Six Words: Nature Flag

2012-01-27T09:28:00.001-05:00

"Like national flag, colors adorn Nature."

- CV.

Photo of a farm in Furano, Hokkaido, Japan.

Quote: Better Be Running

2012-01-27T01:30:00.000-05:00

"Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better be running."

Abe Gubegna Ethiopia, circa 1974. As recited to me by a cab driver in Washington DC.

Painting of Lion hunting a Gazelle by Olaf C. Seltzer (1877 - 1957).

Haiku: Fame Life #HaikuChallenge

2012-01-26T10:52:00.002-05:00

"Fame can rise sky high,
but it can fall from as high.
Stays by sacrifice."

- CV.

Photo of Gandhi from Wikimedia.org.

For Haiku Challenge.