I have realized that looking at twitter doesn't really make your life better. I am quit looking at it from now on. Let's focus on reading more books and magazines instead of  indulging in those futile tweets.

If I can't help looking at them, let's make it only once a week.  

rap battle

I wrote my friend in Korea an email telling her how depressed I am for many reasons.
She got me back with a reply saying, "Are you proposing to do a rap battle against me to determine who is unhappier ?"

I immediately imagined us doing a rap battle on a stage to tell the world how unhappy we are with intensive gestures and words and let them decide who is unhappier. The scene is both hilarious and sad. And then I started to think about all these people around me who are not having the best moments of their lives. Actually I have realized that I can totally arrange an international rap battle on this subject. I have at least 10 people around me who say they are unhappy. Plenty of participants for the competition. Yeah and we give a grand prize to the winner who is chosen to be the unhappiest person. Isn't this such a great idea?

Ernest Hemingway

In this summer, when I was about to say a temporary goodbye to this City of Lights, I happened to come across a book by Ernest Hemingway titled "A Moveable Feast," at Shakespeare and Company, an old and cozy bookshop near Notre Dame. I had heard about the book before because a Valedictorian of the previous batch at my graduate school quoted one sentence from the book in his speech at graduation ceremony. It reads "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." The introduction of the book said that the book is about Hemingway's memories of life as an unknown writer living in PAris in the 1920s . As a Paris resident, I got attracted to the sentence as well as the introduction of the book . So I picked up the book. And I only started reading it recently.

Halfway into the book, I have totally been mesmerized by the beauty of his writing, his ability to convey delicate feelings and situations in such a concise and simple manner. His sentences are simple, but very deep. This was the first time that I read his book in English. Of course, some Paris factor should be there as for my high appreciation of the book. However all in all, I have come to clearly understand why Hemingway is so beloved by so many people in the world. Also, I could easily associate myself with his rather stoic attitude toward life and people. I beame a genuine fan.

So, I took the next step = which was to look him up at the wikepedia. I was mostly curious about his marriage life since I could see that he was very much in love with his wife. But helas, this woman was the first wife out of four wives he had in total. He got married three more times after he divorced the first wife. This somewhat made me sad. It is difficult for me not to be sad whenever I hear love stories which saw unhappy ending although I know for sure that protagonists of "everlasting" love stories are not necessarily the happiest people on the earth.

But what shocked me most was the fact that he committed suicide. I had heard of this before but I had completely forgotten it for a long time. Now I remember. A story of a genius commiting suicide... is such a cliche. But still, I have got extremely saddened on learning the fact. These kind of people who contribute so much to the joy and beauty of the human kind deserve to be "happy". But so many times, these talented and genius people have a lot to suffer in their personal lives. Since i have seen so many talented and genius people going extremes and even choosing to end their lives, I have come to wonder if a genius is indeed something that cannot go hand in hand with personal happiness. The world owes so much to these people and yet it is helpless when it comes to providing happiness to these people, blocking them from choosing such extreme means to escape unhappiness.