Matters of the Heart

A book from my most favorite author, Danielle Steel. I have been reading her books from my college days, like hers there are so many other authors whose stories are so good but somehow I sticked only to her books. Its mainly because of her amazing narrating style, her stories, her characters which makes me every time to fall in love with her books. I have a good collection of her books and always enjoyed accumulating it. I didn't try any of her book in the recent time and started reading this story Matters of the heart, after a long gap. And this book happened to be her one hundredth book. That's a wonderful milestone.

'Some of the greatest crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of love'

This is how the book starts. This story is about a sociopath who holds a person in the name of love. Though I finished off real quick, this story is very disturbing at times and all I thought several times is that I should not continue reading it any further. But still I completed reading this book clenching my teeth thinking about one particular character in the story. Recently someone wanted me to debate about the difference between true love and blind love. This book is a perfect example for blind love. I know its pretty foolish to take a fiction to this level but still I believe there are certainly people if not very many, at least few who just fall prey to a sociopath at times, just like this character (Hope Dunne) in the story. This story is about her who's so foolish in life to give so much love to a person and the consequences is that she gets ripped off and almost touches the edge of death and escapes in a matter of seconds. Eventually she ends up in an ashram in Rishikesh, India for the real healing of her life. Here is the best advice she ever received from her stay in the ashram...

'We are always better than before when those we love inflict wounds on us. They make us stronger, and when you forgive them, you will no longer feel the scar'

Hopefully the next book which I am going to start right away has to be something interesting from my Dany.

The Club di Giulietta (The Juliet Club)

Here is an interesting club for people who want to talk about their love or for those who seek an advice for their love. Named after the legendary lovers Romeo and Juliet, 'The Juliet Club' is in the city of Verona, Italy. Every year some thousand letters all around the world flock into the club either requesting for an advice or telling their wonderful tales about love.

The first letter was addressed to 'Juliet, Verona' arrived in 1937 sparked by the first Hollywood movie released about her. The then curator of the Juliet tomb replied to it. But letters kept coming from then on and by 1990 the Juliet club was organized by the City of Verona which took over by answering all the mails of its most famous daughter, Juliet. The city pays the postage and the volunteer work for free. Every year on Valentines day the club awards the 'Cara Giulietta' ('Dear Juliet') prize to the best love letter received that year.

"Dear Juliet," the letters all begin.

"Dear Juliet ... You are my last hope. The woman I love more than anything in the world has left me. ..."

"Dear Juliet, I live on the third floor. My parents don't allow my boyfriend to come to my house. So I have to sneak him in. ..."

"Help me! Save me!" wrote an Italian woman whose husband had left her. "I feel suspended on a precipice. I am afraid of going mad. "Her answer came from Ettore Solimani, who was the custodian of Juliet's tomb for nearly 20 years, beginning in the 1930's. "Men have moments when they are unable to control themselves," he wrote. "Have faith ...," Mr. Solimani added later in the letter. "The day of humiliation will come for the intruder, and your husband will come back to you."

Just in case any of you need the address...

CLUB DI GIULIETTA - THE JULIET CLUB
via Galilei 3 - 37100 Verona,
Italy.

info@julietclub.com

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet’s love story may have been fictional but many believe it happened in Verona. This city is the perfect place for this story to take place, for its middle age ambient. There are also some real references in Verona. There is a myth that the house you’re seeing is believed to be the real home of Juliet’s family and the balcony of Juliet is also for real. The building dates from the thirteenth century with the house of Capulet's, Juliet's family and it’s a major tourist attraction. If you are fortunate to visit the place, you can pretend to be Juliet and step out on the famous balcony of Juliet's house to talk to your Romeo!

Paulo Coelho's nice thoughts

Here are some beautiful thoughts from the Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho. Some of which I really like to read it over and over again and here is it for you, my sweet people...


Don't let anyone ever make you feel like you don't deserve what you want.

Every time you judge yourself, you hurt your own heart.

It is easier to love than to be loved. Accept love: it will not wait at your doorstep forever.

The only power you have on this planet is the power of your decisions.

Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.

Our angel often uses someone’s lips to talk to us. Be attentive.

The only power you have on this planet is the power of your decisions.

Important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

Join those who walk with tears in their eyes. Avoid those who have never shed a tear.

Happy Mother's Day

Motherhood: 'All love begins and ends there' - Robert Browning.

My heartiest wishes to all the Mom out there on this Mother's day and thank you for being everything to your kids. I love you all so much. Mom rules the world.

"We only have One Mom, One Mommy, One Mother in this World, One life. Don't wait for the Tomorrow's to tell Mom, you love her."

Love Story album song

Here is a wonderful song, 'Love story' by Taylor Swift from her album "Fearless". I edited this video which includes the subtitle. I love the song. Check this out guys.

Films - Are we real Fans or just caught in the Fad?

I watched the most crappiest movie of all time in this weekend. My goodness, seriously the guy who directed the movie and the actors who acted in that movie, do they have a brain to work on it? You might ask me why do I so much care, I could have stopped watching it to make it simple. Well, I continued watching it simply because I wanted to know how far this insanity will go. The height of madness is that the actor has a huge fan base and they went insane every time the actor just rolled on the floor or jumped in the air in some crappy sequences in the movie.

Honestly, what's the big deal about a movie? What is a clean film by the way? Who are the real audience? A clean and a good film has to be something which has to entertain you in some way. Either it can be a love story wherein you need to feel the love or an out and out action packed story which just shows the physical power or the mental toughness. There are way too many genres in which a film can be categorized. And an actor is someone who emulates the character from the script and delivers perfectly in front of the camera. A perfect actor is someone who could carry any kind of roles in his/her sleeve with ease. He's required to deliver what is being needed in the script rather than what he wanted to add to himself which is unnecessary.

I think its high time for us to realize that we are fooling ourselves by justifying our favorite actor's lack of performance, height of stupidity in a film. Are we so dumb to encourage such kind of films in the future too? Seriously, you could be a die hard fan to some actor but that doesn't mean you have to be so loyal to his crappiest movie of all time. This is absurd. Just look at the way the world movies are evolving. Fortunately, I have been watching some good movies in different languages and I could see the wide varieties.

Look at the world cinema, look at the world's finest creators of films, their characters, their world, their dreams, their passion which just reflects in big screen. Look at movies like Gladiator, Titanic, Avatar, Taare Zaamen par, Three Idiots, Paa, Naayagan, Anjali, Bombay, Alaipayuthey, etc. Some of them are big dreams, best technology involved, beautiful inspirations, wonderful creations and also simple real life stories.

Let us be sensible and intelligent admirers to encourage great creators to come up with beautiful films with some fine actors. Please don't allow anyone to mislead you in any way. Please don't get carried away in the name of a fan.

Apple iPad

Finally the hype is over and the product is already out in the market. I checked the Apple iPad yesterday in an Apple store. By the first look of it, anyone will fall in love with it. Seriously, its a cool device. Very handy, thin, simple, elegant and stylish gadget. Well, I am not going to review it and I don't have much knowledge about it to do that. Just felt like blogging about what I felt about the iPad tablet.

Browsing is very fast in the iPad, I checked few websites and it works pretty fast. Guess what, I checked my own blog in that :-) As it doesn't support Adobe Flash, the videos I posted in my blog didn't work. I was disappointed. As most of the websites uses Flash, I am not sure how it will do good with the device. No web cam too. This is another pitfall. As always, Apple's products are used to be way too high in price. The basic Wi-Fi, 16 GB iPad price is $499! I know, Its expensive.

On the brighter side, the battery life is for 10 hours. Honestly, its so cool. I really like the iBook store. It was like reading a real book on your hand. The page turns are so very perfect. Its very smooth and amazing to flip the pages. I loved it. The Multi Touch technology is something which will definitely blow you crazy. Viewing photos and videos is just incredible in that device. Playing games, you will simply love it. I can assure you that. Typing in the keyboard just works perfect. It was not complicated as I thought.

No flash support, no web cam, way too pricey - Thumbs down, Mr. Steve. Despite the fact, there are other features which I just love about it and the iPad tablet just cant gets off my head from yesterday. Seriously, I would have considered buying it, if it had supported Flash and also if it had web cam. I hope they deliver the next model with these features. That's the best strategy Apple's people do every time with their product. They introduce a product in the market and will observe the response towards it. And then they evaluate and come up again with all the necessary feature in the next model. Their trick works every time, simply because its Apple!