comparison & joy

the other day a good friend of mine posted this photo. when i read the message, i remembered a part from one of my favourite books - hector and the search for happiness. hector (main character) was travelling all around the world in search for happiness and writing down the rules of achieving it. one of them he wrote down during his plane trip. on that trip instead of economy class he was updated to business class for free. he sat in his new chair full of happiness drinking free champaign. next to him was a very sad man. when they began talking, hector found out that that guy was once updated to the first class for free and now was very sad to be sitting in the business class again. that story suddenly made hector's free-champaign-happiness much smaller. and the rule he wrote down was:

making comparisons can spoil your happiness.

oh how i agree with hector. but i also think that if you love making comparisons, you should make the right comparisons. what i mean with that is not to compare yourself to someone who has bigger house/better boyfriend/more interesting job, but to those who are homeless, alone and unhappy. i myself am struggling with that. and i myself know how hard is to be satisfied with your life and not complain. but i also know many people, who can only dream of the life many of us are having. for example, an old lady, whom i am visiting every thursday, who was raised in an orphanage, grew up alone, never got married and has noone to care for her.

these thoughts keep occupying my head the whole day and probably the best thing to do is be thankful for what we have. i don't urge you to stop dreaming of better life, never would i wish anyone to stop dreaming. but let those dreams be positive dreams, without comparison and envy.

live the language

i'm in love. with the video i saw today. i am not sure if i have anything to add to those videos. i just want to say that i adore beautiful ads. everything shot in such beautiful colours, with nice music and in nice cities makes me happy.

i want my student years back!

christmas mood

christmas mood reaches tbilisi very late. while the whole world is decorated with lights, all the stores are filled with christmas toys and streets are singing christmas songs from every corner, tbilisi is still saying  goodbye to summer.

but today on my way to work i saw that workers began constructing huge light trees, which made me extremely happy. tbilisi is amazing in december. all the streets have beautiful lighting, you walk around the city and feel the spirit of christmas and new year.

another great way of getting into christmas mood is listening to christmas songs. have you noticed how rare you want to hear jingle bells in summer? but how great it is to listen to them when new year is near. i start listening to christmas songs in november, in beginning of december i set up christmas tree, starting from mid december i spend every weekend cooking some christmas dishes. ginger cookies, cinnamon cakes, chocolate chippies, waffles, apple pies ... 

i am a true child and believer that christmas is the best day of the whole year. this year i will be waiting for miracle more than ever in my life.


here is a song for you to get in my mood.

sun valley serenade. glenn miller. love.

the classics of black and white cinema. sun valley serenade. one of my favourites. because of unbelievably amazing glenn miller, whose music i just adore. there is no other melody that can put you in such a great mood as his orchestra playing 'in the mood'.

i'm on the wave of 1940-50s these days. i have been listening to music, watching movies and remembering greatest artists, composers and singers of that period.

sun valley serenade is probably the only movie featuring glenn miller and his music. you don't even have to care about the plot of the movie when you have such an accompaniment. why did hollywood stop filming such kind and nice movies? why do we go to the premiers of scary movies with shootings and vampires, when sometime ago people were dressing up in long dresses and enjoyed movies in cinemas, the attendance of which equaled to the attendance of a nice concerts.

Why do robins sing in December?
Long before the Springtime is due?
And even though it's snowing, violets are growing
I Know Why and so do you

disney princesses

every girl has her favourite disney princess. my two little nieces - elene and ani have divided princesses among each other. elene is jasmin and ani is snowhite. i myself was a jasmine when i was little. not just because of my hair colour, but because alladin was probably my favourite disney cartoon and it stays like that even now. i can't even call them cartoons, they are real movies. i am not quite sure how cartoons are made now, probably just with the use of computers and technology, but in 1950s, time when cinderella was made, artists drew scenes from real life. each princess had two prototypes - first one, a live action model, who posed for all the scenes and acted in front of the painters, and the second one - singing and speaking voice, who recorded the dialogs and songs.

my favourite voice is cinderella's voice - ilene woods. i honestly believe that such types of voices don't exist anymore. you know that warm, old-style voices that we used to hear in old movies and cartoons. in that category i put judy garland, one of my favourite voices, which i will talk about some other time, since the topic of this post is cartoons and its princesses.

you can watch the video i posted below and have a look at all the princesses, their models and their voices. and you will see how the style of princess singing has changed as time passed. now old-fashioned cinderella and belle are replaced by modern soul and pop singers - in 'princess and the frog' and 'rapunzel'. i may be subjective, but those old voices i loved more, just as i still do love old cartoons more.

love measurement unit

my dad said such a wonderful thing today, that i cannot help sharing it with you.

everything is measured in units - distance in kilometres, weight in kilograms, volume in litres. but what about love? love should be measured in ilukas.

what a perfect measurement unit it would be! one million ilukas, two million ilukas...

бибикните, если вы влюблены

сегодня мне вспомнилось одно очень замечательное видео, которое я видела пару лет назад и которое меня так вдохновило, что я хотела проделать то же самое в тбилиси. мой друг вызвался помочь, и мы были близки от выполнения этой идеи, но что-то помешало: то ли дела, то ли времени не было. вообщем, так и не вышло.

но я считаю, что это так мило! особенно конец, счастливый трактор и счастливый камаз. доброго вам утра, друзья!

la finestra di fronte

i was introduced to ferzan ozpetek's movies by my good friends nato and fran, who sang a soundtrack from 'mine vaganti' (loose cannons) to me and insisted that i should watch it for sure. and so i did. in that movie, i just loved the main character riccardo scamarcio, believing him to be one of the handsomest men in the world. the scenery was amazing - true italy - with beautiful colours, beautiful people, big and emotional families and fantastic music.


the next ozpetek's movie i saw was 'la finestra di fronte' (facing windows), which i loved even more. the plot had great sense, introducing two love stories impossible on the one hand due to moral issues, but nevertheless beautiful and worth having. the movie had so many beautiful people in it, that it was a true pleasure watching it.

i think that ferzan ozpetek is one of the greatest turkish directors ever, though people who are more familiar with turkish cinema may name other great directors as well, but for me personally ozpetek is amazing because of his ability to  make good films with beautiful cast, fantastic soundtracks and cleverly knit stories.

viewaddict

tbilisi is rich in restaurants with great views and i am an often visitor of them because of my beautiful-view-addiction. probably i have been to every place in tbilisi that has a breathtaking scenery opening from its terrace or window.

yesterday i had a dinner in a place with amazing view. 'narikala hills' restaurant was a discovery for me. probably it is best for romantic dinners with candles and soul talks, but i didn't have any chance of this atmosphere because of my friends jokes and funny stories. probably, they will never let us in again, but i highly recommend it to those of you, who love romantic views, nice music and cozy places, which are not full of people.

and here is a cover of my favourite 'let's stay together' by maroon 5. i think such songs are perfect for such views.

siesta

i have a nice app on my iphone. it keeps sending me words of the day every evening and thanks to it my english vocabulary has grown substantially. mostly i have no idea of the definition of the words dictionary.com is sending me, but the word i got today i knew for sure.


                                     

i know its not midday or afternoon or anything like that, but i'm pretty sleepy and instead of going to my bed, would love to find myself on the picture above, with summer, sun and a river/sea noise on the background. goodnight my dear readers!

decisions

decisions

always hard to make, but so worth the effort. my good friend told me that in every moment in your life you should decide - you go one way or another. you may have doubts, you may have thoughts and they all will be eating you from inside, but once the decision is made - you are free. you have already decided and you know the path you are taking.

this applies to everything - new job, new haircut, new road you take from home to work, new book you start, new people you meet...

so wish me luck. today i made probably the biggest decision in my life. life-changing and promising better future and lots of positive things.

for so long

for so long..you and me been finding each other for so long

tiko and i met in summer 2008, in a dining room of one of the hotels in turkey. we met thanks to my dearest lako and this encounter is probably the biggest present that i got from lako, after her friendship with me of course.

and the feeling that i feel for you is more then strong , girl

if in this world we can talk about soulmates and soulfriends, tiko is probably the best description for that word to me. though raised in two absolutely different countries, absolutely different schools, among absolutely different people, we were raised in very similar families, with principles that are so alike, that sometimes i cannot believe it. but all those things are nothing in comparison to what kind of friends we are now. i have a friend who gets me with half a phrase, half a word, half a letter. and i feel that i often don't even have to say anything, she just gets everything rightaway. during the hardest periods in my life she has been so there for me with all her heart, that i will never ever in my life forget that. she was my mind, my eyes and my heart and she stays there forever in spite of the fact that she lives 1500 kilometers away from me. those 1500 kilometers are absolutely nothing when it comes to our friendship. and all my life i will be learning from tiko how to be such a great person and all my life will be trying to be at least a little bit of such a great friend as she is.

autumn

autumn came to tbilisi only yesterday. i was driving with my girls in the evening when i realized that. it was pretty dark and windy, when i stopped the car and let them go out to buy some pastries. and suddenly it felt so cozy. so cozy, that for the first time i felt that i wanted to save this emotion in my head in order to share it with you in my blog later. i managed that with the help of the music that was playing in the car.

the wind was blowing, it was warm inside, cars were driving like crazy, like they always do in tbilisi, the lights were appearing/disappearing and then suddenly a yellow leaf fell on my front window. i looked outside and leaves were flying all over me. they were flying and dancing to the music. to marvin gaye. of course.