Monday, October 29, 2007
First high-heeled race hits Mexico
Hundreds of women from all over Mexico City have donned their high heeled shoes to take part in a 100 metre dash.
Braving sprained ankles and broken heels, some 500 competitors kicked off the first ever High Heel Challenge.
The women battled against each other to reach the finish line first to win a shopping voucher worth £4,500.
But one contender revealed a more serious side to the event: "For me, high-heels are an obstacle in the daily life of women. This race shows that women are able to overcome any obstacle. That's the whole idea."
Unsurprisingly a few casualties occurred during the race with one stiletto-wearing runner taking a tumble and another seeming to pull a hamstring.
But in the end, 1500 metre champion Yamile Alaluf had the top heels of steel.
She said: "It's an honour for me to be the winner of the first year of the high-heeled race, because I think it will become a tradition in Mexico, that it will become very popular indeed."
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Author Lessing wins Nobel honour
British author Doris Lessing has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.
The 87-year-old has been honoured with the 10m kronor (£763,000) award for her life's work over a 57-year career.
Her best-known works include The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor and The Summer Before the Dark.
Lessing said she was "very glad" about the honour - particularly as she was told 40 years ago that the Nobel hierarchy did not like her.
She told BBC Radio 4: "I've won it. I'm very pleased and now we're going to have a lot of speeches and flowers and it will be very nice."
They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now
Doris Lessing
She recalled that, in the 1960s, "they sent one of their minions especially to tell me they didn't like me at the Nobel Prize and I would never get it".
"So now they've decided they're going to give it to me. So why? I mean, why do they like me any better now than they did then?"
The author, who turns 88 on 22 October, said she thought she had become more respectable with age.
Lessing is only the 11th woman to win the prize, considered by many to be the world's highest accolade for writers, since it started in 1901.
And she is the second British writer to win in three years, after Harold Pinter was honoured in 2005. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk won last year.
The Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, described Lessing as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
"Oh good, did they say that about me?" she replied. "Oh goodness, well obviously they like me better now than they used to."
Lessing was out shopping when the announcement was made and said she thought a TV show was being filmed on her street when she returned to find TV crews outside her house.
Lessing was born in what is now Iran and moved to Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - as a child before settling in England in 1949.
Her debut novel The Grass is Singing was published the following year and she made her breakthrough with The Golden Notebook in 1962.
'Pioneering work'
"The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th Century view of the male-female relationship," the Swedish Academy said.
But Lessing herself has distanced herself from the feminist movement.
The content of her other novels ranges from semi-autobiographical African experiences to social and political struggle, psychological thrillers and science fiction.
She has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times - for Briefing for a Descent into Hell in 1971, The Sirian Experiments in 1981 and The Good Terrorist in 1985 - but has never won.
In addition to the Nobel cash prize, Lessing will receive a gold medal and an invitation to give a lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm. She can also expect to see a rise in sales.
US author Philip Roth had been the bookmakers' favourite for the award. His name has been mentioned in connection with the prize for many years, but he has always been overlooked.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
To love & to be loved is the greatest happiness.
A kindergarten teacher has decided to let her class play a game. The teacher told each child in the class to bring along a plastic bag containing a few potatoes. Each potato will be given a name of a person that the child hates, so the number of potatoes that a child will put in his/her plastic bag will depend on the number of people he/she hates.
So when the day came, every child brought some potatoes with the name of the people he/she hated. Some had 2 potatoes; some 3 while some up to 5 potatoes.
The teacher then told the children to carry with them the potatoes in the plastic bag wherever they go for 1 week.
Days after days passed by, and the children started to complain due to the unpleasant smell let out by the rotten potatoes. Besides, those having 5 potatoes also had to carry heavier bags.
After 1 week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended.
The teacher asked: "How did you feel while carrying the potatoes with you for 1 week?" The children let out their frustrations and started complaining of the trouble that they had to go through having to carry the heavy and smelly potatoes wherever they go.
Then the teacher told them the hidden meaning behind the game.
The teacher said: "This is exactly the situation when you carry your hatred for somebody inside your heart. The stench of hatred will contaminate your heart and you will carry it with you wherever you go.
If you cannot tolerate the smell of rotten potatoes for just 1 week, can you imagine what is it like to have the stench of hatred in your heart for your lifetime???"
Moral of the story:
Throw away any hatred for anyone from your heart so that you will not carry sins for a life time. Forgiving others is the best attitude to take !
Life is to be fortified by many friendships.
To love & to be loved is the greatest happiness.
Fate determines who comes into our lives. The heart determines who stays.
Take care, have fun and be happy.
So when the day came, every child brought some potatoes with the name of the people he/she hated. Some had 2 potatoes; some 3 while some up to 5 potatoes.
The teacher then told the children to carry with them the potatoes in the plastic bag wherever they go for 1 week.
Days after days passed by, and the children started to complain due to the unpleasant smell let out by the rotten potatoes. Besides, those having 5 potatoes also had to carry heavier bags.
After 1 week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended.
The teacher asked: "How did you feel while carrying the potatoes with you for 1 week?" The children let out their frustrations and started complaining of the trouble that they had to go through having to carry the heavy and smelly potatoes wherever they go.
Then the teacher told them the hidden meaning behind the game.
The teacher said: "This is exactly the situation when you carry your hatred for somebody inside your heart. The stench of hatred will contaminate your heart and you will carry it with you wherever you go.
If you cannot tolerate the smell of rotten potatoes for just 1 week, can you imagine what is it like to have the stench of hatred in your heart for your lifetime???"
Moral of the story:
Throw away any hatred for anyone from your heart so that you will not carry sins for a life time. Forgiving others is the best attitude to take !
Life is to be fortified by many friendships.
To love & to be loved is the greatest happiness.
Fate determines who comes into our lives. The heart determines who stays.
Take care, have fun and be happy.
What's UP?
Lovers of the English language might enjoy this.....How do non-natives ever learn all the nuances of English???
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP."
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP ,and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this up is confusing:
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !
To be knowled geable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP . When it rains, it wets UP the earth.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP
One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so ....
Time to shut UP .....!
Oh...one more thing:!
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?
U p
Don't screw up Send this on to everyone you look up in your address book .
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP."
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP ,and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this up is confusing:
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !
To be knowled geable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP . When it rains, it wets UP the earth.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP
One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so ....
Time to shut UP .....!
Oh...one more thing:!
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?
U p
Don't screw up Send this on to everyone you look up in your address book .
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