7 posts tagged “qotd”

If you were stranded on an island, what five books would you bring?

1. Light on Yoga - B.K.S. Iyengar
2. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
3. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
4. FM 21-76 US Army Survival Manual (pdf)
5. The Dhammapada - as translated by Thomas Byrom

I didn't think too long about this but now looking back at it, these books provide a fairly practical guide for surviving this world and the next. I haven't read the US Army Survival Manual, but it's in there because I'm a pragmatist.

via (CJP)

In 5 words or less, who are you? 
Submitted by dejablu503.

Curious, Loyal, Hungry, Cunning, Fast.

What is one of your favorite poems?
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.

My hero bares his nerves along my wrist

That rules from wrist to shoulder,

Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,

Leans on my mortal ruler,

The proud spine spurning turn and twist.



And these poor nerves so wired to the skull

Ache on the lovelorn paper

I hug to love with my unruly scrawl

That utters all love hunger

And tells the page the empty ill.



My hero bares my side and sees his heart

Tread, like a naked Venus,

The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait;

Stripping my loin of promise,

He promises a secret heat.



He holds the wire from the box of nerves

Praising the mortal error

Of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves,

And the hunger's emperor;

He pulls the chain, the cistern moves.

Dylan Thomas has always been one of my favorites, and here he shows his mortality unadorned. To live hard and fast, his emotions bared before all, loud and proud, Thomas was the archetypical romantic.

Ever get away with saying somebody else did it?

Yeah, and it took me nearly ten years to get it off my chest before it crushed me under the weight of my own conscience. I remember the moment when I was about seventeen and it came back to bite more clearly than I remember the event itself. It was midsummer, and I was sitting in the loungeroom on one of those long listless afternoons. The cricket was on TV and it must have been close to my birthday. I might've been thinking selfishly about all the birthday and christmas presents I`d ever been given, or something equally insipid.

I thought about some of the good ones I`d had, like the drum kit, and the skateboards and BMX bikes, and then the Swiss army knife I got from my father  for christmas when I was 7. I`d had that knife for about an hour before I decided to do something stupid. I was showing off to the boys down the road when I said "hey! watch me cut this wire". Older homes where I grew up had exposed electrical wiring for the light fittings and they looked good for cutting. The switch was off so I thought no danger. As I cut through the wire I felt the surge run through the house and the heat deep in the blade gripped so firmly in my little hands.

Whether it was the fear or the shock that threw me to the floor, I`ll never know, but the hard plastic handle of the knife had certainly saved me from electrocution. The knife still buzzing, smoking, and  attached to the wall I ran in to the next room where all the parents were. Screaming "it wasn`t me, I swear" blaming the nearest neighbourhood kid, who was white as a ghost from watching his childhood friend nearly go up in smoke.

Sitting on the couch that summer I remembered how hard my mum had worked to bring up 2 boys by herself, and how I sometimes hadn`t been that grateful for it. I had to tell her when she came home from work, before I turned eighteen, because I didn`t want to be a liar all my life.

We know you never slack off at work, but if you did, what would you do?

I`d take my clients out for coffee, speak broken English and mix it up with a little Japanese just to show them that I am human and not just a conversational corrections machine. You see, I am an ESL instructor at a school in Japan with a strict socialisation policy.

Of course there are others who get away with this, but I prefer to draw a clean line between business and pleasure. It would have been much easier from the start to have friends who speak my language well, but then I would never found the support I`ve needed to learn theirs. There are always other native speakers of English to talk around here if I need to, but I won`t always be surrounded by Japanese.

Would you rather go back in time or visit the future?
Submitted by Auds.

I doubt I could learn much more about myself in either the past or future, than I could right here and now. Both lie on the same continuum, and are not effected by the cycles of life and death in this material world. The real aim is transcendence.

The same earthly desires and sinful ignorance would not be more or less painful in the past or future. If I am to apply myself to this life's aim, I should burn myself out like a good bonfire and leave nothing but ashes. What is there to gain by wishful thinking that I could benefit from prior knowledge or advanced technology, except further attachment to the same material world?

What's your dream career? 
Submitted by Something.

Right now I have a yearning to get back into what I left in 2003, developing websites for major brands around the world. The companies I worked for no-longer exist in their previous forms, they have folded or morphed or been taken over but the the principles of working on the web are still much the same. Creativy and flexibility are king when it comes to making connections

Some would say that having such a hiatus between your last job and your next one in an environment that changes so quickly would put you at a disadvantage. I would disagree. My last 3 and a half years as a teacher of languages and a student has taught me that learning is a constant process, just as change is, and if you approach things with an open mind then anything is possible.

So I am starting the long and winding process of climbing back to the top, one step at a time.

Does anyone out there have a similar experience, or success stories to share?