The last time I had been in Madrid was September 2001, yes at the time you are thinking about..
So when I was offerred some training work in Madrid, I just thought great opportunity to go and see again a Museum, I really liked, Museo Reina Sofia, a great modern art museum in the centre of Madrid. One floor in particular, the one so interwoven with Spain History, and the civil war, I remembered quite well. I am not such a fan of Italica, Picasso’s master piece, maybe because I have not fully grasped it or more simply not so connected with it. But they are great other paintings as well from Picasso, Dali, and Miro to just a mention a few on that floor as well.
Having had a quick look at the museum website, 2 temporary exhibitions from 2 artists I have never heard of caucht my eye, namely the ones exhibiting works from Yayoi Kusama and Lygia Pape.
Yayoi Kusama work stretches in so many different directions from more traditional japanese paintings to very engaged work, through videos, sculpure (the accumulation sculptures, with an abundance of phallic appendices) ( not my favourite stuff from her), and interesting installations, such as the vacated rooms, a personal reconstruction of some house rooms such as lounge and dining room with dots of different colours all over the furniture, and more magical ones (her infinity mirror) (My favourite piece of the exhibition).
I have not been able to find any photo of that one. What a shame!!! I will regret having forgotten my camera at the hotel on that days. This is similar to the one representing on the photo shown here, with a room fill of mirrors wires of different lengths coming down from the ceilings supporting bulbs of lights that change colours at different timings, producing a feeling more magical than even a very nice firework display can achieve, with some reflectionson he side to the different mirros giving that feeling of infinity, reinforced by the use of wate and additional reflections on the ground.
I might just go and see the exhibition again when shown at the Centre Pompidou, París (October 19, 2010 – January 9, 20110 or at the Tate modern in London, next year (Feb 9, 2012 – June 5, 2012), just for that glimpse of magic.
This photo will give you some idea of her work.
And the infinity mirror I mentioned was more like those:
With regards to the exhibition dedicated to Lygia Pape, I was mainly interesting in her masterpiece,
Lygia Pape – Magnetized Space
which photo is attached since it looks magical, with a play on light, reflection, and wire. I might just have been in Magical mood… 🙂 Nevertheless, this piece was shown in a dark room of 50 square meters, and since I was lucky to see it on my own, and take the time to walk around, I find it soothing, changing, magical, and was in a strange way attracted to its secret, its message, its playfulness, and its ever changing appearance.
Thinking about it this is also exactly what attracted me to Yayoi Kusama’s infinity mirror work above.
Another work from Lygia Pape, I enjoyed was Divisor, a video showing a what looks like a giant white bedsheet and a crowd of what look like dozens if not hundreds of people moving/walking in the streets with only their head showing over the bedsheet, and the wonderful waves created on that bedsheet by the movement of those people walking.
For this exhibition as well, I was surprised as I had been for the one about Yayoi Kusama to realise, Madrid had been one of the first city to show the exhibition. Lygia pape will also be shown at The Serpentine Gallery in London (Dec 7, 2011 – Feb 19, 2012).
An opportunity for some of you to catch those exhibitions if interested in.
Having been recommending a lot the same website over the last few months to friends and family who were looking to buy English books while living in Europe but outside the UK, I decided to write a short post about that particular website that delivers for free worldwide books in English, namely, www.bookdepository.com.
So I thought it would be a good idea to share this here.
I started using the bookdepository while still living in the UK as they were sometimes cheaper than Amazon.co.uk, and having lived outside the UK now for over two years I buy from them on a regular basis since they are cheaper than Amazon.co.uk (even sometimes without adding the delivery costs from the amazon.co.uk website), and definitely cheaper than amazon.fr or amazon.de when buying English books.
Have a look and see for yourself. And if it turns out cheaper please come back here to thank me for giving you such a great advice and acknowledging you saved money thanks to me compared to the former other options available 🙂
Un test muy interesante para todas las personas que hablan o por lo menos entienden español para discubrir y determinar si una persona es mas visual, auditivo o kinestésico.
Mi resultado fue Visual (38.5%), Auditivo (33.5%) y Kinestésico (28%).
Respecto a si es bueno que te de puntajes alto en todos los canales, diría que podría ser bueno. Pero realmente, no hay malo ni bueno, todo depende más que de la modalidad dominante, de las estrategias de cada persona. Lo que si es cierto, es que aquello que manejan los 3 canales pueden tener más facilidad de adaptarse al canal de otro, siempre que sean conscientes de eso.
Por ejemplo, un vendedor que atiende a un cliente predominantemente kinestésico, debería usar predicados kinestésicos para entenderse mejor, y hablar más lento, como lo hacen los kinestésicos.
I just watched the movie “Crazy heart” for which Jeff Bridges won the 2010 oscar for best actor, and I have to say I truly enjoyed that movie. Very nicely done, and truly enjoyable. I even found myself singing along on some of the scenes.
Having worked with alcoolics, I know how important certain events are to give them the energy to get out of that spiral down and enjoy moving forward again.
Following a great discussion on Linkedin around best life changing books, I decided to keep track here of what had been mentioned so far and seems interesting.
Most Recommended
1. The Secret- 4 votes
2. Greatness Guide- 3 votes
3. The Power of Now- 2 votes
4. How to Win Friends and Influence People- 2 votes
5. Feel The Fear & Do It Anyway- 2 votes
6. Blink- 2 votes
7. The fountainhead- 2 votes
8. Monk who sold his Ferrari- 2 votes
9. Think and Grow Rich- 2 votes
10. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull- 2 votes
11. Muhammed by Haykal- 2votes
All Recommendations (In Alphabetic Order)
1. 100 ways to motivate
2. 7 habits of highly effective people
3. A Time to Think
4. Atlas shrugged
5. Autobiography of a yogi
6. Awaken the giant within
7. Awareness
8. Developing The Leader Within You
9. Discover your Destiny
10. Do One Thing Different: Ten Simple Ways to Change
11. Dont Sweat On Small Things
12. First things First
13. If How To’s Were Enough, We’d All Be Skinny, Rich, and Happy
14. In the Meantime
15. Leadership from the Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life
16. Living, loving & Learning
17. Man’s Search for Meaning
18. Maverick
19. Mindset
20. Mitch Albom’s books..
21. Peoplemaking
22. Power within excellent
23. Rich Dad Poor Dad
24. Self Hypnotism
25. Success Principles
26. Synchrodestiny
27. Tao of Pooh
28. The 80/20 Principle
29. The alchemist
30. The Autobiography of Malcom X
31. The Bible
32. The magic of thinking BIG
33. The Purpose Driven Life
34. The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: King Solomon’s Secrets to Success, Wealth, and Happiness
35. The Road Less Traveled
36. The Road To Success
37. Think like a winner
38. Tie: The Four Hour workweek
39. Use your Head
40. What to say when you talk to yourself
41. Zen and the Art of Archery
Additional recommendations in the order they came in
Buckingham’s “First, Break All the Rules”
“Do What You Are” by Paul Tieger
“The Road Less Travelled.” Scott Peck
Understanding Organisations by Charles Handy
As a Man Thinketh: By Marc Allen
Reach Your True Potential : By Sheri O. Zampelli
How to Think Like a Millionaire: By Mark Fisher and Marc Allen.
Visionary Business: By Marc Allen
A Passion for Success: By Kazuo Inamori
Getting things done – David Allen – Advance level of productivity brings in peace and progress in life.
Power of Subconscious mind – Dr. Joesph Murphy – Its really worked for me at my subconscious level
Healing the past for a vibrant future – Arian Sarris – It healed me of all my past baggage
The Magic of Thinking Big – David J, Schwarts – Inspiring/aspiring to be large then life
The Aladdin factor – Jack Canfield and mark Voctor Hansen – Things comes in your life when you ask for it
My Experiments with truth M.K.Gandhi – Its not a book it’s a bomb, try doing his experiment in your life.
The Art of Doing Nothing Veronique Vienne – For someone like me whose mind wanders and produces guilt feeling for doing nothing
Today, I read the following article, about white guys being paid to pretend to be businessmen in China.
However incredible this appears to be, I have a tendency to believe this anecdote to be true. The comments on the posts were interesting, since a few people were ready to volunteer to be paid $1,000 per week to sit in a hotel room. And it made me wondered, especially in such a difficult financial climate, how many people would indeed be ready to be paid to do just that? In fact, do they even wonder whether this is such a value issue to play with the importance of appearance in China.
Following my earlier post, I thought I would post on the follow-up as apparently a lot of people were keen on spending a long time on the road to go and visit Scandinavia.
voilà, c’est parti dans tous les sens du terme!
Merci à tous pour votre intérêt. Et, pour ceux qui désiraient partir, sachez qu’il y a plein de gens qui cherchent des personnes pour ramener des voitures de location en Belgique. Je vous suggère de contacter les firmes de location….
bon voyage!
I love the fact that in this response it was suggested to the many responders that were not selected to contact the car rental companies in Belgium to see whether they could get a deal to go somewhere for a few days since a lot of people are looking for people to return cars to Belgium.
In terms of free travel, this has to beat all the tips I have ever read about travelling cheaply in the USA. Now we can do even better in exceptional circunstances in Europe!! 🙂
Today, I was moved and reminded of the importance of opening our eyes and not focusing on a single story. Yes our minds have a tendency to simplify everything, which is usually very benefitial to us as human beings, however we should be aware that when we listen over and over to the same story we start believing that this is the only real one.
So if you fancy smiling, laughing, and getting inspired by somebody from another culture, please watch this wonderful 20-minute talk by Nigerian Chimamanda Adichie.
Over the last few years we have seen incidents that we, as human beings, have not been able to control or even forecast. The latest one is the cloud coming out of the volcano in Island that is paralysing Europe and some of the international flights. And even though we have better and better technology at our disposal we still have to cope with nature and let it run us for a while.
Nevertheless some good stuff come out of such event. One of them being solidarity, another one being creativity. Let me share with you an ad received tonight in French on Brussels freecycle:
Subject: [Brussels_Freecycle] [OFFRE] voyage en Suède en voiture, départ DEMAIN SOIR (samedi)
To: Brussels_Freecycle@yahoogroupes.fr
Je me permets de mettre cette offre un peu étrange, qui ne concernerait que des personnes ayant un permis de conduire.
Il s’agit en effet d’accompagner quelques personnes en voiture de location, de Bruxelles en Suède du sud – ou à Copenhague si vous le préférez (un voyage de quelques 12-13 heures, pas besoin de conduire pour l’aller), départ demain (samedi) soir vers 21h, puis de ramener la voiture à Bruxelles dans les jours qui suivent (d’où le besoin du permis).
Toutes dépenses seront couvertes – y inclus une nuitée d’hôtel en Suède ou à Copenhague si besoin. La personne pourra également recevoir une indemnité.
La raison pour cette demande est qu’un groupe de personnes suédois et norvégiens ont été à une à une grande réunion, mais suite aux problèmes du nuage volcanique, ils ne peuvent rentrer en Scandinavie qu’en voiture… Ils sont pour le moment en Écosse, en route pour la Belgique via Londres.
J’espère ainsi pouvoir faire le bonheur de quelqu’un qui a envie de partir quelques jours en Suède….
Bon week-end
Basically someone is offering a free one night trip to Sweden or Copenhagen for anyone with a driving license ready to drive back a car from either Sweden or Copenhagen to Brussels, as some scandinavians that got stuck in Scotland did find a way to drive to London, then from there to Brussels and now to Denmark/Sweden. Amazing, no?
a video showing a what looks like a giant white bedsheet and a crowd of what look like dozens if not hundreds of people moving/walking in the streets with only their head showing over the bedsheet, and the wonderful waves created on that bedsheet by the movement of those people walking.
