This wonderful book, Pablo Neruda: Nobel Prize-Winning Poet by David Goodnough, is one of the 13 books I bought from Better World Books as part of my “2014 Annual Book Binge.”

I hadn't plan to read it so soon and certainly not in one sitting, but I did just that today. My cat, Trio, had decided to take a super long evening nap on my lap and eventually my laptop died on me (the battery ran out of juice), so I was immobilized with a black screen and a fur-ball on my lap. I took a look around me, locked my eyes on the pile of Pablo Neruda books just by my side and picked this one out.

This post is about my thoughts in relation to the Coursera course, THE BILINGUAL BRAIN by Arturo E. Hernandez (University of Houston). Language development—according to Professor Arturo—continues to happen until the 40’s. The left temporal lobe of our brain, which is involved in language, seems to show maturation up to that age. One more interesting finding is that when we are babies, our brains produce […]

My heartfelt thanks to a very dear friend, Maristella Tagliaferro, for bringing SANDOKAN to my attention. The legendary author Emilio Salgari never set foot in Malaysia, but he’s written an awesome series about the fictional character Sandokan through sheer research that became very famous in Italy.

Rise at 5 AM. Spend that first hour on fitness, gratitude and reading. Here is the list of actions what I will be doing between 5 AM and 8 AM: […]

I started reading INSURGENT (Book 2) by Veronica Roth yesterday the moment I finished DIVERGENT. The second book of the dystopian Divergent series was great and just like the first book, it was hard to put down.

I’m glad the book picks up exactly where DIVERGENT ended […]

It has been a while I last read a novel within two days and DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth was hard to put down. I like the vulnerable yet strong Beatrice (Tris) and the intriguing Four of Dauntless. The plot is exciting and in the face of circumstances surrounding the protagonists, the choices one has to make is […]

I found a very useful article on Italki.com about using mind-mapping to improve one’s vocabulary and I immediately plan to put it to work for my Italian language self-learning.

Mind maps are not new to me, but the concept of using it to improve my vocabulary is new and interesting.