I found this beautiful infographic on Business Insider. It pretty much sums up the strategies you'd need when you need a jolt of inspiration. I find this to be completely applicable to all the stuff I plan to do in my life and work.

I have done a few posts in the past about how learn Italian; however, for this post I’d like to revisit my methodology and summarize what had worked for me right from the beginning. Using Italian as an example, I did the following without attending any classes.

Listen to the sound. Like a child learning to speak, hearing and mimicking sounds are important. The main resources I use are: [...]

In October this year, I was privileged to be invited by Maristella Tagliaferro to participate in the @MarcoPolo_Pinocchio a Gedda Project. I'm elated to be able to use my knowledge of Italian to translate one of my favorite childhood stories: Pinocchio! The whole experience has been gratifying and I love interacting with the group members, and getting to know more new Italian friends. I dedicate this post to you—my dearest Maristella. More about the project below.

My copy of SANDOKAN from the Institut Terjemahan & Buku Malaysia (ITBM) has arrived—I’ve read the book and enjoyed it. I’m usually not fond of pirates but this time I'm seeing things from another point of view and that is from the pirates’.

In this story, the fearful Sandokan, known as Harimau Malaysia (Tiger of Malaysia) is a famous and powerful pirate. He is the leader of the Mompracem pack. Together with his good friend, a Portuguese man named Yanez de Gomera, they set out to rescue the ill-fated Tremal-Naik.

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.