"Chocolat"

On this beautiful sunday morning, I've had the pleasure of saboring chocolate, enjoying Binoche's candid smile and splendid acting, gazing at Depp's delightful appearance, dreaming of living in a magical small french town like Lansquenet-sous-Tannes...all this just by watching the sweet film: CHOCOLAT.

In this movie, Vianne and her daughter Anoushka are wanderers; moving from town to town every time the 'north wind' changes. They move into a small french town and open up a cozy, beautiful chocolate shop. Vianne is so lighthearded; open to meeting people and welcoming them into her sweet world. But the close-minded people of this traditional town reject her for being sinfully sensual and open-minded. Vianne was one not to pay much mind to tradition or religion. Opening the shop exactly on Lent week, she wins the major's total rejection.

However, trying not to be shot down by the towns people's rejection, she continues to strive in attracting them to her shop. Some came in the shop with total skepticism, "just to check it out and know the enemy", but usually came out happier people. Vianne has such a warm personality, very inviting, very humble, very giving, reaching for closeness, delighted to share her stories and her culinary talents. She helps an old woman reconcile with her grandson and eventually, her daughter. She takes in a lady abused by her husband, teaching her about the world of chocolate and bringing her into her home. She convinces an old man to finally court the mourning lady he'd been spotting for years. She welcomes a group of river drifters when the whole town totally rejects them, as well. By little acts of kindness in return for skepticism and rejection, she had soon enough transformed the conservative locals into happier, open-minded people.

Vianne falls in love with Roux, the leader of the river drifters (ohhh! Johnny Depp!), and while conversing with him realizes that although she's not conservative, inside her exists a set of traditions which she subcoinciously lives by. The whole wandering from town to town when the wind changes, no matter how much this affects little Anoushka, is her way of coping with life.

This film questions tradition in the "sweetest" of ways; leads you to dream about moving to a small village and opening a cute shop; makes you fall in love (YES! with Johnny Depp!); plants a seed of desire for anything sweet! Truly enjoyable :)

I really liked a fragment of a review I found on www.ram.org, "The cinematography and pacing are very good and pangs of desire for something sweet are sure to be felt seeing the delicacies prepared by Vianne. The story is told effectively by creating an aura of enchantment in the way Vianne works: Is she just offering chocolate or is there something more? The actors do an amazing job and give Chocolat its sweetness."

Fragment: PROCRASTINATION

When I went to college in NY, I spoke a decent amount of english. I'd lived in NJ when I was younger, and learned the language without much effort. However, I came back to DR, and did not study english any further. So, when I got to college, my english level was not up to par for professional studies. I had a tough time trying to catch up with everyone else in the beginning; in college you have to write an essay for everything and anything! It was challenging! But I went from a D- to an A- in my english composition class...YEY!

Amongst all the great new words, phrases, grammar and composition techniques that I learned, there was one word in particular that truly caught my attention: PROCRASTINATION. This word doesn't have a direct translation in spanish. This is what I love about english language; it's so practical! Sometimes, one word (like this one) wraps a whole lot of meaning in it, which could only be translated into spanish by composing a whole sentence!

Anyways, to procrastinate is "to put off till another day or time; to defer; to delay". There's a quote I found one day that goes hand in hand with the word PROCRASTINATION, which says: "There's no pleasure in having nothing to do...the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it!"

So why do I talk about PROCRASTINATION today? Because I needed to let you guys know that I'd started a couple of posts and never finished them, always thinking, "I'll finish them later on..." and of course, never did till today :)

Therefore, I urge you to go as back as February 23rd to read some postings that were meant to be read back then, but having procrastinated so fabulously, you will be reading TODAY!

Here are the dates you should go back and read because they're were dated and saved back then, but finished just now:

February 23rd

March 12th

May 8th

May 18th

May 24th *pending

May 25th

May 28th

Go ahead and read the above PROCRASTINATED fragments ;)

Fragment: A DAY...today!

So this is what a day in my life is like sometimes; more so lately because of the situation at the symphony. Oh, right, I haven't written about this yet.

The thing is that our conductor resigned about 4 months ago. We got assigned a new conductor, this time a dominican (YEY!), whose put the orchestra under a deep restructuration process. We haven't had concerts or even rehearsals since March! Auditions for the whole orchestra have been announced, and they are obligatory. So, basically, we have 2 months to study the assigned orchestral excerpts and solo concert to audition in August, and then...get fired? raise our salary? get promoted, moved to another stand? who knows? As I've said before, I enjoy my job very much...it is SO unpredictable. Keeps me at the tip of my toes ;) Uuuuuuyyyyyy!But somehow, I have managed to keep myself busy, although I am basically jobless :S Playing with my buttons, socializing here and there, hooked to the series 24, singing at church, scarce gigs and other rehearsals, renting movies, working some hours at Crescendo, paying some bills, crashing my car, and the most recent, my new form of smart entertainment: SUDOKU!

(Oh man, I just noticed the clarinet wasn't even slightly mentioned in the paragraph above...hmmm...ok, I need to get on it!)

"The following events took place between 8Am and 4PM today" (like the 24 influence in me? jaja):

-Woke up at 8am; had coffee and cereal; watched 24, Season 2 Disc 2

-Checked e-mails

-Worked on Abotonada stuff (finished Nicky's order, yey!)

-Finally found a new way to close my button bracelets (I'm so excited!)

-Showered; made myself a light lunch

-Watched some more 24 (so GOOD!)

-Walked to my new favorite spot, the new coffee shop in my neighborhood; had my cortadito and did some SUDOKU!

-Walked back home; Lemay came to visit for a bit

-Finished 24, Season 2 Disc 2 (can't wait to go get Disc 3!)

-Started setting up my Etsy shop (finally!); still not done, but chk it out http://www.nenygq.etsy.com/

-Talked to my sister and little brother on the phone while I made myself some pasta for dinner

-Blogged ;)

What a day, huh?!

"24"

Ok, so I am officially hooked to the TV series 24! For those who know me, I know you must be wondering what has gotten into me. I usually AVOID anything with scary contents that create unnecessary tension in my life, especially if it contains too much of a death poll. And...24 IS about ALL this!

So, you are right. There IS some external influence that has led me to watch this. The other day, I was at a restaurant with a group of friends, and one of them started talking about 24 with so much excitement. The description given was so fascinating that I felt immediately intrigued. Soon enough after that day, I surrendered to my own standards of 'things I don't like to watch', and found myself renting the first disc of 24.

The series is shown in "real-time", meaning, each minute that passes while you're in front of the TV, actually corresponds to a minute in the lives of the characters. When there are commercial breaks, a digital clock appears on the screen showing the time, for example, 12:37pm, and when the show comes back from commercial, the same clock appears, now showing 12:41pm; it actually counts the real time that passed when the commercials interrupted the story. So even though we are seeing commercials, the story has kept going! Isn't this just amazingly thought out! How inventive and ingenious of the writers to create something like this!

There's a lot of killing and thrilling tension, but I am so fascinated and, surprisingly, HOOKED! I'm on Season 1, disc 4 right now, 1:00 to 2:00pm...Can't wait to finish my first 24 hours!

Oh, by the way, JACK BAUER is like...THE MAN!!!!!!!!!

"6 Degrees of Separation"

Back in college, I saw one of the coolest plays ever. Not only was it entertaining, and superbly acted out, but the message was SO real; the theory on which the play was all based makes so much sense.

So, I went to WIKIPEDIA to share with you guys an accurate explanation of the theory ;)

"Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularised by a play written by John Guare."

Isn't this theory just fascinating?! We are often amazed by the 'interconnectedness of the human network' (this is wikipedia talking still jaja), which we usually refer to as the small world effect. "Wow, what a small world this is!"

Well, this week, I proved this theory once again (of the many times that I already have). One of my best friends lives in LA, and writes me a message through Facebook saying: "Yesterday, through a friend that doesn't know you, I met Lari, who saw a picture of you in my house and was so shocked to once again prove how small the world is! She is friends with Smardi, your big brother's ex-girlfriend!"

There it is; in ways you least expect it; defying huge distances, even! I mean, Smardi and I live in Dominican Republic, my brother lives in Boston, and Sar and Lari live in LA, and we didn't all know each other, but through the interconnectedness that existed, which became evident through a series of events, NOW we all do.

I just mentioned a key word in the paragraphs above. FACEBOOK has become a powerful tool in this matter! Through Facebook, I along millions of people, have found it extremely interesting to see which friends one has COMMON friends with. "What?! Such and such knows such and such?! But I know them from very different networks!"

Googling this great theory, I came across Paul Walk's Weblog, which talks about Facebook and the Six Degrees of Separation theory. These are some of the things he says (so interesting!):

• I recently got invited to participate in Karl Bubyan’s Six Degrees of Separationapplication in Facebook. This application navigates the ’social graph’ in Facebook, offering a couple of tools to allow the user to test the ‘Six degrees of separation‘ hypothesis. The application and its interface seem quite slick - and it has the now obligatory visualisation (reproduced here).

• So I suggest that for any actual person in whom you are interested, Facebook presents two degrees of separation

• This tool is quite interesting in terms of what it allows the user to discover about their relationship to other, named, users.

You can read more of him here:

http://blog.paulwalk.net/2007/10/08/no-degrees-of-separation/

So...can somebody figure out my 6 links to............Jhonny Depp, pleaseeeee! : p