Websites I Would Like to Share

I really, really love lists…and everyone should. TIME magazine agrees too. So, naturally, the first three websites I like to mention are:

Mental_Floss: These days, there are Mental_Floss magazines and Mental_Floss Books, but why waste fifty dollars when you can get as much (if not more) information from their website. Their cheatsheets are useful too, but I find them very limited.

Listverse: They have nearly a thousand lists (may be even more) in every subject matter. Some lists are hilarious, some socially illuminating, and some extremely practical.

Cracked.Com: Those who are easily offended shouldn’t go to this site. However, if you like politically incorrect, and sometimes risque humor, you are in for a treat.

….and some trivia….

Now things I should pass on….

Gapminder:  “Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view” That is what they say, and it is very useful, intelligent and nice to look (and procrastinate). However, since their statistics didn’t include the UK before 1950 (but have stats of Sri Lanka in 1850s), I am amused–for the lack of a better word.

BugMeNot: It is just common sense, but common sense isn’t common: hence this and this. One surreptiously ask your personal info one step at a time, while one entice you with prices–oh, I meant prizes. But this dilemma crowns itself with Swoopo. In that German shooping site, the users can bid on iPods, computers and airtickets, but the catch is that you have to pay a dollar everytime you bid on something (and sometimes there are as much as a 1000 bids on an ipod).

People Lists: here is one, here is another but it is Vox Populi, Vox Dei isn’t it? I hope not–because if it were the case, the most influential people on the planet will be a Japanese game designer, a cable news presenter and a Korean pop-star (not to mention two supermodels). Yes, seriously. But an astrophysicist has a final say in the matter; he encompassed 4,000 years of recorded history into one list of a hundred individuals. Since, the said astrophysicist is also the same one who proclaimed that we are the only intelligent life in the entire Universe, I will trust him.

Very Optimistic Future: The NYT of the future–they also distributed this on the streets. Feeling bored, I searched eBay for a real copy of this ‘historic’ edition. I didn’t find any. The NYT should have left the fake stories to the Onion. On a pessimistic flipside, the NYT is “a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly,” by 2014. One thing that made this EPIC 2014 more creepy is eeriely comforting narrative, which nonetheless sounds as reassuring as the one in dystopian movie Fatherland.

To Armchair travellers: In fact, this website is to all travelling aficionados because there is no way that we can visit all these places before we… well, you get the point….but the writers of this book don’t get the point, and even came up with a sequel (more like an expended edition).

That Encounter, One Year On….

Yesterday, I learnt to my amazement (and subdued horror) that a friend of mine was celebrating his 1000th day together with his girlfriend. Yes, one followed by three zeros—it is not a typo. They have been together for a thousand days. By comparison, my longest relationship didn’t pass a 400-day circle. On the other hand, my shortest relationship lasted only three days (during a road trip) and ended bitterly.

As optimists will say, closing of one door signals the opening of another. It was true. As soon as I ended my shortest relationship, I embarked upon a new relationship that ultimately led to the greatest adventure I’ve ever had. It was a relationship that started with a chance encounter in one of the most improbable places to start a relationship—a theme park.

This month marks the first anniversary of that meeting. The girl I met would ultimately became my first (and hopefully last) long-distance partner, and the relationship itself was the best of my romances, and the worst of my romances, as Dickens will write. At its best, we shared so many things, at its worst, we had to bear a strenuous burdens of a long-distance relationship.

To cut a long story short, over the summer, we managed to erase the ‘long-distance’ appellation from our relationship, but our summer together ended with a classic parting of the ways moment. Now, it has been a year since our first encounter, and three months since our parting.

However, at the end of the day, love and relationships are similar to leprechauns’ gold. We try so hard to obtain one that we usually forget love is nothing but an illusion. As soon as the relationship is over, love turns into ash as a leprechaun’s gold would. But, memories linger on—the memories that you had  transient and ethereal love, as elusive as leprechauns’ gold, in your hands fill you with joy. That joy is more than a one-night stand can give you, less than a marriage can offer, but it is just the right amount for me.