Can HUGE difference in age prevent people from falling in love?

The answer is NO.

I have emphasized the word “HUGE” because the couple I am going to tell you now is different by 44 years apart. The man is only 36 but his lover has already turned 80.
Personally, neither I oppose nor support this usual love. So I’m really neutral about this. However, this strange love story did tell me that love can go beyond any obstacle, love can turn you into a weird person in other people’s eyes because they could never explain what love is.

So our two main characters live in a  highland town in Vietnam. You might have heard of this place because it’s a really famous tourist spot. It called SAPA, located in Lao cai province, to the northwest of Vietnam. SAPA is famous not only because of its beautiful scenery of mountains, rice terraces. You might say, if Sapa is the famous tourist destination, it should be quite city-like but the people there are really poor and most of them are ethnic minority people. For many many years, their lives have not changed much. The impact of modernization has not really reached their homes.

Two lovers in Sapa

Now, back to the strange love story.

109 Year-Old Haitian now homeless

Tent City in Port au Price

Having been so busy with the coming exams, I have to admit finding another story to put in to this series of mine seems a little too hard. I thought I would have come up with something which might not be in the same league but no, this could be much better story than others.

Since the media is still covering every news from Haiti, I also get kind of interested in knowing how Haitian people are doing there. And today, the story of a 109 year-old Haitian woman who survived the disaster caught my attention immediately.

Two sisters, two guardians of Haitian orphans

As many of you have known. the devastating earthquake in Haiti has left thousands of people homeless and in the aftermath of any disaster, children are suffered the most.

I will not attempt to report any news on Haiti in this entry since all the latest updates are covered in every media means such as radio, television, newspapers, internet…

BRESMA orphanage

The story below is about two sisters, Jamie and Ali McMutrie, from Ben Avon, a borough in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who set up BRESMA orphanage, the home of more than 50 Haitian orphans ( many of them are really small). BRESMA orphanage is described as “an oasis of nutrition, medical care and love for children” in Haiti. The McMutrie has been living in Port-au-Prince for several years. They have been going through a lot of difficulties to operate this home for underprivileged children in Haiti, the poorest country in Western Hemisphere.

Ali McMutrie poses with children in Haiti

Jamie and Ali came to Haiti to lend their helping hands to save the children from poverty and natural disaster.  Jamie McMutrie once drove through a hurricane to rescue a starving baby who was later adopted by a family in the  U.S. The two sisters biggest mission is to find families in the U.S, Canada or Europe for their poor Haitian children.

Life has not been easy on the kids and Jamie and Ali. The 12th Jan earthquake has teared their hopes apart. The two sisters were waiting to bring new family to the children since the paperwork was already in the process. Sadly, the horrified earthquake has buried all those documents and even the people who could make orphans’ lives changed forever under the rubble.

“Click”

Today I’m going to talk about a movie which I’d seen quite a long time ago and just seen it again on ProSieben. It’s called “Click“.

To click is to press a button and expect something to happen. But in this movie, one a button is clicked you would go back to the past or go into the future. There have been many movies talking about this fantasy of the mankind but for me “Click” is one of the most touching and able to stick with me for a long time.

Adam Sandler is one of my favorite actors. He is a comedian and most of his movies are comedies but after all the laugh, there is always something to think about.

“Click” is a story about Micheal Newman, a workaholic architect who took his family for granted because he always wanted to do best at his job. One day he went to a store to buy a remote control to replace his old one he met a guy named Morty who actually was an eccentric inventor. Morty gave Micheal a universal remote control which allowed Micheal to fast forward or fast reverse time. Micheal had abused the device to do and achieve what he wanted without caring about other people.  Micheal used the remote to skip a year to get his promotion but he was not aware that his marriage was falling apart and he had missed his marriage counselling and the death of his dog.

Chicken a la Carte

KFC

It’s like an unwritten schedule, once my PC is turned on, the first thing I normally do is reading news. I read almost everything except sports news because I’m not really a fan of any kind of sports. Articles in which contains photos and videos would always be my first choices in the list.

One of the articles which left a great impact on me was the summary of Six most touching clips which were viewed by million of people on Youtube. I watched them all. Each clip sent a different message but none of them was funny instead each gave me a drop of melancholy. Thus I liked them all.

However, Chicken a la Carte was the one which stole my tears the most. This 6 minutes-9 seconds short film was directed and produced in Philippines by a multi-talented Filipino, Ferdinand Dimadura. Chicken a la Carte had crowned the best short film in the 36th Berlin Film Festival.

The film was about poverty and hunger which killed 25,000 people around the world everyday. Because of Globalization, there are distinctive difference between the poor and the rich in any society, especially in developing countries like Philippines. In the movie you could see that the international fast food brand KFC was not something too hard to afford for many people. Specifically, for the two girls in this movie. They entered the shop,  ordered some chicken and left  behind without a second thought almost the whole plate of food which had not been touched.

On the contrary, there was this poor man who was riding his old bicycle to that KFC’s store to collect food trash. Carefully, he sorted out the trash and picked up pieces of chicken which still looked good and edible then he put them into a clean plastic bag. These was his fancy dinner for his beloved family at home.

Polar bears turn cannibals! A cruel message sent to save our planet

It’s been such a busy time for me. Schooling and doing part-time job have occupied my entire week. Hence, I have not much time do read news.

I try to get news every day so I usually use the “dead time” (which people call time when you are on the way from one place to another) to catch some news. And I find Berliner Fenster (direct translation: Berlin Window) a perfect media to get short but updated news. Berliner Fenster is a small screen equipped on underground trains (U-bahn) in Berlin.

Last week, as usually in order to avoid looking at other people, my eyes were focus on the screen, trying to read news (I said trying because my German is still not very good so I have to guess quite a lot) and a shocking headline and photo immediately drew my attention. It was a photo of a big bloody Polar bear grabbing a Polar bear cub’s head in its mouth. And what reported in the news was because of the climate change, the food chain has somehow broken. Polar bears now have had so little food to eat that they have to turn into cannibals.

Polar bear turn cannibal

Dede, the tree man (Warning: Contains disturbing images)

Warning: This entry contains disturbing images so please prepare yourself before reading.

I know, I know that I have had slight bias towards stories about inspiring people. But I can’t help but to write about this extraordinary person. His name is Dede Kosawa, an 32 year old Indonesian. So, what’s amazing about him?

Well, people know him better by the name “Tree Man“. You might think? Is he a super man who could jump from a tree without being hurt or isn’t he a guy who lives in (or on) a tree???

No no, his name is  “tree man”, literal meaning. “Roots and branches” were really growing from his body. Why do I say “were”? Well, I want to say first so you won’t feel so sad to hear about his story I’m about to tell.  Dede is now almost cured. And he’s back to his home in Bandung where his family belongs to and he’s happy to have an almost normal life.

Okay, so back to his sad story.

Strange warts had been growing unchecked from Dede’s body after he accidentally cut his knee when he was a teenager. He was fired from his job and deserted by his wife. Living in a poor remote village in Indonesia, Dede had to join a local “freak show” to earn some money to raise his two children. His disfigured hands and feet prevented him from living a normal life. He needed help with most of his daily activities such as just having his shirt on.

However, his rare condition had been heard by many people. He was taken to the hospital and he had received support and visit from Indonesian Health Minister and even the President sent the regards to him. Quite many surgeries had been taken removing more than 1.8 kg of warts from Dede’s body.

Is Rom Houben really conscious?

Rom Houben can now communicate thanks to a special computer. Right, Houben is pictured before his accident. Photo: Sky News

When I first read the amazing story of Rom Houben gaining ability to communicate after 23 years, I was really stunned. Who could ever endure those years of being trapped in a paralysed body while their brain was still in perfect condition like anyone else´s? It would be the most horrible nightmare and unimaginable frustration.

The breakthrough discovery in Rom Houben´s condition has raised the question and brought a new perpective to the way people who are in comas. Human brain is the most intelligent and complicated machine above all. It controls every part of the body and Rom Houben has proved that it is the strongest and most alive part which makes him a normal person.

Michael Hirte – Winner of “Das Supertalent show” 2008

Harmonica

It will have to start with “how do I know him?”. Well, firstly I have to thank my new DVB TV receiver box which I bought two weeks ago. If you have read my entry “My first presentation in German”, then you might still remember I said that I will try to push myself hard to learn German. So my first action was to bring German TV into my house.

Now, with TV I have started to reserve my Saturday time to follow “Das Supertalent” show. I love this show. I don’t know about you but some performances did brought tears into my eyes.

Last night, after Oliver Roemer’s singing performace, one of the show hosts asked Oliver if he remembered the winner of 2008’s show. Oliver said it was Michael Hirte. This name did not ring any bell to me at all because simply I have never heard about him. I don’t know why but I assume that the winners of those talent shows normally are either singers or dancers. Hence, I also thought that Michael Hirte was someone with a amazing voice and  great appearance which had won over the audiences’ hearts.

The story of two lovers

I like books but I only read whenever I feel being on the mood  i.e it takes me ages to finish a book. However I can also stay up all night to read a book that I could not take my eyes off. One of these books is “I Wish Someone Were Waiting for me Somewhere” by Anna Gavalda, an award-winning French novelist.

This book contains a series of  short stories and most of them are about love. There is no connection among these little stories, each of them has its own characters and takes place in a different towns in France.

In this blog entry, I don’t intend to re-tell every single story because otherwise I could have to stay up all night again. I definitely don’t want to because I really need to sleep well tonight to make up for last night. The movie “Inglorious Bastards” really kept me up the whole night. If you have seen it, you would know why. Oh, am I digressing the topic? Hmm, where am I???

Oh, yes from my entry’s title “The story of two lovers”, you know that I’m going to talk about love but actually this is more a tragedy rather than a normal and-they-live-happily-ever-after love story. I’m talking about one small story named  “For Years” in “I Wish Someone Were Waiting for me Somewhere“. This story sticked to me the most and it made me cry when it ended.