Thursday, February 15, 2024

Chilled distilled life

All of a sudden, for no apparent reason,
I want to be sitting at one of those courts
where Thai people go for beers and snacks.
An occasional foreigner can be spotted there,
brought by his local date, disoriented, out of place,
too dumbfounded to even be amused.
I want to be more bewildered than him,
for I'd go there alone, on my own accord.
I want to be a stuttering weird-worded weirdo,
speak Thai with a waitress
who’s expecting English.
I want to feel self-conscious,
stared at, gossiped about,
at least in the perceptual trap
of my paranoid thoughts.

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Einstein's dreams - Alan Lightman


There have always been speculations about Albert Einstein getting his most inspired ideas while he was dreaming. Even though this has never been confirmed, it is true that our brain develops new connections providing insightful ideas during REM sleep, precisely when we are dreaming. Those of you who want to know more about what happens to our body and mind while we are comfortably slumbering on our beds can have a look at “Why we sleep”, a great popular science book written by Matthew Walker.
In “Einstein’s dreams” Alan Lightman, who is both a writer and a physicist, tries to figure out all the dreams that the famous Nobel prize winner could have had over the months preceding the publication of his revolutionary paper on relativity theory and specifically about the concept of time.

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

On the black hill - Bruce Chatwin


I’ve had Bruce Chatwin on my author list for a long time. I thought he was mainly a travel writer: I remember some friends of mine referring to “In Patagonia” and “What am I doing here” as great travel literature. When I found “On the black hill” on the shelves of one of my favorite used book stores I realized that he wrote fiction as well.

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

M@mm@Mi@1234

If you can remember your password
You got a bad password.
If you find this funny
You got only bad passwords.


Friday, February 2, 2024

The namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri


We’ve already met this outstanding Indian-American female writer when we talked about her debut work: the short-story collection “The interpreter of maladies”.
“The namesake” is a novel that deals with the life of an American born Indian guy, who is named Gogol, after the great Russian author, for reasons related to his father’s past.

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

The great philosophers: from Socrates to Turing - Edited by Ray Monk and Frederic Raphael


When I was a restless and immature high school student, I used to ignore my philosophy professor’s lectures while talking about silly topics with my classmates or doing the hell knows what. Most of the time, at least. Yet, something managed to sink in and the spark of curiosity ignited by that great teacher has never died. Ever since that confused phase of my life, I’ve tried to fill the gap by reading textbooks such as Russel’s “History of philosophy” and Gaarder’s “Sophie’s world” or some works by the most prominent western and eastern thinkers.

Monday, January 1, 2024

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a very short introduction - Martin Bunton


I found this short essay on the shelves of a very nice second hand book shop in Pattaya, of all places! It’s a very useful overview on a conflict whose causes are very old and intricate, academic style but easy to read, free of all the irritating and confusing biased nuances typical of those media outlets that tend to support one side, for genuine or dubious reasons. It starts telling us about the Ottoman Empire land reform that lead to the centralization of most of the agriculturally interesting areas in the hands of some Muslim prominent families.