Weekly diary "Lets be happy and get into the zone."

Breakfast : Homemade Belgian waffle with Rhubarb, Brown sugar yoghurt and Maple syrup. YuM

I had this at Cafe Giulia, which is located in a renovated 100 year old corner butcher shop in Chippendale, I love this place! There are so many breakfast menu to choose from and they opened from 6.30 am on weekdays. And its about 5 minutes walking distance from my place. Café Giulia is popular for its diversity of its breakfast menu, cool relaxed vibe and of course great taste. The menu is written on the big blackboard and there are some artworks along the wall and the latest newspapers to read.




(both photos are taken from Cafe Giulia appreciation society group in Facebook) x

This week favourite quote :
It’s usually the smartest ones that take forever to get married - their minds aren’t in sync with their hearts. Patti Stanger.

Conquer fear before it conquer you. Ricky Martin.

Highlight of the week :
I am watching the Secret Diary of a Call Girl season 3 tv series in youtube. I can't wait for the season 3 Dvd to come out. They didn't/haven't aired the season 3 in Australian Tv :(














Now, It's been 5 years since I read 'The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl' novel which is a bestseller in both the UK and Australia. Based on Belle de Jour's popular online diary which attracted 15,000 hit each day, Belle de Jour became a controversial phenomenon. I love it. Then I read 'The Further Adventures of Belle de Jour',and the 'Belle du Jour guide to men'. All books are charming, sometimes shocking, often hilarious and always thought-provoking glimpses into the professional high class sex trade in London. I think it was about 2 years ago when the season 1 of the Tv series Secret Diary of A Call Girl , which is produced based on the books aired in Australian TV. And much to everybody (including me) surprise, the TV series is successful and good. Great even. Fantastic. The series premiered in the U.S. on Showtime to the highest ratings the cable channel had seen in four years for a television premiere. The series debut reached almost one million viewers.

Nobody can play Belle more perfect than Billie Piper and the production of the show is slick, sexy, and funny. Sex worker is not ridiculed, in fact it is portrayed in an acceptable and fun way and sex is also talked in a humorous way. The fourth (and final) season is currently aired in the UK.

Season 3 previews :


Meet belle :


Quick look on the 1st season :


Things I learn this week :
It’s contagious. Happiness – and sadness – spread like disease, say researchers at Harvard and MIT. 

Do you know Sarah Wilson? Sarah is probably the coolest wisest woman I've ever known (well not personally, just through her weekly newspaper column). Every Sunday Sarah has a column in Sunday Life which she tries new ideas that challenge her and she take people on a journey to have a better, sweeter life. (the idea is from Eleanor Roosevelt's mantra 'Do something everyday that scares you'.) Sarah is a rare journalist and personality: She is an ambassador, speaker, adept social commentator, following a career that’s spanned newspapers, magazines, radio and television and her voice can extend from politics, health advocacy, restaurant reviewing, opinion writing and trend forecasting. She is now the host and program developer for the Australia’s newest channel Lifestyle YOU.

Throughout her amazing life, She
-begins her 17-hour days at 5.30am with mediation in her make-up trailer.
-had tea with Edward de Bono (the world's greatest thinker)and was invited to meet Dalai Lama.
-was the presenter of Masterchef Australia, which the first series has a record biggest ratings in Australia.
-was an editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for 4 years, During her tenure, the magazine experienced its highest recorded circulation and readership figures and increased its lead in the category.
-In September 2007, Australian Cosmo entered the Guinness World Book of Records when Sarah staged the largest swimsuit shoot on Sydney’s Bondi Beach and it is featured all around the world.
-became the first women’s magazine editor to interview the then Prime Minister of Australia Mr John Howard and current Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd, in the lead-up to the 2007 election.
-she came runner up in the Australian Young Journalist of the Year Awards. Sarah also contributed a weekly column for the Sunday Herald Sun’s opinion pages and was the youngest person in Australia to have such a column
-grew up on a subsistence-living farm, had her first business at 12, ride a vintage one speed bike, and she advocate minimalism and trift.
-loves A sand run at sunrise on the beach, mountain biking, organic and gluten-free foods, tap water (she kind of convert me from bottled water),yoga classes, adores all things food and takes pride in licking the plate clean. (she afterall was a Sunday magazine restaurant critic for 2 years).
Sarah has a blog (where you can read her Sunday life column) and her blog is the most amazing intelligent interesting adventurous thoughtful wise cool all combined into one. (www.sarahwilson.com.au) My favourite article is all her articles. If she is a man, I would have stalked her by now (or at this very second).



One of the thing Sarah said is about Ray Bradbury. Ray was a broke freelance writer. Unable to afford an office, he’d go to the public library to write, where he’d queue to hire a typewriter in the basement for 30 minutes at a time.  It cost a dime a pop; he had to get value for money (and time). So he’d write in efficient bursts. He’d wait his turn again, then another 30-minute burst, and so on. The result was the classic novel Fahrenheit 451, written in some ludicrously efficient, self-disciplined record time.

Sarah said that this kind of discipline enabled the writer to access “flow”. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pioneered this concept back in the early 90s and showed that some of life’s greatest contributions occurred when their creators were in flow (or “the zone”), that is they were so completely focused on the task at hand that time stopped, distractions ceased and much got done. When we engage in something fully we activate so many neurological functions at once that our brains get bamboozled and shut down the part that makes us aware of what we’re doing and how much time has passed. Ergo, flow. Sarah then talked about the Pomodoro Technique. Developed in the 90s by an Italian efficiency enthusiast, it’s recently experienced a surge of popularity. You pick a task and take one of those kitschly 90s red tomato kitchen timers and set it to 25 minutes. Next, churn through your task, ignoring distractions, not stopping to make tea or stare at the ceiling. Rest for 5 minutes and repeat the cycle three more times, after which you rest for a good half hour and grab lunch or read emails. The aim is to work to these 30-minute cycles daily, building up the self-discipline muscle.

(copy-pasted Sarah's writing). Of course.

I tried this, and it actually works! Amazing how I finally find a way to cure my short-attention disease-type thingy. (see How I write compared to the articulate beautiful Sarah) (sob) anyway I wish I have known this method since when I was still at school. I probably graduated with honors now.

Anyway (again) (now, finally notice the short attention?)
Sarah then said,

"I couldn’t bring myself to use an actual ticking tomato (too twee), so I used focusboosterapp, a customised online timer replete with ticking.

The ticking, which Pomodoro proponents say is key, certainly instilled a sense of urgency. I churned, and refrained from editing, to keep the flow and do as I’m told. And I did get in a flow. The time flew and I staid completely into the writing, no toggling, no lack of clarity and perspective. In my five-minute breaks, I walked around the block, which cleared my head. Then back to it, as instructed.

In the longer break at the end I contemplated why my brain got so sucked in by a virtual ticking clock as to behave itself so extraordinarily, not darting off to play silly buggers on Facebook or to lead my appetite astray to the fridge. I concluded it’s because our brains are simple little things that like boundaries. And external motivators, however kitsch they might be. They’re also easily bamboozled and fooled into flow.

The good news, however, is we can control this and dupe our brains to our advantage."
 
Sarah wrote so many amazing articles, I dont even want to duplicate or replicate one.

So, I'll end this weekly list with what she said. (which face it, is better for everybody). She interviewed Mitch Albom once, the author of the bestseller Tuesday with Morrie, which is the biggest selling memoir in history (you can write the interview in her blog).

At the end, she quoted the little insight from Mitch's newest book Have a Little Faith,
"When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched...because a baby, not knowing any better, wants grab everything , to say, 'The whole world is mine'. But when an old person dies with his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson."

Have a happy week ahead! I'm going to eat a scoop of ice cream now and daydream alittle. If I have some extra time, maybe I'll do my laundry. Or maybe eat another scoop of ice cream. Love xx